The Committee is responsible for gathering and summarising responses to questionnaires for the Irish Synodal Pathway.

The young Catholics wrote that they love the Church's teaching, but their voices have not been heard.

The process leading up to the Synod on Synodality in Rome did not pay attention to their views, they said.

They express concern that the synodal process might give a false impression. As it stands. it suggests all Catholics in Ireland would like to see changes made.

Ireland's bishops also received a copy of the letter..

Peadar Hand, one of the letter's organisers, said making changes may not be the way to go.

"Among people who are actually practising and trying their best to live their faith, there's no desire for a change in Church teaching," he said.

"The duty of the Church is not to change with the world, but to change the world."

The letter says:

"As young practising Catholics, we would like you to hear our voices regarding developments with the Synodal Synthesis" it begins.

It goes on to explain young Catholics' concerns following the presentations at the pre-Synodal National Gathering in June.

Issues of concern include "the emerging synthesis risks presenting a false conclusion".

"The Sensus Fidei is in conflict with current church teaching and practice" they say. "This relates in particular to human sexuality, marriage and ordained ministry."

The Catechism defines sensus fidei or sensus fidelium. It is "the supernatural appreciation of faith on the part of the whole people when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals".

The Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference has been asked for comment.

In March 2020 Pope Francis announced a Synod on Synodality.

Its aim is "to provide an opportunity for the entire people of God to discern together how to move forward on the path towards being a more synodal Church in the long-term".

The three-part synodal process started in October 2021 with consultations at the diocesan level. A continental phase is scheduled to commence in March 2023.

The final and universal phase will begin with the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. This will be themed: "For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission."

The Assembly will take place at the Vatican in October 2023.

Source

• CNA

A new reformation for the 21st century must transcend "the current forms and boundaries of Christianity," resist simplistic answers to contemporary challenges and contribute to uniting into ‘One Body' all of humanity, together with all of creation.

On the second day of The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Thirteenth Assembly in Kraków, Poland, keynote speaker Monsignor Tomáš Halík urged participants from across the global Lutheran communion to be "witnesses to the ongoing resurrection of the Giver of Hope,".

They could do this by working for a spiritual renewal that goes beyond national, religious, social or cultural boundaries, he said.

Ecclesia semper reformanda

In his keynote address to delegates attending the 13 to 19 September Assembly, Halík recalled that the Church must be "ever reforming, […] especially in times of great change and crisis in our common world."

Reformation is necessary, he said, "where form hinders content, where it inhibits the dynamism of the living core."

Looking back to the Lutheran and Catholic Reformations of the 16th century, he noted that they "renewed and deepened Christianity, but they also divided it."

The 20th century, he said, "saw the beginning of two great parallel reformations - the global expansion of Pentecostal Christianity and the Second Vatican Council," marking the Catholic Church's transition from "confessional closedness […] to universal ecumenical openness."

But the ecumenism of the 21st century, he continued, must go much further than the ecumenism of the previous one.

Just as St Paul had the courage to lead "Christianity out of the narrow confines of one of the Jewish sects and into the broader ecumene" during "the first reformation," Halík said, Christianity today has a role.

Christianity today needs "to transcend existing mental and institutional, confessional, cultural and social boundaries in order to fulfil its universal mission."

Faith and critical thinking

Reflecting on the "constant struggle between grace and sin, faith and unbelief, waged in every human heart," he called for an "honest dialogue" between believers and unbelievers living together in pluralistic societies.

"Faith and critical thinking need each other," he insisted, adding that a "mature faith can live with the open questions of the time and resist the temptation of the too-simple answers offered by dangerous contemporary ideologies."

Turning to questions of religious identity, he noted that "populists, nationalists and religious fundamentalists exploit this fear [of identity loss] for their own power and economic interests."

They exploit it, he said, "in the same way that the fear for the salvation of one's soul was exploited when indulgences were for sale" in Luther's days.

Comparing Luther to the Catholic mystics of that era, he said, "I am convinced that Luther's theology of the cross needs to be renewed, rethought and deepened today."

Part of the new reformation or "new evangelization," Halík said, "is also a transformation of the way of mission. We cannot approach others as arrogant possessors of truth."

The goal of mission, he reflected, "is not to recruit new church members, to squeeze them into the existing mental and institutional boundaries of our churches but to go beyond" to create a "mutually enriching dialogue" with those of other beliefs and none.

Reconciliation and spiritual discernment

In central and eastern Europe, Halík said, where countries suffered "the dark night of communist persecution," Churches have an important role to play in the process of reconciliation.

"Democracy cannot be established and sustained merely by changing political and economic conditions" he warned, but instead requires "a certain moral and spiritual climate."

Halík also warned that Churches that become corrupted by political regimes deprive themselves of a future. "When the Church enters into culture wars with its secular environment, it always comes out of them defeated and deformed."

The alternative to culture wars, he noted, "is not conformity and cheap accommodation, but a culture of spiritual discernment."

A renewed and newly understood Christian spirituality, he concluded, "can make a significant contribution to the spiritual culture of humanity today, even far beyond the churches." Read more

• Tomáš Halík served as advisor to Václav Havel, the first Czech president following the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the Cold War. A professor of sociology and head of the Religious Studies Department at Prague's Charles University, he is also the recipient of numerous awards for his work to promote human rights, religious freedom and interfaith dialogue.

Carrying on in the same old way won't achieve this, he points out. But churches can be "sparring partners for those seeking meaning" or "midwives of hope" in a world filled with fear, he suggests.

Catholic without attending Mass

Zulehner sees a future where the usual worship gatherings in ageing parish communities won't be sufficient.

The Catholic Church is in the midst of a "turning point" he says. It's going from a church of priests to one of baptismal vocations.

He refers to an online survey which the Austrian Partners Initiative set up and conducted earlier this year.

Kathpress says Zulehner presented the study's first results in lectures in Vienna and Salzburg. He found in the "priestly church" the parish community centres on the priest, while in the "baptismal vocation church" it centres on the people of God.

Those who represent the former prove to be far more resistant to structural reforms.

The image of the Church has changed, he says.

The study pointed to strong agreement with the statement "You can be a good Christian even without Sunday Mass" - a blatant contradiction to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

In the baptismal vocation Church, celebrations of the Word led by women and men were accepted enthusiastically he says. The celebration of the Eucharist was called into question as the "source and culmination of Christian life" according to the Vatican Council.

Get on with it, reinvent

Zulehner would like to see more honesty in the Church.

It is better to admit that the main motive for structural reforms is a lack of money than to conceal dwindling resources and to put forward religious reasons, he says.

As the Kathpress press agency reported on Tuesday this week, the Viennese theologian and sociologist of religion explained: "Then it will be easier to be honest about who decides and what priorities play a role in the decisions".

He also notes the Church is losing its political power, which harms people and society.

The Church must not "manage the downfall", but must "shape the transition". In this way, he opposed an "exhausting, even paralysing church depression".

Challenges like wars, the climate crisis, migration and "robotisation" are issues Churches should engage with from a political perspective, he suggests.

To achieve this, Zulehner says "convinced Christians" are needed.

Their role will be to go into municipal councils, the Council of Europe, and the UN and bring the Gospel into concrete politics.

"Churches are not party-political, but politically partisan" he says.

Source

• Katholisch.de
• Katholisch.de
• CathNews NZ

Threat of schism

"I pray that there will be no schism," the Pope told the Vatican press corps, "but I am not afraid."

Since then, the threat of a formal split of dissident Catholics from the Church or the creation of a separate sect has grown to be a major theme of Francis' pontificate.

Conservative and progressive Catholics alike have publicly challenged the authority of the Pope and the Vatican, openly or implicitly hinting at an irreparable fracture in the Church.

Recently the Pope has moved against his critics on the right, excommunicating former U.S. papal nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò for the crime of schism.

He forced Cardinal Raymond Burke, the informal dean of the dissident right, from his Vatican post and removed Bishop Joseph Strickland from his seat in Tyler, Texas, for his anti-Francis agitation, mostly on social media.

For these and other conservatives, the Pope has done too much to reconcile the Church with modern social trends: opening its doors to women who want leadership roles and the LGBTQ+ faithful, restricting the saying of the Old Latin Mass and accommodating Beijing's influence on the Church in China.

Liberal Catholics, meanwhile, claim Francis has done too little to promote inclusivity and accountability in the Church, calling on him to allow women to become deacons and blessings for same-sex couples and to do more to solve the issue of clergy sexual abuse.

These issues have motivated the German church's Synodal Path, a years-long movement to answer popular drift away from the Church with progressive, and largely unsanctioned, reforms.

