Can We Find A Way Together? The Challenge of Synodality in a Wounded and Wounding Church

The Synodal Way

Let me begin with the synodal way. Synodality has been increasingly discussed since Jorge Bergoglio became pope in 2013. The term itself is not found in the teachings of Vatican II, but as the International Theological Commission explained in its 2018 document, ‘Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church,’ the term synodality conveys the very heart of the conciliar message of renewal and reform. As the commission put it: ‘synodality . . . indicates the specific modus vivendi et operandi of the People’s Church of God, which concretely manifests and realizes its being a communion in walking together, in gathering together and actively participating in all its members in its evangelizing mission.’ ² This topic has come to define Francis’s papacy and is the primary vehicle for his program of promoting a ‘healthy decentralization’ in the church and a polycentric approach to the church’s universality—polyhedral in his own idiom.

The cornerstone of his agenda, which builds on the teachings of Vatican II, has been to promote a fuller and more developed theology, policy, and praxis of synodality. This, Francis believes, is necessary if Vatican II’s teachings on episcopal collegiality and the synod of bishops are to be realized. Beyond that, Francis’s focus on the theology of the people of God rooted in the baptismal calling of all the faithful and their sense of faith provides necessary resources and incentives for promoting synodality at all levels of the church. He is clear that further developing Vatican II’s theology of the people of God requires a more robust and concrete implementation of structures of participation for all the faithful at all levels of the church. We see here Francis recovering key elements in Vatican II’s theology that were restricted during the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. However, his teaching on polyhedral universality and its embodiment in action represents a crucial advance on post-Vatican II’s theology of the world church. Moreover, this pope’s views on the role of conflict and honest speech (parrhesia) in the life of the church, in my judgement and that of others, also go significantly beyond what the council fathers taught at Vatican II and for the most part afterwards as well.

Why is this important for our understanding of the synodal way? In his efforts to connect with those deeply wounded by the church, whether marginalized or those who have decisively left, Francis has reached out to various alienated groups—especially those divorced and remarried, but not receiving communion; to devout Catholics who are gay; and to women who suffer from sexism and misogyny in the church. Francis makes mistakes on these issues along the way, most dramatically defending the behaviour of Chilean bishops in cases of clergy sex abuse when it was not warranted, but he acknowledges and publicly confesses his mistakes and goes on. He is to be credited for being outspoken about problems associated with clericalism, triumphalism, and the misuse of clerical power by bishops and networks of bishops, especially at the top echelons of the Vatican Curia. He seemed open during the Amazon synod to considering ordaining women to the deaconate and ordaining proven married men in cases of special need. But there are many lingering doubts about whether Francis is willing to allow lay women and men in decision-making roles and structures holding priests and bishops accountable in the church.

Francis seeks to advance his approach to synods and synodality all the way down the organizational ladder from the council of cardinals, the synod of bishops, to plenary and provincial councils, to diocesan synods, and diocesan and parish pastoral and presbyteral councils. As we consider Limerick, Australia, and Germany, I am particularly interested in the question whether there is room for acknowledging conflict and with candid honesty discussing these matters in such synodal forums.

Do these three synodal procedures create a space for honest discussion about contested issues? Do they foster or stifle people’s openness to speak out on disputed issues?

Let us begin with the Limerick Diocesan Synod. Based on the information provided on the diocesan website, it is clear that this synod was well run, and quite productive, and there is some indication that participants were encouraged to raise challenging issues and discuss them in groups. ³ As Bishop Brendan Leahy launched the synod he wrote:

The Synod will need to provide forums where people can discuss the dark issues and the practical problems, their disappointments and their inner search. We need to name why ‘mission’ is not fully alive among us. I would like to see people of all ages involved in this.

