This Synod, as Pope Francis, has been insisting, is not about producing some clever document. Nor is it simply a meeting of bishops
It is an invitation to come together, to listen to one another, to form a loving family of God.
This demands much from all of us—especially from the leadership.
How do we see the Church?
Are we what we are supposed to be?
How can we become what Jesus wanted us to be?
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The church is not a pyramid in which “those on top” are authorized to give orders to “those below.”
There is nothing higher in the church than Baptism. Did you read that? Nothing higher. My religious vows or priestly ordination or the bishop’s ordination or the cardinal’s red hat or someone being appointed rector or provincial DOES NOT MAKE ANY OF US HIGHER.
Do we, with special roles in the church—cardinals, bishops, priests, religious superiors, vowed religious—really believe it?
Do we live by it?
Do we want a church of this type—of loving listening, respect for everyone, eagerness to serve, closeness to the poorest? Honestly—do we? Or do we want—and promote—an understanding of church where some are higher and more important?
Do we listen to those in our care? To the “lower” and “less important” members?
Do we, religious superiors, for instance, see our role as the right to command or a call to serve? Do we really believe that everyone in the community is equally important?
When we use words like “consecrated life,” do we remember that the real consecration is Baptism, not religious profession or ordination. If so, we are not higher or more important. We all have the SAME CALL—to live as Jesus taught and showed.
“Vocation” is not something special a few people have. It is God’s call to everyone to lead a holy—that is, Christ-like—life. My mother’s or my married sister’s vocation is as sacred as mine. If I speak or act as if I were on a higher rung on some imaginary ladder, I would betray Jesus.
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To begin to do what the Synod asks us to do, I asked Fr Gilbert Choondal SDB to write the Cover Story, to help us situate our discussion. He has been reading and writing about the Synod, and animating church groups on this theme.
Then we asked a few people from different walks of life to tell us how they see and experience the church, and what they would suggest to make it what it should be.
We sent five questions to each one. Let me summarize them here:
- What comes to your mind when you hear the word, “Church”?
- Tick one or more options that you think describes the church today (we gave them 5 options).
- How do you find the exercise of leadership in the church?
- Is the church today what Jesus meant it to be?
- Your suggestions for making the church what it should be?
Have a look at their answers, based on their personal experience.
Listen to a sister, a married woman, a professional layman, a brother, a priest, a seminarian, a young woman working in IT. They are from different places, settings, background and age groups.
I admit a huge gap in this sample: there are no voices from among the illiterate, the hungry, the jobless, the huge majority eking out a living in minimal—and at times inhuman—conditions. If we are what we are meant to be, their needs and sufferings will be at the heart of our planning, of our ministerial action and of our long and expensive formation. But, I could not get written answers for a magazine from any one of them.
May be, you can write your own answers. In a family or religious community or parish or diocese, we can listen to each other’s answers.
And then see what we need to do to become the church we are meant to be.
This Synod is not meant to produce a nice theological document, but to help us all to become what we are meant to be—a mutually respectful, listening, caring family of God.
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Like to watch an interesting short YouTube video on the Synod? I enjoyed the creative drawings, well-spoken text: see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5lAktuejwo
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Christmas: Five articles help us grasp its meaning and beauty; see for yourselves.
I thank the friends who agreed to share their answers. I thank God for giving us a Pope who calls us all back to the essentials—both with his words and gestures, and, more profoundly, through the witness of a good life.
Listen. Learn. Let us build a caring, listening, healing church.
Fr Joe Mannath SDB
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