Schisms are part of Church history

Schism is nothing new in the Church, starting with the Great Schism of 1054, which created the divide between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism before the Protestant Reformation fragmented the Western Church in the 16th century.

The most recent faction to fall into schism was the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, founded in 1970 by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who rejected the changes of the Second Vatican Council and consecrated his own bishops, for which he was excommunicated

Viganò is thought to come the closest to provoking a similar split.

In 2019, as Francis addressed the disastrous aftermath of the clerical abuse crisis in Ireland, Viganò published a fiery document accusing the Pope of covering up the abuse of minors by ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and calling for him to resign.

Since then, he has called Francis "a heretic" and a "tyrant" and condemned the reforms of the Second Vatican Council while drawing closer to conspiratorial and radical wings of the Church.

Setting himself up at the hermitage of St. Antonio alla Palanzana, about an hour from Rome, Viganò drew a crowd of discontented Catholics: evicted nuns, wealthy Italian aristocrats and reactionary priests.

He created an organisation, Exsurge Domine, with the goal of offering help and financial support to clergy who claim to have been persecuted for their traditionalist views.

What now?

Experts say Francis has skillfully dealt with critics on both sides by waiting for the right moment to act and by issuing documents clarifying his most controversial pronouncements.

Massimo Borghesi, a philosopher and author of the 2022 book "Neoconservatism vs. the Field Hospital Church of Pope Francis," Viganò can no longer be considered a representative voice of the conservative opposition to the Pope.

"I don't think that Viganò's excommunication implies a schism," Borghesi told Religion News Service on Monday (July 15).

"It might still concern an absolute minority of traditionalists who believe that the Church in Rome has betrayed the tradition of the Church following the Second Vatican Council," he said, but he has reached the apex of his following in the United States, where he had seen the most support.

"I don't think this interests the majority of the American Church," said Borghese.

According to an April 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center, a three-quarter majority of Catholics in the U.S. view the Pope favorably.

Even though the country's political polarisation is a factor in their opinion — almost nine in 10 Catholic Democrats support Francis, compared to 63 percent of Republican faithful — conservative Catholics recognise that the Pope's election was legitimate, even if they dislike his policies, Borghesi said.

"The conditions for the schism are not there. They are simply awaiting the next Pope," he said.

If Francis had gone after the archbishop in 2019 or 2020, Borghesi believes, he might have created a deeper split.

Instead, he allowed time for tensions to pass and for many of his reforms to be assimilated into Church life.

In the meantime, Viganó's increasingly radical positions have served to alienate his staunchest American supporters, who have stayed mostly quiet since the Vatican's sentence in early July.

"These processes have cooled spirits and allowed more clarity within the Church," he said.

German Synodal Path

Similarly, Vatican chroniclers say, Francis has come through the direst threat from the left, as the German church's Synodal Path has retreated from its most radical positions.

In 2022, German theologian Katharina Westerhorstmann announced she was resigning from the synodal commission that was studying relationships and sexuality because the Synodal Path's rejection of official Catholic doctrine had drifted dangerously toward schism.

"For me there were some discussions that crossed the line, especially the notion where they seemed to have already decided where this was going and that those opinions that didn't fit into that direction, shouldn't really count," Westerhorstmann said.

She and a group of theologians believed that while reforms were necessary to ensure safeguarding for children and vulnerable adults in the Church, certain doctrinal aspects should remain unchanged.

Westerhorstmann told RNS that while a schism was a definite possibility between 2020 and 2021, that is no longer the case today, despite a flare-up last year, when priests in Germany began blessing same-sex couples in violation of Rome's ban on the practice.

"Right now, it seems that the negotiations with the Vatican are going well; there is more openness maybe on both sides," she said.

"In fact, I would say that there is no risk of a schism in the German church anymore at all."

Both extremes now await the next conclave and the future Pope, where the future of the Catholic Church will once again be decided.

Do we care?

Some observers say the greatest threat to the Church today is not passionate dissent but disinterest.

Aurelio Porfiri, author of "The Right Hand of the Lord Is Exalted: A History of Catholic Traditionalism from Vatican II to Traditionis Custodes," warned that while a full-blown schism is unlikely, a different kind of split is already underway.

"Some Catholic circles, not just conservatives, are drawing away from the Church" said Porfiri.

"I would describe this as a schism of indifference, where some Catholics are leaving the Church, not because they object to one particular aspect or issue, but because they are no longer engaged."

• First published in RNS
• Claire Giangravé is an author at Religion News Service.

The initiative seeks to respond to women's longstanding demands to have a greater say in Church life.

Church reform

The Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith says the new document will form its contribution to Pope Francis' Church reform process, the Synod on Synodality.

The Synod is entering its second main phase with the next meeting of bishops this coming October.

The Vatican announced the details of the doctrinal document shortly after its news conference.

That conference - which four men led - described the preparatory work for the October meeting. Media were not given the opportunity to ask questions.

The smallest gesture

A group pressing for women's ordination promptly dismissed the new doctrinal document as "crumbs".

They noted ordained men would again be making decisions about women's roles in the Church.

Members of ten study groups will be looking into some tough, legally complicated issues that have arisen in the reform process to date.

These include the role of women and LGBTQ+ Catholics in the life of the church.

Unequal work, contribution and rights

Catholic women reportedly do most of the Church's work in schools and hospitals. They also tend to be those more likely to pass the faith on to future generations.

But many complain of a second-class status in a Church which reserves the priesthood for men only.

Francis has reaffirmed the ban on women priests but has appointed several women to senior Vatican positions.

He also encourages debate on other ways to hear women's voices.

The synod process is once such place, as women there have the right to vote on specific proposals. Voting rights until now have been restricted to men.

Francis had appointed two commissions to study whether women could be ordained deacons - those who can, though not priests, perform many priestly functions.

They may preside at weddings, baptisms and funerals, and preach. They cannot celebrate Mass.

Women respond

The Women's Ordination Conference says relegating the women deacons issue to the doctrine office doesn't suggest the Church is looking to involve women any more than now.

"The urgency to affirm women's full and equal place in the Church cannot be swept away, relegated to a shadowy commission or entrusted into the hands of ordained men at the Vatican" the women protest.

These groups will be working with the Vatican after the synod, suggesting this year's results may not be final.

After the 2023 session the synod summary made no mention of homosexuality, although the working document had specifically noted calls for a greater welcoming of "LGBTQ+ Catholics" and other marginalised people into the Church.

Instead, the summary said people who feel marginalised because of their marital situation, "identity and sexuality, ask to be listened to and accompanied, and their dignity defended".

Francis has since approved priests blessing same-sex couples.

Source

• AP News

Pope Francis suddenly announced in a major interview with an American television network that ordaining women deacons, a long-held aspiration of the movement for women's equality in the Church, would never happen.

For many Church reformers this was the final straw, dashing any remaining hopes for concrete action on what was still supposed to be a ‘live issue', though sidelined to a Synod study group.

Remarkably though, some like the irrepressible campaigner Phyllis Zagano, are still optimistic that long-term reform, years beyond the current Synod, might still be possible.

Declining Mass attendance

About the same time the official Australian Catholic Mass Attendance Report 2021 reflected once again the local Church's abysmal state.

Its decline, one factor in generating calls for reform, has continued unabated.

Frequently reported under the headline ‘the Church is now online and multicultural', this report showed that regular Church attendance, admittedly in the COVID era, had plunged again since 2016.

It went from a dismal 11.8 per cent to just 8.2 per cent of Catholics (itself now only 20 per cent of the Australian population).

The attendance figure, a good measure of identification and belonging, for male Catholics is now below eight per cent, while women are higher.

In one diocese, Maitland-Newcastle, the overall figure is less than four per cent.

The attendance figures also highlight the increasing diversity of the Catholic community, with 13 per cent of Catholics attending Mass in a language other than English.

The attendance figures for Eastern Rite Catholics are sky-high and, in some cases, rising.

Synod and Church reform

My reflections follow involvement in a local meeting in late April and an international meeting of Catholic Church Reform International (CCRI) in early May, which discussed its draft submission to the Synod.

In both cases the resilience of Church reformers continues to amaze me.

The Australasian Catholic Coalition for Church Reform maintains its long-running series of excellent Zoom speakers. But inevitably the level of trust and optimism is slowly fading away.

Even the official report on the Australian submissions to the second assembly of the Synod in October was open about the consultation fatigue within the Church.

This is in marked contrast to the situation that existed in 2017.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse had just concluded its enquiries as had the Church's own Truth Justice and Healing Commission.