But it is not enough to name problems. We will need to discern together what is the Holy Spirit suggesting to us today. And we need to have confidence that the Spirit is with us! Difficulties are never the last word in the Christian vocabulary. ⁴

The website offers a great deal of information about the synod, including rankings of issues raised, and thanks to the Director of the Synod, Eamonn Fitzgibbon, I have had access to additional documents that explained the voting numbers and the discussion that took place in the synod’s discernment groups. The synod process engaged over 5,000 people, including children and the elderly, and 4,000 people responded to a questionnaire surfacing issues that merit attention at the synod, and included meetings with 1,500 individuals from 60 parishes and 25 other groups. The synod assembly brought together 400 delegates, 70% of whom were lay people. During these gatherings there was considerable concern expressed about reaching out to those hurt by the church, and not only those struggling with the aftermath of clergy sex abuse. However, for an outside observer like me, the documentation posted on the website provided limited detailed information about specific ways that people have been hurt by the church, and the reasons for this. These no doubt included clergy sex abuse and the related episcopal involvement; but other causes of harm by the church could have involved the church’s stances on homosexuality or gay marriage, or on birth control issues or abortion. These all may have been discussed in the meetings, but we can’t tell based on this public record of the synod. The website report also makes no mention of clericalism, nor of the challenges posed by how episcopal authority nation-wide has been exercised. There is, I am happy to say, considerable concern expressed through the votes and in the strategic plan about the need to address the role of women in the church, and their role in the liturgy, and in church governance.

The second illustration is provided by the Australian Plenary Council that follows a canonically established synodal procedure that has been convoked by the Australian Bishops’ Conference. This is an immense, nation-wide undertaking that is of course much larger than any diocesan synod. It also intentionally includes participants who are marginal or disaffiliated members of the Catholic Church. There were over 222,000 participants in the first phase of listening who made their views known by answering questionnaires and / or participating in group dialogues. The findings from this data were provided in a website report on phase one, Listen to What the Spirit is Saying, a 300-plus page document that describes every one of the issues that received attention during this phase of the Plenary Council, as well as featuring individual statements by people and personal anecdotal narratives illustrating each main topic. ⁵

It is important to point out that an entire section of the report is devoted to clergy sexual abuse of children and the 2017 Royal Commission’s report on this topic, which resulted in a major call for an implementation of the Royal Commission’s recommendations with greater concern for the victim-survivors. There are calls for healing and moving beyond the scandal, but also repeated attention to clericalism, and some attention to the cover-up of abuse by bishops. Healing liturgies and public signs of acts of reparation to the victim-survivors are also encouraged in the recommendations.

The first-phase document reports that many participants are in favour of ending mandatory celibacy, ordaining women priests and married men, and above all encouraging greater involvement of the laity, especially women, in church ministries and administration, and much more open discussion of sexual morality and LGBTQ issues.

The question remains, how will lay people, clergy, and women religious participate in the final phase of the plenary council in October 2020? The report on the first phase ended by describing the method the Plenary Council will follow at that assembly, stating:

We invite the groups who participated in Listening and Dialogue [during the first phase of the Plenary Council] to now reconvene in communal Discernment on any one of the six themes . . .. Each Discernment session is expected to result in a [short] response . . .. Our Writing and Discernment Groups will then meet and discern on these responses, with prayer and from their own theological knowledge, towards publishing thematic papers and fleshing out the agenda for the first session of the Plenary Council in October 2020. How is God calling us to be a Christ-centered Church that is: [1] Missionary and evangelizing; [2] Inclusive, participatory and synodal; [3] Prayerful and Eucharistic; [4] Humble, healing and merciful; [5] A joyful, hope-filled and servant community; and [6] Open to conversion, renewal and reform.

One major challenge facing this plenary council concerns the range of issues that participants have raised honestly and openly about the ordination of married and women priests; about how clericalism can be overcome, and how concealment and complicity by bishops can be meaningfully addressed; and about how the laity and especially women can exercise their baptismal authority in liturgy and decision-making in the church.

If the plenary council concludes with proposals for renewal that reflect business as usual in these areas, there could result wide-ranging disappointment and increasing disaffection. Will what has started so well as a genuine expression of synodality in Australia end poorly? Will those who raised hard questions influence the synod’s outcomes in unpredictable ways, or be dismissed for making illegitimate requests? What could differentiated consensus look like here?

