The synod brings good news to the church
This headline last week caught my attention.
The skepticism that is accompanying news of this new global synod is warranted! Especially from those within the CTA community who have been persecuted within the Church for raising up the cries for justice within the Church and for the wider world.
I wholeheartedly agree with Abby that “it will take power to change the church.”
I wonder: what will it take for those of us hungry for reform to see Pope Francis opening up a path for all of us to “take the power to change the church” … to build it, weave it, model new ways of sharing life and making decisions?
I’d argue Pope Francis is the most prophetic living leader in power, maybe that we will encounter in our lifetime. He is taking a massive leap in faith that the Holy Spirit swelling through the people of God will create pathways to help renew the dusty, self-referential structures and continue in the Spirit and mission of Vatican II. What if we could trust in the wisdom of this shepherd just enough to overcome our well-earned cynicism?
The synod itself is about transforming the structures of governance in an ongoing way to be more synodal, dynamic, and mutually accountable. It's exactly so the (painful) lessons of 1976 can be heeded. The Pope is challenging bishops to continue on a listening journey of co-governance rather than shrinking back when the people of God are more prophetic than bishops were prepared to be. It’s the people of God who in fact are protagonists, co-creating with the Spirit... even when we face opposition.
The synod offers us a powerful invitation. I’m worried that bitterness and heartache might keep us from seeing the new… the new that, yes, is long overdue and much delayed, and yet is here, now.
“Behold I am doing a new thing: can you not perceive it?” - Isaiah 43:19
If we only look to the US Church, it is inevitable to become discouraged that this will all "go nowhere,'“ but the reality is that new structures are being born, created, and are unfolding. Increasingly this pope is trying to signal that positions of responsibility and power do not have to be held by those who are ordained.
Consider what is unfolding in Mexico later this month with the CELAM assembly. For those who read Spanish, you might skim the working document that will guide the discernment of this historic gathering (translations are forthcoming). For the first time ever, the structure itself will be more inclusive, lay and clerics together empowered to set the course, lay out the priorities. The newly approved Amazonian ecclesial conference is similarly constructed to include lay voting members and women. Baby steps here, but not insignificant!
The leaders at the center of the global synod process (those who will synthesize and prepare working documents for debate) are not afraid of asking new questions. It doesn't mean we will end up with women deacons in two years. But perhaps within the decade we will have authority to vote on our bishops, as our brothers and sisters in eastern rite Catholic traditions do. (Adam Deville’s work is instructive and potent here, as are the calls for ecumenical dialogue woven throughout the synod process.)
The synod is aimed at unleashing all the faithful to step more fully into their power as baptized believers and protagonists in the Church — something that CTA members have been doing! Now is a time to step up in leadership, to be savvy, wise, and spiritually ready to make a significant contribution. There will be a space to directly share our collective consultations to the USCCB synod team. We need voices to help drive the Church towards urgent priorities for peace and justice.
Is now a time — for example — to call for a truth and reconciliation commission to address the US Catholic Church's complicity in racism and the founding of this country? What would be a path to power to make this contribution and recommendation as part of the synod? Where would CTA have to show up? And with what kind of spirit, preparation, testimony?
I hope CTA can try to listen for and follow the hope. I believe so strongly in the voices that have been gathering into the center of CTA through years of radically inclusive cohorts, marked by dreaming and organizing and acting for the liberation of all. I hope you could take the invaluable experience of CTA (including the laments) forward — experience of where synodality can go wrong and of how it might go right/differently this time around. Your voices are so needed!
I also respect that we are coming to this moment from different places and positions. The prophetic call and cry from those on the outskirts of the Church is necessarily marked by skepticism about whether those who hold the power will change. But that is exactly the community — those who are disenfranchised, not engaged, perhaps with two feet out the door — that Pope Francis believes in this moment, the community that is the bearer of a Word of wisdom and an essential witness back to the Church.
Call it naive, but I find in the synod a fresh way to proclaim good news about the Catholic Church: to everyone! To the weary, the tired, the despairing... that together we might be repairers of the breach, and weave a more glorious, beautiful, justice-seeking body of Christ here on earth as we draw near to each other with hope, and faith.
God has not abandoned the Church. Exactly because the Holy Spirit might yet want to speak through each of us — if we dare to hope to believe something new is waiting to be born within a vast, living tradition of faithful witnesses.