Many Catholics, sensing the crisis, were keen to hold the Church authorities to account.

Later that year the Plenary Council began to take shape and extensive community consultations followed.

There was widespread engagement through several hundred thousand participants and 17,500 submissions. A significant minority of Catholics possessed enthusiasm for reform and, more importantly, still trusted that their voices would be listened to by bishops.

That is no longer the case seven years later.

We Australian Catholic reformers are tired and, in some cases battered and bruised, from engagement with the Church. We are also older. Most of us have lost hope that reform will occur in our lifetime.

Changed dynamic

We are now witnessing a changed dynamic within the movement. The balance within its component parts has changed towards a more pessimistic view of officialdom.

A minority is still hopeful; a few even remain optimistic, but most are struggling.

The majority view now is that reform groups have been too reactive to the official Church.

This view, always one strand, is that engagement has proved to be a dead end. We instead need to model what being Church should look like and stop trying to reform the institutional Church because that goal is no longer achievable.

There is a widespread agreement now that the Plenary Council didn't deliver. This is a bitter pill for reformers to swallow given the enormous effort which went into community engagement.

The Australian Church missed ‘catching the wave' of some popular enthusiasm during 2017-2022. Worse than that it has given reformers no credit and instead ground their voices down by obfuscation and delay.

The majority view among reformers now is that the Synod won't deliver the necessary reforms either. It has been made clear that ‘embedding cultural change' is the Pope's objective. That is, building ‘a synodal Church'.

The Synod has steered away from confrontation and hot button issues. Women's equality, a regular priority in continental submissions, ironically is one of them and, despite kind though patronising words, the Pope has now made clear that won't happen.

Disruption needed

What the Church needs now is not faithful engagement but disruption. It certainly needs disruption on the ‘woman's equality' issue. What that might mean in practice is not clear, but something must be done even if fragmentation follows.

Most reformers now believe that the western Church is dying, or at least the Vatican 2 Church is dying. The Mass Attendance figures for 2021 confirm this. Whatever survives in Australia won't be the Anglo-Celtic Vatican 2 Church, but something quite different.

By participating in strictly circumscribed diocesan events, many think we are colluding with officialdom. That is a sad conclusion.

Behind the relatively benign idea of consultation ‘fatigue' lies the darker notion of consultation ‘resentment'. The ‘Emperor Church' has no Clothes. The scales have fallen from the eyes of many reformers.

The reality is that the official Church treats reform groups with disdain.

It doesn't even recognise their positive contribution to public Church debate by empowering Catholics (see the latest document reporting on the limited implementation of the Plenary, which does at least give credit to Garratt Publishing and Yarra Theological Union).

Similar themes are evident internationally. There is still some remarkable willingness to engage, but the balance has moved from relative optimism to prevailing pessimism.

For international groups like CCRI the central issue must be equality for women.

Some are still optimistic that Francis remains on track; that perhaps the 2024 session of the Synod may not be the last; that the Study Groups will evolve into something productive.

But this is a minority position. Nevertheless, the majority persists with the 2024 Synodal process in Rome, still hoping that our voices will be ‘heard' by the institutional Church.

Ongoing Church reform

Where to from here? Reformers may still throw a light on the Synod as distinct from trying to influence it through participation. But that distinction must be clear.

Group and individual effort and advocacy still play a positive role.

Shining lights among Australian reform groups include Women and the Australian Church (WATAC), Sense of the Faithful (SF) in Melbourne and Concerned Catholics Tasmania (CCT).

WATAC models an alternative Church through Australian Women Preach, SF does valuable evidence-based tracking of Plenary Council implementation.

CCT engages with the Tasmanian Church community and pressures the official Church as best it can despite the conservative environment in that state.

These are painful times for the Church reform movement.

The distinction between hope and optimism has been explored by writers like Vaclav Havel and Seamus Heaney. Like them I don't expect ‘things to turn out well' though I remain convinced that there is ‘good worth working for' within the Church.

• First published in Eureka Street. Republished with permission of the author.
• John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University.

Altering customs and thought habits, especially when linked to faith, takes a long time. Simply getting the word out of a council's teaching and its implications can take decades.

Then, there are people and institutions for which new directions, practices, or emphases appear as threats to ideas and practices that have taken years to master.

Some people have a vested interest in preventing or holding back change.

Habits of thought that have been nurtured over a lifetime of individuals and institutions do not change easily. And so it is not surprising that it can take a century for a council to have its full impact on the life of the Church.

The generation of slaves who left Egypt under Moses's leadership struggled halfheartedly or reluctantly or not at all and with little success to lose Egyptian religious habits and a slave mentality.

Ultimately, they had to die out before the new people of God could enter the promised land in freedom. Likewise, the degree of change a council like Vatican II calls for takes generations to become second nature.

So, what of Vatican II? It is a half-century since that council. Are we halfway to a Vatican II Church? Probably not.

When that council ended, many hoped that an era of change was ahead for the Catholic Church.

• There would be more participation by the entire People of God in setting directions and practices for the Church;
• Scripture would become the guide for thought and action;
• there would be empowerment and perhaps even ordination for women;
• there would be new strides toward Christian unity;
• there would be more engagement with a world that had changed drastically in the twentieth century;
• there would be more interest in and acceptance of non-European thought and experience;
• there would be a move beyond a medieval monarchical model of Church leadership.

They did not happen.

Cooperating today for the sake of the future rejuvenated Church

The forces of inertia, clericalism, and vested interests abetted by two papacies retarded and even reversed the tentative first steps toward a Vatican II Church.

Those who welcomed Vatican II and were ready to engage in the renewal it should have sparked are now elderly, and age and a half-century of frustration and disappointment have sapped their energy.

Now, after more than half a century when the impetus of Vatican II was impeded, we have the first pope who would have studied the council in his student days and who is restarting the process that had barely begun before being stymied when he was a young man.

With the Synod of bishops' first session intended to put the Catholic Church back on the ancient path of synodality weeks away, we should let history temper expectations, hopes, or fears.

Huge changes are unlikely, even with a second session planned for sometime next year. This synod meeting will simply be restarting a delayed process that will likely take a century.

It is turning on the ignition for a journey that should have started in the 1960s, and it is likely to take a few generations to reach whatever destination is ahead.

Some people's extravagant hopes for this gathering must be tempered because they are otherwise guaranteed to be disappointed.

This is the start, not of a sprint, but of a marathon.

There will be disappointments along the way right from the start, but not likely so great as the big disappointment of the past half-century.

There will be incremental progress. There may even be some unexpected big spurts of progress.

We must be prepared for the fact that this "marathon" is actually a relay, and those of us alive today and hoping today will not see how it all ends.

However, we can have faith that the Holy Spirit, who guided the ecumenical council, will be part of the restarted life of Vatican II. And we can and must enter into the process, cooperating today for the sake of the future rejuvenated Church.

• William Grimm is a missioner and presbyter who since 1973 has served in Japan, Hong Kong and Cambodia. He is the active emeritus publisher of UCA News where this article first appeared.
• Published in La Croix. Republished with permission.

The Church has a duty to accompany gay people on a personal path of spirituality, providing that accompaniment is within the framework of the Catholic Church rules, he told reporters on the plane returning to Rome from World Youth Day (WYD) in Portugal.

He made the comment after a reporter reminded him that during WYD he said the Church was open to "everyone, everyone, everyone".

The reporter challenged the sense of that statement about openness when some Catholics, like women and gay people, did not have the same rights and could not receive some sacraments.

That comment seemed to refer to women not being allowed to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders to become priests of the Catholic Church.

It also referenced same-sex couples not being allowed to contract marriage, which is also a sacrament.

"The Church is open to everyone but there are laws that regulate life inside the church," Francis explained to the reporter.

"According to the legislation, they cannot partake in (some) sacraments. This does not mean that it is closed. Each person encounters God in their own way inside the Church."

Ministers in the Catholic Church must accompany everyone with the patience and love of a mother. That includes those who don't conform to the rules, he explained.

Church law

The Catholic Church teaches that women cannot become priests because Jesus chose only men as his apostles.

Neither does the Church allow same-sex marriage or blessings for same-sex couples. Same-sex attraction is not sinful but same-sex acts are, it teaches.

However, Francis supports civil legislation giving same-sex couples rights in areas such as pensions, health insurance and inheritance.

A welcoming Church for everyone

During one WYD event, Francis said the Church has room for everyone - "including those who make mistakes, who fall or struggle".

He then led the crowd in a chant of "Todos, todos, todos!" (Everyone, everyone, everyone!).

"Who among us has not made a moral error at some point in their lives?" he asked.