The third example is provided by the Synodal Way and requires more description and analysis. This endeavour is a joint undertaking of the German Episcopal Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics. This latter group is a highly regarded association of lay Catholics that has its roots in the mid-19th-century establishment of annually held Catholic Days that provided the occasions to discuss issues that needed to be addressed by parishes and Catholic associations about the mission of the church and its role in civil society. ⁶

The joint conference of the German Episcopal Conference and Central Committee was established after the German National Synod, a monumental achievement, known as the Würzburg Synod, which was held 1971–75. Since then the joint conference has met twice a year to discuss issues that merit attention and action, with ten representatives from the Bishops’ Conference and ten from the Central Committee. This particular initiative, the Synodal Way, emerged as a response to the MHG report (named after the three initials of the universities: Mannheim, Heidelberg, Giessen), a major study commissioned by the German Bishops’ Conference to analyse instances of clergy sex abuse in the 27 dioceses of Germany that took place between 1946 and 2014. The result of this study released in 2018 indicated that more than 38,000 cases of abuse in Germany were committed by about 1,700 Catholic clerics. The bishops decided after the report was released that some nation-wide deliberative process among Catholics was needed to ponder and address with lay people the issues raised by the report. Based on their previous experiences with listening sessions in dioceses between 2011 and 2015, they decided that conducting a national synod would take too long. An unconventional model was devised in which German bishops would collaborate with representatives from the Central Committee. In February 2019 their synodal plan was announced.

This group of bishops and lay people surfaced many of the same concerns that were voiced in the Limerick and Australia assemblies, but the German church chose to employ a unique process that could yield distinctive results. They established forum groups composed of bishops, theologians, other specialists, and lay Catholics from various parishes and Catholic associations representing different positions in society.

In March 2019, the German Bishops’ Conference met to deliberate about the causes and problems contributing to the clergy sex abuse crisis. Their assembly confirmed their decision to pursue a synodal dialogical procedure with the Central Committee, on four position papers addressing (1) Power and the Separation of Power in the Church—Shared Participation and Participation in Mission, (2) Living in Successful Relationships—Love Life in Sexual Morality and Partnership, (3) Priestly Existence Today, and (4) Women in Ministries (Diensten) and Offices (Ämtern) in the Church. They envisioned that this endeavour would result in a ‘binding synodal process’ that would offer a distinctive affirmation of the need for mutual listening and collective discernment and decision-making of participating bishops, theologians, and lay people. This was not simply the bishop’s consultative process with theologians and lay people, but collaborative decision-making.

This formula, a binding synodal process, raised concerns among three Cardinal Prefects of Curial Congregations: Marc Ouellet, the Congregation for the Bishops, Louis Ladaria, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and Beniamino Stella, the Congregation for the Clergy, and also Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State. They were concerned because it seemed the description of the process to be used called into question the decision-making authority of bishops in diocesan synods and plenary and provincial councils. Their apprehensions were communicated to the pope who decided to write a letter to the people of God in Germany about the reactions from the MHG study and the proposed German synodal procedure, which was issued on 29 June 2019. Three months after the letter was made public Cardinal Walter Kasper told a reporter that Pope Francis had contacted him in June, before he wrote the letter to the people of Germany, and after these cardinals had expressed their concerns to the pope. The pope requested that Kasper come to Rome to discuss this matter with him. This gave the pope the perspective of someone with local knowledge of the German situation. In other words, it was not only the concerns of the four Vatican cardinals that informed the pope’s deliberation, but also Kasper’s assessment of the situation as his letter was crafted. ⁷

Pope Francis’s letter to the German people expressed his care for them, his shared concern about the future of the German church, and his desire that God give them the help that is needed to move forward. He also accentuated the need for spiritual conversion and for the decisive importance of following the Holy Spirit in these conditions, and that structural reform in itself offers no solution if it is not guided by the Spirit and grace. Otherwise, such reform risks being Pelagianism. His remarks might be interpreted as dichotomizing the influence of the Spirit and structural reform. About the announced Synodal path, he explicitly states ‘what it means concretely and how it develops will certainly have to be considered even more deeply.’

The Pope did not, however, foreclose the possibility of the German bishops conducting a synodal process in collaboration with the Central Committee of German Catholics. Strictly speaking their proposed endeavour would correspond with what Francis calls in his letter a form of ‘synodality from the bottom up.’ Such a manner of collaboration between bishops, theologians, and laity is comparable to the form of partnership undertaken by the Latin American Bishops Conference at the Medellín Episcopal Conference in 1968 and analogously with the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops during the 1970s and 1980s when they issued pastoral letters on war and peace, the economy, and sought to prepare a letter on the issue of women in the church and civil society, which was ultimately abandoned. ⁸

