This is the view of Dr Joe Grayland, theologian, author and parish priest of three parishes in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

He questions whether we need another form of the clergy. - Originally reported 31 May 2021

Grayland made the comments, Thursday, during Flashes of Insight - Women Deacons in the Catholic Church, a conversation with Dr Phyllis Zagano, Emeritus Professor of New Testament at the Ecole Biblique, Justin Taylor and hosted by Emeritus Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham Thomas O'Loughlin.

Grayland asks if the Church actually needs permanent male or female deacons.

If it does, he suggests we need to change the understanding projected by the transitional diaconate modelled in seminaries.

Grayland says he works with eight women across the three parishes; they serve the community, they work full time, but none are ordained.

We might need more priests, but Grayland says the last thing we need is an expanded clerical class, the permanent diaconate.

It is not a perspective Zagano shares.

Zagano is an internationally recognised scholar, prolific writer and advocate for women deacons.

She says that if anyone wants to be a deacon to get power, they have other issues.

The ministry of the deacon is one of service, she says.

Zagano says it is important to have a specialised view of ministry and that the diaconate should not be limited to in-house Church functions.

Zagano says the office of the deacon is distinct from the function of deacons.

Deacons hold the same office, but their ministry of service would be expressed differently, she said.

She says that if people want to go to confession, they see a priest, and if they go for food, counselling or spiritual direction, deacons can offer the service.

If our prime concern is not to expand the clerical class, why ordain anyone, she asks.

She however noted that if the Church were to reintroduce deacons, there is a question around whether they would be installed or ordained.

Zagano says there is no doubt that women were deacons in the Early Church.

It is a point that Taylor, who works on some of the earliest evidence the Church has, agrees with.

Taylor says that it is clear from both scripture and the documents from the first thousand years that women were deacons.

When the Early Church spoke of deacons, there was no distinction made between male or female.

Taylor says that referencing deacons, men or women, the Early Church saw deacons as officeholders and not just functionaries.

Questioned by O'Loughlin about the future, Grayland says that women's ministry should not be seen as a threat to male in ministry.

He commented when looking at the evidence if the Church is going to have women deacons, the church needs to popularise it as part of the Church evolving.

He says that reflecting on what Zagano and Taylor have discussed; the Church needs to understand that the development of women's diaconate is not a straight-line trajectory but an evolution.

Grayland says he hopes our Church's understanding of women's ministry and women's diaconate will change but wonders why we do not have women deacons now.

Zagano agrees and says we must not go forth in political discussion but with a spirit of discernment.

She says that a wise bishop once wrote to her and says this about discernment.

"Discernment is not an organizational technique, and it's not a passing fashion, but it's an interior attitude rooted in an act of faith."

"Discernment is the method and at the same time the goal."

"It's based on the belief that God is at work in the history of the world in the events of life and the people we meet and who speak to us."

"This is why we are called to listen to what the Spirit suggests to us with often unpredictable ways and directions."

"As one might assume, he's a Jesuit bishop," she says.

Zagano concludes by saying it is important that theologians listen to the People of God and for the People of God to make their needs known.

In a spirit of discernment, Zagano is convinced that if the People of God make their needs known, they will not be denied.

As to the future, Zagano says that we need a genuine discerning discussion, a prayerful discussion, to move to a future where the Church will restore the tradition of women in ministry and the diaconate.

We have our loves and our hates, our up days and down days, and the times when we just want to sit quietly and be left alone.

Moreover, these emotional swings are not simply mood swings or based on how we feel when we get up in the morning.

There are times of genuine rejoicing - both for us as individuals and members of families and for us as members of larger groups.

Likewise, there are hard, sad, lonely, and even dangerous times.

And then there are all the times when we "just are" - neither good nor bad, neither particularly joyful nor sad, and we just keep moving on.

As people, individually and as members of communities, with all the changes in what is going on around and in our lives, we gather to worship God and thank him as our Father in heaven.

So, how do these ups and downs in our circumstances affect us as we gather for liturgy?

A simple answer is to see the liturgy as one more service we consume.

On this reckoning, we should have unmitigated joy at weddings.

A similar joy is when a new child is welcomed among us - and most Christians have traditionally celebrated births with a baptism.

Then, we could have sympathetic sorrow and mourning at funerals. With darkened tones, we could express our solidarity with those suffering after a disaster - and "mourning with those who mourn" is very important.

Following this approach, a wedding - always the paradigm for human rejoicing as we see in Mt 9:15 - should provide us with many opportunities to express high spirits: it should be an occasion for fun.

Indeed, this is a formula used by those who want God-free secular ceremonies to satisfy the human need to ritualise our experience: it is always good to have an opportunity to ventilate and express how we feel deep down.

The Christian approach

But the Christian approach is far more complex.

At a wedding, we introduce a dark note when we speak about "until death" separates the couple.

Conversely, at a funeral, we speak of death being "swallowed up in victory", of life being "changed, not ended", and, with joy, of the angels leading the dead person into paradise.

Indeed, the most emotionally charged liturgical moment in the year - on the Friday recalling the crucifixion - we see that afternoon liturgy not as a stand-alone gathering but as one scene in a three-act drama.

It begins with the joy of Holy Thursday evening and ends with the exultation of the Easter Vigil. So to be present at the Good Friday liturgy without the other two gatherings, in effect, is to miss the whole point.

It is Good Friday in a series of three rejoicings - and on that afternoon, we emphasise the rejoicing in the Cross's victory over death.

That most emotionally charged day is not one of dark mourning, nor do we rejoice in suffering, but we are rejoicing because we do not believe that suffering, death, and decay have the last word.

No matter when we gather to worship, there is a note of joy in our gathering, and the question now becomes: why strike this joyful note even in the face of suffering?

One famous answer to this question is based in the thought of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72).

It takes this line: we humans cannot cope with the harsh facts of our universe, the painful reality that all ends in failure and decay, and so we make continued existence bearable to ourselves by projecting a story of the kind of world we wish for.

The note of joy is a necessary deceit: if we did not put the futility and darkness of existence out of our minds, we would either go insane or abandon all effort.

So, just as the medic knows that telling a sick person that "you're improving" can improve the patient's health, telling ourselves a joyful story acts as a pep-talk and gives us energy to face tomorrow.

This theme was famously taken up by Karl Marx (1818-83), a disciple of Feuerbach.

Marx described religion as "the opium of the people": religion, and the joy it makes us think about, acts like a painkiller - opium was one of the most effective analgesics in the nineteenth century - amidst life's pain.

So is our joy in liturgy a fraud?

Joy as a profession of faith

The joyfulness inherent within Christian liturgy is a primary expression of faith: the Christ has conquered death, and our redemption is "close at hand".

The cry Maranatha - "Come, Lord Jesus" - is not only one of the oldest cries of our gatherings (1 Cor 16:22; Didache 10; and Apoc 22:20) but sets the whole tone of our liturgy.

When asked about "professions of faith" in the liturgy, we usually think of reciting the creed or perhaps the occasional renewal of baptismal promises.

Indeed, the whole idea of professing faith tends to bring to mind an exam with questions and answers.

We get images in our heads of a string of questions like "Do you believe this?" and "Do you believe that?" and a quiz-like encounter as to whether if you believe X, then you must believe Y, or can you just believe X and avoid believing in Y!

But this entire formalised approach to questions about believing only makes sense if we already believe that the loving Father's purposes will be brought to a joyful conclusion.

Even in times of suffering, our joyfulness is the expression of this faith - which may or may not be formalised in creeds, questions, and catechisms.

Joy is at core of our vision.

So when we gather - for instance, at a funeral - the sadness of our loss as the small group who grieve the death of a loved one has to find support and understanding from the larger community.

Death is death, and loss is loss, and tears are real: Jesus wept at the death of his friend (Jn 11:35).

But within that larger gathering, we hear another theme that must stand alongside our mourning: "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Cor 15:26).

It was to capture this two-sided aspect of how we face the future that led to many of the changes in the liturgy in the 1970s.

Until then, the standard colour of vestments at a funeral was black (in European culture the colour of death and mourning).

This was replaced by white - the colour of joy and resurrection - or purple as the colour of sadness but without the note of dark finality expressed by black.

Likewise, the coffin used to be surrounded by four or six candles in brown (unbleached wax) - another sign of mourning.

Now, at the head of the coffin stands the great symbol of Easter: the Paschal Candle.

That candle - linked to Easter, baptism, and beginnings - is there because, for all our grief, we confess that we continue our journey through death to new life.

The funeral is but the most explicit case of something true of every liturgy: our individual sadness and loneliness need to encounter our community faith.

The gathered community is the sacrament through which the joy of the risen Lord encounters us.

Joy communityu

Joyfulness as a mark of the Church

Eating together is both a marker of our joy and contributes to it.

Can you imagine a wedding without a feast? Can you imagine sharing a meal with friends that did not produce some laughter?

The early Christians saw their eating and drinking together as joyful occasions, foretastes of the final banquet. Indeed, they imagined their Christian life together as a feast.

They saw this theme of joy and festival setting them apart from others: the Lord had come among them, the Lord had shown them a Way, the Lord risen from the dead, and was present at their meals.

Over the centuries, this sense of the joyful presence of the Lord when Christians gathered was often lost from sight.

In its place came gatherings that focused on sinfulness and unworthiness.

The Lord's presence in the community was reduced to concerns over presence as a commodity, and there was a general fear that expressions of joyfulness were frivolous or encouraged buffoonery!

Religion and worship were a serious business - and it could all be wrapped up and defined in fixed boundaries.

In this careful packaging joy, that spark that sets an occasion alive, was often the first casualty.

One of the challenges of Vatican II - and by its nature, a challenge that could not be put into a set of rules or promulgated as a text - was to find a way of acting so that liturgy is not just performing a routine, even one divinely authorised.

It was to be an activity of those who rejoice in their new life in the Christ, which expresses this spark of the unexpected, this joyfulness of those who somehow grasp the reality of being loved by God, this sense of belonging within the People of God, this spark of joy.

But how do we move from a perfunctory routine to this new joyful openness? This is the challenge that faces every group that sits down to think about liturgy.

There are no prescriptions - one cannot produce a formula that will produce joyfulness - but one can remove many obstacles.

Here are just a couple of examples.

First, we tend to confuse the sacred with the solemn, so we become so formal in our ways of celebrating that we exclude our spontaneity.

We see this in some of the formal dress bishops and cardinals rejoice in.

They claim it points to the sacred but is merely over-the-top formality. Solemnity is what it conveys - and then it is simply human pomposity.

Likewise, we tend to cut corners in any repeated activity - less is done (e.g. communion from the Tabernacle), and fewer people are involved (e.g. same people do the tasks each week).

We repeat ourselves (e.g., same stock phrases in introductions and prayers), which gives the impression that we are just going through the motions: another job!

Whenever we are joyful, we are fully engaged here and now!

Likewise, we often slip into an approach to worship akin to someone filling an order: so many prayers delivered as per instructions.

But if we behaved like this on any joyful occasion in the rest of our lives (birthdays, anniversaries, special occasions), we would soon be told the extent of our failure!

But perhaps most importantly, we have all become so familiar with what we do week in and week out that we grow bored to tears - the very opposite of joy.

This is the challenge of liturgy that we Catholics have yet to address.

Worship must witness to the living God

It is always instructive to see how people (both those who call themselves believers and those who reject belief) refer to the idea of "God".

The good people are the bores; what is nice is what is naughty!

An advert selling chocolate announces that it is so tempting it is sinful - yes, it is a joke, but a joke that only works if we have a vision of God as wanting us to be miserable.

How often have I heard reference to God as "the man upstairs?

The man upstairs (an image from a two-tier world of masters/servants) is watching you: and you reasonably ask what is the minimum you "can get away with".

The image of the man upstairs is incompatible we our belief that God is love - and it is that love we celebrate when we gather.

An earthquake kills thousands, and we refer to it as "an act of God", and now the notion of God equals the extent of our ignorance of plate tectonics.

Indeed, for most people (believers and unbelievers) God is a mean, old bully, and, indeed, a killjoy.

If we do anything in the liturgy that promotes, reinforces, or acquiesces in this false notion of God we become traitors to faith.

Writing to the Romans, Paul trotted out a little well-turned list of attitudes that he wanted to animate their gathering.

It was clearly a list that he had memorised - and wanted others to memorise - and that he had used on many occasions.

I think of it as a kind of ancient liturgical catechism - and the place that joy, rejoicing, and the spreading of joy has within it is significant.

Here it is:

Rejoice in your hope;

Be patient in tribulation;

Be constant in prayer;

Contribute to the needs of the saints;

Practice hospitality;

Bless those who persecute you;

Bless and do not curse them;

Rejoice with those who rejoice;

Weep with those who weep;

Live in harmony with one another;

Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;

Never be conceited;

Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all; [and]

If possible, so far as you can, live peaceably with all (Rom 12:12-8).

Joy is not icing on the liturgical cake: it should be its abiding flavor.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK).
• First published in La Croix International. Republished with permission.

First, was the disappearance of Latin (which had become a de facto badge of identity for many Catholics), and the second was the fact that now the president of the Eucharistic assembly ‘faced the people.'

This was visually different, obvious, and - as is the way with that which we see with our own eyes - imagined to be self-explanatory.

‘He now faces us!' and ‘We can now see him and see what's happening!' were the comments at the time, and the whole church-building re-ordering programme was expressed in ‘turning round the altar so that the priest faces the people.'

For the ‘average person' not thinking about liturgy, theology, or the Vatican Council, this was what liturgical change was about: literally, a shifting of the furniture.

It is probably for this reason that those who are unhappy with the reforms of the Council imagine that if they can change back the furniture and make the language more Latinate as in the 2011 English-language missal, then they will have broken the symbolic heart of the renewal.

Is it about communication?

The new shape of the liturgical arena, the president facing the rest of the congregation, was presented at the time and is still most often presented today in terms of communication and the theory of communication.

The president could now be seen and heard, and this was perceived as a welcome development because it fostered understanding and comprehension (which it does).

This, in turn, was expected to lead to a deeper appreciation of the Eucharist (as it has to an extent that is not often acknowledged and in ways that were not expected).

However, this emphasis on being able to see the priest made him and his role in the liturgy central to the whole event - and this dynamic (one actor with an audience) is actually a hangover from the eucharistic spirituality that Vatican II set out to challenge.

Selling the reform short

But did those who implemented the reform in parishes sell it short?

Was it simply a matter of communications?

Perhaps it was something far more fundamental - indeed, was it such a fundamental aspect of the reform that neither they nor their congregations could take on board the rationale of the shift in one move?

Therefore, they ‘explained it' by simplification - and, in the process, traduced it?

This seems to be exactly what happened: in well-intentioned attempts to communicate ‘the changes' in the liturgy they opted to use ‘communication' as the rationale for the new physical arrangements, and once embarked on that road, then every arrangement had to explained in a similar fashion: it must be seen by all, all the time.

So why did Vatican II want the president facing others in the assembly and every building to have the ancient basilican arrangement?

The fundamental rationale of the reform was the renewed awareness of the early and patristic understanding of the assembly as gathered around the table of the Lord.

The Eucharist is many things, but in its fundamental form, it is a meal of eating and drinking, a banquet, a sacrum convivium, and its visible focus is the visible focus of a meal: a table.