Since the start of his papacy 10 years ago, Francis has consistently tried to make the Catholic Church more welcoming and less condemning.

He has sought to welcome all people, including members of the LGBT community, while not changing Church teachings which urge people with same-sex attraction to be chaste.

While pushing through a series of reforms, Francis has constantly walked a delicate line between appealing to more liberal believers and upsetting conservatives.

Among these reforms, he has given more roles to women, particularly in high-ranking Vatican positions.

Pope rejuvenated

On the plane, the Pope said he was rejuvenated by what he had seen at WYD Portugal.

About 1.5 million people attended his closing Mass at a park in Lisbon on Sunday.

Francis said he was impressed with both the size of the crowds at WYD and their behaviour.

He also told reporters who asked after his health, that he has been well since his surgery for an abdominal hernia in June.

Source

• US News

The 74-year-old priest and intellectual made the remarks in his native Prague at the beginning of Europe's continental stage of the Synod.

Halík, an internationally known author who teaches sociology at the Charles University in the Czech capital, gave a "spiritual introduction" to the weeklong European synodal assembly on the future of the Church.

La Croix: How can the Church be more relevant in our secularised societies in Europe? Should it adapt to societal changes or be counter-cultural?

Father Tomas Halik: The main mission of the Church is evangelization, which consists of inculturation, an effort to infuse the spirit of the Gospel into the way people think and live today.

Without this, evangelisation is only superficial indoctrination.

The Church cannot and should not be part of, or in resistance to, the counter-culture, except in the face of repressive regimes such as Nazism, fascism and communism.

Attempts to make Catholicism - especially from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries - a counter-culture against modern society, culture, science and philosophy led to an intellectual self-castration, causing the estrangement of a large part of the working class, intellectuals and youth.

Fear and aversion to modern culture has led to ex-culturation, contributing significantly to the secularisation of Western society. The efforts of Vatican II to dialogue with modernity and secular humanism came too late, at a time when modernity was already coming to an end.

Postmodern society presents churches with very different challenges and opportunities from those of modernity.

To become a credible and intelligible voice in an age of radical plurality, the Church must undergo a profound reformation - and I hope that the synodal path will be such a reformation.

Don't such transformations risk diluting the Christian message, as the pope seems to fear when facing the most extreme positions of the Synodal Path in Germany?

The Synodal Path in Germany seems to place great importance on changing institutional structures.

It boldly raises questions that cannot be taboo, and speaks of problems for which solutions cannot be postponed indefinitely. I

insist, however, that institutional reforms - like questions concerning the conditions of priestly ministry - must precede and complement a deepening of theology and spirituality.

I recently published a book, The Afternoon of Christianity, in which I reflect on the theology and spirituality of synodal renewal.

I apply a method I call "kairology" - a theological hermeneutic of cultural and societal change, inspired by the Ignatian method of "spiritual discernment."

A distinction must be made between the "spirit of the time" (Zeitgeist), which is the "language of the world", and the "signs of the times", which are the language of God through world events.

Some theologians - such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer - questioned whether or not Christianity is a religion.

I believe that the Christianity of tomorrow will be a religion in a very different sense than it was in the past.

The word religion (religio) is derived from the verb religare, to bring together; religion was the integrating force ("common language") of an entire society.

But the word religion (religio) can also be derived from the verb relegere, "to read again".

Christianity should offer a new hermeneutic, a new reading, and a deeper understanding of its own sources - Scripture and Tradition - as well as of the "signs of the times".

The process of secularisation has accelerated in Europe because of the abuse crisis. How can this be seen as a "sign of the times" for the Church?

For me, sexual abuse plays a similar role to the scandals of selling indulgences just before the Reformation.

At first, both phenomena seemed marginal. But both revealed much deeper systemic problems.

In the case of selling indulgences, it was the relationship between the Church and money, the Church and power, the clergy and the laity.

In the case of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse, it is about the systemic disease that Pope Francis has called "clericalism".

Above all, it is an abuse of power and authority.

The pope calls for the transformation of the rigid system of clerical power in the Church into a dynamic network of mutual cooperation, a shared journey (syn-hodos).

This journey inevitably leads to a transcendence of the Church's current institutional and mental boundaries, to a deeper and broader ecumenism - to a universal invitation to all on the path to the eschatological goal of "universal fraternity".

The great vision of Pope Francis, contained in the encyclical Fratelli tutti, could play a role in the 21st century that is similar to that of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 20th century.

The future course of the synodal process will show whether the Church offers only beautiful visions to today's humanity (just words, words, words) or whether it will show the courage of "self-transcendence".

Christian identity is not something static and unchanging.

The identity and authenticity of Christianity lies in participation in the drama of Easter - the mystery of death and resurrection.

Many things in the Church must die for resurrection to take place - and resurrection is not a "resuscitation", a turning back, but a radical transformation.

How can a culture of synodality be developed and sustained in Europe, when "national" Churches are part of such different ecclesial realities?

The obsession with the "national principle", whether in the State or in the Church, brings with it the danger of nationalism, of national egoism, one of the diseases of modernity from the 19th century, which is reappearing today as a dangerous temptation containing populism and fundamentalism during the crisis of globalisation.

Nationalism was the cause of two world wars.

And the current third world war, which Russia started with the genocide in Ukraine - a global threat that the West reprehensibly underestimates - is also caused by nationalism, by dangerous Russian imperialism and by national messianism.

Pope Francis makes it clear: a Christian must not be a nationalist.

In my opinion, thinking only within national borders must be overcome by "glocality" (the concept of thinking globally and acting locally).

The synodal transformation of the Church should contribute to the transformation of globalization into "glocalization", thus tipping the balance towards more solidarity, mutual respect and sharing.

• Céline Hoyeau and Malo Tresca
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

To survive in secularized Western societies, the institution will have to reform itself, she says.

In a new book with fellow sociologist Jean-Louis Schlegel that came out this past spring, "Vers l'implosion? Entretiens sur le présent et l'avenir du catholicisme" ("Toward Implosion: Interviews on the Present and the Future of Catholicism"), she dissects the causes of the current model and suggests possible changes.

The book has been generally well received in France.

"My conviction is that the Catholic Church is threatened with implosion through the dislocation of its internal structure," she told Presence info, based in Montreal.

"It is a pessimistic diagnosis that the book assumes, and which concerns France, the countries of Western Europe, Canada, the United States — with certain differences — and some Latin American countries.

It is an observation of an extremely serious crisis that implies that the institution must lay new foundations to overcome this course."

She said she sees it as the consequence of a system built in response to the Reformation, then reaffirmed in the face of the sociopolitical changes of the 19th and 20th centuries.

"This ‘Roman system' allowed the church to overcome these great crises by strengthening its doctrine and its disciplinary system.

Today, it has become a burden that is leading it to implode.

The church is sick of a system of clerical power and a territorialised relationship to the world through the parish, which it can no longer manage today in secularized Western societies," she said.

The sexual abuse crisis is forcing the institution to question the deep roots of clericalism and how to redefine the place of the priest in communities, said the sociologist, who points out that the "sacred construction" of the priest is based on the exclusion of women.

Considering the female priesthood would, according to her, not allow "women to move to the side of the sacred, but (to) deconstruct the sacred figure of the priest."

"What is very difficult is to redefine theologically the function and status of the priest as a service to the community.

"If the Roman Church goes down this road, it will be destroying the system of power that defines it and which has been the framework of its own ecclesiological constitution," she said.

However, if the problem is not solved through reform, it will be solved through the exhaustion of the clerical body, she added.

A few years ago, she popularised the word "exculturation" to refer to a recent stage in the process of social disqualification that has affected the church since it was hit by the advent of political modernity.

At the heart of this process is the affirmation of the individual and his or her ability to take charge of his or her own destiny, especially in the political arena.

Expelled from political life in France, then in other countries, the church reacted by "massively investing" in families.

"It made the family the foundation of its social intervention.

"It was at this time, in particular, that the control of the sexual life of the faithful — who were not to use contraception under any circumstances — became its main obsession," she states. Continue reading

Members of the Synodal Way, a group made up of equal numbers of German bishops and lay Catholics, meet regularly. In February, they called on the Catholic Church to allow priests to marry, women to become deacons, and same-sex couples to receive the Church's blessing.

The Holy See made clear that it views the Synodal Way's calls for addressing homosexuality, celibacy and women in the Church as divisive and warned those calls could cause a schism.

In a statement published on 21 July, the Holy See warned that any attempts at imposing new doctrines through the German Synodal Way "would represent a wound to the ecclesial union and a threat to the unity of the church.