The pope accentuates in his letter that the synodal way proposed by the German bishops must manifest the exercise of the collegiality of the bishops as a reflection of ‘synodality . . . [which] comes from above downward.’ As Francis puts it, ‘This is the only way to make mature decisions in matters essential to the faith and life of the Church.’ ⁹ He repeats what he said to the bishops in their ad limina meeting in 2015 ‘that one of the first and greatest temptations in the church sphere is to believe that the solutions to current and future problems can solely be accomplished by way of the reform of structures, organizations, and administration, but that in the end in no way touch the vital points that actually need attention.’ ¹⁰ This requires a spiritual mode of discernment and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

On 4 September, Cardinal Ouellet wrote to Cardinal Reinhard Marx to express his concerns about the proposed synodal way, that it was not in compliance with the requirements of a synod as stipulated in canon law. More details about this synodal way were subsequently clarified by the German bishops in light of the pope’s concern and Ouellet’s letter at their Episcopal Conference held on 23–26 September 2019.

In light of these questions raised about the statutes of the German synodal way were discussed and approved at their 25 September 2019 bishops’ conference, the German bishops made clear that this ‘synodal way’ is neither an official diocesan synod, nor a national synod in the canonical sense which allows for consulting, but no final voting by lay participants. Nor is it a plenary or provincial council that engages all the faithful with the bishops. It is, the bishops affirmed, sui generis. ¹¹

On 18 October the statutes were approved by the Central Committee. There will indeed take place voting on matters that bear upon the Catholic church in Germany, and there will be required two-thirds of those voting for approval from the bishops in attendance, on the one hand, and from the lay and ordained members representing the Central Committee, on the other. On 22 November, the Central Committee approved the statute by a vote of 17 with 5 abstentions. It was clear that these resolutions will have no binding power in the universal church, nor by application to the bishops’ conference, and also not to decisions of local bishops pertaining to the local church. In the words of the Statute of the Synodal Way, ‘Resolutions of the Synodical Assembly have no legal effect of their own accord. The power of the Episcopal Conference and of the individual diocesan bishops to issue legal norms and exercise their teaching duties within the scope of their respective responsibilities remains unaffected by the resolutions’ (11. §5). ¹² This revised statute could be judged as jettisoning the promise of reaching binding synodal resolutions, yet some have suggested that there still can be movement beyond the common impasse in the discernment of the laity, theologians, and the bishops in these synodal procedures. Karin Kortmann, the vice-president of the Central Committee, ‘expressly rejected criticism of the alleged non-binding nature of the decision-making possibilities of the Synodal Way. It is not the statutes that fall short here, they merely depict what church law stipulates. She promised, “We will do everything we can to reach binding resolutions and votes in the Synodical Assembly.”’ ¹³

Each of the four documents developed by the working groups of bishops, theologians, and lay members are addressing difficult issues involved and respond to challenging questions and criticisms about official doctrines and policies by offering alternative approaches. Contrary to certain interpretations of Pope Francis’s letter to the German people Kortmann remarked: ‘Let us not persuade ourselves of a supposedly incompatible antagonism of structural reforms and spiritual deepening.’ ¹⁴ The precise character of these documents and the votes taken to accept them, which contribute to any binding authority they embody and what influence they might have on ecclesial practice in local German churches going forward remain to be seen.

The Way of Restorative Justice

Restorative justice has emerged over the last 50 years as a way to address the harm inflicted on individuals and communities as a result of behaviour that is abusive, aggressive, and at times legally criminal, from bullying in schools to violence in war, and also including unwanted sexual advances and behaviour. In cases of criminal behaviour, restorative justice offers an alternative way, for some as a complement and for others a substitute, to standard approaches to conflict negotiation and criminal justice, providing a way to grapple with questions like ‘What harm has been done? What needs have arisen and whose obligation is it to meet those needs?’ And more poignantly, from victims to perpetrators, ‘Why did you do this to me? How could you do this to me?’ ¹⁵

In the 1990s this approach began to be adopted in cases of sexual violence, including the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy. This communicative process, conducted at the initiative of the victim with the offender, is mediated by professionals, and joined in certain cases by family members, and representatives of communities of care of both the victim and the offender.

