This humorous anecdote reflects the complexity of finding oneself in unfamiliar territory and carries a certain wisdom that extends beyond the Irish landscape.

For synodality to have a real chance, one might argue that Pope Francis, the pontiff of the margins, might find himself in the position that Rome and the Vatican, the Church's centre, is not the best place for the Synod on Synodality.

Perhaps he should contemplate a different point of departure where the capacity to listen, hear, and implement change is greater than the epicentre of Catholicism itself, which seems so out-of-touch, even with the Rome across the Tiber.

Two empires - one city

In Rome, the empires of Church and state share a rich history of position, power, and prestige, displaying their intertwined legacies to full advantage.

Today, the remnants of these two empires serve as tourist attractions, destinations for hop-on-hop-off buses and guided tours.

While these empires have their followers, most tourists, like many Catholics, see them as remnants of a faded glory.

Like the tourists, their guides are weary of the daily routine of reciting a scripted blend of history and anecdotes.

Although equipped with microphones and earpieces, guides and tourists maintain a semblance of communication; their communication is one-way.

As tourists meander through the monuments of old masters, sipping from their water bottles, the guides' voices dominate, using the language of romanticism.

The business of Catholicism

Rome is a city where the business of religion is veiled in the garb of Catholic faith and holiness, using the language of romanticism and piety.

Rome is a cultural hub of sacred art and religious rituals that appeal to emotions rather than reason.

It is a place where the cult of adoration thrives, even as lovers embrace and refugees seek shelter in and around St Peter's Square, the emotional experience of adoration is a bulwark against reality.

In this city, the magical aspects of religion are strong, symbolised by the tradition of throwing money into fountains and onto tombstones.

Catholicism in Rome is sustained, in part, by a multitude of religious women and men, predominantly from Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

They are the domestic workers of the Church, there to keep the boat afloat. When the day comes that they are no longer interested in advancement via religion, another source of labour will have to be found.

Yet, amidst this city's complexities, there is another side to Rome's enduring spirit—an army of people from diverse backgrounds, races, languages, and cultures who serve the needy.

Laity, religious and clergy from around the world prepare sandwiches for distribution to the poor in the streets and along the Tiber River, following Christ's call to care for the "least of his brothers and sisters."

A living museum

Rome is more of a living museum that "hears" the past. It seems reticent to listen to the present or dialogue with it.

The language of romanticism and piety is the comfort food that, while keeping a certain type of religiosity afloat, does so at the expense of authentic interaction with the people who see the buildings, the culture and the old masters as curiosities.

With a church on every corner, housing saints in supine sanctity, the religious culture here appears weary.

While these churches are architectural wonders, many are also monuments to their builders.

The Vatican Church will continue its business, sticking to its culture of romanticism and piety, while the Church across the Tiber will continue to evolve.

This entrenched nature of the first warrants consideration of a different starting point for a listening synod for the second.

A new place to listen and speak

The new place needs a new language. In a city where popular piety dominates liturgy, religion, and social interaction, another pastoral language is used to address LGBTQ+ inclusion, second marriages, the use of contraception, and intercommunion. This is the language of incarnation, not romanticism and piety.

The Synod's challenge will be to find an incarnational language that speaks to people who live on the other side of the Tiber.

History shows that the major changes to the empires of Rome have come from north of the Alps, where the language of reason, more than emotion, prevails.

Rome's dominant language of popular piety and romanticism, which more closely aligns with conservative Judaism and Islam, will find the language of the north, which is more attuned to the language of liberal Western democracy thinking, conflictual.

A Synod on listening will find itself caught in a cultural milieu that lets people talk but struggles internally to enable change.

The transition to active engagement and implementation of change that many beyond the Tiber are already living will have to include a significant change in the language and culture of the Roman Church.

If the Synod follows the path of the Amazon Synod, characterised by abundant talk but minimal implementation, it will lead to widespread dissatisfaction.

If the narrative of piety continues to lead the Church's conversations, perpetuating the romantic idea that secularism and modern priorities are enemies of Catholicism, then the Synod may struggle to find the fertile ground it seeks for meaningful dialogue.