"It will not be permitted to initiate new structures or official doctrines in the dioceses before an agreement has been reached at the level of the universal Church," said an unsigned "Statement of the Holy See."

The statement warned German reformers they had no authority to instruct bishops on moral or doctrinal matters.

It is the second time the Holy See has weighed in publicly to rein in German progressives who initiated a reform process with lay Catholics responding to clergy sexual abuse scandals.

Francis wrote a letter to the German church in 2019, offering support for the process, but warned church leaders against falling into the temptation of change for the sake of adaptation to particular groups or ideas.

The "Synodal Path" has sparked fierce resistance inside Germany and beyond, primarily from conservatives opposed to opening any debate on issues such as priestly celibacy, women's role in the church, and homosexuality.

Preliminary assemblies have already approved calls to allow blessings for same-sex couples, married priests and the ordination of women as deacons. One has also called for church labour law to be revised so gay employees don't risk being fired.

Dozens of bishops from around the world warned earlier this year that the proposed German Catholic Church reforms, if approved at the final stage, could lead to schism.

The next assembly of the "Synodal Way" is scheduled for 8-10 September.

Sources

Religion News Service

La Croix International

Deutsche Welle

The Catholic Church had adopted a top-to-bottom approach that stripped local churches of any decision-making power, and the synod of bishops was reduced to nothing more than a stamp of approval for prepackaged conclusions made in Rome.

When Bergoglio emerged as Pope Francis in the 2013 conclave, the synodal process was high on his list for reform.

"There was a cardinal who told us what should be discussed and what should not," Francis said about his experience at the 2001General Synod in an interview with the Argentine newspaper La Nation in 2014. "That will not happen now," he added.

On Oct. 9 and 10, Pope Francis will inaugurate a three-year preparation process for the 2023 Synod, which will focus on reforming the synodal process.

The preparation process and the 2023 Synod, with the theme "For a Synodal Church: communion, participation and mission," have the potential to revolutionize the way decisions are made in the Catholic Church and promote a more decentralized structure of authority.

"If people just think about this as a meeting on meetings, they are so missing the point," said the Rev. David McCallum, executive director of the Program for Discerning Leadership of the Gregorian University in Rome and a member of the Synod Commission on Methodology, in an interview with Religion News Service.

The three-year synodal review process will take place in three phases: a local phase at the diocesan and parish level, a continental phase engaging bishops' conferences around the world and a universal phase, when bishops and lay people will convene in Rome to discuss the findings and topics developed in the first two phases.

To coordinate and guide the entire process, Pope Francis created a five-member steering committee flanked by two commissions on methodology and theology.

The hierarchical structure Pope Francis eschewed at the Vatican in 2001 is currently reflected in Catholic dioceses around the globe.

Throughout history "it became very natural that bishops, who were often the most educated and prepared leaders in the particular region where the church was, exercised their leadership as a mayor would," McCallum explained.

Speaking to La Nation, Francis said church governance "is in my hands, after I receive the necessary advice."

Far from an authoritarian imposition, synod organizers say the role of the pope is that of guaranteeing unity, which helps distinguish synodality from a parliamentary debate.

The goal of the methodology commission in the first phase is to provide dioceses and parishes with guidelines that promote spaces for dialogue among all members of the community — lay, religious and the disaffiliated.

Bishops will be asked to appoint a reference person whose job it is to facilitate and create opportunities for encounter. By instructing people on individual and communal discernment "the synod will have a formational quality to it before people enter it," McCallum said.

In Venezuela, Rafael Luciani, full professor at the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas and extraordinarius at the School of Theology and Ministry of Boston College, tackles synodality in the Latin American context.

Luciani is a lay theologian and a member of the synod's Commission for Theology.

His job, ahead of the inauguration of the synodal process in Rome, is to coordinate seminars that engage the whole Latin American church.

By placing a magnifying glass on local parishes, Luciani hopes to find an engaging model that can then be applied to dioceses and bishops' conferences worldwide.

Ultimately, the 2023 Synod will likely change power dynamics and relationships in the Catholic Church, but the change "has to come from local churches, not from Rome," Luciani told RNS.

Inverting the pyramidal structure of the Catholic Church may be frightening for some, proponents admit, raising concerns the Vatican will become nothing more than a bureaucratic step in the church's decision-making process or — worse still — akin to a nongovernmental organization.

Instead, the new synodal process is "a spiral," Luciani explained, where at every phase the decisions are sent from the dioceses to the episcopal conferences to Rome and then back again.

"For the first time there is an interaction, it is not a linear way of proceeding," he added.

This "new ecclesial culture" is the real novelty of the synod, according to Luciani, but doubts remain in the local churches, where the "biggest question," according to Luciani, "is the question of authority."

Authority is closely tied to clericalism, a "perversion of the priesthood" as Pope Francis puts it, which also induces lay people into believing those who have received the priestly ministry are above the fold, especially in the exercise of power. Financial corruption, immorality and sexual abuse by clergy are just a few examples of the consequences of an untouchable clergy.

With synodality, Pope Francis hopes to break from a tradition that has inexorably tied power in the Catholic Church to members of the clergy.

Synodality sets out to renew the power structures that have characterized the Catholic Church for centuries, but to do so it must achieve a far more ambitious goal: teaching faithful, lay and religious, to come together in dialogue at a time when entrenchment and polarization have turned Pope Francis' "culture of encounter" into a quasi-utopian and — ironically — divisive concept.

In this effort, the synod "goes beyond Pope Paul VI's vision and Pope John Paul II's and Pope Benedict XVI's different ways of proceeding and even beyond the first synods of Pope Francis," Luciani said.

Nation-states also struggle to reconcile the differences of local realities with an increasingly centralized world. Countries such as Hungary, Poland, Brazil, Russia, the Philippines and even the United States have shifted "toward a more authoritarian way by trying to establish order as a defence against chaos and uncertainty," McCallum said.

"The church, an organization rooted in faith, needs to have a better track record than resorting to top-down authority," he added.

Members of the synod commissions are hesitant to say which structural changes will take place at the October Vatican summit. It would defeat the purpose of coming together if there wasn't "a sense of unpredictability and also of possibility," McCallum said.

Pope Francis understands the synod is more about "starting processes" than getting immediate results. Reforming seminaries is essential to promote the formation of clergy capable of overcoming differences and finding common ground, according to McCallum.

"We realize it's a generational process," he said.

While this conclusion may seem underwhelming, the synod is not the first step in this process. It builds on the Eastern Orthodox experience of the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 and the transformations set in motion at the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, as well as the latest synods under the last three popes.

Synodality has already worked before. "It has been the witness of bishops already that they change," Luciani said, citing examples of prelates who were transformed in their beliefs during the synods at the Vatican on Young People in 2018 and the Pan-Amazonian region in 2019.

The Latin American bishops' conference, CELAM, has a head start in its application of synodality.

Since before the 2007 Aparecida meeting, where the cardinal Bergoglio played a key role, the church in Latin America has engaged lay people and local communities in lively consultations aimed at promoting shared responsibility and dialogue. Luciani, an expert adviser to CELAM, said this synodal process offers profound insight on how to "go back to a model of the church as the church of churches."

"It's not just about who takes that decision," Luciani said, "but about how do we reach that decision together."

Pope Francis' gamble to act as an Ignatian spiritual director to 1.2 billion Catholics in the world — if successful — could become a countercultural statement for a new way of reaching decisions that other institutions might take note of.

Synodality "needs to demonstrate to the world that we have faith that the ultimate truth and goodness that God calls us to is not going to be established by secular power, the kind of power of unilateral control," McCallum said.

"It's going to be manifest when we express our love and affection for one another with authenticity when we live with the integrity of our values and behaviours."

• Claire Giangravé is an author at Religion News Service
• First published by RNS. Republished with permission.

"It is hardly an exaggeration", says a Vietnamese-born former boat refugee, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse and Paramatta Bishop, Vincent Long.

There's an "unprecedented momentum for deep reform, the model of the Church based on clerical hegemony has run its course", the bishop said, 30 June, while delivering the Dom Helder Camara Lecture at Newman College, Melbourne.

For the Church to flourish, "it is crucial that we come to terms with the flaws of clericalism and move beyond its patriarchal and monarchical matrix," he says.

"We have struggled under the weight of the old ecclesial paradigm of the clerical order, control and hegemony with a penchant for triumphalism, self-referential pomp and smugness."

It has to change "into a more Christ-like pattern of humility, simplicity and powerlessness as opposed to worldly triumphalism, splendour, dominance and power."