We may interpret that table theologically as an altar - the table is ‘our altar' as distinct from the altar in the Jerusalem temple or the many altars found in ordinary homes in antiquity - but it is, in its own reality, first and last, a table.

The Lord gathers us at his table: there we discover his presence and bless the Father.

The table is at once in unity with our own tables - for a table is a reality of the ordinary world - and in union with the table of the heavenly banquet.

The table transcends the dichotomy, which is a false dichotomy for Christians, of the sacred and the profane: the domestic is the locus of the sacred.

This is a typical Greco-Roman altar found in Caesarea Philippi. Altars such as this one could be found in every building - including most homes - across the Roman world. Photo - Thomas O'Loughlin

A priestly people

The Lord has come to our table, we gather as a priestly people at his.

We can interpret the table in many ways, and interpreting it as ‘an altar' has been the most common, but our eucharistic thinking must start with what it is.

This use of the word ‘table' did, of course, produce allergic reactions to Catholics of an older generation: Protestants had the ‘holy table' or brought out a table for a ‘communion service'; we had ‘an altar' - and the physical object in a church-building was never referred to by any other name: it was an altar, and altars were for sacrifice!

But we still referred to ‘the mensa' in many of the rubrics; the shape never took on that of either an Old Testament nor a pagan altar; and it was expected that a vestigial four legs (just like the table I am writing upon) should appear as four columns or pilasters on the front of ‘the altar.'

There is only one problem with tables: you cannot just use them in any old way, they create their own space for us as dining animals!

How we humans behave

Let us imagine the smallest possible table gathering: two people meeting for a cup of coffee in a café.

Unless they are not focused on their own meeting - i.e. they want to watch a TV screen rather than talk to one another - they will take up positions opposite one another across the table.

The table creates a common space, a space for eating and talking and for sharing a common reality in a way that cannot take place when people sit side-by-side at a bar.

If you are alone, it is as easy to sit at a bar and eat, drink, read the paper or play with your phone as at a table (and you do not risk having a stranger sit opposite you); but if two people go to drink instant coffee or have a magnificent meal together, then they will face one another.

We watch each other eating, and around the table, we become a community - however transient - and not just two individuals.

This is also a space of deep communication between us as people: we can share our thoughts with our food, we can pick up all the richness of facial expression, tone, body language - and really communicate.

This is the communication we long for as human beings, not ‘the communications' of the media or of communications theory that is better described as information transfer.

The table is an intimate place - yet curiously, it is also a public space, a place of respect for one another (hence ‘table manners'), and a place where our humanity and our relations with other humans are enhanced.

The importance of the table is written as deep in our humanity as anything else: it is studied by behavioural scientists, anthropologists, and psychologists - but it suffices here to remind us of the references to tables in the Psalms (Ps 23:5; 79:19; or 123:3), the gospels (Mt 8:11; 9:10; 15:27; 26:7; 26:20 - and this is in just one gospel), and many early Christian stories.

The table is at the heart of our humanity and at the heart of our liturgy.

But what of a table with more than two people? The fundamental logic continues:

We arrange ourselves around the table and create roughly equal spaces between each other.

This continues until we have used up all the space around the table - and then, traditionally, we extend the table into the longer form we find at banquets, in refectories and messes, and even in domestic dining rooms where the table ‘pulls out' for those occasions when we have extra guests.

The Eucharist is our common table as Christians and our sacred table as guests of the Lord: it was to re-establish this fundamental table-logic that stood behind the changes of Vatican II.

The move in the president's direction was not that ‘he could face the people' in serried ranks of pews, nor be visible as a science teacher's bench must be visible to her class, nor as a lecturer on a podium - but so that if he stood at the Lord's table, everyone else could arrange themselves around that table as human beings do.

This seems impossible!

But is this not simply impossible?

How does one put hundreds of people at a packed Sunday Mass around a table?

People need to be in pews: which means that only the president can be at the table!

Well, first, the shift in the position of the table has been done in most buildings in a minimal way.

It was just ‘pulled out from the wall' rather than made the centre of space for the assembled banqueting community.

Second, in many places, it has been found possible to create a long table in an otherwise uncluttered space and arrange well over a hundred people to stand around it such that all could see they were gathered around the Lord's table.

And third, the Eucharist is a human-sized event - and a gathering of over a hundred should be considered very exceptional - as they were for most of Christian history.

However, it is important to note just how deeply set this reality of ‘being around the table' is within our tradition.

First of all, in the directions for gathering at meals that come from Jewish sources that are contemporaneous with the earliest Christian meals, we find that when the guests assembled, they had a cup of wine (‘the first cup'), and each said the blessing individually; then they went to the table, and there was another cup (‘the second cup') and now one person blessed for all.

The reason for the shift is explicitly spelt out: only when they were at the table were they a community, and so only then could one bless all.

Now think again about the Last Supper, the other meals of Jesus, the blessing of the cup in 1 Corinthians, or the ritual instructions for the community meals in the Didache.

Second, consider the words of the traditional Roman eucharistic prayer (Eucharistic Prayer I): Memento, Domine, famulorum famularumque tuarum et omnium circumstantium, … . A literal rendering (still too daring for translators!) supposes the arrangement of people that existed when the text was created: ‘Remember, O Lord, you male servants (famuli) and your female servants (famulae), indeed all who are standing around … '.

Could it be that the venerable Roman Canon assumes that the community, both men and women, are standing around the table of the Lord?

And third, we have from the patristic and early medieval periods directions for how the broken parts of the loaf are to be arranged on the paten, and these often assume that the arrangement around the paten's rim reflects the people around the table.

So, once again, table gathering is not a new ‘secular' or imported idea but a return to the depths of our own tradition.

A whole community gathered

If we start thinking about the new orientation not as ‘priest facing people' or ‘people looking at priest', but as the whole community gathered around an actual table we not only have a more authentic expression of the Eucharist, a deeper appreciation of the many prayer of the liturgy that suppose this physical arrangement, but we also how shallow has been our taking up of the reforms of Vatican II over the last half-century.

A fuller renewal, with a deeper appreciation of its inherent logic, is going to mean more shifting around in buildings a gradual exposure of the ideas so that people feel comfortable with them and see why we are abandoning the ‘theatre-and-stage' arrangements.

Moreover, and it will run into cultural problems in that many modern households do not eat together at a table at home and so lack a basic human experience upon which grace might build the community of the Lord's table.

A recent UK survey found that one in four households now have no dining table / kitchen table at which they take meals as a household - the human consequences for society are frightening!

Over the last few years there have been calls from some liturgists - including bishops and cardinals - for a return to the ‘ad orientem' position (i.e. president facing away from the assembly), while others, needing to reply to these calls, have tried to make out that the present arrangements are nigh on perfect!

But both the present arrangements of ‘the expert' being visible at his bench and pre-reformed notion of only one person at the table - in effect not facing the same way as the people, but turning his back on them and keeping them away from the table behind him and railings - are fundamentally flawed as being neither true to Christian tradition nor human nature.

If we think about how tables are part of our heritage, we might also appreciate why Pope Francis has insisted that there can be no question of going backwards as if the pre-Vatican rite and the current rite are simply ‘option.'

Sixty years ago, Sacrosanctum Concilium made a definite change upwards.

The theological bottom line is this: if the Logos has come to dwell among us (Jn 1:14), then every table of Christians is a place where one can rub up against him at one's elbow.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• His latest book is "Shaping the Assembly: How Our Buildings form us in Worship".

In the discussions, one question is invariably put to me, and it amounts to this: If you were going to be at the upcoming Synod assembly, what would be your Number 1 ask?

The question is an obvious one: many of those interested in the Synod belong to groups who are calling for renewal within the Church, and very many of them are still seeking to bring the vision of Vatican Council II (1962-65) to fruition through specific changes and reforms.

But if the question is obvious, that does not mean that answer is.

You, me, and every other Catholic could draw up a wish list of "changes we would like to see", but would such a list appropriate?

Come to think of it, even Pope Francis could draw up such a list.

I'm sure that abolishing clericalism, finding new ways of standing up for the poor and for the creation, and some way to repair the hurt and damage caused by sexual abuse by clergy would be on it - but that list too might be a short-circuiting of the very basis of a Synod assembly.

Synod assemblies are supposed to be places of listening

At the heart of the notion of synodality is that people from different places, coming together bring different views, perspectives and insights.

Each has to be listened to, taken into account, and valued.

Traditionally, this has meant bishops listening to bishops - and, clearly, this is one of the problems when synodality is to become a characteristic of the Church.

There need to be many other perspectives than those of celibate, older men who all have a common profession with a highly defined esprit de corps.

A start has been made with having some others of the baptised being at the Synod assemblies and allowing them to vote, but if this next assembly is to usher in synodality to the Catholic Church, this is just the tip of an iceberg.

Only when a genuine culture of listening is in place, can one start to think about various wish lists for change.

But why is listening so important?

Because the opposite of listening is a top-down approach where all knowledge, guidance, and wisdom is held by a group of leaders, or even just one man, and this is then dispensed to everyone else.

The vision of the Catholic Church put forward by Pius IX (who was pope from 1846-78) and his successors - a model that is still very much in place - is the antithesis of a synodal Church.

The older model was one of a two-tier Church of teachers (the ecclesia docens) and obedient listeners (the ecclesia discens).

The synodal Church assumes that all speak and all listen.

They do this in terms of their common dignity as human beings created in God's likeness, in terms of their common baptism that makes them members of the Christ, and in terms of their common task as disciples moving along the Way.

We do not yet know how to do this - the consultation processes have been very patchy and clunky - but we have made a start.

Only one thing seems certain: the period from October 2023 to October 2024 is going to be a steep learning curve, it is going to be painful, but it will be a time of real growth.

Also, let us be realistic, it will meet stiff resistance not just from Roman Curia officials who have a personal interest in the status quo, but from those looking for simple, black/white answers to complex questions, and from those who use religion - and a certain type of Catholicism in particular, as one more front for their social and economic agenda.

Alas, authoritarianism survives because it is convenient for so many!

The key questions: where are we now and where should we be going?

So what are they listening for?

It is not a case that they are listening out for some voice from heaven or that there is a secret key that could unlock some wondrous source of wisdom.

There have been many times in Christian history when groups have claimed that they had just such a treasure with all the answers.

Some claim that they have it in a sacred book such as the scriptures, or in replicating yesterday and claiming that is "tradition", or in an individual such as the pope, or even some private revelation (e.g. "the secret message" of Fatima).

But synodal listening is far more mundane and requires much more thinking, prayer, and discerning.

The focus is on where are we, as the People of God, now?

What are the demands of discipleship that we face in our time and culture, and what is the best way to face these challenges.

Moreover, we are a people on the move: we are called to walk and act as disciples, not simply sign up to an abstract list of beliefs. Hence, a second question, where should we be going?

How should we be witnessing to God's love manifest in his Anointed One?

What should we be doing that we are not doing?

Answering these questions will throw up a whole raft of changes that we have to make if we are to move forward: that is the wish list.

And once we know where we should be going, if the Synod does not act on these, it will fail.

One does not listen just to get information. One also listens to see what has to be done now.

Then one prays for the courage to make the changes in the face of those who oppose change.

The true wish list can only emerge from the listening.

What would you say?

If presenting a "wish list" is not the first step for a Synod, that does not mean that there is not something I would like to say to the assembly were I there.

Synod assemblies have often failed to really solve problems they've decided to tackler for this reason: facing the need to change would mean acknowledging that the Church had made mistakes in the past.

In 1415, at the Council of Constance, the Church did not face up to the questions posed to it by Jan Hus (c.1369-6 July 1415) - instead they condemned him and handed him to the civil power who murdered him by burning at the stake.

If that council had admitted that certain errors had crept into the liturgy and remedied them, the festering problems that lead to the Reformation - and the division of the Western Church - might have been avoided.

It was only in the 1950s that scholars looked again at Hus's writings and realized that he was not guilty of the heresies of which he was accused, and for which is was murdered.

Alas, many places in the Catholic Church still have not responded to problems pointed out by Hus - despite Vatican II addressing them.

But Vatican II did not admit that there was a defective tradition due to mistakes; so by not admitting that any mistake had ever been made, many bishops' conferences did not realise that the changes were actually important and not just "window dressing".

At the Council of Trent (1545-63), the fear that if they admitted Martin Luther might have made many correct challenges to the Church meant that rather than learning from his criticism, and that of others, they swung to the other extreme.

So fearful were they that if they admitted that Luther was right on anything, they rejected even the obvious reforms.

The effect was that the indefensible was, in many cases, made the norm.

Moreover, this policy served to embed division and warfare over religion into the heart of European society.

We are still paying the cost.

Again, many of these were put right by Vatican II - but again, no one "put their hands up" and said, "we got it wrong".

The myth that the Church is perfect, that it does not make mistakes, and that "everything it has ever said is consistent with everything else" won the day!

Then at Vatican Council II a somewhat similar situation arose.

The bishops privately knew that mistakes had to be corrected, but once more, they made changes without explaining that they proposed these as remedies.

The result was the conundrum of saying: the new way is better, but there is nothing wrong with the old way!

The result has been people scratching their heads as to why the changes were made; while others engage in culture wars within the Catholic Church.

It would have been much better to come clean and say: we have made massive mistakes, explain the mistakes, and then show how we are trying to put things right. Lest it look like a pope was finding fault with an earlier pope, we were presented with confusing messages that pretended that the earlier pope had "really meant" to say the exact opposite!

One could multiply examples - but the point is that we are not perfect, but we have the Spirit constantly calling us to improve.

It would be better, simpler, and more honest to face our problems and say: we have blundered!

Listening and admitting mistakes is part of conversion

Few today take the triumphalistic tone of the early twentieth century: we have all just as it should be in the Holy Church - and so we do not need to change.

But we still have many in authority in the Church who, almost unknown to themselves, slip into the position that they can only countenance changes where these do not contradict what has been long defended.

To these brothers and sisters in baptism, the idea of a chronic mistake is unthinkable - but a reality check shows that they do occur.

To move out of this mindset of "we cannot have been wrong" requires humility, facing up to unpalatable realities, and trust in the Spirit.

Moreover, it goes against the grain in that the familiar always seems so secure, the new and unfamiliar is frightening, and, lest we forget the basics, religion is naturally a conservative force within society - and so it acts as a break on change and as a locus of reaction to change.

So what would I say: Believe that the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth (Jn 14:17) and that we will only be the complete witness to the Christ at the end of time. Meanwhile, we must be engaged in a continual work of renewing and purifying.

In this process of conversion to the gospel, the best start is to admit and name the mistakes that have been made - even if this means taking some of the shine off sainted figures in the past. Then ask the Lord for the courage to begin afresh in new ways.

This is a message we have long preached to individuals in their following of the Way, but one we need to learn also as communities and within the Catholic Church as a whole.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.
• His latest book is "Shaping the Assembly: How Our Buildings form us in Worship".

That is certainly true of the picture above - it is worth many thousands of words as we approach the synod in October.

Dare I say it, it is worth a thousand of the numbered statements in Denzinger!

Please study the picture closely.

It is typical of the signs one sees on the outskirts of villages and towns in Germany. The image of a building in yellow tells the viewer that the only church/chapel in the town is Catholic.

