Pope Francis: The People of God must be consulted before the October 2023 synod of bishops
Pope Francis has decided that the synod will open in the Vatican and in every diocese throughout the Catholic world in October 2021. It will first go through a “diocesan phase” (October 2021 until April 2022) and subsequently a “continental phase” (September 2022 through March 2023) before concluding in “the universal church phase” at the Vatican with the synod of bishops in October 2023.
In an interview with Vatican Media, the cardinal explained that “the first and greatest innovation is the transformation of the synod from an event into a process,” as now each assembly of the synod develops in successive phases: the “preparatory phase, the celebratory phase, and the implementation phase.” He emphasized that the purpose of the first phase is the consultation of the People of God. He recalled that the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) “teaches that the People of God participate in the prophetic office of Christ” and “therefore, we must listen to the People of God, and this means going out to the local churches.”
The aim of the diocesan phase is “to consult the people of God, so that the synodal process is carried out through listening to all the baptized,” who, as the Second Vatican Council said, “cannot err in matters of belief.”
He said the general-secretariat will send the bishops a preparatory document, accompanied by a questionnaire and a vademecum (handbook or manual) with proposals for consultation in each local church.
The diocesan consultation will conclude with a moment of discernment, after which the local church will send its contribution to the bishops’ conference. The conference will then hold an assembly and engage in a period of discernment on the inputs that have come from the dioceses, after which they will produce a synthesis and then send it to Rome.
So the American Bishops will have to set aside time in their June meeting to figure out if they are going to do anything in a collaborative way instead of each bishops doing his own thing in his own diocese. Then they are going to have to spend time in November figuring out how they are going to summarize all their individual diocesan reports into a grand report which is due by April 2022. (Maybe the Vatican will allow them to finalize it at their June 2022 meeting.
But then they are not done. They have to engage in the continental phase. It is not clear how the Vatican is defining continents. If North America and South America are separate where is the dividing line. But the Vatican may choose to treat the Americas as one continent. They like that idea. And its has some plausibility geographically and historically as being the New World. I suspect there may to a little of both. Maybe North, Central and South American reports with an overall attempt to interrelate them.
Now they have a worthy opponent, not just poor Joe Biden preoccupied with all our national and world problems.
Yes Francis and the whole Vatican ready to be critical at the diocesan, national, and regional levels. The bishops will need all the resources of their big funders who want to do Francis in. I suspect the bishops will not lack that money nor right wing lay talent.. Their problem is lack of talent among the bishops. And of course Rome is very good at discerning between grass roots activity and false top down activity.
I would assume that the continents are the seven standard - Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, North America (Canada, the USA, Mexico), South America ( including Central America), and Antarctica, which lacks both bishops and permanent population, so I guess it can skip the synodal process.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe combine countries culturally? Then Mexico would join South America. Some countries might be Europe instead of Asia. Treat Oceania as a continent instead of limiting it to Australia. Although Papua New Guinea and New Zealand don’t share a common culture. North African nations and sub-Saharan African cultures vary wildly from one another as well as within their own geographic area. Languages don’t I unify the countries of most continents. It will be interesting to see how they are grouped. Guessing the standard continents might be easier, including all the countries in Oceania as part of Australia.
Few bishops want to “ consult the faithful” so will probably perform the required tasks in a perfunctory manner. Highly unlikely that the American bishops will bother with real collaboration but will informally plot (collaborate) with their like minded colleagues on ways to assure that the outcome reflects their own personal beliefs and agenda.
This effort by the Pope represents a noble and idealistic goal that is unlikely to achieve anything real.
I'm still not quite getting what they hope to accomplish. More local control? That could be either a good or bad thing.
ReplyDeleteFrancis has certainly changed the synod's from a very boring several weeks of reading papers into real debate about controversial topics, e.g. divorces and communion, married priests for the Amazon. There has not been agreement, let alone change, but at least the bishops are now talking in public about these things.
ReplyDeleteThis synod is about the synodal process. It will give the bishops an opportunity to talk about the pro's and con's of real debate and real consultation with the laity.
I think the American bishops are going to have to confront the fact that they don't agree among themselves and that they are not ready for real collaboration with the laity, and they are not ready for dealing with bishops on other continents who have a whole different set of priorities.
The participants in the recent synods have said that the most valuable part for them was learning how very different and varied the church's situation is in various countries. It looks like they are trying to bring that type of experience into the preparatory stages so the bishops in various countries and continents will experience the complexity of the church.
The participants in the recent synods have said that the most valuable part for them was learning how very different and varied the church's situation is in various countries. It looks like they are trying to bring that type of experience into the preparatory stages so the bishops in various countries and continents will experience the complexity of the church.
ReplyDeleteIt is truly inexcusable and shocking if these men who hold very high level positions in the church don't already realize how complex the church is, and how vastly the church differs in multiple ways in different countries, different cultures.
Can they really be so ignorant and unaware?
If so, then there is little hope that that going to another synod will enlighten them. If they aren't aware already, then it seems that they have chosen to remain ignorant, and to live in their separate little ivory towers, and enjoy the generally highly comfortable and occasionally luxurious lifestyle (especially in the richer countries) provided to them by the donations of the "simple faithful" in the pews. Meeting up with their friends in Rome for a meeting, to enjoy the wonderful food and wine there, is simply one of the expected perks of their jobs.
And they would see little point in consulting with the "simple faithful" either as long as the money keeps flowing.
Re: the continental consultations: it's worth recalling that South and Central American bishops have a pretty well-established tradition of this already. They have an organization, CELAM, which organizes periodic meanings across the continent. To Anne's point: Mexico, which geographically is considered part of North America, takes part in the CELAM consultations. Francis was active in CELAM when he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires; I am sure that experience is the basis for his coming up with this idea for his synodal process.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether other continents have a similar tradition. Have the bishops of Europe held continent-wide consultations?
I'm not aware of a regular tradition of North American consultation. I believe the American and Mexican conferences have worked together on immigration issues. But I don't think there is anything comparable to CELAM.
If North, Central and South America (and presumably the Caribbean - there are quite a few island nations) are treated as a single continent, that could have the effect of diluting the domination of the two "big dogs", the US and Brazil. Perhaps Mexico would be on that list, too. Giving the smaller countries a bigger voice would be something that I think Francis would support very much.
There is precedent for treating all of the Americas as a single entity: in 1997, John Paul II hosted a synod for the Americas. It resulted in the release of a document, Ecclesia in America, in which JP II urged North and South to show solidarity and collaborate more than had been the case historically. That also sounds like something Francis would support.
Re: the Continental consultations
ReplyDeleteAs always Merton was so far ahead of everyone. From his journal February 15, 1958. This was near to the time when he became an American citizen.
This afternoon I suddenly saw the meaning of my American destiny...
My vocation is American - to see and understand and to have in myself the life and roots and the belief and the destiny and the orientation of the whole hemisphere - as an expression of God, of Christ, that the world has not yet found out - something that now, only after hundreds of years coming to maturity.
No one fragment can begin to be enough - not Spanish colonial Catholicism, not 19th Century republicanism, not agrarian radicalism, not the Indianism of Mexico - but all of it, everything. To be oneself a whole hemisphere, and to help the whole hemisphere realize its own destiny.