Restorative-justice methods aim to help victim-survivors understand the offender’s motivation, to make clear the kinds of harm the offender has inflicted, and to educe the offender’s acknowledgement that this abusive behaviour did in fact take place. The perpetrator’s acknowledgment of the abuse helps confirm that the victim is genuinely a survivor and not just a victim of the abuser’s actions. The process can involve the survivor’s expression of forgiveness of the abuser, but this is neither required, nor presumed. The victim-survivor may also seek agreements with the offender concerning forms of accountability and reparation.

The way of restorative justice provides resources that victim-survivors can use to offset many obstacles and limitations that the legal justice system entails. For example, in Ireland, the US, and Australia, the common law tradition features an adversarial approach to accuser and defendant, but one in which the prosecuting attorney has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the alleged crime occurred, and where a verdict can be dismissed by the judge on a technicality. Trials can be punishing for victim-accusers, and are regularly profoundly disappointing when little, or no justice for the accuser is reached.

Restorative justice provides a moral framework that is deeply rooted in indigenous American traditions, the Christian tradition, and other religious traditions. It is philosophically coherent and therapeutically informed, and it upholds two sets of contrasting and contested claims: On one hand, restorative justice defends and recognizes a morally appropriate, righteous, justifiable form of anger as virtuous for individuals and communities. ¹⁶ This can be clearly distinguished from anger that seeks retribution and revenge that can justify inflicting escalating harm. Simultaneously, restorative justice offers a victim-survivor a way to begin the process of forgiving the abuser and perhaps even reconciliation. It acknowledges, however, that forgiveness and reconciliation may be understandably difficult, if not impossible for the victim-survivor to achieve. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not simple decisions, but in some sense gifts from God; restorative justice may provide the conditions for these to take place, but they are neither the primary nor necessary outcomes. The victim-survivor should feel no such obligation. Instead, restorative justice provides a possible avenue for addressing the harm done, and can contribute to a restorative, healing process. But depending on the kinds and levels of damage inflicted by the abusive behaviour, even these outcomes may not be attained.

A victim-survivor often suffers from various psychological difficulties: depression, anger, anxiety, self-hatred, self-abusive behaviour, substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and dissociation. ¹⁷ These are manifestations of the harm done to the individual. But these criminal acts also damage the person’s relationships with others—parents, siblings, teachers, friends, and more, as well as harm communities and institutions. It often happens that the victim’s relationship with God is profoundly damaged if not irreparably destroyed.

Restorative justice concentrates on the personal character of abusive behaviour, and on the individual victim-survivor in relation to the accused. The offender in Catholic contexts is usually an individual priest in a parish or in a school. Bishops and provincials are not often intended interlocutors, but a significant number of them have learned the importance of meeting with victim-survivors, hearing their stories, and discovering the many ways bishops, provincials, and even popes have contributed to their brokenness and bear some responsibility.

Yet this raises a difficult issue. Can a comprehensive healing process take place for the victim or possibly even the offender without taking into account other factors that have influenced priestly formation, and the practices whereby priests were assigned to a church or school or another institution? Can real healing take place without bringing into the process bishops and provincials of individual clergy, acknowledging their relation to the national, and global networks of power exercised by bishops and religious superiors, by posing the difficult questions of victims, which might include the following: ‘why did you, bishop or provincial, make it possible for me to be abused?’ ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ ‘What can you, bishop or religious superior, and even the college of bishops do to address the suffering I have endured and the wounding to which I have been subjected, often repeatedly because of what you have done or not done?’ Awkward questions, no doubt, but not unreasonable. How has such an organizational culture been created and sustained in the church to socialize others into it and maintain a code of silence and concealment?

As valuable as the way of restorative justice is for individuals, and the ripple effects of healing it might have for the web of relationships with abused people, is there not something in addition to restorative justice that is needed, beyond civil or canonical legal procedures? The Vatican meeting of episcopal leaders of bishops’ conferences from around the world in February 2019 served such a purpose, but what more local roles can diocesan, provincial, and plenary synods and councils play in this movement toward responsibility and accountability, so necessary for the healing of Catholic communities?

To my knowledge, victim-survivors of clergy sex abuse and their families and friends have no process for pursuing a way of restorative justice with bishops and superiors of religious orders as it bears upon their acts of complicity and concealment that have led to destructive forms of behaviour on individuals, loved ones, and communities without any degree of responsibility, accountability, and just penalty.

