Are the Australian Plenary Council and Synod on Synodality achieving renewal and reform?
(Synod on Synodality, 2021-2024)
Almost 60 years have passed since Vatican II, and the world and our Church are facing ever more complex challenges from new understandings in science, theology, psychology, sociology and technology.
Australian Catholics responded enthusiastically to the announcement of the Plenary Council in 2018 and over 200,000 made responses to the question: What is God asking of us in Australia at this time? At that time, we were still recovering from the painful journey and aftermath of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse which revealed the seismic magnitude of the Australian Church scandal and tragedy.
For most Catholics who contributed to the Plenary Council preparatory stage there was never the expectation that all the issues discerned would or could be readily resolved. They understood that the more complex issues would be recorded for ongoing consideration and synodal discernment.
But it was expected that at least some urgent progress could be achieved from the Council. Of particular importance was the issue of gender equality, where the outcomes have fallen well short of expectations.
When the Synod on Synodality was announced in 2021, expectations of renewal were again raised, leading to the hope that the global Church would move to synodal renewal. The Synod Instrumentum laboris does offer some immediate opportunities for women, but not the diaconate.
In his Homily on 7 July 2024 (NCR/Vatican News) Pope Francis said: “We don’t need a religiosity closed in on itself, that looks up to heaven without caring about what happens on earth and celebrates liturgies in the temple but forgets the dust blowing in our streets.”
He is reminding us again that we must be a more mission-oriented, hands-on, grassroots church that is welcoming and inclusive, synodal and co-responsible, and creatively open to change. He wants a church that goes to the peripheries and engages with the marginalised and the poor where they live and work. He wants pastors who have the ‘smell of the sheep’ and who are not afraid of ‘messiness’.
From the 1940’s when various Cardijn groups began across Australia using its See Judge Act method, young people engaged in vigorous discernment of the gospel and its call to community service. This prompted establishment of co-operative movements, credit unions, housing projects for young families, sport activities, marriage preparation courses, and much more. Training camps in Victoria educated generations of leaders in the Church and wider society, leading to free legal aid services, and revolutionised models of community facilities by working class young people who subsequently entered political, civic and religious life, helping transform our country into a gentler, kinder society. These same principles have been adopted by Pope Francis in his social documents Laudato Si’, and Fratelli Tutti.
Synodality and Synodal Disconnect
For a 2000-year-old Church, where 200 years is considered ‘recent’, reform has long lagged changing realities and times. It’s unsurprising, therefore, that church membership in the Western World continues to decline. Yet regardless of and notwithstanding institutional failings, few, other than the most zealous members, seem discouraged by this. The Church is no longer a ‘field hospital’.
For Catholics in Australia and across the world the key issue right now is whether the Catholic Church in the foreseeable future is actually capable of achieving the essential reforms needed through synodal and co-responsible processes.
The Instrumentum laboris reaffirms the need for synodal, co-responsible governance arrangements which support and empower a more mission-oriented church for the benefit of humanity.
Clericalism is identified as one of the most significant factors hindering the Church from embracing synodality and, even more inhibiting, the lack of adoption of co-responsibility. In some quarters there is even open opposition to synodal processes (paper in La Croix International).
Is Diocese/Parish ‘synodal disconnect’ further inhibiting progress?
Getting back on mission
So is this a ‘Clayton’s Synod?’1 – a shadow of what it might have been or might become? Has the Catholic Church’s journey towards real renewal failed? Or is it stalled in a holding position, blocked from going forward by clericalism, hesitancy about the synodal model, and in particular refusal to commit to co-responsibility?
If the Church is to get back on mission it must return to ‘grassroots’ missionary activity with synodality and co-responsibilty. Much can be learned from local parishes with ‘grassroots’ engagement. Since the Middle Ages it has been the hierarchy which has interpreted the needs of people and defined strategies for meeting those needs. In the 21st century, hierarchies claiming authority from God independent of the people they govern have no credibility, even in the church. Synodality is a way of being and doing church that acknowledges the indispensable role of all in the definition and conduct of its mission.
So far only 6 of 28 Australian territorial dioceses have committed to a synodal and co-responsible governance approach. Hopefully, the others will follow.
Evidence confirms that to successfully renew and reform the Church there is need to educate and provide formation to all the People of God – lay women and men, religious, clerics and bishops – in parishes and dioceses on how to participate and engage in synodal processes.
Just as Pope Francis is showing how synodality is to be done at the Synod, so must bishops now give Australian Catholics the opportunity to participate and engage directly in synodal approaches, such as diocesan synods and assemblies, and diocesan and parish pastoral councils.
1. A “Clayton’s” something is a uniquely Australian & NZ way of suggesting that something which purports to be what it is, is actually a significantly lesser version.