Synod Forum: the People of God as the protagonist of mission

By Antonella Palermo

“The People of God is never simply the sum of the baptised; rather, it is the ‘we’ of the Church, the communitarian and historical subject of synodality and mission”: this quote, from Instrumentum laboris of the Synod was the starting point for the Forum “The People of God as Subject of the Mission”, which took place on the afternoon of 9 October at the General Curia of the Jesuits, in Rome.

The discussion was moderated by Klara A. Csiszar, professor of pastoral theology at the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University of Linz, in Austria, and a member of the Culture-Religion-Society doctoral school of the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj, in Romania.

On mission by attraction, without exclusion and in freedom

Thomas Söding holds a doctorate in theology, and teaches New Testament at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum Catholic Theological Faculty. He was a member of the International Theological Commission 2004-2014 and currently, in addition to being a Consultant of the German Bishops” Conference Faith Commission, he is Vice-President of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) and of the Synodal Way of the Catholic Church in Germany.

In his address, Dr Söding, with an exegetical, hermeneutical and very emphatic perspective on ecumenism, said that mission is the horizon of the Church,  

He said it is not the task of Jesus’ disciples to control the people’s faith, but to make it possible.

Further, he claimed, it is not the competence of the twelve apostles to exclude anyone from the missionary community, because Jesus’ mission always requires an outstretched hand.

He pointed to St Peter and St Mary Magdalene, but also the housewife in the parable of the yeast as examples of missionary faith. “There is only one mission,” Söding pointed out, “and that is to proclaim the coming kingdom of God. Mission through attraction is the key.”

According to St Paul, he continued, missionary growth is all the more effective the more one is filled with faith, a faith that can never be taken for granted. “One must empathise with others in order to involve and encourage even the weak,” the professor insisted, noting that the apostle “does not make believers dependent on himself but proclaims freedom in Christ.”

Theological competence, he said, is not a privilege of bishops, who are a gift to the Church to the extent that they stimulate new forms of participation in Church life.

Finally, Söding highlighted that expectations have increased on the part of the lay faithful who wish to contribute actively and maturely to the life of the Church: “They expect to be listened to and they ask for more transparency.”

The Church, sacramental subject, interpreter of the Gospel here and now

Ormond Rush is a priest, associate professor and reader at the Australian Catholic University, Brisbane campus. Elected president of the Australian Catholic Theological Association for three terms, he has served as an expert in the two assemblies of the Australian Plenary Council and is a consultant to the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.

In his speech, Rush emphasised the inclusive sense of the Church, understood as the entire body of the faithful, in which the hierarchy is included.

He illustrated four aspects of this understanding: the people of God as an interpreting subject; the people of God as a subject conditioned by time; the people of God as located in a place that is important for incarnating the Gospel; the people of God as a sacramental subject.

By virtue of these connotations, Rush spoke of how the early Christian communities needed to interpret the Gospel in order to apply it in the various local churches that gradually emerged. Various canons surfaced but were considered faithful to the message of Christ.

“This Synod is an interpreting subject that seeks the guidance of the Spirit for the meaning of the living and full Gospel,” Rush stated. Time and space are obviously data that shape the Church and the Gospel itself.

Finally, Rush noted an analogy between paradigmatic 5th century Council of Chalcedon, and the Second Vatican Council. In Lumen gentium, Vatican II emphasised the complex divine and human reality of the Church, similar to the divine and human natures of Christ defined in the earlier Council. Lumen gentium, he said, indicates that downplaying the divine can lead to seeing synodality as a merely democratic process (the majority wins); on the other hand, downplaying the human element can lead to seeing synodality as a merely consultative process (only the hierarchy can decide).

In conclusion, Rush said, “we must avoid the double risk” and look to Vatican II to maintain a balance.

Rediscovering the link between law, theology, and life

“We must rediscover the link between law, theology and life,” said Donata Horak, professor of Canon Law at the Alberoni Theological Study in Piacenza, affiliated with the Pontifical University Angelicum and at the School of Theological Formation in Piacenza. She is a member of the Presidential Council of the Coordination of Italian Theologians (CTI) and secretary of the Coordination of Italian Theological Associations (CATI).

Dr Horak’s contribution offered an examination of the exercise of power and representation in a synodal Church, with the premise that “whatever reform we do, we will do it to rediscover what is the authentic original will of the founder.”

The goal and the way is to make the Gospel credible for just relations and a human coexistence in which we all find ourselves brothers and sisters.

Responding to a contribution from the audience observing that mission is not something irenic and made palatable, but often has to do with a dimension of real struggle with evil, Horak said the reforms must not aim at “self-preservation, imposing ourselves, reiterating, or defending ourselves from the world, but must be for Him, for Christ who sought to liberate lives.”