The letters and numbers tell the days and times when Catholics there gather to celebrate the Eucharist. 'Sa' is an abbreviation for Saturday, and 'So' for Sunday; the numbers are self-explanatory.

Now look more closely!

There used to be - in the time since the sign was put up - three celebrations: one on Saturday evening, and two on Sunday morning.

Now part of the sign has been painted over: there is now only one eucharistic assembly!

Why is this?

It could be that the population has dropped by 66 percent. But that cannot explain it since there is a big new housing estate nearby: the town is growing in population.

It could be that there are fewer people 'going to church.'

That is almost certainly the case. Rejection of the church has been increasing in recent years with more and more people formally renouncing their membership of the Catholic Church; and there has been a decrease in religious practice across the churches generally.

But would that explain why there is now only one Mass over a weekend instead of three? Of course not!

The real problem

The reason is not hard to find: it is due to there being not enough presbyters to preside over the assemblies - what is incorrectly referred to as either 'the priest shortage' or 'the vocations' crisis.'

It is the same story across diocese after diocese and country after country.

Fewer presbyters, older presbyters, and empty seminaries mean that the few men there are available being spread thinner and thinner. That is why the white paint has been applied to this sign to alter it.

We can engage in platitudes. I see one diocese claims that it is not 'closing parishes' but 'restructuring.' Such statements belong to the deceitful world of spin doctors rather than to those who claim to be successors of the apostles.

Many other dioceses try to avoid facing the issue by importing young presbyters from the developing world.

Are they not needed there?

Is there no need for them to help their own communities? Is this not a form of neo-colonialism - stripping the developing world of its assets for the sake of the rich countries?

Should not a presbyter emerge from out of the community: a basic sign of an inculturated liturgy?

Older and more tired

What has happened in this town is that where there used to be three presbyters in three towns, now there is one man travelling between them. You probably know a place near you where this is happening.

But the presbyters are old and often tired.

The assemblies are often too big - one cannot genuinely relate to a community of hundreds!

To imagine one can just 'scale up' the size of a congregation from one hundred to two hundred - or even more - without detriment to the level of participation in the liturgy is a failure to understand both how humans relate and the nature of a eucharistic celebration.

It is a gathering of family (we call each other 'brothers and sisters') and friends ('I call you friends' - Jesus) not a 'service provision event.'

Moreover, the presbyter has to pretend that each celebration is the centre and summit of his day - yet his demeanour may reveal his exhaustion.

Please do remember that is it less than a 100 years ago since celebrating two Masses on one day (except in an emergency) needed a special permission from the bishop - 'bination' was seen as most exceptional.

Most of the Orthodox churches still do not permit it.

Face the problem

Meet any group of presbyters and they will openly talk about the problem. Often as soon as a bishop enters the room, the discussion falls silent!

But if this problem is not addressed openly at the synod, then much of what it will discuss will have an air of unreality.

That sign is truly a sign for the times.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK).
• First published in La Croix. Republished with permission.
• His latest book is "Shaping the Assembly: How Our Buildings form us in Worship".

It was expected by most of the bishops that it would ratify a series of documents prepared by the curia covering a raft of issues - but in essence, this was seen as an exercise in tidying up a few loose ends that had been debated since 1870 - and the whole affair would be over by Christmas.

The expectation of many bishops as they arrived in Rome in early October was that the council would involve just that single trip.

Some suspected that the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8 would be a most appropriate day on which such an event could end, and so the bishops (allowing some time to visit Gammarelli's, the papal tailors, for some new kit) would be home well before Christmas.

Those bishops expecting a short, rather technical council were right about one thing: it ended on the Immaculate Conception feast, except that they got the year wrong. It ended on 8 Dec 1965 - three years and four ‘sessions' later - making it the second longest council in the history of the western church.

Moreover, what we would now call its ‘outputs' - formal documents ranging from binding constitutions to messages of goodwill - dwarf in volume, range, and complexity the productions of any previous council.

‘The documents of Vatican II' is a hefty paperback!

Then, on 4 December 1963, came the first bombshell: Sacrosanctum concilium. The liturgy would change.

Now, sixty years on, we have enough distance to take stock of where we are in relation to it.

Mixed messages

Some months ago, Pope Francis annoyed many who express their great regard for pre-1969 liturgical practices.

Francis stated that they might be using those liturgical claims as an excuse for a much wider rejection of the teaching of Vatican II.

Such a rejection, the pope has made clear now in several documents, is simply not an option for Catholics.

This position is clear and consistent: an ecumenical council with the approbation of the Bishop of Rome is the highest teaching authority.

While one can find any number of individuals - and their websites - who disagree with the pope on this and who view Vatican II with a range of attitudes from being "a rant by trendy liberals in the ‘60s" to it being the demonic invasion "foretold in Revelation 12," the situation is otherwise when it comes to bishops!

However, to a man, they are staunch supporters of Vatican II and add a few footnotes to it in everything they write.

But, one suspects that for some of them, this is simply ‘the party line.'

In fact, we all know that for some bishops - and quite a number of presbyters and deacons - their acceptance of Vatican II is little more than ticking the obligatory box and expressing the right sentiments.

There are many who would like to skip the council as a blip, and, since that is impossible, give it as minimal an interpretation as they can.

Would it be good to face this?

The idea that all the bishops appointed or all teachers in seminaries in the last 60 years would be equally enthusiastic about the vision of Vatican II is, of course, an illusion, albeit a pious one.

Even the credal text of Nicaea in 325 - which was, after all, what we today would refer to as a ‘convergent text' - left many of its signatories wondering whether they had gone too far.

But Catholic episcopal unanimity is a deeply entrenched illusion that has been fostered with care since the time of the Reformation.

While Protestants, those ‘others,' might speak with many voices and have ever more divisions, we Catholics speak clearly with one voice and all in harmony with and under Peter.

That was the theory; and for many, that is still the theory, and it is just that: a theory.

One has but to read some of the pastoral letters of several bishops - and they are present in every episcopal conference - to see that there are ‘church parties' as alive and well in the Catholic Church as they are in every other Christian communion!

The same range of attitudes can be found among presbyters - and the tensions can be felt in any number of parishes.

The claim, plus those few quotes from Vatican II documents, is that Vatican II is wholly accepted.

The reality is very different.

This pretence is unhealthy.

In a way, Pope Francis, in pointing out that liturgical ‘preferences' were/are being used as an analogue for rejecting the council, has lanced a boil.

Perhaps the time has come for an open discussion of whether or not we accept, partially accept, or reject what was set in train by Vatican II.

This would require jettisoning the myth that we all think ‘with Peter,' but it might inject honesty and realism into many debates in our communion.

A couple of decades ago, we still imagined that a ‘few bad apples' - with reference to sexual abuse by clerics - could be dealt with ‘discreetly.'

Now we know it was not only morally wrong but a mistake.

We might learn from that mistake.

There are deep tensions over the legacy of the Council.

Within the church, there has been a great deal of laziness in regard to studying its implications and this results in confused messages and practices.

There are some whose theological vision and/or pastoral approach is tantamount to a rejection of Vatican II, and it might be healthy to bring this into the open.

Bringing it into the open would indeed be in line with the pilgrim People of God ecclesiology advocated by the council.

Moment or process?

Some years ago, there was a wonderfully vibrant debate at a conference of theologians.

The debate concerned whether Vatican II, and its subsequent enactments was to be construed ‘strictly' in terms of what is written in its documents or was to be seen as the beginning of a process that began with John XXIII, window-pole in hand, and then continued with ‘the spirit of Vatican II.'

The debate rumbled on from the lecture room to the meals to the evening relaxation - without a clear victor.

What did become clear was that this was a clash of hermeneutical perspectives.

It is a version of the question as to whether the US Constitution should be interpreted in terms of its original eighteen-century moment - and to accept ‘the mind' of the framers as a limitation - or whether it should be interpreted in the light of the evolution of society and needs.

Likewise, this is the question of whether a text - even a sacred one - somehow contains the truth or is to be seen as a momentary witness within a trajectory?

These distinctions often overlap with the social binary of ‘conservative' / ‘liberal', but they are not identical, nor can they be mapped one onto the other.

Does Vatican II condemn us to theological ‘culture wars'?

From another perspective, is it possible that there is a genuine conciliar hermeneutic within theology - or are these approaches a function of individuals' epistemology?

I am convinced that there is a conciliar, and strictly theological, hermeneutic that has to be applied - and has been applied historically - to conciliar judgements and that this approach has to map onto our theology of tradition rather than be justified by an appeal either to a particular view of what constitutes a right judgement, a criteriology, or to a wider position within jurisprudence.

The argument can be sketched out in this way.

The church is a community ‘stretching out' over time, and so we never experience more than our moment - a tiny ‘slice' of the reality, a still within a movie.

In this, our koinonia is fundamentally different from a political institution whose public commitment is to a set of rules and procedures.

A community - as a living organism - is constantly changing, both for better and for worse, and no moment can be considered ‘golden' or definitive.

The Spirit is ever active - and there was no moment of a divine ‘go slow' such as after the last canonical book was written, the last ‘apostle' died, or some event such as Christianity becoming a religio licita in 313.

The Spirit, celebrated as active by Luke at Pentecost in Jerusalem, was celebrated as equally active at the council in 1962, and will be celebrated as just as active in the synod in 2023.

Only at the eschaton will the community ‘possess the truth' and, meanwhile, over the whole of her life, the Church relies on the leading and guiding of the Spirit.

But the Church is also truly human - and like the Logos made flesh exists in history - and so the Spirit is a presence, not a mechanism.

Similarly, the object of our koinonia is not the community itself (such as is the case in a political or judicial body), but the mission entrusted to it, which it must carry out ‘in season and out of season' (2 Tim 4:2).

The community, therefore, does not know the exact parameters of its task tomorrow any more than it knew yesterday what are today's challenges.

God, and our following, is full of surprises!

Moreover, when the church reflects - in a local community, a regional synod, or ecumenically in a council - her ‘object' is always beyond definition.

When the church imagines that God, or the mystery of the Christ, or the mystery of salvation can be defined, she has forgotten the very first element of monotheism: the divine is always greater than can be imagined, and all our statements are momentary stutters.

We need to refine, renew, and re-invigorate them continually - once they get ‘stuck,' they rapidly lose their value.

We know this when we refuse to surrender to textual literalism or to confuse revelation with a book, but it is a temptation to falsehood that we must shun as an insidious virus.

If we freeze the moment of a council, we deny that through its dynamic influence, the Spirit might be active now in the Church.

Moreover, Nicaea was revisited by Constantinople, then by Chalcedon, then by any number of Western councils - until in the aftermath of Trent, we had one Christology being preached by the Jesuits - the Sacred Heart - and another by the Redemptorists - the Merciful Redeemer - and any number of combinations.

But these were at odds not just with one another but with the Nicene vision.

But we lived with this because each theology was a sincere attempt to get around the problems of late medieval scholasticism.

Our responses to the divine cannot be grasped in any one way.

Our expressions of our worship and its abstraction as teaching constantly evolves.

We never step into the same river twice, but there is a river for we live within it.

Vatican II was but a moment in the process, and being loyal to it (as to any council) is a dynamic affair of seeking out, in the Spirit, its spirit rather than its letter.

In this sense, it does not matter whether we are six or sixty years after Vatican II: this was the last time we came together in such a meeting, and so we must journey in its wake - far more elusive than its text - until there is another.

This constant journeying is not only what will allow us to grow towards a deeper life together within the Catholic Church but is the way forward in our relations with other churches.

… never deformed?

There is an adage that ‘the church is ever in need of reform but has never been deformed.'

This is similar to the dilemma of the washing powder brands who are always pitching ‘the new, improved formula' powder but are unwilling to admit that the older stuff was not as good as the competition and might even have been useless!

Three and half centuries of telling Protestants that they were mistaken when the said Rome had lost its way (e.g. in using an academics' language for worship), and nine centuries of telling the East that there was no basis for their complaints about what the west did in either practice (e.g. introducing unleavened wafers at the Eucharist) or theology (e.g. adding ‘and the Son' to the creed) had left their mark.

When Vatican II wanted to introduce changes, it felt compelled to do so while insisting that there was nothing wrong with what was already there!

This, perhaps naturally, produced a reaction to the council's innovations akin to the mechanics' maxim: ‘if it ain't broke, don't fix it!'

If something was ‘fit for purpose' one day, why was it unfit the next?

And, if the council's teaching was the polar opposite of what went before (e.g. Unitatis redintegratio (1964) compared with Mortalium animos (1928)), then were we wrong then [i.e. in the old position] or are we wrong now [i.e. having changed it]?

The position was, and is, made more confusing in that in most documents - indeed, in texts still being written - there is a lengthy praise of the older position to show, ingeniously, that nothing has changed.

The effect of this strategy - saying nothing has changed [when it has] and we have never erred [when we must have or we could not have had to make such drastic changes] - is dispiriting and, more perniciously, generates a suspicion that it is but a game of words or ‘the fashion' of those in office.

It would be far better both for our appreciation of the Council and its changes, and for our ongoing relationships with other churches if we just put our hands up and confessed: yes, we did get things wrong in the past, confusions and bad practices did embed themselves, and for every development of doctrine and practice that we find valuable there was a another that is corrupt.

Only when openly asserting our inherited defects can we appreciate that change was needed and that the result is a true reform.

Moreover, as a conscious attempt ‘to renew all in the Christ' (Eph 1:10), Vatican II is more than just an option.

In short, after 60 years, implementing Sacrosanctum concilium is still very much a work in progress.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• His latest book is "Shaping the Assembly: How Our Buildings form us in Worship".

O'Loughlin suggests that the arrangement of space is often overlooked, but we constantly refer to it.

It plays a pivotal role in our lives, he writes.

"We want ‘round table talks' and do not want to be put in the back row.

"They are taking my space.

"This place is homely.

"We need to de-clutter" - are all examples the Emeritus Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham uses to make his point.

O'Loughlin observes that buildings in every society have been used to project power, regulate society and reflect group identity. However, their role in religious worship is profound, and he notes that every religion and Christian denomination has utilised buildings as integral parts of their worship.

"In every society, buildings have been used to project power and authority, to regulate society and to project an image of how that group sees itself," he writes.

Bringing together a diverse group of nineteen Christians including liturgists, pastors, architects and artists from around the globe, the book seeks to answer the pressing question of how space affects the act of worship.

Among the contributors are three prominent New Zealanders: Dr Joe Grayland, a liturgist and Parish Priest from Palmerston North; Judith Courtney, former Auckland diocese liturgy coordinator; and Peter Murphy, a Papakura Parish Priest and former spiritual director at Holy Cross seminary.

The book offers a global perspective, with insights from New Zealand, Japan, Australia, France, the UK, Ireland and the US, and sheds light on how, in different cultural settings, the environment and ritual practices together shape the liturgical experience.

Richard Vosko, a US theologian and architectural consultant, contributes a thought-provoking piece suggesting that religious buildings, from churches to mosques, serve as societal symbols.

They reflect the relationship between the worshipping group and the broader society.

However he warns of a growing disconnect, with churches becoming less relational.

This shift, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and societal challenges like 'politically partisan pastors and administrative corruption', has led to a decline in church participation.