He says he agrees with Gerald Arbuckle that we need to re-found the Church rather than renew it, going to the very cultural roots in a hope-filled journey under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

"What is urgent is that we need to find fresh ways of being Church and fresh ways of ministry and service for both men and women disciples. New wine into new wineskins."

Long says the tone for sweeping Church reform in Australia was set in 2016 when Archbishop Mark Coleridge proposed a Plenary Council to discuss "the critical issues of the times".

Concerns in Australia include dwindling Mass attendances, a decline in priestly and religious vocations and the critical and damaging public fallout of the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

Cosmetic changes, mediocrity or restorationism dressed up as renewal won't work anymore.

It will not be a simple restoration project or doing old things better; the Church needs to focus on new horizons says Long.

He says it will be a Church in which women and men are aware of their baptismal dignity.

"So long as we continue to exclude women from the Church's governance structures, decision-making processes and institutional functions, we deprive ourselves of the richness of our full humanity.

So long as we continue to make women invisible and inferior in the Church's language, liturgy, theology and law, we impoverish ourselves.

"Until we have truly incorporated the gift of women and the feminine dimension of our Christian faith, we will not be able to fully energise the life of the Church.

Long is of the view that the Church in Australia is uniquely positioned to move into a new fresh future.

The painful Royal Commission brought about a heightened level of consciousness and an unprecedented momentum for deep reform.

"The Church cannot have a prophetic voice in society if we fail to be the model egalitarian community where those disadvantaged on account of their race, gender, social status and disability find empowerment for a dignified life."

As he notes, Australians are offering goodwill, enthusiasm and hope in the Plenary Council.

"Could we be a leading light in the struggle for a more fit-for-purpose Church in this place and in this time?"

"Could Australian Catholics rise to the challenge and co-create the synodal Church that Pope Francis has envisaged?"

In October 2021, the Catholic Church in Australia will gather for the first Assembly of the Plenary Council.

The initial phase of listening drew nearly 220,000 people across Australia and 17,500 individual and group submissions.

These submissions were distilled into the six national theme papers and then further distilled again into the working document and finally the agenda.

Momentum for the Plenary Council ebbed and flowed during this process, which has been disrupted by the pandemic but by and large, there has been considerable goodwill, enthusiasm and even a sense of hope for the future of the Church in Australia

Submissions have been distilled into six national theme papers, which were further distilled into the Council's working document and agenda.

Source

• CathNews
• The Tablet
• Image: The Australian

Different people and different reform groups, have their own take on what, or who, needs reform the most urgently.

I must admit the recent article by Antonio Spadaro on Pope Francis has prompted me to think more about it.[1]

I would like to share some of those thoughts with you.

On a personal level, reform in the church touches both the mind and the heart. On the institutional level, it concerns a very wide range of aspects like doctrinal, moral, spiritual, liturgical, structural and attitudinal.

Much of the effort of reform groups worldwide in recent times has been directed at the pope, bishops, and "the Vatican" since they are the decision-makers.

That is the politics of the issue.

And we can now, after the sexual abuse scandals, include priests in that list.

Let us stand back for a moment, and take a look at the demographics underlying the whole question of church and reform.

I have to speak to my own experience, conscious that others from different age groups, different cultures and different countries will have their own specific take on it.

The percentage of those involved in reform groups in Australia (and NZ?) is, at a guess, about 5% or less.

In the church the hierarchy is less than 1%.

That leaves about 90% of the church to think about.

An unspecified percentage of these are older pre-Vatican thinking and acting people who have no interest in changing themselves and no interest in the topic of changes in the church.

And in their case, change might be impossible, so they will probably go to their graves with their current beliefs and practices.

The rest, perhaps 40-45% might change how they think and what they do, if they were given good reasons to do so.

There are many influences that have brought this about. One obvious one is that they have been neglected since Vatican II, because of the lacuna of adult "growth in faith" programs, and perhaps too, neglected in our current focus of reform.

Antonio Spadaro's illuminating essay on the pontificate of Pope Francis is helpful in many ways.

It is a great help in understanding Francis' approach to change or conversion.

Francis sees conversion applying to everyone in the church. He is reluctant to move forward in synodality until there has been time for discernment.

This explains why when he became pope he did not call for the resignation of those who opposed him but wanted to give all a time to discern.

The analogy that Francis used referring to his method, which caught my eye, was that of litmus paper in a liquid.

When the liquid is acid/alkaline throughout, the colour of the litmus paper will change either red or blue depending on its acidity or alkalinity.

To artificially change the litmus paper is pointless. One has to wait for the whole liquid to change.

To change to married pastors, to ordain women, to welcome LGBTIQ persons into the church, will of itself not bring reform to the church.

Change has to permeate the whole church.

So it is with the Church. Francis wants the church to change.

He rejects cutting off heads and making dictatorial changes because this will be superficial.

Simply ordaining married men and women or making other structural changes will not, of itself, bring conversion.

So with synodality, we have to be patient.

But as the church is a human organization it will always fall short of the ideal.

History shows that sometimes those who cannot change or who disagree with authority will form their own church. Two classic historical examples are: The Old Catholic Church, formed after Vatican I and the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) founded by Marcel Lebebvre in 1970, after Vatican II.

Yet the ideal that we wait until all aboard remains attractive, even if humanly unattainable.

My point is that any reform group should turn some significant attention to the 40-45% of parishioners who might change if things were explained to them.

Perhaps reform groups have focused too narrowly on the hierarchy and neglected the laity.

I have always felt that changing the hierarchy is going to be a huge challenge, but an even greater challenge might well be changing the passivity of the laity.

The image of trying to quickly turn an aircraft carrier around comes to mind.

The laity, after all, have been told for centuries that their job is to "pray, pay and obey".

Or, as someone else has expressed it: the laity has been "parked" for centuries.

My gut feeling is that we have neglected them.

By our words and actions, we could try to re-orient the parish to what is essential. This would be a conversion from the ground up.

There is little to stop us doing this now, not waiting for the Plenary Council or other events.

Francis has given us all the information on that score: Return to the gospels and modify structures that block a return to the gospels (Evangelii Gaudium).

• Take time to prepare liturgies,
• introduce bible studies,
• form book clubs on spiritual reading,
• form meditation groups,
• form groups that visit the sick, and imprisoned,
• invite people to discussion groups on burning issues and current church issues,
• take action regarding refugees and other social justice issues.
• let qualified lay people look after the financial aspect of a parish.
• Reject clericalism in what we say and do, and call no one "Father".

These are all things that could be done locally with or without the pastor. This will turn the litmus paper.

The problem is that today we tend to sit back and wait for others (bishops) to take actions because that is the clerical way we have been brought up. While certainly not giving up on approaching our bishops we must become proactive in things we can do at the parish or diocesan levels.

Having said that, we are impatient beings. We live in a world where change is happening more quickly than in other eras. We are reluctant to wait endlessly for bishops to act.

There is episcopal inertia that infuriates all. We all know examples of this.

We can appreciate that a synod is not a political parliament and that discernment is necessary. For each person to make a speech promoting his/her point of view can mean that neither side is listening to the other.

I think this is what Francis meant when he said there was no discernment at the synod on the Amazon regarding the ordination of married men.

In short, we must keep the pressure on the hierarchy but simultaneously attend to our own conversion and that of the laity around us.

Reform is more than politics, it is inclusive conversion.

• Gideon Goosen is a Sydney-based theologian and author. His latest book is Clericalism: Stories from the Pew.
• First published in Pearls and Irritations

[1] Antonio Spadaro,S.J., ". Francis' Government: What is the driving force of his pontificate?", La Civilta Cattolica, laciviltacattolica.com September 2020. accessed 16.9.2020

"There's a culture of unaccountable clericalism where the power of the Archbishop and clergy in general is really exercised with very little consultation and accountability to the people that the church is meant to serve," Board member Carey McIver (pictured) says.

Concerned Catholics Australia formed as a result of "a lot of frustration", McIver says.

The group wants to create a church "relevant to the 21st century … a church that is inclusive, listens, invites participation of all people not simply those that are of a clerical order," he explains.

This would involve greater representation of women, who make up 50 per cent of the congregation, in leadership and governance roles.

"Our late Archbishop Guilford Young advocated this back in the early 60s … and here we are 70 years later and the role of women is still undervalued." he says.

Another item on the group's wish list is "active pastoral councils" in parishes to advise priests and better meet the needs of the community.

"There are contentious social issues that we hold a line in the sand on that are not debatable," he says.

"That's not, in my humble opinion, a church that reflects how the world has changed in terms of our understanding of science, technology, the universe of which we are a part."

