Role of synod: to listen, to learn, not to
decide
By GARY
MacEOIN Special to the National Catholic
Reporter Rome
The synod is a discussion group, Archbishop Daniel E.
Pilarczyk of Cincinnati told journalists at the Vatican press office November
29. He was summing up the work of some 300 synodal fathers and collaborators
who during the previous two weeks had made 254 interventions, or
speeches -- eight minutes each for synod members, six for experts and other
lesser luminaries. The Synod of Bishops for America convened Nov. 16 to run to
Dec. 12.
Few bishops can resist the invitation to speak for eight
minutes, said Pilarczyk. Each brings the problems and experiences
of his own diocese, trying to add something to the overall issue of the Synod
for America. It is not an efficient way to do business, but we are not here to
do business. We are here to listen, to learn and at the end to produce a series
of propositions for the pope, recommendations he may use or not at his
discretion.
The press has been given summaries of the 254 interventions, all
made in the popes presence. Each speaker had previously handed in his
summary along with the full text, both in writing and on a diskette. As part of
the Vaticans obsession with secrecy, the full texts are unavailable to
journalists, so the quotations that follow are from these official
summaries.
Are the speakers telling the pope what they think? They are
afraid, says Pepe Alvarez Icaza of Mexico City, who with his wife Luzma
represented the Christian family in Vatican Council II. They know from
previous synods that the pope follows every word, scowling when he hears
anything he doesnt like.
They are afraid, says Paulist Fr. Kenneth McGuire, an
anthropologist who is studying the dynamics of the synod.
They are afraid, echoes Holy Cross Fr. Robert Pelton
who is here with a team of six lay women and men in search of creative ideas
for promoting Christian base communities in the United States. Team members are
church employees who coordinate base communities in parishes from Maryland to
Texas.
In response to charges that the synod fathers are afraid of the
pope, Fr. Paul Minnihan, of San Jose, Calif., says Not so.
Minnihan, a doctoral student at the University of Louvain, is working on a
dissertation on the synod. He admits that synod language can often be enigmatic
because of curial conventions. They are telling the pope what their
problems are.
Are you sure? I challenged him. Many bishops
anguish at the shortage of priests, and Im told they want approval of
married priests and women priests. Where is that in the
interventions?
Its there, said Minnihan, pointing to the
intervention of Bishop Angélico Såndalo Bernardino, auxiliary of
São Paulo, Brazil. The number of priests in Brazil, this bishop said,
has grown from 5,000 to 8,000 in 20 years. But the situation is still
desperate, an average of one parish priest for 20,000 Catholics. They are
overloaded, under stress, lack time to take care of their physical and
spiritual health. They survive only because there are 75 pastoral agents
for each priest. How can we solve these problems? the bishop asks.
How can the synod help provide a creative solution to the problem of
ordained ministers and their collaborators?
If this is a call for women priests, it is so cautious as to
confirm Alvarez Icazas insistence that the bishops are afraid to anger
the pope.
Bishop Gerald Wiesner, Prince George, Canada, was even more
cautious when he expressed the need to address the matter of women in the
church and called for a just and balanced collaboration of
women in leadership roles.
One bishop did speak openly about another touchy issue. Bishop
Néstor Herrera Heredia of Machala, Ecuador, said that there are
situations in which marriages break up that do not involve a denial of the love
of Christ, nor of matrimonial indissolubility and fidelity. The roots of such
situations lie rather in economic, social and cultural causes that precipitate
free union, divorce and new unions because of the necessity to subsist and to
maintain and educate the children. Many such couples participate actively in
the liturgy. Cannot there be a way to allow them to receive the Bread of Life
in the Eucharist?
Poor Herrera was quickly shot down by no less a watchdog of truth
than Archbishop Jorge Medina Estévez, pro-prefect of the Congregation
for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
Our life should be like a sacrifice, living, holy and
agreeable to God, Medina said. ... It is illogical to seek to
participate in the eucharistic communion while ones concrete life
expresses a rejection of the law of God, as is clear in situations of
concubinage and adultery.
About half of the interventions were homilies. Its risky, as
Pilarczyk said, to invite a bishop to speak. With my whole heart I thank
the Holy Father for having called us together for this Synod of America, our
America, one prelate said. My intervention is to stress the
importance of the formation of our priests. ... The priest must be holy, wise
and sound. ... A monthly retreat and an annual obligatory retreat. Frequent
confession. ...
Some homilies, of course, are worth listening to. Since the
Eucharist is a key instrument of solidarity, said Cardinal Adam Maida of
Detroit, every eucharistic celebration should include a petition insisting on
our Christian obligation to work for justice. And an empty chair should be
located prominently to remind us of the vast numbers of hungry people in our
world.
The other half of the interventions formulated problems and
suggested possible solutions. Many seemed to be groping for a new paradigm, a
church in which the role of the laity in evangelization would be much
greater.