If the Synod is to have a genuine chance of success, it must consider a new starting place. A place where listening is ingrained in the cultural fabric and where people are accustomed to discussing, debating, listening, and translating dialogue into action.

Rome may not be the ideal place to embark on this transformative journey.

• Dr Joe Grayland is a theologian and a priest of the Diocese of Palmerston North. He is currently on Sabbatical and writes from Rome, Italy. His latest book is: Liturgical Lockdown. Covid and the Absence of the Laity (Te Hepara Pai, 2020).

In the discussions, one question is invariably put to me, and it amounts to this: If you were going to be at the upcoming Synod assembly, what would be your Number 1 ask?

The question is an obvious one: many of those interested in the Synod belong to groups who are calling for renewal within the Church, and very many of them are still seeking to bring the vision of Vatican Council II (1962-65) to fruition through specific changes and reforms.

But if the question is obvious, that does not mean that answer is.

You, me, and every other Catholic could draw up a wish list of "changes we would like to see", but would such a list appropriate?

Come to think of it, even Pope Francis could draw up such a list.

I'm sure that abolishing clericalism, finding new ways of standing up for the poor and for the creation, and some way to repair the hurt and damage caused by sexual abuse by clergy would be on it - but that list too might be a short-circuiting of the very basis of a Synod assembly.

Synod assemblies are supposed to be places of listening

At the heart of the notion of synodality is that people from different places, coming together bring different views, perspectives and insights.

Each has to be listened to, taken into account, and valued.

Traditionally, this has meant bishops listening to bishops - and, clearly, this is one of the problems when synodality is to become a characteristic of the Church.

There need to be many other perspectives than those of celibate, older men who all have a common profession with a highly defined esprit de corps.

A start has been made with having some others of the baptised being at the Synod assemblies and allowing them to vote, but if this next assembly is to usher in synodality to the Catholic Church, this is just the tip of an iceberg.

Only when a genuine culture of listening is in place, can one start to think about various wish lists for change.

But why is listening so important?

Because the opposite of listening is a top-down approach where all knowledge, guidance, and wisdom is held by a group of leaders, or even just one man, and this is then dispensed to everyone else.

The vision of the Catholic Church put forward by Pius IX (who was pope from 1846-78) and his successors - a model that is still very much in place - is the antithesis of a synodal Church.

The older model was one of a two-tier Church of teachers (the ecclesia docens) and obedient listeners (the ecclesia discens).

The synodal Church assumes that all speak and all listen.

They do this in terms of their common dignity as human beings created in God's likeness, in terms of their common baptism that makes them members of the Christ, and in terms of their common task as disciples moving along the Way.

We do not yet know how to do this - the consultation processes have been very patchy and clunky - but we have made a start.

Only one thing seems certain: the period from October 2023 to October 2024 is going to be a steep learning curve, it is going to be painful, but it will be a time of real growth.

Also, let us be realistic, it will meet stiff resistance not just from Roman Curia officials who have a personal interest in the status quo, but from those looking for simple, black/white answers to complex questions, and from those who use religion - and a certain type of Catholicism in particular, as one more front for their social and economic agenda.

Alas, authoritarianism survives because it is convenient for so many!

The key questions: where are we now and where should we be going?

So what are they listening for?

It is not a case that they are listening out for some voice from heaven or that there is a secret key that could unlock some wondrous source of wisdom.

There have been many times in Christian history when groups have claimed that they had just such a treasure with all the answers.

Some claim that they have it in a sacred book such as the scriptures, or in replicating yesterday and claiming that is "tradition", or in an individual such as the pope, or even some private revelation (e.g. "the secret message" of Fatima).

But synodal listening is far more mundane and requires much more thinking, prayer, and discerning.

The focus is on where are we, as the People of God, now?

What are the demands of discipleship that we face in our time and culture, and what is the best way to face these challenges.

Moreover, we are a people on the move: we are called to walk and act as disciples, not simply sign up to an abstract list of beliefs. Hence, a second question, where should we be going?

How should we be witnessing to God's love manifest in his Anointed One?

What should we be doing that we are not doing?

Answering these questions will throw up a whole raft of changes that we have to make if we are to move forward: that is the wish list.