Vosko calls for a reimagining of liturgical spaces to be more egalitarian.

Grayland's contribution focuses on the call for active participation in worship, as highlighted in Sacrosanctum Concilium.

He discusses the evolving demands on liturgical practice, especially post-pandemic, and underscores the need for a new kind of ritual environment.

His insights suggest that New Zealanders are seeking dynamic, inclusive liturgical experiences.

Meanwhile, Courtney and Murphy discuss the challenges and roadblocks inherent in liturgical change.

They highlight that, while community needs have evolved, many churches built in recent years in the Auckland diocese still adhere to a traditional design.

As the world grapples with rapid change, the conversation around the role of space in shaping our spiritual experiences remains more pertinent than ever.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His earlier book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• His latest book is "Shaping the Assembly: How Our Buildings form us in Worship".

Some assume that I am one of those academic types that enjoy asking irrelevant questions; others simply say that they haven't got a clue about what I am talking about.

We had better face an awkward truth: while theologians and clergy are agog about synodality - some eager, some disdainful - for a very large proportion of the People of God, it is just some complicated new idea that makes little sense.

I had better clarify what I mean by ordinary Catholics.

By ordinary Catholics, I mean someone who

• is not a cleric
• nor a member of some special group within the Church (such as a prayer group, or the choir, or the parish council), and
• who probably does not subscribe to any special religious news service whether it is CathNews or The Tablet -
• and who probably just passes by the various leaflets, magazines, and diocesan papers that are at the back of church buildings.

So, the question arises: what will reach this large group of sisters and brothers? How will their experience of being disciples be touched and enhanced by our turn towards synodality?

Experiencing synodality

If this whole movement is to be more than just words, it must give disciples a richer liturgical experience. This is because it is at the liturgy that most ordinary Catholics have their experience of what it means to be Church.

That experience must, somehow, to do three things:

• It must engage them as individuals within a community.
• It must, to be true to the fundamental insight of synodality, involve a deeper listening to the word of God and to one another.
• It must lead to a greater sense of their own dignity as brothers and sisters in baptism who are called as a people to offer praise and thanksgiving to the Father.

If synodality is about renewal in the Spirit, a renewal of liturgy is one of the forms it must take.

What will it look like?

In this arrangement, the Word of God is being shared among the gathering in the University Parish in Leuven, Belgium.

The assembly is arranged so that it is a community-event of listening. They are not consuming a message being dispensed from the front of a lecture hall.

We are the people of memory. Only when we recall "the mighty acts of God" can we recognize our identity as disciples of the Christ.

Listening is not just hearing words; it is giving the words a chance to seep into us. Yet most ordinary Catholics are arranged in row after row like children in an old-fashioned classroom.

We now know that the lecture hall only works as a communication venue for those already highly involved, but (60 years after the liturgy reform) this much better format is strange to most Catholics.

It is worth noting that in this church-building they did no elaborate re-building work - they just put the chairs in a rough circle because this allows people to feel they are a community and it helps focus people in their listening.

We are all celebrants

The great shift in liturgy at Vatican II was a move from the notion of a presbyter who celebrates on behalf of the baptized to the recognition that we, as God's sons and daughters, are all celebrating God's goodness. We are all celebrants.

But how does the ordinary Catholic get an experience of this?

We are not consumers at the Eucharist. We are guests.

This photograph allows us to recall the words of the First Eucharistic Prayer:

Remember, Lord, your men-servants (famuli) and your women-servants (famulae), indeed all who are standing around (omnes circumstantes) …

We are a celebrating community.

If synodality is to take root, it will require an experience of solidarity in discipleship.

In an arrangement like this, that solidarity can become a weekly experience.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

Yet few organizations have such hierarchically clear levels.

The clue is in the name: the Church claims to be hierarchical (in the original sense of its having a divinely-appointed government and in the popular sense of ranks in a pyramid); other power pyramids are only "hierarchical" by analogy.

Vatican II used the image of the Church as the People of God to emphasize that it is all the baptized, as one community, that witnesses, preaches, works, suffers, and prays.

Put another way, the basis of the Church would be centred around baptism, not ordination.

A pilgrim Church

A Vatican II Church would also be a pilgrim Church; it has not yet reached its goal, so it cannot think of itself as a societas perfecta.

In the older church understanding, the Church was the perfect beacon that not only other religious organisations, but all other societies, should imitate.

Vatican II saw the community of the baptized as serving the larger human family, growing, learning, and humbly aware of its incompleteness.

But after several centuries of triumphalism, taking the pilgrim image on board has been just too much for many of us.

Many of the divisions within contemporary Catholicism can be seen in terms of a willingness, on the one hand, and a reluctance, on the other, to take this image of the Church as a "pilgrim people" to heart.

This is the background to Pope Francis' repeated calls for a "synodal Church".

His hope is that synodality will give flesh to Vatican II's vision.

When we are faced with new images of the Church, our instinct is to look backwards to "the early Church", to see if we can draw lessons or inspiration from there.

This longing to recover the golden age of the first Christians is not new.

Already in the early second century, when writing the Acts of the Apostles, Luke presents us with this vision of unity, harmony, and dedication:

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved (Acts 2:42-7).

Luke raises some important questions.

How accurate is his picture of the first Christian communities?

Does looking backwards reflect a Christian vision? And while it is rhetorically powerful, is it pastorally effective?

The goal of the pilgrimage of faith lies ahead, not behind us (Photo by Thomas O'Loughlin).

However, if it were not for the conflicts in the Aegean churches, at least a generation before Luke's time, we might never have had the letters of Paul.

There were disputes over religious practices and an unwillingness to welcome one another as equals (1 Corinthians) and about what was to be believed and expected (1 Thessalonians).

We know of arguments between followers of Jesus who were Jews and those who were Gentiles, over circumcision and the sharing of resources.

Abuses over hospitality and support for the "apostles and prophets" generated the first internal Church regulations, and it wasn't long before the term "christmonger" was coined for ministers greedy for money.

There were "clergy on the make" within a few decades of the crucifixion and several centuries before "clergy" formally emerged.

Also, far from holding all in common, the wealthy kept their slaves. And most did not like practices that challenged the social status quo, such as sharing at the Eucharistic table.

It was not all 'sweetness and light' in the early churches

In other words, the first Christians were as challenged by the Word as we are today.

Far from being plaster-cast saints, it was their willingness to keep trying to live the Gospel in a culture which saw them as fools and odd-balls that was their claim to being "among the saints" (Eph 5:3).

Graeco-Roman civilization looked back to "a golden age" since when things had been going downhill. Christians were different.

They looked to the future: to the coming of the Son of Man.

At the heavenly banquet - to which they looked forward ­- people would be gathered from north, south, east and west (Lk 13:29). They were on a journey.

This colours our thinking about the Church, and about synodality.

We do not imagine that there was a perfect time which we are seeking to re-create, but we, confident in God's help, ask what we should become. The Gospel of Matthew puts it this way:

Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me (Mt 25:34-6).

We are not engaged in a restoration project.

We have to restore our church buildings periodically, but living the life of faith must not be confused with a restoration project. (Photo by Thomas O'Loughlin).

Nostalgia is not a Christian virtue

Luke's device of imagining a perfect past as a blueprint - a technique he borrowed from Greek history writing - engages the human propensity for nostalgia: "We shall not see their like again!"

But the sense that it was somehow easier for the first Christians — that they belonged to the "age of the saints", to "the springtime" — disempowers us.

Inherent in this is a lack of faith that our moment is as beloved of the Creator who holds it in being as that of those called to witness in the first days.

The times have changed, but the call to follow and witness - amid the particular difficulties of our age - is always the same.

Those early Aegean churches and our churches today are one in hearing: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (Jn 20:29).

Nostalgia is, in many ways, the antithesis of the courage of faith.

This was the point Pope Francis wanted make last June when he lampooned seminarians who love wearing lace.

The past always seems to be a safe place to run to and take refuge, but faith requires that we push out into the future, trusting in God's grace being with us.

We are, as we claim to believe, more valuable than many sparrows! (Lk 12:7).

Diagnosing deeper problems in the Catholic Church

That said, we should not just criticize the seminarians who want to wear lace surplices and whose nostalgia is for an imaginary past where they were not seen as odd-balls but as "valuable people".

We should study in detail - a task that will need sociologists and psychologists - what it is that makes presbyteral ministry (as currently configured) so attractive to these young men so intent on the past rather than the present.

Such a study might reveal important illnesses besetting the Catholic Church today.

We should look on this nostalgia as the presenting-problem that might reveal some of the problems the up-coming synod needs to address.

If we are attracting un-suitable candidates for ministry, perhaps the problem lies in our forms of ministry. Perhaps, we need to change the ecclesial structures of that ministry.

Discipleship

Something else distinguishes the pilgrim people from the societas perfecta: discipleship.

Until the 1930s most mainstream Churches were united in thinking of belonging in terms of identification and the acceptance of specific beliefs.

The matter of identification was seen in their desire to be recognized within legal frameworks: ideally, establishment, but at least giving their leaders a say in education or social policy.

Likewise, individual belonging was presented as assent to certain propositions. Churches and denominations had their "truths to be accepted" (the credenda).

There was a list of boxes to be ticked.

Then came movements such as Fascism, Nazism and Communism. Identification and assent to propositions were no longer enough to "belong" - as was recognized by theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

One had to become a disciple.

The disciple - more an "apprentice" than a "student" - knows that one does not just talk the talk. but must also walk the walk.

And this is the walk of the pilgrim.

Discipleship costs. Or as our formal memory (Mark 10:38) presents the desire of disciples looking towards their destination: "You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"

The "synodal Church" is not an exercise in nostalgia, an attempt to recreate an illusory early Church without disagreement or dissent.

Pope Francis' dream seems to be that synodality will bring about Vatican II's vision of a pilgrim Church of disciples "among the saints" — not because they are perfect, but because they are humble witnesses to the Gospel of mercy.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Theology is the possession of a Christian skill which can enhance life for the individual and the communion of which that person is a member. It has a vital role to play in a synodal church.

I have tried to look at this in various ways in previous articles; now I want to conclude these meditations by looking at how it can change the way we see ourselves and our discipleship.

Repetition

Repeat anything often enough and not only will people believe it - hence the constant repetition of adverts and why so much energy goes into 'building brands' - but, eventually, people will forget that there are completely different ways of thinking about a problem.

One of the duties of theology is to stop us in our tracks when those tracks have become ruts. It should get us to look afresh at reality, our place in it, and what it is all about.

Here I want to consider just two situations where this applies.

Situation 1: Living in a post-religious world; are people really not "religious"?

One of the most significant cultural developments of recent decades across the developed world is the number of people who reject any recognized form of religion, who say they do not believe in God or a god, or who ignore organized religion in their lives with the simple statement: "I'm not religious!"

Christians respond to this situation in a variety of ways.

One obvious reply is to try to "convert" them to accept the traditional language, vision and practices of Christianity.

After all, this is the basis of all missionary plans when missions were sent out in areas that had never heard of Christ and there they "won" many new people for the faith.

So why should they not view the society around them as "a new pagan land" and preach to such people?

While it is true that Christians must always proclaim Jesus as the Lord's Christ, addressing fellow citizens does not seem to have the same impact as missionaries had in parts of Africa in the last two centuries. Part of the reason for this is that the languages and practices of Christianity appear to many post-Christian societies as simply an appeal to go backwards.

This is a point that was made in a different way recently in La Croix by John Alonso Dick when he wrote about "changing the conversation" and quoted T.S. Elliot's poem "Little Gidding":

For last year's words belong to last year's language.
And next year's words await another voice.

Christianity - at least in its traditional language and practice - is explicitly that from which many are running away (and often for very good reasons), and they cannot abide the notion of returning.

Inviting people to "come home" to Christianity is equivalent to saying they should love the technology of the early twentieth century, outmoded social views such as the restrictions on women of the nineteenth century, or the religious clashes and bitterness of even earlier.

The situation is that they have tried Christianity and found it wanting.

Moreover, the history of clerical abuse has destroyed the credibility of the Catholic Church as a witness to anything noble in the eyes of many.

Clerical pomposity and attempts to influence public policy make Catholicism something that people reject with disgust.

It is so easy to imagine that this post-Christian situation is the equivalent to being a-religious, as so many claim. But this, for those who believe in God the creator, would be a great mistake.

Post-Christian does not equate to being without religious longings.

Are they godless?

But does that mean that they are godless, that the great questions do not trouble them, or that for this generation Augustine's claim that every heart is restless until it rests in God (Confessions 1,1,1,) is no longer true?

If it is true that they are truly godless, then it must be a case that now, for the first time in history, there are hearts and minds in which the Holy Spirit is no longer speaking.

To say they are godless is tantamount to saying that God has gone away.

But part of the good news of the creation is that God never goes away, and in every heart, his Spirit is somehow active.

It means that the quest for God is taking new forms, finding different expressions, and the challenge facing Christians is twofold.

First, for themselves to recognize these new expressions of God's presence in human life and work - and not assume that God only speaks in the older language with which they are familiar.

Second, to help their fellow citizens recognize for themselves these divine stirrings, the deep human need for the Infinite, and to forge with them a new language - a language and religious culture and practice - that belongs to today and tomorrow (rather than being that of yesterday spruced up for today).

This view of the situation of modern women and men was elegantly summed up in this way at the Second Vatican Council nearly sixty years ago:

For since Christ died for all, and since the ultimate destiny of all humanity is the same, namely divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers all of us the possibility, in a way known to God, of being made partners in the Paschal Mystery (Gaudium et spes 22.5).

But finding this new "language" is very difficult - it is even more difficult than learning a foreign language because we do not know its grammar - and then we have to translate our older "language" into it.

In this task of translating the Christian past into the human situation of today and tomorrow, theology plays a crucial role.

So every study of theology is intrinsically an act of mission - and no explicit missionary act can take place without theological reflection. Put bluntly; the more people say, "I'm not religious," the more those who profess faith need the skills of theology.

Situation 2: Making God in our own image - what are the limits of tolerance and mercy?

One of the depressing aspects of being a Christian is that whenever one hears of narrow-minded intolerance, one often finds that this intolerance is backed up by people who are loud in their professions of their Christian faith.

I met a gentleman recently who was not only homophobic but who also saw all contemporary tolerance of homosexuality as misguided and inviting divine wrath to come upon society for "putting up with it".

He summed up his basic view with this phrase: "It's against the law of God!"

And in the conversation, I could hear two other hidden assumptions: laws need a penalty if they are to have any bite; and just as human legal systems punish "accomplices", so God must punish those who "connive" with those who break his law.

Around the same time, Pope Francis was reported as "changing Church teaching" by saying that the death penalty was incompatible with Christian teaching.

In response, a news program interviewed a US-based Catholic who said that this was all part of the slippery slope of the "Church losing its way and going soft on sin". For this person, God was the final policeman and creation was a kind of police state with God watching everything and biding his time before releasing his vengeance.

When we see a crucifix, we might ask a theological question: do we think of God as power or as love?

As I watched that interview - and I have heard the same sentiments often over the years — I wondered just where the message of love fitted with this answer.

Perhaps love is not what it's about, but power? Certainly, both the man I met and the other I heard on TV would have seen divine power as more "real" than divine love.

