Cardinal Grech: Synodal process is mature fruit of Vatican II

Cardinal Mario Grech, the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, spoke Wednesday morning at the opening of the #250PUL with a Lectio Magistralis on the Second Vatican Council and synodality. For the Secretary General of the Synod, the current synodal process is a “mature fruit of Vatican II” and shows how “a correct reception of the Council’s ecclesiology is activating such fruitful processes to open up scenarios that not even the Council had imagined and in which the action of the Spirit that guides the Church is made manifest”.

Dwelling then on the next steps of the ongoing synodal process, the cardinal explained why the Document for the Continental Stage will be sent to the local Churches, explaining at the same time the concept of “Restitution”. “If the prophetic dimension resides in the People of God — the totality of the baptized (cf. LG 12) — and the first act of the Church is listening, then it is precisely to the People of God that the outcome of that listening must be returned. And since the People of God live in the Churches, the Document must be sent to the Churches.”

For the Secretary of the Synod, this important ecclesial act “is neither a concession nor a deference to those on the margins of a project; it is not a gesture of bon ton to gain some sympathy or some cheap consensus; not even a report — indeed, an account — to someone who claims the right to know. It is a purely synodal ecclesial act, reflecting in the circularity of the process, the ‘mutual interiority’ that exists between the particular Churches and the universal Church.” In short, for Cardinal Grech, sending the Document for the Continental Stage to the Churches is “a due act”.

Lastly, the Secretary-General concluded his speech with a wish that “the Church continues to live the synodal process in the logic of listening to God and to others, to the Spirit in others... If there is one disposition that the Council Fathers lived and handed down to the Church as a legacy, it is that of listening to one another to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church”.