To illustrate how far the Church is from this reality, McIver offers the example of the fallout from the 2019 appointment of Father Nicholas Rynne.

Rynne was appointed as the parish administrator of the Meander Valley parish. However tensions arose over his more traditional approach.

Concerned parishioners wrote to the archbishop about changes Rynne was 'forcing' on them.

After an investigation, Rynne was removed from the parish.

Despite his removal, some say the views of parishioners were not listened to soon enough.

Concerned Catholics' Australia founding member Paul Collins says the Rynne incident was not unique.

Laity and quite a number of priests in Tasmania have had for some time, he says,

"These concerns centre around the voice of the laity being heard, the kind of issues that the laity are focussed on, and particularly concerns about appointments to parishes.

The church's future could be "disastrous" unless the leadership was prepared to have "sufficient emotional intelligence" to listen to other people, Collins says.

Hobart's Vicar General, Father Shammi Perera, says he is "disappointed" about claims of a lack of engagement.

The Church and the archbishop in Tasmania "regularly engages with parishioners and the broader community and will continue to do so."

Tasmanian parishes are encouraged to run at least one session to share views before Australia's 2021 Plenary Council, Perera stresses.

However, Collins says there is some concern that while plenty of lay people are going to the Plenary Council many are church employees.

McIver says in addition the response from the Archbishop to his group's efforts to facilitate the gatherings before the Plenary Council had not "been encouraging".

Source

• ABC News
• Image: ABC

Last year, a record 272,771 Catholics in Germany formally left the Church.

While Wilmer is concerned there could be a further drop in church attendance due to the coronavirus crisis, his main concern is the Church's apparent irrelevance in today's world.

Phenomena like clerical sexual abuse, Church structures and Church tax are only ostensible causes for the decline of Catholicism, Wilmer believes.

In his view, what's really at the heart of reduction in the Church's relevance is that "We, as a Church, and therefore our interpretation of life, are becoming less important," he said.

In today's societies, the Catholic Church is only one "provider" among many other alternatives that gives meaning to people's lives, he noted.

A change in structure is needed to put the Church back into the running, he suggests.

Instead of classical parishes with their claim to exclusivity, the Church needs more vibrant "power centers" that radiate presence and charisma.

Committed lay Christians, rather than priests, should run these centers, in Wilmar's opinion. These people could be found, for example, within universities or house communities.

"I don't want to talk down classical parishes, but we need alternatives to the proclamation of the Gospel message," Wilmer says.

At the same time, these people need to be physically present, if they are to be useful as witnesses to the Christian faith. They must learn how to live and proclaim the Gospel message and not flee into cyberspace, he says.

"It is a case of being together, walking through life shoulder to shoulder and sitting opposite one another at the kitchen table, at the workplace, where people are growing old, where they are sick and frail, laughing and weeping together, face to face, and really being present physically."

Over 8,000 Catholics officially left the Church in Wilmer's Hildesheim Diocese in 2019 - an increase of more than 1,000 from the previous year.

The overall number of Catholics in the diocese has reduced from 593,360 in 2018 to 581,460 in 2019.

Source

• La Croix
• Image: Trip Advisor

The bishops' conference launched a two-year "synodal procedure" for church reform last weekend, on the first Sunday of Advent.

Working together with the lay Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), special synodal candles were lit before Mass in all 27 German cathedrals and the four co-cathedrals.

Conference president Cardinal Reinhard Marx and ZdK vice-president of the ZdK, Karin Kortmann, lit the synodal candle together in Munich Cathedral during Mass.

Marx's homily stressed the importance of listening to one another and reaching consensus, despite differences of opinion.

"After the ghastly experience of discovering that clerical sexual abuse occurred in the Church, it is now crucial to examine systemic dangers like bad governance".

"In order once again to become credible witnesses of joy and hope, we will have to remove certain obstacles."

In a video message after Mass, Marx and ZdK president Thomas Sternberg said: "Credibility is an absolute must and we want to regain it through self-critical discussion."

The next two years will see the synodal procedure focusing on resolving two specific systemic problems in particular.

These problems have resulted in the Church fostering abuse and standing in the way of credibly proclaiming the Gospel message.

In a combined letter to the German Faithful weekend, Cardinal Marx and Sternberg said it was time to admit "self-critically" that the Gospel message had been "obscured and even terribly damaged", particularly by the clerical sexual abuse of minors.

"We must take the consequences and make sure the Church is a safe place," they said.

Four days before the synodal procedure was officially launched, a group of diocesan press spokesmen from 12 dioceses called on the media's critical cooperation.

"Particularly as far as scandals, crises and conflicts are concerned, the only thing that helps is as much transparency as possible.

"We would be grateful if the media were to accompany this crucial debate on the future of the Catholic Church in Germany," they said.

Several bishops have spoken out about their hopes and fears regarding the procedure in sermons and interviews.

Among these was Cardinal Walter Kasper, emeritus President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.

He said he hoped the participants in the four synodal procedure forums on "power and checks and balances", "sexual morality", "the priestly lifestyle" and "women's place in the Church" would "earnestly listen to one another and not just exchange maximum demands, otherwise the whole project will go wrong".

He himself was still "somewhat sceptical", he said.

In Bishop Heiner Wilmer's opinion, the discussions won't be easy and the German Church will be a different Church afterwards.

"It will certainly be more participatory and more feminine," he said.

Source

• The Tablet
• Image: Catholic World Report

The theologians were given an entire "study day" to address the German Bishops' Conference during its March 11-14 spring assembly in the northern Diocese of Osnabrück.

They did not mince their words, openly directing the bishops to the Church's "systemic defects."

Revise the teaching on human sexuality

Professor Eberhard Schockenhoff told the bishops it was imperative for the Church to adopt a positive attitude to human sexuality and drop St. Augustine's "poisoned view" that erotic sexual pleasure was a consequence of original sin.

However, the 66-year-old moral theology professor from Freiburg University, said the abuse crisis was not the reason why the Church's view of sexual morality was no longer credible.

Rather, he blamed it on the fact that the Church had failed to integrate contemporary scientific insights into its teaching on sexual ethics.

Schockenhoff said the Church should no longer condemn the use of artificial contraception by married couples as an act hostile to life.

Instead, he said the use of contraceptives must be recognized as a decision of conscience based on the mutual respect of the spouses in the interest of their children's wellbeing.

The moral theologian said the Church must also recognize that there are other legitimate sexual relationships besides heterosexual marriage.

While lifelong marriage may be the best framework for living out one's sexuality, he said it is not the only one.

The Church must unconditionally recognize same-sex partnerships and stop "disqualifying their sexual practices as immoral," Schockenhof said.

He admitted, however, that promiscuity and having several relationships raise serious moral questions.

Schockenhoff called the positive view of sexuality and the erotic dimension of love that Pope Francis puts forth in his apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, "a true ray of hope."

Checks needed on clerical power

Gregor Maria Hoff, who teaches fundamental and ecumenical theology at the University of Salzburg, said the abuse crisis had precipitated the Church into a "sacralization trap," which could only be solved by introducing a system of checks and balances.

The 55-year-old theologian said that, as a religious institution with priests who are seen as representatives of Jesus Christ, the Church possesses a sacred power based on trust.

He said it is thus "fatal" and "disastrous" when such trust, and the power linked to it, are shattered as happens when priests sexually abuse others.

He said the only solution is for the Church to introduce a system of checks and balances so that power is controlled both from within and from outside the Church.

"This is the only way of preventing an unholy power, which still believes in its holiness even when it abuses it, from gaining independence," Hoff emphasized.

"Otherwise, why have some of the Church's highest representatives - of all people - refused to admit their guilt as, for example, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer (Archbishop of Vienna from 1986-1995), who flatly refused to admit his guilt either publicly or to victims to the very end until he died (in 2003)?" the theologian said.

Hoff argued that power would be divided and "sacralised power would dissolve" if the Church were to introduce a system of checks and balances.

The place of women in the Church

"The question for the German bishops' conference is whether it merely wants to delegate power or whether it wants the People of God to participate independently in Church power and is prepared to make this possible," he said.

Later, in a March 15 interview with Kathpress, Professor Hoff said the Church's decision-making processes must be more transparent, stating this is the only way to come to grips with the so-called "hot-button" issues.

These include dealing with power, the Church's teaching on sexual morality, the question of priestly celibacy and "last, but not least, women's place in a clerical Church." He said this final issue should be "the order of the day."

Hoff noted that Pope Francis is continually urging the Church to go to the peripheries, saying this has opened the way for experiments in local Churches. He said introducing participative power would be such an experiment.