But while we can argue about whether or not "the bible" is for or against homosexuality, or whether or not the death penalty is needed and permitted, in both cases such arguments are only addressing the presenting level of the problem.

I suspect that there is a deeper problem. We think about the world around us, we have views on "justice", law and order, and the role of power in human relationships. And then we build a god in our own image, a god who ought to work as we would work ourselves (if only we had a chance).

Here is a basic question each of us as Christians must answer: is the fundamental aspect of God towards the creation one of power or love?

This is one of the hardest questions in all of theology.

It is also where the whole three thousand-year history of our theology intersects with one's personal outlook on life.

If we think of God as love, we might better appreciate the prayer for homosexual couples recently published by some Dutch bishops, and why a Jesuit theologian, Jos Moons, called having such a prayer "actually quite Catholic".

Faber's answer

The nineteenth-century hymn writer Frederick Faber (1814-63) proposed this very different vision to that of God-as-power, which seems to come to the very heart of the issue:

There is a wideness in God's mercy
like the wideness of the sea.
There's a kindness in God's justice,
which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth's sorrows
are more felt than up in heaven.
There's no place where earth's failings
have such kindly judgment given.

For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind.
And the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we would gladly trust God's Word,
and our lives reflect thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.

What a wonderful piece of theology, though — alas — it is a hymn we hardly ever sing!

God's love is broader than the measures of our human minds, and so we must be wary of ever presenting anything but mercy and gentleness lest we betray the God we claim to serve.

But this level of mercifulness is not just a human trait nor a psychological or social disposition: it is the very challenge of discipleship. Such a level of forgiveness and tolerance, the level the world needs if there is to be peace, can be seen on reflection to be itself a gift, a grace, and so something for which we must be eucharistic.

In formal theological jargon what those two men who wanted a god of vengeance had done was to assume that justice was a univocal concept in the human and divine spheres, and so drew god down to their own level.

What Faber did was to say that if you can imagine the widest reality you can - for him it was the sea and for us is might be the light-years that separate the galaxies - then that is less than the "wideness" of God's affection for us.

Theology is not a body of ideas, nor the ability to provide the exegesis of doctrine, nor knock-down arguments to those who challenge Christian beliefs.

It is an invitation to imagine beyond our imaginations' bounds. I have responded to those too-human-bound images of the divine with a piece of poetry because theology is, in the final analysis, more like poetry than prose.

Theology and theologies

Theology is not just about knowing "what you are about".

It's more a matter of having the skills to think about what you know and do, to clarify what is obscure and confused, and to then help others in their quest.

God's infinity, Deus semper maior, is most truly recognized in God's mercy; but appreciating the range of that mercy and seeing what response it calls forth from human beings is a most complex challenge - and skill in theology is one great facilitator in this task.

In these five articles on the study of theology as a help towards a synodal Church, I have worked outward in a series of circles:

• religious questions that concern me as an individual;
• religious questions that concern me as a member of the Catholic Church;
• religious questions that concern the Catholic Church in relation to other Christians;
• religious questions that concern Christians in relation to other religions;
• religious questions that concern 'religious people' - those who believe in the Transcendent with other human beings.
• religious questions that concern every human being - though many would not see themselves as asking religious questions.

We all inhabit each of these circles simultaneously because each of us is the centre of a world whose outer reaches (and they might be just next door or even among our closest friends) interact with the whole of humanity.

Being a believer in this world - exploring my own doubts and questions, working with other Catholics and other Christians, encountering others every day of every religion and none - calls on us to think through our choices, what it means to follow Jesus's Way of Life and to reject the Way of Death, and to bear witness to hope and love.

This vocation is neither easy nor straightforward.

We both follow a well-mapped route which our sisters and brothers have travelled before us, and have to explore new routes and carve out new paths.

On this journey, being well-skilled in theology is like having a compass as well as a map.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

However, if we do not keep in mind that we share this planet with many faiths, then we might just become a little sect rather than be witnesses to the Good News.

Here is where the study of theology can help us clarify who we are - and how we relate to others. Theology is a door to a greater level of human understanding.

An ever more complex world

Just a generation ago, many Christians lived in societies where everyone they met was either a Christian or someone who rejected Christianity.

Today most Christians live side-by-side with people from a variety of religions.

Indeed, I can keep track of the variety of religions! Where I live, I can watch the way that the local supermarkets try to cash-in on festivals.

There is Christmas and Easter for Christians; Passover and Hanukkah for Jews; Eid for Moslems, Diwali for Hindus; and - in the last few years - Halloween (originally an Irish Christian festival) for anyone else!

We live in a multi-faith world, and there is little chance that anyone believes there is only one way of thinking about the Big Questions of life, death, love, meaning, and purpose.

But there lies the heart of it; we all are concerned with these questions - and humans have been concerned about them and consequently engaged in ritual and religion since our very earliest evidence for humans on this earth.

What does this fact - that all human societies and cultures ask great religious questions - mean for us as Christians?

A marketplace logic and its pitfalls

It is very easy to take the logic of the marketplace and transfer it to questions of religions (the proof of this is how endemic is the notion among Christians that we can buy our way into heaven), but it can confuse us at a very deep level.

If I need to change a punctured tire, I need either to have a jack or buy one.

If I get a jack and use it, then the wheel gets changed.

The opposite is also true: no jack, the wheel cannot be changed!

This is a good piece of clear, logical thinking.

Alas, I might try to use this same thinking in matters of religion.

The starting point seems clear enough: if I follow Christ, the way, truth and life, I can look forward to new life with him in the presence of God the Father.

This is a true and simple statement of Christian hope.

But what if I tried to expand on it?

I might try to reverse it, and then I would say, "If I do not follow Christ, then I cannot look forward to new life."

This, too, can be true because following Christ as a disciple is a costly business, and I could reject God's love.

But what if I tried to make it more abstract: "Disciples of Jesus can look forward to new life."

Again this is a very blunt, but still true statement.

But can it be reversed?

Then it would become "no new life unless you follow Jesus" or "only followers of Jesus can get to new life".

Both these statements have often been made - and many have tried to present Christianity in terms of "faith" on one side and hell and annihilation on the other.

Mercy limited!

But these statements are false.

In fact, we cannot try to limit God's love and mercy; we cannot be true to a God who is love and then preach this sort of either/or vision of rewards and punishments.

The fundamental problem is that we have transferred what is the efficient thinking of the finite world into the realm of mystery and the Infinite.

That is not only sloppy, but it also leads to falsehoods.

Those various celebrations advertised in the supermarket are all a response to the mystery of God who created the entire universe and who loves each of us.

We may have insights into the nature of the divine that we want to share with all, we may want to build the great family of the People of God in peace, but we do not "bring God" to people.

God is already present in every human heart.

Every word of prayer in every religion is a praise of God, and we must respect each searching after the divine as part of the precious treasure of humanity and as something sacred.

Religion is viewed by many today as the great distraction and the great sower of discord.

Part of the Christian message is that God is present to each and so, by respecting God's presence in every religion, we can build discourse.

We all think about the questions of religion.

But we usually do so in a very confused manner.

Theology can help us do it better.

And the more ably we think about religion, the more we can replace discord with discourse.

Religions can, indeed, learn how to respect one another, speak to one another, and learn from one another - all to the glory of God.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

Here I want to give a more concrete form to the argument by looking at a basic problem of Christian theology and a current problem in Catholic practice.

We all ask theological questions and we cannot avoid them! Sometimes we realize this and we carry on the questioning with skill and a cupboard full of resources, sometimes we do it badly, with a limited range of ideas, and make a mess of it.

The poor cook has only a handful of recipes, relies on tins of sardines, and cannot cook a piece of meat without burning it; the good one has enough training and built-in resourcefulness that with the same ingredients we get an interesting meal!

So it is with the study of theology: the same questions that lead the untrained person to throw it all up and say that the world is mad and a mess, can, with some theological training, be seen to refer to basic human issues and it can be seen that there are ways out of our problems. Discourse can then replace discord, and enlightenment can take the place of bigotry and ignorance.

I want to develop this by looking at a couple of situations where there is "a commonsense answer" and another, more theologically informed answer. Then I will leave it up to you to choose.

Situation 1: Living as an individual disciple: What is 'God'?

Everyone I meet appears to know what the word G-O-D means. For a great many people I meet the answer is simple: there is no god - it is an illusion and the universe does not need a god and there is no evidence in human life for god: just look at suffering!

For others, there is a god and there are ways of describing god. There are "Acts of God", which are always nasty like fires or floods or earthquakes. There's also "the Man Upstairs" and it's a good idea to "keep in with him".

This Man Upstairs is very much like a lord of the manor whom you do not really like, indeed resent, but you know that you have to be "nice" to him, as you do not want the consequences of making him angry.

I know other people who cannot utter a sentence without mentioning god and god seems to be the actual motive force of everything - except for some reason he keeps hiding.

So it is "Thank God for a lovely day" - but what about the storms that kill people? Or "God is above us all" - so no need to worry! - So why bother doing anything? Or "do not be sad, God loves us" - but I am sad and I want to shout out in anger as the agony of death, decay and destruction I see around me.

By contrast, most other words need very careful definition. I have to learn how to use language precisely and if I were a car mechanic and referred to a "rocker arm" as a "yoke" you would probably (wisely) not trust me to service your vehicle.

Much of education is trying to explain how to use language so that it illuminates rather than obscures. But "god" is such a simple a word and we all seem to know all about it.

The atheist knows there is no god, while some religious people know more about god than they do about the physics of their refrigerator.

So why have theologians asserted over and over again: we do not know what we mean by the word G-O-D and that the whole task of theology is to ask the real question (it is not a learning game): what is God?

Late medieval attempt to picture in statues the whole mystery of God - Father, Son, and Spirit - in human images. While such a desire to see God may answer both a human and a catechetical demand, it not only fails, but betrays the deeper reality that the Divine is greater than all we can imagine.

Could it be that we confuse the question "what is god?" with the question "how many gods are there?"

To the latter question the atheist will answer that there is no god. The official answer of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and members of many other religions will be there is one god.

Others, including those who refer to the Man Upstairs and who thinks of God as the super-boss among a class of bosses, will say there is more than one god.

By contrast, "what is God?" is an attempt to put words on mystery. It is a mystery that is glimpsed here and there for a moment, felt intensely and then felt as absent, a vision which is more akin to poetry than to prose, a sense rather than a cold-blooded deduction from evidence.

"What is God?" is a question that is the pursuit of a lifetime and, while we may pray and worship and work, we must always resist the falsehood of thinking we have an answer.

If you think you have captured God in a sentence or a single idea or "have it worked out", then that is your projection, your idol, rather than the Reality which is beyond the universe but which beckons us.

It takes a lot of training in theology to appreciate this fundamental maxim: Deus semper maior - "whatever G-O-D is, is always greater than what we think God is".

An early modern attempt to imagine that which is beyond imagination. Mystery cannot be fitted within the categories of our empirical experience, nor depicted in this material way.

So let us use the G-O-D with reverence and be sensitive to how we can be spreading confusion by overuse.

Situation 2: Living in a community of Catholic disciples: Are we short of presbyters?

Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Catholic Church today knows that there are not enough priests to staff the parishes; that communities are losing their churches due to this shortage because the remaining priests are usually greying and often exhausted through trying to cover too much territory.

And while priests from Africa and India may bring welcome help, this is far from ideal: they are needed in their own cultures and often have difficulty adjusting to a western European religious environment.

The answer to the priest shortage is so obvious to many people as to need no reflection: ordain married men, abolish compulsory celibacy, or even consider ordaining women - as other Churches have done.

But as soon as these possibilities are suggested a series of counter-arguments, usually designated as "from tradition", are advanced so as to make any change appear impossible or so far in the future as to be beyond any visible horizon.

Faced with this impasse, most arguments seem to revert to the history of practices: could what happened in the past, tell us something about the future?

But once we turn to the past we find that cases are put forward from each side as to what happened or did not happen, the significance of Jesus doing or not doing something, whether or not "apostles" equal "bishops" and whether or not those around Jesus were "ordained" or simply picked - or maybe there is no difference?

Then, even when answers to these questions emerge, another problem pops up: can the Church do something that appears never to have been done before? Or if something has always been done in one way can it now be done in another way?

So faced with a crisis in the present and the future, we seem to pore over the details of the 16th century (Trent's rejection of those who challenged the notion of celibacy as a more perfect form of discipleship) or the 12th century (first imposition by the Western Church of celibacy as a pre-requisite of ordination), or even (to the dismay of biblical scholars) the exact details of Jesus' meal on the night before his crucifixion (asking, for example, were women present).

Can theology throw light on this question?

A sign in a German town - when the sign was made there were three celebrations of the Eucharist each weekend, not there is just one. This change is not the result of a major demographic shift in the area, but doe to the fact of ever fewer presbyters. The model of the presbyterate still demanded by Roman Catholic Church practice no longer fits the pastoral reality of this local church. The sign is an analogue of the absurdity of theory confronting reality and reality being found wanting.

The first point to note is the style of the argument: it looks backwards to the past while imagining the past as a (1) complete, (2) clear and (3) adequate statement of all that we need to know about the structure of the Church.

The past, it seems, sets the parameters of discussion and contains the precedents for what can and cannot happen now.

So we might start by noting that the notion that ever closer scrutiny of the past (as containing the answers to any possible question now or in the future) is very similar to the way as some in the Reformed churches relate to "the bible" as having within it a clear answer to every possible question.

So asking whether the "tradition allows" women to be priests is like asking whether "the bible allows slavery or capital punishment". The assumption is that there is an answer in the book and if it countenances the practice, then it is allowed, while if it criticizes it, then it is forbidden.

But the bible has no criticism of slavery or capital punishment and does not condemn those who would stone a woman who committed adultery. Likewise, until the later 19th century the tradition had little problem with slavery.

I knew a priest who had been a prison chaplain and was with many men before they were hanged. He could not understand why people now thought it immoral. I have also met Christians from cultures where stoning women still occurs - and they say they can "understand" the practice!

But asking these questions of the past misses a more basic fact of life: cultures change and sometimes their insights amount to an enrichment of human life and sometimes to its diminution.

But a culture's past is as different from its present as that culture is from a foreign culture, and the future will be different again.

So maybe we need to refine our questions. Perhaps we should ask what can we do now that would help us pursue the goal of building the kingdom of God, affirming the dignity of each person, recognizing the presence of the Spirit in every one of the baptized.

We thus shift the focus from where we have come from (because we are no longer there) to where we are going (because that is where we soon will be).

This question allows us to assess what we value and value what we possess. It asks what it means to say "thy will be done" today.

We are only asking these questions - about celibacy, the form of ministry, and about who can be ordained - because we are no longer in the older situation. So we look forward and know that we may make mistakes - we have made many in the past.

But if we focus on purpose and what we are called to become, we will at least be honest. And, moreover, we will break out of the circle of endless details about what some verse in some first-century text means or what happened in the fourth or fifth centuries.

These questions may be great historical questions (and, as such, respond to our needs as history-producing beings), but they are not questions about what is demanded of us on the path of discipleship moving into the future.

Clearer questions

One thing that the study of theology should do is to help us clarify our questioning.

