Archbishop Pierre to the US bishops: embrace synodality

Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Vatican's ambassador to the United States, addressed the US bishops yesterday.  It was pretty good. 

The speech is here, starting at approx. 12:50.  

Pierre's address is not rude, but it's also surprisingly stripped of extraneous diplomatic niceties.  It's as though what he had to say to the bishops is too urgent to over-decorate.  I encourage you to watch it, especially if (perhaps like some of the American bishops?) you're still trying to wrap your brain around synodality.

https://www.usccb.org/plenary-assembly-meeting-june-14-16-2023-0

Here is what I think underlies Pierre's message: the institutional church cannot remain complacent.  It must change.  The world is changing.  You may be able to sense it yourself: there are streams and threads running through society which are bringing us to a new place.  I don't find it easy to summarize this spirit of change which is blowing, but let me just make a couple of observations.

• In a book I read recently, by Richard Rohr OFM, he wrote something along these lines: it is no wonder that young people stay away from church; they find more meaning and more commitment to justice in other institutions, like the government and their employers.  He may be right.  Certainly, the multinational corporation which employs me is committing more time, talent and treasure to the rights, safety and flourishing of LGBTQ persons than the church in the US does.
  
  
• The states attorneys general who are investigating the church's protection (or lack thereof) of young people, are showing us that the last remnants of social deference to the institutional church are quickly fading away.  The church can no longer expect that the government and other social institutions will shield it from the hostility of activists.  

I offer these two observations as two symptoms of what I think is happening: the winds of social change are blowing.  Of course, we could add many other observations of change percolating around us: the Great Recession; COVID, the Great Resignation; the failure of Russia to subdue Ukraine; the nationalist/authoritarian turn in the GOP; the failure to take climate change seriously; the end of Roe v. Wade and new activism around abortion rights; the advent and quick integration of artificial intelligence into commerce; a reawakening activism in favor of worker rights.  Perhaps there are other items we could name and discuss.  Taken together, these all point to a society transitioning...somewhere.  New?  Different?  Better?  It's difficult to say.  But I firmly believe that we're socially evolving...somewhere.

A complacent church institution, content to run today and tomorrow as it has run yesterday, is a recipe for obsolescence.  Or so it seems to me.

Can anyone doubt that Francis's call to become a synodal church is prophetic?  Who will listen?  Who will respond?