Taking part in the Synod on Synodality is much like participating in a hui says Manuel Beazley, currently in Rome as a New Zealand member of the Synod.
Beazley is also Vicar for Maori in the Auckland Diocese.
“As Māori, synodality is nothing new to us. In a sense it’s part of our DNA as Māori people” Beazely (pictured) says. Both synodality and hui emphasise collective decision-making and inclusivity.
Māori come together to hui and to wānanga, to gather and to reflect on the big issues facing the community Beazlet explains. “Through the combined wisdom of the community we come out the other end of it with something new to take us forward.”
Beazely says he finds the similarity between the synodal and hui approaches “quite reassuring”.
It’s something that we are already familiar with here in Aotearoa and the Pacific, and among the many indigenous people through the Pacific who practise synodality in some shape or form, he says.
Coming together, sharing wisdom and then moving forward together will mean we will be a Church that journeys together, Beazely observes.
“If we are to say that we are a Church for all then we should be a Church for all. A Church where everyone is welcomed, a Church where everyone can belong and be accepted.
“For me that would be the ultimate sign of the Church that we are a place where all people can find a home.”
Community collaboration shapes the Church of the future, he says.
When in Rome
This month’s synod in Rome is the second time Beazley will represent Aotearoa New Zealand during the Synod on Synodality process.
Getting there with a sense of everyone’s views has been hard work. He’s read the Instrumentum Laboris. And spoken to countless people.
He’s sought to maximise everyone’s participation “so that we can journey together on this road towards synodality through listening and dialogue and also forming a co-responsible church” he says.
When Beazely was at the Synod last year, a key outcome was contacting like-minded ministers and joining them as if they were another family. He said they continue to keep in touch using modern media.
Since then, Beazely says he has thrown himself deeply into parishes and communities, spreading the word about synodality and helping parishes and communities form their synodal structures.
“I think that’s key to how we are to go forward, the more we can speak about synodality as not being something new but reaching back into the great treasure of our Catholic history and bringing all of that into the future.
“It’s really just about sitting down, talking with people, sharing …their hopes, their aspirations for the church and also their frustrations at some of the things that they see happening in their local church” he says.
“And just hearing the depth and the breadth of all of that Catholic experience – that’s what I hope to take to the synod … to be able to share with the global church all of those things that affect people from outside the world.”
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