She reaffirmed that the Church is a people composed of women and men who all bear the priestly, prophetic, and kingly function of Christ. All are co-responsible for the mission and equal in Christ.

She dwelt on the ownership of power which, she said, “is a knot that the law will have to resolve.”

It is necessary, according to the professor, to unravel the contradictions where “a kind of double ecclesiology seems to emerge on certain fundamental questions.” We must rediscover the foundation of the rehabilitation of each person in the exercise of power, she explained, pointing out that the Canon Code is currently unclear on this point.

Overcoming the dichotomy between consultation and decision making

“The current discipline of synodal institutes and participatory bodies reveals a minimalist vision of consultation,” Horak said.

She recalled that in the law of the Latin Church, a rigid dichotomy has taken root that contrasts Synods – always and “only” consultative – with Councils, which instead have deliberative power. This rigid distinction is unknown in the law of the Eastern Churches.

“There is a resistance to the participation of the people of God, which even goes beyond the limits of the law,” she said. “If the Code were at least executed in all its possibilities, we would have a much more vital and participative Church; for example, the particular councils (plenary and provincial), which have deliberative power, have remained almost unused.”

Horak expressed the “need to rediscover some dynamics of shared deliberative voting, distributed to different subjects, to pluri-ministerial bodies, because of the competence in the matter or the ecclesial situation in which a decision must be made. The hierarchical principle must therefore be included in the dynamics of complex and asymmetrical ecclesial relations, where charisms, ministries, offices, and competences are variously distributed, always in the communion guaranteed by the bishops, who can attribute deliberative vote to consultative bodies, Synods, or pastoral commissions”.

The knot of representation

The synodal bodies of the future will have to be representative of the entire people of God, taking into account professions, skills, and characteristics of the territory, the jurist insisted. She called for a recovery of “the authentic sense of consultation that is truly the condition of ecclesiality in the exercise of authority.”

Horak added that deliberative power, even if it is formally legitimate, makes sense if it is the result of community discernment, because the Church cannot be a monarchy.

In conclusion, she asked how can we proceed with the reforms of Canon Law that are required of us in the present time, so that the law is at the service of the life and mission of the Church?

Going into the specifics, “a first step,” she observed, “would be to improve the language of the Code by eliminating contradictory expressions with respect to contemporary ecclesiology, to make the opinions expressed by the consultative bodies obligatory ad validitatem, to equip each council with regulations on elections and candidacies, and to introduce new synodal institutions. There are so many possibilities that the current system would allow, if fully implemented or reformed.”

Canonology has a bolder vision

We could go even further, Horak said: “At a time when codifications are in crisis, the Church’s order could rediscover the vitality that belongs to its tradition, overcoming the formal rigidities that have taken hold in the last century.”

The study of canon law, “which has been too complacent about the exegesis of the Code, is today called upon to have a bolder and more ‘catholic’ (universal) vision”.

She specified that this could mean providing the Churches not with new codes, but with more streamlined instruments that include procedural rules so that the Churches can legislate autonomously and give themselves those reforms necessary for the proclamation of the Gospel to be credible in their concrete cultural context.

Universal law would increasingly have the task of fostering a “healthy decentralisation” and a healthy differentiation of the discipline of institutes, ministries, and ecclesiastical structures, always without prejudice to the communion that is the fundamental right/duty of every baptised person in the People of God.

The Church is not master of the mission, but its servant

Bishop Lúcio Andrice Muandula of Xai-Xai, Mozambique, had the task of supplementing the debate with a biblical-pastoral reflection. President of the Episcopal Conference of his country and first vice-president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (Secam), he exhorted the people of God to a mission that does not come from man but from the Father.

He invited people to go out of themselves in a Church that “is not missionary master but missionary servant.” He also reiterated that the Church cannot close itself up in a self-referential attitude: “It is not just a matter of performing a service of maintenance of the Christian community but of engaging in dialogue with the world.” This, he said, is an attitude that must grow from the Christian initiation of each person, as happens in southern Africa, where parish life is grafted onto the practical needs of the territories.

In the exchange of questions with those present at the Forum, the need emerged to clear the field of the concern that to speak of the People of God while not emphasising that one is speaking of the “Body of the Church,” is to “lapse” into a sociological category that neglects the divine datum.

A theologian and missionary asked the question: Where is this missionary people if there are so few people in the Church? “The engine of everything,” he said, “of getting to know each other and making synods is to create joy.”

Perhaps, he suggested it is precisely this trait of joy, which seems to have been somewhat lost lately, that must be recovered “through a more solid and continuous Christian formation.”