The past - and all its texts such as those that are in the bible - is our memory, an important key to our identity, and one of the deep common bonds between us.

But the past is not "the universal religious encyclopedia" in which are all the answers just waiting for one of us to go and "look them up".

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

I have argued that it can foster a more conscious discipleship and help us see new ways through our difficulties.

But can it bring us, with the Holy Spirit's help, light for our path?

Theology is not a download

Theology is not just a body of information that one downloads.

In the past it was often confused with "the information needed by a priest" or some set of codes that could be used to explain everything, as if "theology" were the religious equivalent of basic geometry.

Theology does involve knowledge about how Christians live, how they worship, how they have presented their faith in doctrine, about how they read the texts they cherish, and what it is that makes them the community of followers of Jesus.

But most of this is already known to some degree to most Christians who take their discipleship seriously.

So what is special about theology? It is having a developed, trained skill in thinking about the Christian life, reflecting on what we are doing, why we are doing it this way, and asking if the great purposes of God could be better served by acting differently.

Let's see this by looking at an old problem and some fresh answers.

Living with other Christians: Can we share a table?

Meet any group of Christians and the likelihood is that there will be individuals from more than one tradition: a few Catholics, a few Anglicans, maybe a Methodist or Baptist, and one or two others.

All claim to be followers of Jesus, all pray to the Father, all acknowledge the Spirit within them. All have been baptized and have set out of the Way of Life which makes them fellow disciples.

So far, so good - and we rejoice that we no longer call each other nasty names (or worse) and appreciate that God, and the divine love and mercy, is unlimited.

But then, someone notes that the community of disciples never becomes more visible than when we gather in the Christ to share the meal of the Christian blessing and thanking the Father; when we break and eat the common loaf and drink from the common cup.

This sharing of the loaf and cup, the Eucharist, is the center and summit of the whole Christian life - and we echo St. Paul when we say, "Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor 10:17).

The Eucharist has - too often and for too many - been an experience of exclusion and rejection. The sign pinned over this church door in Sterzing / Vipiteno (Italy) reads: "Here Jesus invites sinners and welcomes them to his table."

We are a divided body

But we are also divided: we worship apart, we have different structures and customs, and we have different ways of expressing belief and different ways of explaining what we do believe (and a history of saying that anyone who is "not with us" is both wrong and needs corrective punishment).

So many Churches have rules which say that "if you are not completely united with us, you cannot share the Christian meal with us". This causes bitterness, hurt, rejection.

It has also caused untold suffering when, for example, two Christians from different Churches marry and cannot share that which both may proclaim as most precious to them.

Faced with this problem it seems the only answer is to argue that the Eucharist is a manifestation of the union the Church in Christ (which it is), so if you are not in visible union with the Church it would be wrong to participate in that visible manifestation.

This logic is tight, and has been proclaimed by bishop after bishop, canonist after canonist, and so it would seem that it is as much a fact as "caution: hot surface" written on many machines. The rejection of "intercommunion" is hard, even sad, but there is nothing that can be done!

But one amazing difference between theology and engineering is that while the latter uses language factually - the bridge can either bear the weight or not -, theology uses language analogically.

It is aware that language is an approximation and that what appears a clear answer from one string of reasoning, emerges as a faulty answer from a different starting point, and both strings of argument can be true.

The pope in 2015

When Pope Francis visited a Lutheran church in Rome in November 2015, the wife of a Roman Catholic expressed her sorrow that they were "not being able to partake together in the Lord's Supper".

"What more can we do to reach communion on this point?" she asked the pope. His reply was very interesting. Here's what he said.

Thank you, Ma'am. Regarding the question on sharing the Lord's Supper. … I think the Lord gave us [the answer] when he gave us this command: "Do this in memory of me".

And when we share in, remember and emulate the Lord's Supper, we do the same thing that the Lord Jesus did. And the Lord's Supper will be, the final banquet will there be in the New Jerusalem, but this will be the last.

Instead on the journey, I wonder - and I don't know how to answer, but I am making your question my own - I ask myself: "Is sharing the Lord's Supper the end of a journey or is it the viaticum for walking together? I leave the question to the theologians, to those who understand.

It is true that in a certain sense sharing is saying that there are no differences between us, that we have the same doctrine - I underline the word, a difficult word to understand - but I ask myself: don't we have the same Baptism? And if we have the same Baptism, we have to walk together.

You are a witness to an even more profound journey because it is a conjugal journey, truly a family journey, of human love and of shared faith. We have the same Baptism. When you feel you are a sinner - I too feel I am quite a sinner- when your husband feels he is a sinner, you go before the Lord and ask forgiveness; your husband does the same and goes to the priest and requests absolution. They are ways of keeping Baptism alive.

When you pray together, that Baptism grows, it becomes strong; when you teach your children who Jesus is, why Jesus came, what Jesus did, you do the same, whether in Lutheran or Catholic terms, but it is the same. The question: and the Supper?

There are questions to which only if one is honest with oneself and with the few theological "lights" that I have, one must respond the same, you see.

"This is my Body, this is my Blood", said the Lord, "do this in memory of me", and this is a viaticum which helps us to journey. … … … I respond to your question only with a question: how can I participate with my husband, so that the Lord's Supper may accompany me on my path? It is a problem to which each person must respond.

A pastor friend of mine said to me: "We believe that the Lord is present there. He is present. You believe that the Lord is present. So what is the difference?" — "Well, there are explanations, interpretations...".

Life is greater than explanations and interpretations. Always refer to Baptism: "One faith, one baptism, one Lord", as Paul tells us, and take the outcome from there.

I would never dare give permission to do this because I do not have the authority. One Baptism, one Lord, one faith. Speak with the Lord and go forward. I do not dare say more.

Francis notes that theology is not a matter of fixed answers. Instead, there is always a variety of explanations and interpretations, and it is the task of theology to find those answers which are most conducive to discipleship.

Another way of viewing the situation

So what would such an argument look like? We have one Lord, and this is the faith we share. At baptism each of us was joined, not only to the Christ, but to one another as forming the children of the Father.

This is the kernel, the basis, and cornerstone of our identity - and this is not limited to any one Church but is the basis of "the Church". All who are in this great host of witnesses to God's love are on the journey of faith and are sustained on this often difficult path by each other and "the food for the journey".

This is an expression of God's love, mercy and care. And if it is God's mercy, are we not overstepping the mark to limit it?

A Lutheran church in Morschen, Germany. Can our common re-birth in the baptismal fond lead to our sharing sustenance at the Lord's table?

Theology is a process in the midst of life

Theology is not only more than "an encyclopedia"; it is a creative process by which we seek out what is the way of faith amid an often-dark forest of clashing ideas.

It helps us to recall that because "God is always greater", and we have to watch out for a bad habit of making God appear to be as narrow such as we have a tendency to become with our "possessions".

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

This 11 minute Flashes of Insight conversation asks whether the experience for Church ministers is an opportunity for the theology of reconciliation to grow into change.

It considers restorative justice a matter of putting things back together as they were, as it were by plastering Humpty Dumpty back together, or is it actually a way of going forward to something new?

Key issues in the discussion include

• is whether ‘putting Humpty Dumpty back together again is actually desirable?'
• how to go about restorative justice
• how well do we do restorative justice when as ministers, we may not have the capacity to reconcile
• how as ministers do ‘we do wrong'
• ministers and a capacity for empathy
• whether the theology of reconciliation is up to the task of facing restorative justice

A door to a synodal Church

But if voices are to witness to the truth, the speakers must seek to be as informed as they can be.

In matters relating to faith, an essential part of that personal equipment is to be theologically literate. Viewed in this light, we can see the study of theology as a doorway to a synodal Church.

But there are three obstacles to such widespread literacy.

First, among Roman Catholics, "theology" was historically confined to the ordained. Many Catholics have simply never thought that taking a serious interest in theology is any of their business.

The old attitude of the "the clergy speak, the laity listen" is still alive as we reach the 60th anniversary of the opening of Vatican Council II (1962-65).

Second, there has been a marked swing away from the teaching of theology in many universities.

The emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ("STEM Subjects") means that theology is excluded as somehow useless, a confessional matter, or as a poor use of resources.

Third, many highly committed Catholics - both lay and clerical - have never considered how the formal study of theology can be a resource for the Church and the world.

While individual academic subjects strive to say everything about something, theology strives to say something about everything.

Therefore, what follows is the case for getting more and more Catholics to take up theological studies as an aspect of the synodal path we have no upon.

Discipleship

Words have a sparkle as well as a meaning.

For many Christians today the word "discipleship" - a notion that has a very wide range of meanings - has a very positive sparkle.

It captures a sense of personal commitment, of life as a movement of growth and learning, and seems to fit very well with a sense of belonging within a Church that imagines itself as the pilgrim people of God.

"Theology", by contrast, has little sparkle; indeed, it seems a dull word relating to a rather boring and obscure academic pursuit.

When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers' (Ps 8:3): the wonder of the universe - which we today see in greater detail than ever before - has always been a starting point for theological questioning.

But let us look at a series of situations - scenes that confront us as Catholic Christians every day - and see if looking at them with the resources of theological speculation can help us to do three things.

First, theology can help to reposition these problems so that they might be seen as opportunities rather than roadblocks.

Second, theology can help us to relate to them differently as individual disciples and as a community of disciples, the Church, and thus find ways "through" the problems.

Third, theology can provide us with alternative ways of talking about what we hold precious as disciples and so help us in the task of evangelization.

What is theology?

What exactly do we mean by theology?

Most Christians think of theology primarily as an academic subject. It's a body of information that exists "out there", something that's difficult to get one's head around and must be absorbed by religious experts. And, so, it is really the business of the clergy.

It is like the religious equivalent of physics. Physics is complex and seems to be awfully important. So we are glad that there are egghead off in some university somewhere who work on it, but we can get on with life quite well without it!

Just so with theologians. No doubt they are useful, but just as the egg still boils whether or not you understand the physics, so faith keeps going and God is still "above us all" whether or not you have read a theology book!

But, actually, theology is not really like physics. It is far more like cookery: the more you know about cookery, the easier everyday cooking - and cooking is not only unique to human but affects us every day - becomes.

'Wisdom is calling out in the streets and marketplaces' (Prov 1:20): wherever humans come together, there are latent theological questions. Theological questions are as close as the local weekly market.

This might seem a little bit arrogant but think of the number of times either religious questions or questions with a religious dimension come up in everyday conversation.

A person is knocked down on the road and someone says: "If your number's up, your number's up!" Do you accept that life is so determined? Even if you do - and there have been many deterministic religions - don't you still look both ways before crossing the road?

One athlete on winning a race bows to the ground and thanks Allah; another blesses herself; a third does nothing because he thinks that is superstition. Are there different gods or if just one God, why so many arguments. Or is it all hocus pocus?

As I write this I recall the bomb thrown into a church in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday a couple of years ago, another bomb that exploded in Kabul in a dispute between Sunni and Shia, and the tensions in the United States that arise from some of the apocalyptic ideas held by members of the fundamentalist "Christian" right who deny climate change and imagine they can predict the future by stringing together a few biblical texts.

All three stories set me thinking. Perhaps religion is bad for human beings. Should it perhaps be consigned to the dustbin of failed stupidities? That is a basic theological question.

'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these' (Mt 6:28-9): the beauty of the world around us is another starting point for theological reflection.

Religion produces discord but could it also be the sponsor of discourse between groups since societies always develop religions, even if today they are usually god-less religions. That too is a theological question.

Discord or discourse
All religions argue about what their "original" texts/stories or founders meant/ said/wanted.

Are there better ways of looking at these questions that might generate more light than heat, and are there ways of pursuing these questions that are creative rather than destructive?

Once again, we have theological questions.

If we are encountering these questions, then as a community we might seek to address them in a careful, considerate manner - and we have a noble goal: replacing discord with discourse.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

We have all heard about global warming and seen graphs and projections of changing temperatures, but it takes a constant and sometimes torrential rain for the statistics to become a reality.

But has this anything to do with religion or should a theologian even use time in thinking about it?

Let me tell you a little story about last Sunday.

Taking his cue from the constant rain, a friend of mine preached about climate change.

His argument was a simple one.

• Look around you - we are all struggling in this rain.
• We hear every day on the news about weather records being broken with higher rainfall and, for some unfortunate people, floods that mean they need to leave their houses.
• The news headlines tell us:
  • "Insurance costs could increase as climate risk rises."
  • "Sydney has officially received more than a full year's worth of rain, and it's only April."
  • "Frightening, out of control: Nelson residents flee as river bursts."
  • Eastern Australia faces wet weather and flooding with 70% chance of third consecutive La Nina."
  • "State of Emergency declared on NZ's West Coast."
• This concerns us as Christians because we will soon profess our faith in God as the creator of all. [When we say the Creed].
• We have to see this as part of the challenge of faith today.
• If you want to know what Pope Francis is saying about this, then read Laudato si' on the web or buy a copy from the rack at the back of the church.
• It was a very short homily because attention spans contract in inverse proportion to noise of the rain pelting down on the church roof.

Surprise reaction

On Sunday evening, he rang me to tell me what happened next because it shocked and hurt him. Here's the story.

As he said farewell to people in the porch when the Eucharist was ended, he was tackled by three or four people in a group.

They told him - in quite graphical language - what they thought of his homily, his advert for anything written by 'that pope,' and their future attitude to him!

Criticism of preachers is, of course, not new - as a revered Professor of Homiletics once warned: 'If 50% of the congregation like the idea of you preaching, you can bet your bottom dollar that the other 50% dread it!'

The criticisms on Sunday evening can be summarised under three headings:

• They did not want to hear about science in a sermon; it belongs to the world and not to religion - and, anyway, how do you know it is true?
• They did not want 'social commentary' because they came to Mass to have a personal encounter with Jesus, and this annoyed them.
• If he did this again, they would withdraw their contributions; they were not going to pay someone to support 'woke' culture.

They were not as crisp as this, but I hope I have captured the kernel of what I was told they said. These are very revealing comments as they manifest in a nutshell some of the deepest spiritual problems among Christians today - and this makes them worth thinking about.

West Coast NZ

Faith and Reason

For several centuries it was a central plank of the opponents of religion that one should create a great chasm between faith [aka 'superstition'] and reason [aka 'science'] - one excluded the other!

It was left to Christians to argue that 'all wisdom comes from God' (Sir 1;1) and that no item of truth can contradict another - but it may only be from a fuller vantage point that we can understand this.

Thus, down the centuries, far from being enemies of science, Christians have seen the discovery of the complexity of the universe as an investigation of God's handiwork. What is new today among some Christians it is the notion that they would rather believe than think!

But if one has to opt for a binary of either believing or thinking, one is moving on to very dangerous ground. Here lies the road to both to silliness and to being hoodwinked by every demagogue with a Twitter account.

Rational enquiry is not a substitute for faith, but rather faith in the Creator - who is beyond our imagining - goes hand-in-hand with rational study of that which is within our vision.

Without rationality, faith becomes credulity.

Without faith, life is reduced to a swamp.

This is such a basic element of the Christian tradition - though there have always been fundamentalists - that it was rarely mentioned.

We cannot take it for granted today: even when we examine the 'things of faith' - be it doctrine, ancient texts such as those collected in the Bible, or practices - we cannot ignore the light that comes from rational enquiry and discourse.

