Making Church organisation fit for purpose

Thursday, March 17th, 2022

Pope Francis shared his vision for the Church in the Third Millennium with the members of the Synod of Bishops during their meeting in Rome in October 2015.

The Synod has a meeting every two or three years and, up until the election of the first-ever Jesuit pope, they were choreographed events attended by selected prelates with a token presence of non-voting others to discuss a tightly controlled agenda.

Francis talked to them about a new and very different kind of synod, where all the People of God walk together at all times, talking and listening to the Spirit in one another.

He does not like parliamentarianism. Since all starts with the risen Jesus and his promise to be with us forever, closeness to him and freedom of conversation can only generate unity and love, although human selfishness and pride can make it a tortuous journey.

The pope’s vision was so radical that he had to coin a word that is not (yet) in your dictionary — “synodality.” As he uses it, it suggests an attitude of mind and a way of relating and working together that would imbue the Church “at all levels.”

It implied a more loving, less authoritarian way of being the Church with continuous two-way communication between the People of God, their bishops and top management.

The pope’s proposals would find favour with the People of God and the hierarchy but would demand significant changes at the top level of pope and the Roman Curia, which together constitute the papacy.

Synodality, a threat to Roman Curia hegemony

The media saw the importance and within weeks Catholics around the world were welcoming the hope of a new life for a Church that seemed to be in terminal decline, with its decaying congregations, vanishing vocations, ecumenical winter, reduced worship, clerical sex abuse, unnecessary sacramental famine, and clustering of parishes presaging the sale or demolition of church buildings.

For the Curia, however, it did not come as a message of hope, but as a threat to its hegemony.

Synodality “at all levels” is the antithesis of the centralised authoritarian control system that was given a boost when the papacy was endowed with ‘universal jurisdiction’ in 1870 and which is currently working so badly.

This leaves the Roman Curia with a lot to lose.

It is the less visible part of the papacy but the dominant one, in a very unequal partnership between a permanent institution of 3,500 people and one elderly, overworked transient pope who is legally in charge of everything in the Church and the Vatican City State.

The Curia controls its own recruitment and promotions. It has a significant influence in the election of popes. It selects all the bishops, ruling them meticulously and controlling their advancement. It makes the day-to-day decisions in the life of the Church.

The Curia is thus the effective central government of the Church and normal popes are analogous to what is known in civil administration as captive regulators. They have to maintain a working relationship with the team they have inherited.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”

The underlying weakness is in the system which leaves an unchanging Curia inadequately supervised and wielding significant power divorced from responsibility.

To carry forward his vision, Pope Francis has made “synodality” — under the headings of Communion, Participation and Mission — the topic for the upcoming meeting in 2023 of the Synod of Bishops. And he has allowed an extra year for consultation with the faithful.

This puts the old Synod effectively in charge of developing the new and is not without risk and possible conflict of interest.

The Synod of Bishops is not part of the Roman Curia, but it is controlled by the Curia.

Any movement towards Francis’ vision of synodality would weaken the power at the centre. So, the Curia can be expected to resist the development from behind the scenes while being careful not to be seen as contradicting the pope directly.

It could use the existing Synod of Bishops to define the new synodality in a way that leaves it devoid of power, as was done with the national bishops’ conferences.

One is reminded of the famous speech by a champion of black feminism in the United States, Audre Lorde. She entitled it: “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”.

A pope may be able to understand the Christly virtue of voluntarily shedding power, but for a bureaucracy to do so would require heroic humility and self-sacrifice.

Attempts to control the laity’s responses

In preparation for the final meeting in October 2023, an open consultation with the People of God is currently in progress.

This will be followed by national and continental synods which are confined almost exclusively to prelates and Church employees. Their job is to distil the outcome of the consultation and gradually reduce it to a manageable agenda.

Recent experience with the Australian Plenary Council, however, indicates that the Curia will supervise every step of the way and its final approval of the Instrumentum Laboris, on which the agenda will be based, will control what is to be discussed and more importantly, what may not be mentioned.

The attempts to limit the scope of the independent Synodale Weg in Germany were out of step with Pope Francis’ earlier guidelines and seemed to owe more to Curial than to Papal thinking.

The Germans were strong (and rich) enough to reject or ignore the interference, but the intervention did nothing to allay fears that the agenda will be sanitised before the October 2023 meeting.

We thus have some reason to fear that any challenging ideas for Church reform emerging from the consultations will have been filtered out by then, as will suggestions for changes in the regulations and pseudo-infallible teachings that are currently blocking top management from playing its role in mission, which is to take timely management decisions and order priorities to keep the Church focused on Jesus’ mandates and principles in a changing more educated populace.

Pope Francis wants participation by the faithful, even by those who have walked away. He will need massive grassroots support if his ideas are to prevail.

Whatever way his “synodality” gets to be defined, it implies open two-way communication between the shepherds and the flock. Jesus’ promise to be with us was addressed to both.

The way is open for the laity to say what they think and want. The consultations have initiated the conversation and the momentum must be maintained.

Question 13 of the official consultation document asks people to identify issues that have not been covered, but it does not explore their relative importance. This is a serious deficiency if the many neglected issues are to be prioritised intelligently for discussion.

Take the survey and make your priorities known

So, with the help of some reform-minded people I have put together an unofficial survey that allows you to express your priorities. It can be accessed simply by clicking here.

Please look at it and have your say, for the good of the Church.

A preliminary report will be issued as soon as a meaningful number of responses has been received. A final report will be issued later, when people stop responding, and brought to the attention of Pope Francis.

How many times have you been frustrated because you saw something that could be improved, but lacked a forum in which to share your suggestions?

The door is now open. Constructive criticism can no longer be labelled (or libelled) as dissent.

Please read the survey and fill it in. It takes about 8 minutes.

And circulate the link (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BGVZK8Q) among your friends whatever their current relationship with the Church. It will help some of the challenging ideas to survive the perilous voyage from consultation to agenda.

John O’Loughlin Kennedy is a retired economist. In 1968 he and his wife Kay founded Concern Worldwide. His recent book, The Curia is the Pope: and why it cannot listen, is published by Mount Salus Press.