B 3.4 How can we give structure to instances of synodality and collegiality that involve groupings of local churches?
Ecumenism isn’t a significant part of synodality in some quarters. Maybe it should be. Other churches and communions haven’t latched to Pope Francis. If we are looking to a deeper future, we must look to groupings of local churches, even if they aren’t specifically named in the current document or movement. In my experience, localities have lost something of an ecumenical synodality in the past few decades. May be expectations were too high … on all ends.
The first phase of the synodal process highlighted the role played by synodal and collegial bodies that brought together various local Churches: Eastern Hierarchical Structures and, in the Latin Church, the Episcopal Conferences. The Documents drawn up during the various stages emphasize how the consultation of the People of God in the local Churches and the subsequent stages of discernment were a true experience of listening to the Spirit through listening to one another. From this rich experience we can draw insights to help build an increasingly synodal Church:
a) the synodal process can become “a dynamism of communion that inspires all ecclesial decisions” [Francis, Address at the ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015] because it truly involves all subjects—the People of God, the College of Bishops, the Bishop of Rome—each according to their own function.
We Catholics struggle with some of this. And some of us have our concerns:
The orderly unfolding of this synod’s stages dispelled the fear that the consultation of the People of God would lead to a weakening of the Pastors’ ministry. On the contrary, the consultation was possible because it was initiated by each Bishop, as the “visible principle and foundation of unity” (Lumen Gentium 23) in his Church. Subsequently, in the Eastern Hierarchical Structures and in the Episcopal Conferences, the Pastors carried out an act of collegial discernment weighing the contributions coming from the local Churches. Thus, the synodal process has promoted a real exercise of episcopal collegiality in a fully synodal Church;
From bishops to the laity in their various expressions:
b) the issue of exercising synodality and collegiality in instances involving groups of local Churches that share spiritual, liturgical and disciplinary traditions, geographical contiguity and cultural proximity, starting with the Episcopal Conferences, demands renewed theological and canonical reflection. Though these bodies, “the communio Episcoporum has found expression in service to the communio Ecclesiae grounded in the communio fidelium” (PE I,7).
Here, too, Catholicism is beset by infighting. Some is sparked by bad behavior from some actors. Some of it is just the modern indulgence for suspicion.
Speaking against the model of total hierarchy, the document suggests local maturity in handling important issues:
c) one reason for facing this challenge emerges in Evangelii Gaudium: “It is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory. In this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound ‘decentralization’” (no. 16). On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Synod of Bishops, the Holy Father specified that synodality is not only exercised at the level of the local Churches and at the level of the universal Church, but also at the level of groupings of Churches, such as Provinces and Ecclesiastical Regions, Particular Councils and especially Episcopal Conferences: “We need to reflect on how better to bring about, through these bodies, intermediary instances of collegiality, perhaps by integrating and updating certain aspects of the ancient ecclesiastical organization.” [Francis, Address at the ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015].
Perhaps this principle is why it seems rogue bishops and conferences continue on certain paths that in the past would have seen a clamping down from Rome. Thoughts?
Catholic Sensibility 