U.S. reformers are not willing to sit quietly while our conservative bishops shut out our voices in our US/Canadian Continental Synod. We are reconvening as described below with U.S. and Canadian participants invited to join us – along with anyone else who shares our concern. If those of you who are from another country have similar concerns that your voices were shut out of the Continental Synthesis in your region of the world, we’d be happy to call together a similar gathering for you. Do let us know if you want to have a similar gathering in your region. In the meantime, you are invited to read the message below and, in particular, you may find these insights helpful into the embedded restrictions still present in the Synodal process . . . even with 70 lay people being granted voting rights.
North Americans invited to join CCRI for our online gathering on Tuesday, May 9, 2023
There seems to be strong interest in reconvening our Region XVI U.S. gathering and discerning the issues we raised that have not been included in the US Continental Synod Report. The problem we face is clear: Referring to Sunday’s Gospel, too many conservative bishops are the “gatekeepers” in full control of who was and wasn’t invited to participate in this Synod. And, all too often, our progressive voices were not allowed through the gate. As Eileen Mathy said: “We must exercise whatever voices we are granted for as long as we can. I do believe that persistence will make a difference.” And as Kathleen Chafin said: “We have more power than we think. Doing nothing gets nothing. If we truly believe in our concerns we have to work towards change without regard to ‘winning or losing.’”
All who are interested are invited to gather online on Tuesday, May 9, at 1:00 pm Eastern time, noon Central time, 11:00 am Mountain time, and 10:00 Pacific time. To access this session, click on https://zoom.us/j/2429500175. Password is spirit. Please pass this word onto your networks.
Deeper insight into the embedded restrictions in the Synod despite the good news of 70 lay people being given a vote
Luca Badini is a member of our CCRI steering committee from Italy currently living in the UK and serving withWijngaards Institute. He shared these insights into the restrictions still imbedded in the hierarchy controlling the synods. . . even with 70 lay persons invited to vote. You may find this helpful as you continue to address to forthcoming General Assembly in Rome in October.
The 2018 canon law on synods (Episcopalis communion) has been amended to include a greater participation of laypeople with voting powers in synods. More details in the article linked below:https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/pope-francis-expands-participation-synod-lay-members-granting-right-vote.
Referencing the letter from Bishop Flores, [which says “While not a complete articulation of the many topics and perspectives shared in the listening process] this confir.ms the understanding of synodality of two senior Vatican officials. I’m sharing my comments on it here, as I see a tension between the nice rhetoric on the one hand, and what the current rules governing the practice of synodality actually say on the other. My comments largely repeat those I had already made to Card. Grech’s keynote speech at the European Continental Assembly back in February: you can find my comments to that earlier speech of his here. For those interested, I’m providing a summary below.
In short, the current rules, outlined in the 2018 document Episcopalis Communio (EC) amending the canon law concerning synods – which is referenced both in the letter circulated by Clyde, and in Card. Grech’s keynote speech in Prague – are as follows:
– Only the Pope and bishops can decide if and when to call a synod, and they alone can set its agenda. ECreinstated the previous canon law which restricts to the Pope/bishops alone the power both to call a synod and to determine and delimit its agenda. The main change EC introduced is that once they do call a synod (and set its agenda), they then will have to consult the laity before gathering themselves to make decisions, i.e. they have made mandatory a period of consultation of the laity as part of any future synod.
But, to reiterate, despite Card. Grech and Hollerich waxing lyrical that “By virtue of its participation in the prophetic function of Christ, the holy People of God is the subject of the synodal process through the consultation that each Bishop carries out in his Church”, it remains – as Grech himself stated unambiguously in Prague – that “There is no consultation unless the bishop summons the People of God in his care”. Concretely, this means that “synodality” is fully dependent on the good will of each and every bishop; there is no legal obligation on any bishop to call synods: indeed, now that the German church wants to actually make a national synod permanent and mandatory, Rome has made it abundantly clear it does not want that. So to affirm as this latest letter does that the People of God is “the subject of the synodal process” is at best misleading and at worst disingenuous. The fact of the matter is that the People of God continues to remain in an entirely passive position; it can only speak (with no guarantee of being listened to, as none exists in canon law) if and when called to do so by the bishops. The much vaunted “mutual listening” can only occur if the bishops feel like it and want to.