We must convert the parish, said Archbishop José Ruiz Navas
of Ecuador, into a community of small communities and movements. In this
way, the pastor becomes a stimulater of the lay leaders and a catechist of the
catechists, so that all those baptized -- adults and children -- can become
living and responsible members.
Bishop Francisco Robles Ortega, Toluca, Mexico, explored a similar
idea: personal parishes for people of similar interests in big cities. Teams of
lay people would run these parishes under the direction of a priest.
The search for a new paradigm returned constantly to the need to
enlist ever greater numbers of the laity in tasks that in recent centuries have
been the exclusive preserve of the clergy. It takes less reading between the
lines than in Minnihans search for requests for women priests to see here
a response to, and rejection of, the recent curial instruction to limit the
laity to worldly matters and leave the sacred to the clergy (NCR, Dec.
5).
In a typical intervention on this issue, Archbishop Marcello Pinto
Carvalheira of Paraiba, Brazil, said that lay people are given a
missionary commitment by baptism. For a population of 150 million, Brazil
has 15,000 priests and 890,000 lay associates.
Today, more than ever, the priority task of the New
Evangelization belongs to the entire people of God. The action of the laity is
necessary here, and in many situations it is decisive, he said.
Many speakers stressed the urgency of inculturation of the gospel
in the indigenous cultures of the Americas. The most outspoken was Harry
Lafond, head of the Muskeg Lake tribe of Saskatchewan, who was given six
minutes as an expert. The gospel came to the First Peoples linked to
unconscious European imperialism, he said. Natives lost much in terms of
languages, culture and family lives, as well as their own spiritual traditions.
A new partnership in a new millennium must be charted on the gospel of
Jesus Christ and be marked by mutual education, open dialogue and a mutual
solidarity of justice. It must also take some religious risk, especially in
terms of marrying native spirituality with Christianity and in terms of church
organization and rites -- dialogue about the place of the elders, the
ordination of elders, and the place of native ceremonies and rites within the
church.
From the other end of the continent came a similar call to
remember that we have a root that they cannot kill, from which a new
sprig will always shoot. The speaker was Bishop Toribio Ticona Porco of
Corocoro, Bolivia, an Aymara indigenous -- as he said -- by blood and by
my pastoral work.
Relativizing the New Evangelization, he insisted on the spiritual
values of a culture founded on the living rock of the Andes that
understands that God is the catechist of the world who reaches all the
children he has created, children he cannot forget and to whom he teaches his
catechism even when they live in a distant land never reached by any
missionary. This God catechizes in mysterious ways with the alphabet of the
stars, the beauty of creation and the discoveries we humans make.
What can the synod do for us? he asked. It can further the
beginning of inculturation. It can denounce the past and continued stealing of
our land and destruction of our cultures.
The rapid expansion of what the preparatory documents called
sects was repeatedly deplored. Several speakers warned against
applying the term to all non-Catholic Christian churches and movements. Only a
few asked to what extent is the growth of these new religious groups due to the
Catholic churchs failure to match their zeal as well as their success in
responding to the material and spiritual needs of migrants emotionally lost in
city slums.
The litany of suggestions was endless. Create new hemispheric
structures. Dont create any new structures. Send missionaries north to
accompany the flow of migrants. Stop selling arms to Latin America. Do
something about the debt. But what? Nobody seemed hopeful of any real action on
what the Latin Americans call the eternal debt. Repeated denunciations of
public corruption (which indeed is serious) were seen by some as a way to avoid
putting the blame for massive poverty where it primarily belongs, namely,
unjust social structures, what Medellín had called structures of
sin.
It would be premature to pass judgment at this point on the value
for the church and for the Americas of the synod. The discussions in the
working groups for the coming days may produce consensus on important issues.
After that, it remains to be seen what use the pope will make of the
recommendations of the bishops.
One thing is clear. This pope is determined to keep control. He
has succeeded in giving the collegiality proclaimed by the Vatican Council the
narrowest possible interpretation. Although there is nothing in the rules of
procedure to this effect, no general congregation comes to order until the pope
arrives, an innovation -- quite different from the practice of Pope Paul VI.
The priest, who briefs the English language press explains this innovation as
arising from the respect of the bishops for the Holy Father.
Pope John Paul II is a man of incredible determination and will
power. In addition to presiding at the synod, he engages in a whirlwind round
of public and private audiences, visits to events outside the Vatican and
formal liturgies in St. Peters. He has to be supported while he is
putting on the liturgical vestments. His face is drawn and haggard. His words
are often slurred as he recites or sings the prayers. His left hand shakes
incessantly. But he struggles on. He remains always in charge.
In the wings are many speculating about a succession, a succession
for which they may still have to wait a long time.
National Catholic Reporter, December 12,
1997
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