Is synodality [a system being introduced in the Catholic Church in Scotland similar to presbytery meetings and the General Assembly where the ‘fathers and brethren’ meet to exchange views] failing?
As we write in The Tablet this week, “the Church is hardly agog with expectation as the next phase in Pope Francis’s programme of synodal reform approaches”.
There’s much disappointment that some of the contested issues – in particular around what ministries are and are not open to women – have been tweezered out of this particular leg of the synodal journey and carefully placed into a parallel track, from which they may, or may not, one day re-emerge resolved.
While acknowledging that the need for better, healthier, more reciprocal relationships between men and women, between priests and lay people, and between bishops and Rome “could not be more urgent”, Austen Ivereigh explained in last week’s print edition that “there is no way the three-week second session could meaningfully advance such a range of divisive, complex questions”.
Austen also reminded us that according to Let Us Dream – which, thanks to Austen’s own skills as a collaborator and editor is the clearest and most fluent articulation of Pope Francis’s vision for the future of the Church – those who feel disappointed by the lack of protein in the synodal soup “remain trapped within their desires, rather than allowing themselves to be touched by the grace on offer”.
Well, fair enough I suppose, it is the “synod on synodality” after all, not the “synod on women’s ministries” or indeed on any other specific issue: the focus was always intended to be on “how to be a missionary, synodal Church”.
But in this week’s Tablet Tina Beattie asks, “How can the Church be a missionary, synodal Church when more and more women are walking away and taking their families with them, tired of being treated as second-class Catholics or as irrelevant to the main business of mission and evangelisation?”
Tina writes: “It is all part of a pattern of delays, deferrals, further reflections, unpublished reports, while the platitudinous waffle about women’s charisms and gifts drones on.”
She concludes, “I refuse to let the politics and institutions of the hierarchy drive me away from all that most gives meaning to my life, but I have lost interest in the chunterings of a celibate male hierarchy when it comes to women.
“The Vatican can carry on with its commissions and reports, but there are more fruitful ways for women to live our faith than to beg for the scraps that fall from the masters’ tables.”
Many of these issues were debated at the Second Vatican Council over sixty years ago.
As our leader [opinion]column concludes, “The Church has hardly moved forward in its thinking since. If clericalism is at least partly about a male closed shop at the top of the Church, and if the synod process was supposed to break that open at last, it has to be admitted that, so far at least, it has failed and it does not seem to be about to succeed any time soon.”
In Living Spirit – many readers tell me this is the corner of the Tablet where they linger longest each week – Rosemary Haughton writes of “Mother Church” with words of love and exasperation that echo those of Tina Beattie.
“She will lie and cheat if she feels it is necessary to keep her charges safe; she uses her authority ‘for their own good’ but if it seems to be questioned she is ruthless in suppressing revolt. This is Mother Church, a crude, domineering, violent, loving, deceitful, compassionate old lady, a person to whom one cannot be indifferent, whom one may love much and yet fight against, whom one may hate and yet respect.”
Top picture is of Pope Francis meeting the crowds who turned out to welcome him on one of his recent tours away from the Vatican.