And once we know where we should be going, if the Synod does not act on these, it will fail.

One does not listen just to get information. One also listens to see what has to be done now.

Then one prays for the courage to make the changes in the face of those who oppose change.

The true wish list can only emerge from the listening.

What would you say?

If presenting a "wish list" is not the first step for a Synod, that does not mean that there is not something I would like to say to the assembly were I there.

Synod assemblies have often failed to really solve problems they've decided to tackler for this reason: facing the need to change would mean acknowledging that the Church had made mistakes in the past.

In 1415, at the Council of Constance, the Church did not face up to the questions posed to it by Jan Hus (c.1369-6 July 1415) - instead they condemned him and handed him to the civil power who murdered him by burning at the stake.

If that council had admitted that certain errors had crept into the liturgy and remedied them, the festering problems that lead to the Reformation - and the division of the Western Church - might have been avoided.

It was only in the 1950s that scholars looked again at Hus's writings and realized that he was not guilty of the heresies of which he was accused, and for which is was murdered.

Alas, many places in the Catholic Church still have not responded to problems pointed out by Hus - despite Vatican II addressing them.

But Vatican II did not admit that there was a defective tradition due to mistakes; so by not admitting that any mistake had ever been made, many bishops' conferences did not realise that the changes were actually important and not just "window dressing".

At the Council of Trent (1545-63), the fear that if they admitted Martin Luther might have made many correct challenges to the Church meant that rather than learning from his criticism, and that of others, they swung to the other extreme.

So fearful were they that if they admitted that Luther was right on anything, they rejected even the obvious reforms.

The effect was that the indefensible was, in many cases, made the norm.

Moreover, this policy served to embed division and warfare over religion into the heart of European society.

We are still paying the cost.

Again, many of these were put right by Vatican II - but again, no one "put their hands up" and said, "we got it wrong".

The myth that the Church is perfect, that it does not make mistakes, and that "everything it has ever said is consistent with everything else" won the day!

Then at Vatican Council II a somewhat similar situation arose.

The bishops privately knew that mistakes had to be corrected, but once more, they made changes without explaining that they proposed these as remedies.

The result was the conundrum of saying: the new way is better, but there is nothing wrong with the old way!

The result has been people scratching their heads as to why the changes were made; while others engage in culture wars within the Catholic Church.

It would have been much better to come clean and say: we have made massive mistakes, explain the mistakes, and then show how we are trying to put things right. Lest it look like a pope was finding fault with an earlier pope, we were presented with confusing messages that pretended that the earlier pope had "really meant" to say the exact opposite!

One could multiply examples - but the point is that we are not perfect, but we have the Spirit constantly calling us to improve.

It would be better, simpler, and more honest to face our problems and say: we have blundered!

Listening and admitting mistakes is part of conversion

Few today take the triumphalistic tone of the early twentieth century: we have all just as it should be in the Holy Church - and so we do not need to change.

But we still have many in authority in the Church who, almost unknown to themselves, slip into the position that they can only countenance changes where these do not contradict what has been long defended.

To these brothers and sisters in baptism, the idea of a chronic mistake is unthinkable - but a reality check shows that they do occur.

To move out of this mindset of "we cannot have been wrong" requires humility, facing up to unpalatable realities, and trust in the Spirit.

Moreover, it goes against the grain in that the familiar always seems so secure, the new and unfamiliar is frightening, and, lest we forget the basics, religion is naturally a conservative force within society - and so it acts as a break on change and as a locus of reaction to change.

So what would I say: Believe that the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth (Jn 14:17) and that we will only be the complete witness to the Christ at the end of time. Meanwhile, we must be engaged in a continual work of renewing and purifying.

In this process of conversion to the gospel, the best start is to admit and name the mistakes that have been made - even if this means taking some of the shine off sainted figures in the past. Then ask the Lord for the courage to begin afresh in new ways.

This is a message we have long preached to individuals in their following of the Way, but one we need to learn also as communities and within the Catholic Church as a whole.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.
• His latest book is "Shaping the Assembly: How Our Buildings form us in Worship".