To abandon it would be to affirm a religion that is less than our human dignity - and so a rejection of one of our unique gifts as humans: God has given us logicality, and the Logos has become us.

To isolate 'faith' from rationality may make religion (apparently) simpler and far better at providing a 'security blanket' for those who crave absolute certainty.

But it also makes Christianity indistinguishable from superstition. In assuming it can relate to God without the universe and our interaction within it, it takes God out of his creation.

It might seem pious to believe something that is the very opposite of what rational and critical evaluation leads us to affirm, but this is not a faith that is grounded in our tradition but simply a whim that opens us to every kind of extremism.

Libraries have been written on this, but the advice of St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) still holds: if it has to be a choice between a pious confessor and a learned one, get the learned one.

Truth in its fulness is beyond this life. Even the limited truth we can attain is only achieved with the greatest effort - and we need all our faculties, especially our reason, in this quest.

Flood waters expose drains north of Nelson, New Zealand.

What are we doing when we celebrate the Eucharist?

One of the great limitations of the liturgy before the reforms of Vatican II was the need to provide simple explanations of what we were doing - or at least present at - which were accessible.

The outstanding example of this process - over-simplifying to the extent of confusion - was that "we go to Mass to meet Jesus." It was to be a private encounter, perhaps highlighted by "receiving communion."

A glance at any of the Eucharistic Prayers would show that our action - as the People of God - is to gather as disciples and then, with, through and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, to offer praise and thanksgiving to the Father.

We celebrate with Christ, in Christ, and through Christ, and our prayer is to our heavenly Father. We do this in the power of the Spirit - and thus fulfil our baptismal calling.

Again, it is so basic that we miss it and do not spell it out.

Many Catholics look shocked when they hear this and wonder when this 'latest theory' was invented. So, just in case, here are the texts in the 2011 English translation.

Eucharistic Prayer 1 - The Roman Canon

It begins
To you, therefore, most merciful Father,
we make humble prayer and
petition through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord.

It ends
Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honour is yours,
for ever and ever.

Eucharistic Prayer 2

It begins
You are indeed holy, O Lord,
the fount of all holiness.
Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray,
by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall,
so that they may become for us
the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It ends
Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honour is yours,
for ever and ever.

Eucharistic Prayer 3

It begins
You are indeed holy, O Lord,
and all you have created
rightly gives you praise,
for through your Son our Lord Jesus Christ,
by the power and working of the Holy Spirit,
you give life to all things and make them holy …

It ends
Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honour is yours,
for ever and ever.

Eucharistic Prayer 4

It begins
We give you praise, Father most holy, for you are great
and you have fashioned all your works
in wisdom and in love.

It ends
Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honour is yours,
forever and ever.

It is not a private encounter but something much greater. We move beyond our isolation into the community of faith, become the body of Christ, and then in him enter the court of heaven.

New South Wales

Who are we when we celebrate?

There was a nasty little barb in the criticism of my friend: do what we want or we will not pay you. Quite apart from the rampant atheism of the notion that even in faith, money is the bottom line, this threat shows a very defective ecclesiology.

They assume that the ministry of the Church exists to supply them with a service - in the same way the electricity company supplies me with the power for this computer. I get what I pay for and I pay for what I get!

But one is not availing of a service from another in liturgy: we are all providing a service to one another. We are a community in a common endeavour, not a clientele in an emporium.

Contributions are part of our support for the whole work of the community as a local church.

Anyone who thinks it is payment - or worse still, a cleric who thinks it is his wages - needs to ask some hard questions of themselves. We do have a paid, semi-professional ministry; maybe that is part of the problem.

In our first reference to a collection at the Eucharist - mid-second century - the money was for the poor: the presiders had not yet converted themselves into clergy.

Moreover, one of the reasons we have formally appointed teachers in the Church is that we sometimes need to be reminded of hard messages that 'upset our apple cart.'

When a presider preaches, he is not simply mouthing off a few platitudes (though it happens all too often) but bearing witness to the truth. This is one of the reasons that St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) saw a similarity between the teacher and the martyr.

Sometime in the second century, a Christian teacher - who pretended his essay was a letter from St Paul - wrote this:

proclaim God's message, be zealous in season and out of season; convince, rebuke, encourage, with the utmost patience as a teacher (2 Tim 4:2).

It is still the fundamental challenge: we must preach in season (what people like) and out of season (when it is not 'the flavour of the month'). And we might add: we need to preach in both cold seasons and heatwave seasons!

The world and all that is in it belong to the Lord; the earth and all who live on it are his' (Ps 24:1).

Should we address climate change?

After finishing the call, my friend asked if he should simply drop any mention of climate change as it was so disturbing to these people.

He felt that he should not drop it because if everyone is hearing about it in the media, they should be alerted to linking that concern to the bigger picture that is our vision as believers.

I heartily agreed! But it would be naïve to ignore the fact that there are deep-seated interests in our societies who value Christianity as simply a religious prop to their ideology - such people will always try to bully people not to raise questions.

And Pope Francis seems to be their especial bogey man.

I then suggested that he might show how that concern can be linked into the liturgy:

1. We have special texts in the sacramentary for celebrations of the Eucharist 'for productive land' and, even more relevant in floods, "May the flood of water not overflow me, Nor the deep swallow me up, Nor the pit shut its mouth on me;" (Ps 69:15). We Christians have always been concerned about the environment - at least in theory.
2. He might use a real loaf of bread and break it and share it. The Eucharist is not an esoteric rite - it begins with that basic foodstuff. If that foodstuff is threatened by parched fields and ruined harvests, then it is not only a matter of human sympathetic concern, but of Christian loaf. A real loaf reminds us that faith is rooted in the heart of our humanity.
3. He might fill the community's cup from a bottle of ordinary wine and demonstrate how it is through the earth, through the creation, that God shows us his love and care, and gives us joy. It is from within the creation that our song of praise must well up in our thanksgiving to the Father, through Christ our Lord.

We might recall that prayer of the first communities of disciples:

We give thanks to you, our Father, for the holy vine of David, your servant, which you have made known to us. Through Jesus, your servant, to you be glory forever (Didache 9,2).

- and if you have not yet read Laudato si', then read it. You just click here!

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

The comments were made from Wales by Professor Thomas O'Loughlin in "Scapegoating: The Church's fall from grace", a Flashes of Insight conversation with Dr Joe Grayland, Dr James Alison in Spain and Sande Ramage in Palmerston North.

This Flashes of Insight conversation considers the impact on the church's fall from paradise, whether the church is being scapegoated, how the Church is dealing with this crisis and asks about real reform and restorative justice. It is a four-part conversation.

Host Joe Grayland asks if the sex abuse crisis will reconcile the Church with itself and with society or will it be a lost opportunity?

James Alison is an English Roman Catholic priest and theologian noted for his application of René Girard's anthropological theory to Christian systematic theology.

Alison says we all know what scapegoating is - it's when everybody gets together and blames someone for something that is not in fact their fault.

When we say that someone is a scapegoat, we're effectively saying they are falsely accused.

However, Alison says understanding the scapegoat mechanism goes back to something much more ancient. It is the initial way groups create unity and a coming together instead of destroying themselves in a frenzied all against all.

Alison says the group mysteriously finds it came together against one of their own number whom they had thrown out, and then recognised they were right to do so.

He describes it as a basic human act and an effective way of creating unity.

"It works to a certain extent in as far as we all gang up together against someone and throw them out, we become united. We suddenly have peace for a fairly short time."

The people involved think they've done the right thing because 'they've got' the person responsible.

Alison says the difficulty in this process is what he calls the "single-victim mechanism" - everybody calling them guilty for their own interests.

He says we live in a world where the innocence of the victim has become commonplace; the notion that the crucified one turned out to be God is commonplace.

"People are quite unaware of how different our world is in relation to victimhood than the ancient world was, to such an extent that now one of the ways in a violent tussle you try to achieve power is by claiming victimhood. The last thing you would do in the ancient world would be to claim victimhood because everybody knew in the ancient world the victor won."

Alison says modern society uses the scapegoat mechanism to play games to try to get positions of power - to be, as it were, consecrated within the society.

"Is it possible that we've got to a point where Christianity has led us to the situation where victimisation or victims are the victors, and that if you're not a victim, you're obviously a loser," asks Grayland.

Alsion says that Nietzsche thought something like that.

Nietzsche thought that the triumph of victims was a sign of everything that was wrong and that we should go back to having Ubermensch, who would be able to stand firm and not put up with all this victim nonsense.

Alison clarified that Nietzsche's view is not one he agrees with.

He says the challenge for the Church is not to be reactive to real change as it goes through the revolution we are experiencing at the moment.

Alison says he's noticed that some church officials tend to double down on the silliest and worst of their possible positions and make themselves more sacred in response to things coming out.

"Actually, as they do that we all learn what isn't really sacred."

Alison said it is important for the Church to recognise it is not talking about a script, it is not talking about a text, but it is talking about how to interpret 'a book'.

"I sometimes wonder whether this is what Paul was talking about - the catechism, that which holds back the coming of the kingdom.

"Whether he (Paul) had in mind the sense that the church is actually part of how humanity gets over the lynching thing by religious figures playing into the role."

Alison says 'fake religion' is actually how the most positive form of secularism emerges, not the negative.

"The negative forms of secularism are of course very easy to imagine, but the positive form - in other words, the creation of goodness, the ability to see through mechanisms of deceit, hypocrisy, etc. come about as we learn the failed attempt of the church to play the sacred role."

In a strongly worded response to the question, O'Loughlin compares the abuse crisis to being conned by a used-car salesman.

"I don't want to make this sound trivial, but…

"Have you ever been taken in by a used car merchant?

"I was taken in over 20 years ago by one. And you know, even now, I still kick myself.

"Why did I not see through it?

"… And if I ... if I ever saw that guy again, I would just want to deliver…

"So I feel embittered that I have been conned."

O'Loughlin says the Church has for so long held itself up quite explicitly as a beacon to the nations saying the Church sets the moral standards.

"We set the moral agenda, and I feel the part of the attack on the church today is the horror of feeling yourself conned.

"I don't think you can tell people you're bearing witness to the truth. And then tell downright lies," he said.

Ramage suggests that in terms of her experience of the restorative justice process, people have mixed perspectives to a point where the participants sometimes don't know which role they are playing.

She calls it the tension of the opposites and draws inspiration from the Christian image of Christ on the Cross.

"The image of Jesus on the cross - probably most of us can get the idea of when we're crucified and cannot find our way and we are just feeling like a victim persecuted.

"But if we step back and see the whole picture, including the two thieves on either side, I think that's the most powerful one because this is the victim in the tension of opposites that is not integrated.

"So the thief on one side that sees an 'I can have a new way,' the thief on the other side who says, 'nah, I don't want a bar of it'."

Ramage says she thinks the crucifixion is the most powerful image and, as Christians, it is something we somehow have to fit within this crisis.

"The tension is we are both offender and victim," she says.

The Flashes of Insight conversation centred around the responses to the abuse of power by Catholic clergy and religious.

The background to the conversation is René Girard's view of scapegoating.

I am sure many people around the world have had a similar experience to me as they look at the amazing photos that NASA and its partners have been releasing in the last few days.

I have only a secondary-school pupil's grasp of physics, but one does not need to be an astrophysicist to know that these photos show a level of information about the cosmos that is greater than humans have ever had before.

For the whole of human history, we have stared up into the night sky and wondered - but our wonder just grows as we look at these images.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) once opined that one reason humans stood up-right was so that we could turn our heads upwards to look at the wonders of the night sky!

Looking upwards reminded us of the complexity of the creation.

But to just appreciate the technical brilliance of the scientists that developed, built, and then deployed - successfully - the James Webb telescope is stretching my head to its limits.

When just before Christmas, and then with its launch on Christmas Day last year, we heard from the NASA and ESA teams that this was the greatest scientific instrument ever built, there were probably many - myself included - who thought that this was just the usual researchers' hype to promote their project.

Now, when we see its first images, I for one stand in awe of the skills of those who conceived such a project and then got it into space - a marvel of human ingenuity.

Beyond our thinking

The images show light that has been travelling for BILLIONS of years - thousands of millions of years - and so over an extent that is, literally, beyond comprehension.

It looks back into an earlier ‘moment' in the evolution of the universe than we can imagine - yet we see a simple fact: these photographs.

I can imagine a year, a decade, a lifetime.

The historian tries to train his or her imagination to appreciate that distance back to the time of Jesus, or the builders of the pyramids, or the first cultural marks made by Neanderthals.

Going back hundreds of thousands of years in tracing evolution to the time of Australopithecus and the early hominins is actually just an abstraction - we cannot really grasp such time spans.

To make comparisons such as we make in class - and I have done it myself - such as if they are thought of in terms of 24-hours, then those hominins lived in Africa yesterday morning, the pyramids were built around ‘ten minutes to midnight' … and so on … only serve to show we cannot get our minds around such spans of time.

But if coping with the time spans of biological evolution on this planet is so hard - at the edge of imagination - how do we even begin to grasp the time spans in these new photographs?

Southern Ring Nebula (click image to enlarge)

The universe is ever more complex. Ever more wonderful.

But - for me as one who worships God - it serves as a further reminder that though I use the word " g - o - d " every day in prayer, and we hear it used often enough, it refers to a reality beyond reality, beyond all imagining.

It is but a sound, a stutter that there is that which is greater than all that I can imagine. We do not know what God is. To imagine we can ‘define' - set limits in our mind upon - God is itself the greatest blasphemy.

For Augustine looking ever deeper into the cosmos and its complexity, there came back but the reflection in his mind: ‘I, the universe, am not God, but he made me!'

I am awed by these photographs of the cosmos, but that is still less than religious awe: the creator is still greater and ever greater. Beyond images, beyond words, beyond imagining.

Human continuity

Looking at these pictures I am also struck by the continuity in human nature and what interests us and inspires us.

The first human builders looked upwards and were amazed by the night sky and aligned their structures with it.

The ancient scholars in Babylonia looked up and sought to use mathematics - whose inherent beauty seems to resemble both the beauty of the cosmos and our own logicality - to understand and appreciate it.

That same maths - that we still divide a circle into 360 degrees is a legacy of the Babylonians - helped scientists today to build not a pyramid in Egypt or Newgrange in Ireland but the James Webb telescope.

Yet we still wonder at what we see in the cosmos around us!

The instinct to wonder, to question, to seek beyond our imagining is at the heart of our humanity - when we look upwards.

But we also look downwards!

On the same day that James Webb was launched (25 Dec 2021) there were also grim rumblings of manoeuvres and exercises by Russian troops on the borders of Ukraine.

Little room there for wonder, awe or human aspiration.

Here was the dark side of humanity seeking domination, promoting destruction, and advancing falsity in the form of nationalist mythology. The realism of theists is that we neither decry wonder not deny wickedness. Here is where we are called in faith to make a difference.

Stephan's Quintet (click image to enlarge)

Belief in creation

Similarly, human understanding is not just limited - imagining 13.5 billion years is beyond me; knowing ‘what is' God is impossible - it can be perverse.

For some - that these pictures challenge neat, well-boxed ideas about ‘Made by God' are taken to mean that God, faith and religion are all just bunkum.

