The following letter was released last month:
A response to the Synthesis Report of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.
We welcome the Synthesis Report of the XVI ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. It affords us a lucid insight into the thinking of our current bishops. We acknowledge the bishops’ recognition that the laity have an important part to play in discernment.
On close reading, the Bishops’ Report is not one document, but two. It is not so much a synthesis as the minutes of an apparently unresolved quarrel.
One voice is filled with hope, with renewal and the fresh air of a Spirit unbounded, rejoicing in the emerging lay church (1). The other belongs to bishops who have yet to find the courage to let go of their privileges (2). By the end we understand that this is not the first document of a new synodal age. It is the record of an Episcopal Conference in which prophetic voices won no significant concessions from the powerful and wealthy forces of conservatism.
This document will disappoint and wound the many faithful, from all quarters of the Catholic world, who had called in their submissions for progress, among many other pressing issues, on women’s ordination, on teaching on LGBTIQ issues, on the celibate priesthood, on reproductive rights or on measures to end the many forms of clerical abuse.
Underlying these was a question that goes to the heart of them all. For a church to be synodal the bishops will need to accept a new model of authentic co-responsibility with the laity. The hopeful voices in the synthesis claim that all Christians ‘should be listened to carefully, regardless of their tradition, as the Synod Assembly did in its discernment process.’ (7b) But, the experience of many millions of faithful parishioners throughout the world has been that, in the months leading up to this assembly, their bishops did not listen to them carefully. Indeed, many did not listen to them at all. To claim therefore that this flawed process validates the bishops’ conservative conclusions because it was already synodal is unhelpful.
The synthesis in fact establishes no co-responsible institutions. While, during the Assembly, the Holy Father denounced the ‘scourge’ and the ‘scandal’ of clericalism, which, he declared, inflicts ‘scorn, mistreatment and marginalization’ on the laity, the bishops ended their Assembly by recommending only an extended period of episcopal committees and inquiries (3). It becomes clear that they are not yet ready to let go, either of clericalism or of control.
The synthesis tells us that progress in the Church, along the lines Pope Francis has set out, does not lie with these men. For the present it lies with the faithful people of God, discovering the consensus fidelium in their emerging communities, and living, as the synthesis itself recognises, in ‘the closeness of the day-to-day, around the Word of God and the Eucharist.’ (18e) It lies also with those presbyters ready to join in faithful partnership with the laity on a common path to renewal.
It was signed off as such:
Dr Mary McAleese, President of Ireland 1997-2011
Dr Luca Badini Confalonieri, Executive Director, Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research
Miriam Duignan, Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research
Jamie Manson, President, Catholics for Choice
Penelope Middelboe, co-founder Root & Branch and Spirit Unbounded
What do Mary McAleese’s worldly titles have to do with anything in the church?
Are we to call her ‘Dr’, ‘President’ in church?
Are we to entertain her petulant outbursts about ‘clericalism’ one minute while humouring her notions of seniority the next?
Mary McAleese is a regular person who wrote a letter about the Synod, with the same weight as if you and I had.
Yet that is precisely the problem with this Synod, if you attended local parish gatherings you will have found your discussions absent from the Synod Synthesis Report in favour of those put forth by powerful liberal lobby groups.
Perhaps in future when we put forward letters to the Synod we should sign them off with things like McDonald’s Team Member, Sheep Farmer or Hairdresser, since posting occupation titles seems to get one’s Synod voice some media coverage.