To remedy this lack will require that practices of restorative justice would include meetings between victim-survivors and bishops, religious superiors, and perhaps in some instances even the pope. But even these meetings must be complemented by synodal ways that allow for the practice of free and honest speech that enable members of the church together to discern not just the personal factors that have contributed to abuse, but also the cultural and systemic dynamics that must be identified and addressed.

The Way of Seekers at the Margins

In the midst of the particular historical constellation of controversies and conflicts in the church that marks this age, there are many people, frequently young people, who find themselves at the margins of the Catholic Church. Some are at the margins within the church, conflicted, dissatisfied, yet still participating in the sacraments and church activities to some degree. Others are at the margins on the outside of the church, disaffiliated and disengaged from the life and mission of the church. We can’t blame modern forms of secularism or individualism entirely for this marginal existence, what some associate with a post-secular world. This marginal existence is to a large degree the result of the difficulties taking place in the church.

Many people self-identify as disaffiliated and yet they convey an inchoate desire for God, for spirituality, for wonder and awe, for deep laments and anguish, with contemplative impulses. They regularly combine these with a passion for various forms of active engagement in works of mercy and work for justice, for various forms of solidarity and accompaniment with those who suffer because of the colour of their skin, their native home, their religion, their gender or sexual orientation, or with the desecrated earth. They seek to fashion a spiritually meaningful life path that they often do not find in parishes or recognized Catholic communities. They might be searching through music, through art, through encounters with nature, or with more conventional religious practices; in these, they may find some sense of transcendence or profound immanence in myriad forms.

On this third path one encounters people who long for doctrinal changes and ecclesial reforms to which the church, to date, has not been receptive. Some of these people, whether they remain active within the church or not, piece together fragments of a form of life as a discerning individual, perhaps some manifestation of a contemplative-in-action that remains profoundly Catholic in principle, but maybe not in institutional identification. They give signs of a Catholic imagination and an embodied sense of piety, damaged and betrayed by the church, by leaders, and by parishioners. How do people live with this sense of being wounded and disoriented at this moment in the church? Surveys indicate that there are many living on the borderlands of the church who profess core beliefs of the faith, but they reject, for instance, the church’s restrictions on who can be ordained and on various teachings in sexual ethics.

Catholics do have theological resources for addressing such ambivalence and even rejection in relation to certain teachings, but they are often left in the dark about them. There has long been recognized a gradation of beliefs, some are more credibly justified than others, a position formally taught during the scholastic period. Using the precision of logic and legal reasoning, certain theological notes were attributed to various teachings. These demarcations were included in theological manuals during the scholastic period and taught in schools of theology through the mid-20th century.

Of the ten notes utilized, three have remained influential. ¹⁸ Certain doctrines are maintained as central core convictions of faith, official dogmas of the Catholic Faith, belief in God, the source of all, who sends Jesus of Nazareth and the Spirit of God for the sake of salvation and offering new life. A second level is identified as authoritative doctrine, such as moral teachings, taught by the official teaching authority of the pope and the bishops as based on teachings of scripture and tradition, but acknowledged as potentially fallible in part or more comprehensively, and therefore susceptible to change, modification, nuance, and development. A third group is composed of doctrines held as necessary to support other dogmatic teachings, such as, the officially recognized books of the sacred scripture. The centre holds for most believers, perhaps with qualifications, but there are increasing questions about the second and third levels.

At the Second Vatican Council these technical distinctions were not denied but were replaced by more personal, pastoral, and biblical modes of expression that aimed to be more compelling to wider circles of Catholics, but also ecumenically sympathetic, that is, seeking to articulate a shared heritage of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant faith communities amidst their differences. The formula ‘hierarchy of truths’ was introduced at Vatican II to name the attempt to search for shared core beliefs and acknowledge contrasting convictions and interpretations of the central doctrines.

Karl Rahner in the years after the council often thought and wrote about the creedal faith of Catholics and other Christians. Without denying the core creedal faith of Catholics, he wrote about how each individual formulates their own concrete catechism with their own personal hierarchy of truths. ¹⁹ Believers can affirm the creedal foundations of faith, but they may interpret them and their significance in different ways. There can be a different personal imaginative construal of the core beliefs about the Triune God, the person and mission of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in the world and among diverse peoples and life forms in the world, and the nature and implications of salvation, and the fullness of life.