– The second point stressed both in the letter and in Grech’s plenary speech in Prague is that, after the consultation, it is up to the bishops exclusively to “exercise the charism of discernment” and decide whether and to what extent to really listen to what has emerged from the consultation. Yes, they will now allow a woman to vote at the October gathering, but again let us recall the Vatican’s reaction to the German proposal to have a permanent national synod with substantial lay representation: it was a resounding No, on the basis it would endanger the bishops’ exclusive prerogative to teach and defend doctrine.
In short: according to Cardinal Grech, “synodality” means the laity can only listen to and debate when and what the Pope or bishops allow them to, and that in any case the laity can have no vote in the final decision-making process, which is still reserved almost exclusively to the bishops.
This is all to say that “synodality” as it has been enshrined in EC – i.e. the canon law currently in force since 2018 – is still an entirely clericalist system, only softened by the requirement to consult the laity. Which, mind you, is better than nothing, but methinks we need to be clear-sighted as to where we still are.
As a final, related point, I have finally found the time to create a rough transcript of the two related insights by Prof. Myriam Wijlens which I have mentioned repeatedly in our zoom meetings before. She made them back in 2021 in a panel on synodality organised by the Australian Embassy to the Vatican, but unfortunately I don’t think she has repeated them since… I have copied them in full, together with the link to the YouTube video they come from, at the end of the document with my take on Card Grech’s speech at the European Continental Assembly back in February, which I have linked above. To sum up, Prof. Wijlens makes two points (I’ve somewhat expanded here what she says for the sake of clarity):
1. The theological basis of synodality is the new understanding of how we come to know and grow in our understanding of Revelation put forward by Vatican II. Instead of understanding Revelation as a top-down process which goes from Jesus to Peter and the apostles, and then to their supposed successors the Popes and the bishops, and through them down the hierarchy to priests and finally to the laity, we now understand that it is the entire people who has received the deposit of faith, and who grows its understanding of it through the experiences, insights and values of all its members. It is precisely because those unique experiences and insights into the deposit of faith are scattered throughout the community that:
1. it is the People of God – all Christians both individually and as a whole – which is the active subject of discernment, and 2. the bishops should merely be representatives of, and spokesperson for, the faith of their church. Hence her second point (what follows is the transcript):
2. “What does it mean to be a bishop in a synod? Is the bishop speaking about his personal faith, is he there as Joseph Smith? Or is he there as the bishop representing the diocese of – whatever diocese you’re representing in the world. Now theologically, the idea was always that a bishop would be a witness to the faith of his own church. So he does not speak about his personal faith. The Holy Father has said this also, it’s not for the holy father to speak of his personal faith, but he has to reflect the faith and to confirm the faith of the church of all times and of all places.”
Incidentally, this is why I found so disappointing, and in fact destructive of synodality, when Pope Francis ignored the requests of the Synod on the Amazon for married priests and ordained women, on the basis – I kid you not, that was the only explanation offered, and I therefore regard it as the “official” explanation from the Vatican – that he “felt” it was not the time to do so. Decision-making on the basis of what this or that Pope “feels” at any given moment. Yet this is not what synodality should mean. He should have merely ratified what an international (and, ideally, truly representative) synod decided by two-thirds supermajority, after extensive consultation of the local churches in the Amazon. But his behaviour makes perfect sense in the entirely clericalist understanding of “synodality” which he, and Card. Grech, both share, namely that regardless of what emerges from the consultation, the bishops and the pope on top can decide to ignore it if they “feel” they need to.
I would add that historically, the method for discerning authentic from inauthentic interpretation of the deposit of faith has ordinarily been (conciliar) debate followed by majority voting, initially at the local level and later, when Christianity expanded, at councils where bishops would be representatives (in the political sense of the word) of the faith of the church they were supposed to serve.