The Synod on Synodality and our understanding of the church

Some observations of my diocese's input for Pope Francis's Synod on Synodality suggest that American Catholics are still a long way from seeing themselves as full and responsible stakeholders in the Catholic church.

In an article on the America magazine website, Rev. Louis Cameli, a priest in the Chicago Archdiocese, described his work to compile, read, digest and synthesize the responses which were collected during the archdiocese's input phase of  Pope Francis's Synod on Synodality.  Fr. Cameli reports:

I faced the daunting task of going through a foot-high stack of papers that represented the voices of many people. I read and eventually tried to synthesize everything that had been submitted. In the process, I gained a deeper understanding of synodality as well as a sense of the tasks and challenges that face us in the church.

(In a separate article in the archdiocese's newspaper, Cameli noted that the 12-inch stack represented responses from some 40,000 individuals.  He wrote, "That is approximately 2% of the Catholics in the archdiocese. Of course, we had hoped for wider participation, but this number represents a beginning.")

Cameli doesn't provide a comprehensive summary of this voluminous input.  But he makes three observations of what he refers to as a "via negativa" - which he defines as "what seems to be missing", "significant deficits" that came out of the consultation process:

1. A prayer deficit: As Cameli writes:

For so many respondents, the synod consultation was about figuring things out or sharing a personal opinion about how things ought to be, or some form of need-based planning. The Holy Father’s hope for the synodal process aligned things much differently.

For Pope Francis, everything about the synodal path begins in prayer. Out of their prayer, believers encounter each other. In their encounters, they are summoned to listen deeply to each other. And finally, in their listening, they discover where the Holy Spirit might be prompting them to move. The essential elements are prayer, encounter, listening and discernment.

2. Church as object rather than subject: Here is Cameli:

I realized that so many of the respondents were speaking more to the church rather than from the church. In other words, they commented on the church as if it were an object outside of them.

This is in sharp contrast to what Pope Francis has in mind. We are the subjects, the actors and—in his words—the protagonists in this process. In other words, we are the church. And in a synodal context, then, we speak from the church. All this means much more than quibbling over prepositions. From a formational perspective, it involves carefully cultivating an internalized sense of identity with the church.

3. "Ecclesial introversion": This is the church gazing at its own navel rather than lifting its eyes and looking about. Cameli:

The third and final deficit that I found in the responses was something that Pope Francis has called “ecclesial introversion;” a sticky attachment to the internal life of the church and its structural-institutional organization. The whole point of synodality is to be “on the road together” in mission, going outside of ourselves. So many comments in the responses spoke to recommended changes in church life or, even more accurately, within church life. The sense of outward mission was generally faint. Formation for mission, an ever-expansive sense of our purpose in the world, needs to take hold of our communities of faith.

These are three sharp observations.  They suggest that people in my archdiocese have approached synodality in a characteristically American way: identify a problem; complain about the problem; solve the problem (or, perhaps even more characteristically of Americans these days: demand that someone else solve the problem).  

It seems Francis's spirituality of praying, listening and discerning together does not come naturally to American Catholics.  

(Perhaps it's not just Americans.  The German church's Synodal Path, which it embarked on independently of and prior to Francis's inauguration of this worldwide synodal process, has drawn some sharp rebukes from the Vatican.  Perhaps this misalignment between the German church and the Holy See is not solely about content; the German process, seemingly rushing to solve problems, may not be what Francis had in mind.)

In the last couple of years here at NewGathering, we've taken two different looks at Avery Dulles, SJ's well-known book on ecclesiology, Models of the Church.  Dulles offered a series of different models or paradigms of the Catholic church to enrich - and correct - the most traditional paradigm, which Dulles calls the "Institutional Model".  The Institutional Model consists of the visible aspects of the church: the pope, the Holy See, bishops, dioceses, parishes, religious orders, schools and other formal offices and institutions.

Two years ago, I summarized four of the complementary models proposed by Dulles:

• The Church as Mystical Communion conceives of the church as being the women and men (whom Lumen Gentium memorably called "The People of God") who are united by the gifts of the Holy Spirit into a communion.  A great advantage of this model over the Institutional model is that the latter viewed the people as secondary and almost irrelevant, whereas in this Mystical Communion model, we are primary.
• The Church as Sacrament conceives of the church as the visible sign of the dimensions of the church which are intangible and invisible but are its core essence: the graces and spiritual gifts which the church offers to the world.  Just as Jesus was made incarnate here in earth, the church makes incarnate the spiritual gifts which God offers humanity.
• The Church as Herald focuses on the church's imperative to proclaim the Good News to the world. This mandate belongs to all members of the church.  This model is congenial to many Protestant denominations which place less of an emphasis on institutional structure and more on proclamation than Catholics are wont to do.
• The Church as Servant emphasizes the church's mission to serve humanity, especially its preferential option for the poor.  This paradigm is very much in the tradition of Pope John XXIII and Pope Francis.  It also is much-loved by deacons, as well as many congregations of religious.

 A few months later, Jack completed this list of Dulles' alternative models by adding this description of the The Church as Community of Disciples:

Dulles developed the “Community of Disciples” chapter as a variant of Model 2, the Church as Mystical Communion.  Pope John Paul II had used the phrase briefly in his first encyclical. Dulles thought that discipleship emphasized the personal, fallible, human aspects of the Church that were not captured by images such as the Body of Christ, or People of God that had been used to promote the Church as mystical communion

Cameli's observations and analysis suggest that the Catholic Church in the United States still has a long way to go to internalize some of Dulles's alternative models.  It seems the Institutional Model continues to reign in the popular imagination as the essence of the church.  I fear that, unless/until the people of God embrace alternative ways of thinking about the nature of the church and our relationship to it, Francis's synodality initiative will not bear good fruit as abundantly as it might.