Julia Knop, a professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Erfurt, was the most critical of the theologians who addressed the bishops.

She accused them of having opposed, for far too long, any discussion on power in the Church, compulsory priestly celibacy and the teachings on sexual morality.

The 42-year-old Knop said the bishops had, for years, turned these into taboo subjects.

"And I assume that some of you would like to continue this tradition," she told the stunned bishops.

Professor Knop said she hoped the March 13 study day with the episcopal conference would, at last, get the bishops to join in the ongoing discussions.

"You are in leading positions in the Church and you represent a Church whose systemic defects have become obvious," she warned.

Open your eyes to reality

The female theologian admitted that issues of power, celibacy and sexual morality are by no means new to the Church.

"But what is new is that their destructive connection can no longer be denied," she warned.

"They can no longer be brushed aside as the favorite issues of left-wing Catholicism. They simply cannot be made taboos any longer. What is new is the insight that serious Church self-correction is now imperative," she said

In an interview a couple of days later with katholisch.de, the official website of the German Catholic Church, Knop explained that she had not wanted to give the bishops a telling-off.

Rather, she wanted to open their eyes to the precariousness of the present situation and trigger a serious debate on the hot-button issues.

She also defended her statement that some bishops wanted to continue to cut off discussion on controversial inner-Church questions and keep them as taboos.

"In recent months, some bishops have repeatedly warned that one should not speak of typically Catholic systemic dangers, but should see clerical abuse as a phenomenon that is to be found in society in general," she said.

"Whoever argues like this maintains taboos in order to prevent Church reform," Knop said.

"I find the present situation in the Church in Germany really dramatic. Many people are saying that the Church is threatened with collapse," she said.

Knop then made this final point: "Not a single bishop got up and left during my address and no bishop has since told me that what I said was wrong."

• Christa Pongratz-Lippitt, Vienna
• Image: The Tablet

The 57-year-old Swiss Dominican, head of the Diocese of Lausanne-Genève-Fribourg since 2011, was referring to the sexual abuse crisis and how it is putting pressure for change on the Catholic Church.

Mounting pressure is a key factor to consider in the debates within the Church about the institutional reforms that are needed to address how bishops have failed in handling sex abuse cases. But this pressure on the institutional Church is undeniably different today from that of the past.

First, there is pressure from internal debate (within the Church), as well as from external forces (the media, society and culture, the state and the judiciary).

This pressure is more visible and public than in the past. And it is also something much more difficult for the institutional Church to control, not by coercive measures, but in the sense of controlling the narrative.

This is where the boundary between internal debate and external forces gets blurred.

Mass media and social media have changed the conversation within the Catholic Church, creating deep consequences that are really beyond anyone's comprehension.

Second, the internal debate has shown sharp divisions among Catholics in never before public way.

Some Catholics think the debate over ecclesial reform should include a reconsideration of the theology of the priesthood and seminary formation, the role of the laity and of women, and the Church's teaching on sexuality.

Others have a restorationist and puritan agenda that see homosexuality as the root cause of the current crisis and those who disagree with their call for a gay witch hunt as accomplices.

This tension caused by these polarities is not necessarily bad.

Pope Francis believes polarities are necessary in order to help the truth fully emerge.

The problem is that in some local churches, such as in the United States, the intra-ecclesial debate tends to be more polarized than the pope can probably imagine.

All this makes Bishop Morerod's point about the need for putting pressure on the Church even more important, especially from an historical perspective.

In the long course of doctrinal development, for example, the heresies played an important role in pushing the Church's theologians and pastors towards the correct and more complete understanding of God.

In a similar way, institutional reforms within the Church have mostly been born via negativa; that is, out of a reaction against something.

The Church has rarely changed spontaneously. It has done so almost always because of pressure.

Most of the time that has come from the outside - from political and cultural pressure, repression and persecution, and outrage caused by the revelation of scandal.

Throughout history there has been no change in the Church without at least some external pressure. And the current abuse crisis has sparked enormous external pressure for it to change again.

The problem is that not all change constitutes real reform. For instance, the First Vatican Council (1869-70) modernized papal power without really introducing much in the way of doctrinal reform.

The history of 19th-century Catholicism reminds us of the negative effects external pressure can create in a religious institution that perceives itself as being under siege.

The period of Ultramontanism, between the 1820s and Vatican I, created a political and religious culture in the Church of resistance and reaction against external pressure. Liberalism and modernity were the foils against which it elaborated a new strategy for survival.

In a Church dominated by a "siege mentality," talk of reform has often sounded like betrayal or even heresy. And, yet, Catholicism of the "long nineteenth century," which ended in 1958 with the death of Pius XII, was developing its own modernization even as it fought against the forces of secularist, totalitarian modernization, as James Chappel points out in his recent book, Catholic Modern.

However, this was not exactly a moment of institutional reform.

One of the differences in the way pressure works on the Church today, as compared to the past, is that, until recently, "the Catholic Church" was understood more or less to be an entity under tight institutional control.

At least this was true in principle and by perception. It was a natural fit with the siege mentality. On the one hand, this made ecclesial reform much more difficult.

But on the other hand, it also showed clearly the only path through which reform could travel - through the Vatican, the bishops, the clergy and theologians who had the ears of the Church's decision-makers. That system has now largely disappeared.

The theological rethinking that led to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) was made possible by ditching this siege mentality, which had reduced the Church to a defensive crouch, triumphalistic in its rhetoric but insecure in its relations with the modern world.

At Vatican II, the Church opened itself to dialogue with the world and theological and spiritual renewal.

It did so by following two principles: ressourcement (a rediscovery of the sources of the tradition) and aggiornamento (an openness to the resources of modernity).

But that openness to the world had undeniable costs. Clearly Vatican II still belonged to a Church-world pattern of relationship that is now gone. Until a few years ago, it was much harder for an individual Catholic to know what was happening at the other end of the world.

It was also much more difficult for that person to be reached by particular "narratives" and agendas concerning the contemporary Church.

Until the end of the 20^th century, external pressure created an internal counter-pressure in a Church that was more controlled by the ecclesiastical institution, but also by the social and cultural system where it was assumed that the Church could take care of itself.

The institutional Church has since lost its monopoly on reform.

There are many reasons for this. Some are theological but mostly they have to do with the changing role of the Church in a modern, pluralistic world.

Thus it has become disputable whether or not ressourcement and aggiornamento — and of what sort — can still lead the Catholic Church of today on a path toward institutional and theological reform.

That's because the Church that is going thought the abuse crisis is the very same that was going through the renewal of Vatican II.

The crisis of clergy sexual abuse has created new tensions and new possibilities. But it has reawakened the temptation towards retrenchment.

Pressure from Catholic groups and external forces, neither of which trusts the Church's ability to police itself, is a sword that could cut both ways - for or against genuine ecclesial reform.

• Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University
• Image: Ilsismografo

He is pictured above in St Peter's Square, on the opening day, with a diocesan priest of New Caledonia, Fr Jean-Paul Pouillet, who is having a 3-week break in France.

"A great honour for him and the whole Archdiocese of Noumea!" said Marist priest François Grossin.

Païta is a city in New Caledonia, a little north-west of Noumea, the country's capital.

Lamataki is one of many young people from all over the world attending the Synod on Youth, Faith and Vocational Discernment at the Vatican.

Some 34 young people have been invited to attend the gathering, and each will have the opportunity to give a brief, 4-minute reflection along with the cardinals and other bishops participating.

The Synod began with opening speeches at the plenary session in the Synod Hall in the Vatican.

Of the speeches given on the first day, 25 came from synod fathers, and one from a young American woman, Briana Regina Santiago, who is a member of the lay community of the Apostles of the Interior Life.

The atmosphere was described as "open and lively," thanks mainly to the presence of young people who readily - and sometimes noisily - expressed their approval, and to the pope's availability during the breaks.

Already two main tendencies can be discerned within the Synod.

• Some believe that the Church must change its way of being, in order to reach out towards young people
• Others believe that the way to reach young people is not by flattering them or going along with what they want, but rather by reaffirming the Church's teachings

The dominant theme seems to be the need for authenticity on the Church's part.

"Young people want us to be witnesses of the Gospel through our actions rather than our words," pointed out Cardinal José Tissera of Quilmes from Argentina.

The speech of one of the synod fathers made a particular impression.

In a moving tone, he directly addressed the young people asking forgiveness for the Church's failings towards them, with sexual abuse being the main one of these shortcomings.

Source

• Supplied: François Grossin.
• international.la-croix.com
• cruxnow.com
• Image: Supplied