Plenary Matters

Christopher White, Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, sat down with Geraldine during his recent visit to the Diocese of Parramatta to give some revealing anecdotes and insights into the synod's first assembly.

He also told Geraldine any correspondence to the pope on matters like women deacons can be sent c/- Prefecture of the Papal Household, 00120 Vatican City State.

You can watch the interview on the Diocese of Parramatta's YouTube channel, as part of the 'Bishop Vincent Presents' series.

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The synod released its letter to the People of God, while Pope Francis made his own intervention on the Church as 'God's faithful people.' Geraldine chats with Julie on her last day on the press floor about her experience observing on the ground and how synodality might be made more concrete in the coming months.

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As the synod prepares its final documents to go out from Rome to the whole Church at the end of this week, the real work of the first assembly is only beginning. The Tablet correspondent Christopher Lamb, who covered the Plenary Council in Australia, tells Geraldine that this synod is history in the making despite some questioning its legitimacy.

This episode was recorded on the floor of the press room and filmed by a PBS documentary team. We are trying to resolve the audio issues on Geraldine's end, please bear with us!

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You can also read Br Mark O'Connor's fourth letter from the synod, 'The meaning is in the waiting'.

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Just over the halfway point of this first assembly of the synod and the tensions on the floor are no surprise, according to Australian Augustinian Fr Tony Banks. He has a unique vantage point living with five of the synod delegates right beside St Peter's Square and tells Geraldine that the emotions and personal testimonies in the room, which are reportedly disturbing some delegates, are part of the process. While the effects of synodality won't be felt for some years to come, he believes this synod is cementing the notion of a church under pressure to change.

Read Loup Besmond de Senneville's article, 'Discordant voices inside the Synod'

Watch Cardinal Hollerich and Fr Timothy Radcliffe speak at the opening of the final module in the Instrumentum Laboris on participation, governance and authority.

You can also read Timothy Radcliffe's reflection on the woman at the well, as well as Mark O'Connor's third letter from Rome via the Diocese of Parramatta's Catholic Outlook.

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As the first full week of the synod wraps up Geraldine speaks to Br Mark O’Connor who is in Rome watching and listening on the ground. The pre-synod retreat led by Dominican priest Timothy Radcliffe set a reflective tone for the men and women who will spend the rest of October at round tables just like at Australia’s Plenary Council.

While inside the synod hall delegates seem to be learning the new rules of engagement, Mark is also keeping a close eye and ear on Vatican press proceedings.

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Highly recommended:

• Timothy Radcliffe’s six retreat talks: Hoping against hope; At home in God and God at home in us; Friendship; Conversation on the way to Emmaus; Authority; The Spirit of Truth

• Mark’s Letter One and Two from the synod

• Christopher Lamb’s Tablet podcast with Austen Ivereigh

• New York Times article, ‘Vatican Conference Draws All Stripes to Rome, Welcome or Not’

Google synodality, then discuss: how can Catholicism attract modern searchers? Geraldine goes back to two ‘Young and the Restless’ guests from last year, Grace Brennan and Joe Wehbe, to explore how they each think the church can better serve diverse communities.

In regional Australia Grace sees a parallel between empty shopfronts and empty churches, in need of creative solutions to arrest decline. For Joe, it’s the individuals who can hold communities together and are often unaware of their influence on those around them who emerge as the true leaders. But how do people become the protagonists and not just passive recipients, as the recent World Youth Day in Portugal also showed?

Plenary Matters will return in October for a new series during the synod in Rome.

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How does the church engage creatively with the modern world? For Richard Lennan, who did his doctorate in Austria on Karl Rahner, looking to the future to see how we should be in the present has been the project of his theological life for nearly four decades. This is the 'Gaudium et spes' approach to the world: neither naïve nor fearful about the future, but always moving ourselves towards God rather than reducing God to our place and time.

Now professor at Boston College teaching the next generation of theologians, he wants church leaders to better support these lay women and men in bridging the gulf between theology and the church. He thinks Francis should hold a synod on the role of theology, which he sees as the antidote to the growing polarisation in the church and society.

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The restoration of women to the diaconate is the urgent issue of our time, says Dr Phyllis Zagano. How many of us even understand the essence of deacons’ roles: its emphasis on service but also its impressive history in the life of the church. The early church ordained deacons to provide vital pastoral and social services. Deacons could be made bishops and, in a few cases, even made pope! Deacons disappeared into the priesthood after the 12th century until the Second Vatican Council restored the diaconal ministry, but so far not for women.

Until a woman can stand alongside the Pope in St Peter’s, proclaiming the Gospel and preaching, the church will remain silent on the dignity of all humans, Phyllis Zagano believes. Francis has introduced women into managerial functions of the church, and the issue of women’s ministerial roles, including the diaconate, is on the agenda for the synod in Rome. Could the stained glass ceiling be about to break open, restoring women to the centre of the church?

Further reading:

See also two Australian resources: Liturgy on the margins on diaconal ministry and the Australian Women Preach podcast.

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The future church must be more incarnational, says Professor Massimo Faggioli, if it is to respond to the needs of modern Catholics. That is the big question on the table at the upcoming synod in Rome: who will be the ministers in this church?

Critics of the synod reject what they see as a ‘paperwork church’ – a technocracy dressed in any ideological guise. The church is less centralised than it was during Vatican II, but the tone struck so far in this synod has also been different from Vatican II: more respectful, less radical, more hopeful perhaps?

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Australia’s Plenary Council set the scene for the global synod as onlookers at home and in Rome wondered if the Australian church would emerge intact. Now it’s the turn of some of our seasoned Council members, Sr Clare Condon, Emeritus Professor John Warhurst and Francis Sullivan to reflect on their disappointments and hopes in a synodal church.

Both the working document for the synod and the list of people who will participate in the meetings in Rome have the makings of a meeting like no other in church history. But will the restless movement that we are invited to join lead to a church that is still recognisably Catholic? Can diversity hold us together in the end?

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