For others - that there is a difference between these images and their simplistic reading of the Book of Genesis sets up a challenge of ‘science versus faith.'

To believe in creation is not to accept any story as a factual account, but to embrace all the wonder and complexity around us - and then appreciate that there is still the Mystery and that the Mystery is loving.

I heard a physicist say recently that she was ‘still a Catholic' and a believer in God ‘even though I know I should believe in the Book of Genesis.' She is not alone. For many - both those who claim belief and those who reject belief - it seems to be an either/or. This is a failure of our preaching and our teaching - and of understanding.

One believes in God, one listens to books.

One tries to love the Creator, one tries to appreciate our myths.

The truth is one - and it is our conviction that whenever we grasp even the smallest little bit of truth that it is a little bit of the work of the Creator and eventually will fit with all the other little bits. But we will only come to ‘the truth' at the end of time. For now, both in our scientific work and in our human journey we move forward in darkness. Truth is our desire, our destination - not our possession.

As I look at these wonderful photographs I am driven back to those lines in Genesis:

Then God said, "Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. And let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth." And it was so. God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And He made the stars as well. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day. (1:14-9).

What a witness to continuity: the wonder of those theologians and astronomers is still the wonder of theologians and astronomers today. They had but their naked eyes, we have the lenses of James Webb.

The concern of the Priestly-author (who created this part of the Genesis account) was to remind his fellow Jews in Babylon that the sun, moon, and stars were not divine, not gods - as those around them imagined - but the handiwork of God. The wonder of the Big Bang, the swirling galaxies beyond our counting, and the billions of ‘years' (what does a ‘year' mean before there was our planet, our sun or our galaxy!) is not ‘all there is.' To believe in the Creator is to assert that the whole we see stands in dependence on that which is beyond.

All in these pics depends for its existence upon that which is beyond it, but that Source of Being does not depend upon it.

We believe in God - Creator beyond all that is seen and unseen - and we read Genesis as a memento of our desire to seek truth and to worship. We look at these photographs as still more evidence of our human quest for truth - even in our darkness and our wickedness. And we try - through theological reflection - to reduce our confusion.

Carina Nebula (click image to enlarge)

The response of wonder, thanks, and praise

As a human being my response to these images is one of wonder. It is ever more amazing.

It is also one of thanks.

I could not even hold a screwdriver for the brilliant scientists and technicians who built the James Webb, but I am thankful to them. I am also a bit sad: what if all the technical skill used to make and fire munitions in warfare had been turned to work similar to launching the James Webb into space?

So the James Webb produces wonder at the scientists' results, thanks to the scientists for their research dedication, and praise to encourage them.

As a theist, I am driven to even deeper wonder at the cosmos - and challenged never to slip into the blasphemy that ‘I have it figured out.'

The universe revealed in these photographs challenges how we think and speak of the creation - and its Creator. But I am also a little sad: human confusion - that ‘creator' is imagined mechanically or that ‘revelation' is reduced to a book - is a stumbling block on our human journey. But most of all, I am driven to thankfulness for the beauty of God's handiwork:

When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you set in place, what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?

For you have made us, mortals, but a little lower than the angels, and have crowned us with glory and honour (Ps 8:3-5).

So the James Webb produces wonder at the divine handiwork, thanks to the Creator for ‘his' sustaining love, and praise - knowing that the desire to praise ‘him' is itself his gift.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

We could rephrase this in the following different ways:

• Symbols are just symbols - and ignored.
• Symbols no longer speak to us - and we miss what they do in our lives.
• Symbols are just taken as more noise - to which we might listen but which are little more than more words.

This is how the pope explains it in his letter:

Guardini writes, "Here there is outlined the first task of the work of liturgical formation: man must become once again capable of symbols." This is a responsibility for all, for ordained ministers and the faithful alike. The task is not easy because modern man has become illiterate, no longer able to read symbols; it is almost as if their existence is not even suspected (DD, 44).

Romano Guardini (1885-1968)

Francis takes his starting point from one of the great theologians of the first half of the twentieth century: Romano Guardini.

The Italian-born German priest influenced a whole generation of theologians including Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, and Joseph Ratzinger - now more famous as a retired Bishop of Rome.

Guardini also made an important impact on Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

The Argentine Jesuit, now more famous as the current Bishop of Rome, once intended to write about Guardini and his scholarship on the interface between philosophy and theology.

In the course of his work, Guardini realized that human beings live and die by symbols. We are symbol-using animals.

We live by symbols and we do most of our important thinking and communicating through symbols. Without symbols we would have no culture or religion - indeed, we would not be human.

More than signs

Symbols are far more than just signs. A sign is simply a means of conveying information. A symbol, on the other hand, is something we relate to, value, and consider part of us.

Symbols also embrace far more than "facts". That a group of people need some sort of organization is obvious, but that we would then call that our "motherland"/"fatherland" is saying far more than that we have a tax-collection/public works administration.

People hate bureaucracy and paying taxes, but wax eloquently about "La Patria", "Der Vaterland" or "our flag". One is just a fact; the other is a symbol. And symbols have power over us: people will both kill and be prepared to die for them.

Symbols can bring forth our highest wonders as human beings or be manipulated by tyrants so that we become beasts.

Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Francisco Franco - to name some of the symbols-corruptors of just one decade - were all keenly aware of symbols. Symbols were never "just symbols" to them, because they abused them to the full.

Guardini was one of the first to recognize this potential - and to realize that Christian symbols had been eviscerated. They had their value stolen not just in society but even in the liturgy. Hence his call for liturgical reform from the 1920s onwards.

This need for reforming the liturgy was taken up by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and is now being re-affirmed in Pope Francis's apostolic letter.

When symbols become mute

Guardini realized - as we see in the pope's quote - that what was once a means of discovering how God is central to human life, might become no more than a convention. We do not need to look far: the cross was the symbol for Paul:

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor 1:17-8).

But if, for Paul, the cross was "the power of God" - just to think of it was to appreciate the divine love; for many later Christians it just became a religious code, a sign, meaning "religion" or "Christian religion" and could be hi-jacked by people or reduced to a decorative image. The cross had become mute.

The step from a mute symbol to a corrupt symbol is a very short one.

Can we re-discover symbols?

A symbol is never the property of an individual. In this sense, the image of illiteracy is not a good one. There could be a book with much in it but I as an individual am unable to read it - if it is a book in a language I do not understand.

But symbols become mute when they do not convey something precious within a society: the symbol is something shared.

I appreciate it partly because you do - and we are someone united; you appreciate partly because I do. The symbol speaks to me in my depths as an individual, but it is our common property.

We recognize it at once as a family table. It is far more than a bench or a bar or a ledge for food. It is a physical fact - but it is also a symbol. And as a symbol it is real - it could be our table!

If we as Christians are to rediscover symbols as part of our re-discovery of that symbol appointed by the Lord - "do ye this in recollection of me" - which is the Eucharist and which in turn opens up to us the Father's love - then we need to find basic symbols that speak to our humanity.

One very simple case is that of the dining table, the family table, the kitchen table. This is a very good starting point because we celebrate the Banquet of the Eucharist gathered around a table. The Lord's table is our table; our table is the Lord's table.

But do we really experience this?

The table as symbol

"What is on the table?" is the question before a meeting. We want contesting parties to be invited to "roundtable talks". We dream of a happy family table for Christmas, a birthday, or for Thanksgiving. The banquet is deep in our humanity and our longing.

The table is also the place of welcome - we each want to have a place there - and it is our destiny: "People will come from east and west and north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God" (Lk 13:29).

So, part of liturgical renewal is that each of us as individuals needs to rediscover the table as a sacred place - there we become a family, a company of friends, a tiny Church of the baptized, and there we thank God for the creation and our sustenance (saying "grace before meals") and thank God for the enjoyment of the food and the joy of the company at table (saying "grace after meals").

Another part of this renewal is at the level of the community. In our church buildings we need to make our common tables into tables that speak to us as such. Tables we can really gather around and do gather around.

It is not enough to sit or stand and watch the table - in a building or on zoom - and what one of us does there. We have to become table companions.

If the only person actually at the table is the presider (or a few men in Holy Orders) then we are witnessing clericalism expressed by physical location.

Giving good example

Perhaps Pope Francis having given us a letter on symbols, needs now to dispense with his purple-soutaned attendants at some public celebrations of the Eucharist and be seen to be gathered with other members of the baptized - famuli famulaeque - standing beside him at their common table?

If such a celebration happened, it would be great to see a photograph of it.

Such a picture would convey far more insight to far more people about an "ecclesiology of baptism" than many papal letters! One of the basic qualities of symbols is that they are worth more than many thousands of words - and convey what no words can!

This is a table we can gather around. Nothing eviscerates a symbol like talking about doing something (such as 'being gathered at the Lord's table') but then not having it pan-out in an actual deed!

Liturgical renewal must take place where I live - I must value my table. It must also take place where the church to which I belong meets - we must value our table.

Renewal has to be done simultaneously in our homes and in our religious buildings. Then a teeny little bit of the liturgical formation, for which the pope is calling, will take place.

Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

The enthusiasm of some for the Synodal Way is one side of the way all human societies make deliberate change. Likewise, the fears of Cardinal Walter Kasper and some other bishops are exactly what we should expect.

If we could see the future clearly, then it would be different - but no one has a crystal ball. The future always contains surprises. Some of these will be more wonderful than anyone has imagined; other will be worse than our greatest fears. That is simply the way it is!

One might imagine that it would be different with the Church - the Body of the Christ animated by the Spirit - and it has been the illusion of some Christians in every age that because they "had the faith" or "the Bible" or the "gift of magisterium" that their steps into the future were guaranteed!

Alas, we are always engaged in a process of discernment: we pray for the light of the Holy Spirit and we then try to glimpse the way forward. We walk forward by faith. The Church's prayer is always that "by the light of the Spirit we may be truly wise and enjoy his consolation" (da nobis in … Spiritu recta sapere, et de eius semper consolation gaudere).

Wrong signals

If we cannot now know the outcomes of our decisions, what we might suspect, with Cardinal Kasper, will be a disaster. But it may turn out completely the opposite - and vice versa - so we can exercise some foreknowledge with regard to the signals our actions send out in the present.

Right now, I can know that something is being wrongly interpreted or wrongly used. What will happen tomorrow is, in an absolute sense, unknown; but what is faulty now can be known through an examination of evidence that has been building up for some time and is available to us. This is where we can take definite action for the better.

This is such a basic element of our thinking that we tend to ignore it and spend our time in more distant - and so imprecise - speculation.

We can easily illustrate this: will there be a fire in the house or will it be OK? I simply do not know, and I hedge my bets by having house insurance. Contrast that with the definite event that I smell smoke and hear the fire alarm now, right now. In this case, I do not speculate but act: I call the fire brigade.

Liturgy is not costume drama

We see this same decision process in the Church.

Some weeks ago, Pope Francis did not speculate that some clergy might or might not really want to take the reforms of Vatican II to heart. Rather, he saw that their actual activity now - wearing lace and birettas - sent out a signal that they did not like modernity.

This was not a "might be" or "might happen" but a definite signal to people by those priests that they preferred a former time. So the pope sent a clear and definite signal to them!

In effect, he told them that helping the People of God celebrate their liturgy - it belongs to all the baptized because when we assemble we are "wholly celebrant" - is what their ministry is about. It is not costume drama in which they, as clergy, have the leading roles and take the bows!

The view out of a Roman window: the view from outside, looking in, is very different!

But there are many other areas where the Church, or clergy, are right now sending out signals that indicate an actual problem - a fire that needs fighting urgently. And if these are not tackled, then it will make the whole synodal process, for both the fearful and the hopeful, little more than hot air.

Seen to be transparent

Long trained to discretion, indeed secrecy, most clergy are happier dealing with anything "scandalous" far from the public view. Hence, one episcopal conference after another has been found to have been involved in cover-ups! It would be interesting to know just how many bishops have had to resign in the last 25 years because they were seen "to have swept matters under the carpet".

But this attitude - quite apart from the fact that it is morally unjust (criminals were allowed to create more suffering and went un-punished) and ecclesiologically inept (every member of the Church is as much a member as anyone else) - also failed to appreciate our cultural situation.

Lace inside the head

Many years ago I heard praise of a new bishop - arrived from a job in Rome - by some of the canons of his chapter: "He is the soul of discretion - his Vatican training is in his every move!"

I hope that would not be a vote of approbation by those priests today if they got a new bishop. Anyone who is so naturalized to secrecy, even to holding up the so-called "pontifical secret", is actually unfit for a job in the Roman Curia, much less in a diocese.

Such a man is an inhabitant of a world that is long past. Such a man is wearing lace inside his head.

A world that craves transparency

Whenever we find examples of people doing things in a "smoke-filled room" or "behind closed doors" or without full reporting, we become suspicious. Sad experience has taught us that such "back room" procedures are usually the fore-runner of greater problems.

So, for example, we are not surprised to hear that there is a crackdown on a free press and open discussion in Vladimir Putin's Russia. What might be labelled "judicious discretion" among two bishops in purple cassocks seems little different from "suppression" and "repression" when done by a military junta.

But time and again we see a minimalist approach to transparency from bishops. It is simply the wrong signal: it creates the impression that they cannot be trusted. Then it generates the question: why do they want to keep things back? Then: what have they to hide?

The breakdown of trust in the Church - which just might be generating those attitudes which cause the fears expressed by Cardinal Kasper - is a fact right now. Once people spontaneously generate that wonderful expression, the hermeneutic of suspicion, then there is a rupture in the magisterium.

This rupture is not a possible fruit of a mistaken approach to synodality (i.e. the equivalent of "will the house go on fire?" or "will there be a sea-battle tomorrow?"), but a simple fact for many of the baptized - they do not trust the official statements of bishops as anything more than statements intended to preserve power and prevent necessary change.

This level of suspicion of bishops has probably not been seen over wide areas of the Western Church since the sixteenth century.

An interesting slogan

Among disadvantaged groups this very significant statement is often repeated: Nothing about us, without us, is for us.

It is worth thinking carefully about the implications of this maxim.

It speaks of suspicion, the desire for transparency, and the desire for real - not token - consultation.

It also speaks about the experience of women who hear statements made about them and their bodies by men.

It speaks about married people hearing about the demands of the Christian life from celibates who have never had to worry about being out of work, never had to cope with the pressures of providing food or shelter or repaying a mortgage each month, nor dealing with the worries that are part of every relationship and family.

It speaks about hearing of "child protection measures" from men who do not have children but have profound professional identification with clerical abusers.

And the list goes on ….

Signs of the times

Let's not worry about tomorrow's potential problems, we have enough actuals that need urgent attention.

"So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today" (Mt 6:34).

Time is short! Some things are urgent! Transparency is a 'sign of this time'

Time is short! Some things are urgent! Transparency is a 'sign of this time'

We need to take heed of the signs of the times - and stop sending out the wrong signals.

You might say, "But transparency is not that important, and certainly not part of our moment! Let's just ignore it!"

Well, some people in the Vatican have already seen that it is part of our historical moment - hence the accounts for Peter's Pence have just been published for the first time. This is the transparency that is appropriate to a community such as the Church.

Anything that is less than full transparency - and being transparent about transparency - is a skandalon (a stumbling block) to evangelization.

• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.
• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.