In the decades that followed, informed by countless ecumenical dialogues, Catholic ecumenists Margaret O’Gara and Paul Murray championed what has become known as ‘receptive ecumenism,’ which emphasizes that there can be ‘a mutual exchange of gifts’ between different communities of faith as they share their distinctive receptions of core beliefs, and that such reciprocity between church communions can provide ways for each to address certain forms of limitations and even woundedness within their own traditions. Based on the ecumenical work that resulted in the 1999 Joint Statement of Catholics and Lutherans on Justification by Faith Alone, there was a particular acknowledgement by some Lutherans and Catholics that we can rightly speak of a ‘differentiated consensus’ among Christian communities, based on past affirmations, and Lutheran Theodor Dieter also proposed, there is a differentiating consensus that may grow over time. ²⁰

These various formulations offer resources for Catholics and other Christians to embrace their conviction about the importance of the exercise of the freedom of an informed conscience operative in discernment in matters of faith. This can provide a way to acknowledge that a differentiated consensus can make room for dissent in matters of faith and morals.

With the way of seekers at the margins in mind, we must ask whether and how these various formulations might offer resources for those struggling in and with the Catholic Church today? Can we find a way for seekers at the margins to be welcomed in such a synodal way and as needed in a way of restorative justice? If so, what would that require?

One of the central requirements would be that all Catholics, perhaps especially bishops and clergy, would honour the efforts of each church member who strives to discern the sense of the faith in their own personal life, and that such ordained leaders would likewise respect the collective discernment of the sense of the faithful taking place in communities of faith, ecclesial movements, and base communities. This requirement also involves cultivating the spiritual skills for discerning the sense of faith in one’s own life, but also communally in the sense of the faithful. This is the great baptismal gift of the Spirit that Vatican II highlighted.

Why are learning to discern the sense of the faith and the sense of the faithful so central, so basic for finding one’s own way with others? It is because consulting the faithful, and I would say, deliberating and engaging in decision-making among the faithful about the life and mission of the church, is based on the central conviction that the Spirit is actively at work in the faithful as they receive the Word of God, understand the self-communication of God, and apply this received revelation. When papal and episcopal teachings are not received by the faithful, this may reveal a breakdown in communication, a failure of understanding on the part of the faithful. However, it may also happen that a teaching is not received due to an accurate, authentic, and possibly truthful discernment by an individual or community. Thus, theologians speak of the dissent of the faithful that emerges through an exercise of an informed conscience.

The post-Vatican II era of controversies and conflicts in the church must be understood in relation to the specific problems associated with clerical sex abuse and episcopal concealment. To address these conflicts and problems, the church, including the lay faithful, must discern together by heeding the Spirit’s voice addressing the churches through the sense of the faithful in their aspiration to receive the Word of God, but also in the laments of the faithful suffering from the woundedness in the church and in the world.

Conclusion

Let me end with a variation on Gerry O’Hanlon’s question. Can the quiet revolution of Pope Francis lead to a synodal church in Ireland? ²¹ We can certainly imagine an Irish national synod comparable to the plenary council in Australia. But the only way to make it possible is to implement the basic ingredients of synodality at all levels of the church, not just in diocesan synods like Limerick, but in parish assemblies, ecclesial movements, and base communities.

This will also require, following Pope Francis, being attentive to the conflicts that are revealed in the grievances and mourning being voiced in the church, and cultivating among all members the courage and humility to speak out with bold honesty and humble audacity about these conflicts and laments. As Francis has personally demonstrated on various occasions, we need to be patient in situations of conflict, and we must be attuned to the antinomies and dialectics that mark both one’s spiritual life and ecclesial life. Put simply, if synodality is to find expression in Ireland at any level, faith communities must heed the voice of the Spirit of God in the sense of the faithful and in the laments of the faithful—not only by those who are active in the church in high profile ways, but also by the wounded, the marginalized, and the disaffiliated at the margins.

My implicit overarching argument is that realizing a synodal Catholic Church in Ireland, or in my own country, or in any diocese, parish, and community will require pursuing not only the synodal way, but also the way of restorative justice that should include forums for circles of mutual understanding in polarized communities, and certainly a way for seekers at the margins. All three are necessary ingredients for realizing the synodal character of the church in any land.