The pope's latest effort, the Synod on Synodality, now underway and continuing through the end of 2024, has already fomented ardent debate on some of the most controversial topics within the church, from female ordination to LGBTQ inclusion.

Francis' vision for the synod is a balance of traditionalists' love of orthodoxy and the pope's enthusiasm for reform.

Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Vatican's synod office, told Religion News Service Wednesday (Nov. 30) that when considering expectations for the synod, "the only limit is the Word of God, understood in the light of tradition."

That formulation, however, has caught its organizers at the Vatican between the two sides and risks disappointing both.

Addressing this polarization, Grech said that any change that will come from the synod will be inspired by the Holy Spirit, while taking into account the church's historical beliefs.

"The Spirit doesn't speak in a vacuum, but it helps us to understand, deepen and translate the word of God in our everyday lives," he said.

"Obviously we also need a guide: how the word has been received, deepened and applied by those who came before us.

"If we use these tools, then we can be certain that we are walking down the right path," he added.

The synod, a massive consultation of Catholics around the world on the theme of "Communion, Participation and Mission," hands a microphone to the ordinary faithful, inviting them to express their ideas and concerns at the parish and diocesan level, in person and online.

The results of those discussions, communicated to the Vatican via the national bishop's conferences, have been collected in a summary called the Document for the Continental Stage.

It will be considered by large assemblies of lay and religious Catholics grouped in seven continental assemblies.

Much of the rank-and-file's discussion represented in the document, even from some of the church's most conservative corners, concern the ordination of women, the need to adapt church doctrine on sexuality and to combat clerical sexual abuse.

Conservatives fear that the synod will do too much; liberals fear it will do too little to keep up with these demands.

But Grech, speaking at the presentation of "Walking Together," a new book collecting Pope Francis' teaching on synodality, said, "The synod isn't the search for a compromise between opposing factions, opposing parties. There are neither winners nor losers."

The synod, he said, seeks to interpret the will of the Holy Spirit rooted in truth, "and truth can be presented by a minority, a group or even an individual."

How the truth will emerge from the synodal debates remains unclear.

The Document for the Continental State is also loosely interpreted as contributing to authoritative church teaching, but the final takeaway will likely not come until the pope has issued a post-synodal apostolic letter that comprises the main reflections and deductions of the synod.

The contents of such a letter are considered part of the magisterium, or official teaching of the church.

What is clear is that "synodality is a calling for the church in the third millennium," according to Sister Nathalie Becquart, the undersecretary at the Vatican's synod office and the first woman to occupy that office.

The synod will lead "to a new reception of the Second Vatican Council," she added, suggesting that the broad consultation with Catholics will allow the reforms of the mid-1960s to finally take hold."

While it's too early to determine the practical changes that the synod might bring, Becquart said she wouldn't rule out the possibility that the assemblies will discuss the church's need for "new structures."

What those new structures look like remains unknown.

When the world's Catholic bishops met in Rome for the Synod on the Family in 2015, the conversations were dominated by the possibility that the pope would allow divorced Catholics who have married to take Communion. (He softened but didn't reverse the ban.)

Media coverage of the 2019 synod on the Pan-Amazon region largely focused on whether women would be given the right to serve as deacons, often the first step toward ordination. (They were not.)

In this synod, female leadership is again a factor, and Grech said that women's roles in the church will "of course" be a part of the conversation, pointing to the amount devoted to the topic in the working document for the next stage.

But Grech advised Catholics to "have patience."

"We in Christian communities have to grow our appreciation for what women do in the church," he said.

"And we must create more spaces for female contribution, which makes a huge difference," he added, pointing to the need for more women theologians to shift the debate.

"Let us all pray and ask the Holy Spirit to give us instructions so that all who are baptized — without distinction between men and women — can find a space, a calling, a mission."

• Claire Giangravé - Vatican Correspondent RNS. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Writing as a member of the just completed Plenary Council of the Catholic Church in Australia, she spoke of her experience during the moment of "protest" once the motion on women failed to get the required vote.

But her very reasonable question may equally have been the following: "What is it about change and the Church?

It's glib to answer that few like change, so what's news?

Surely, it's not too much to expect that a Church in crisis would be open to considering change, to actually welcome change, albeit gently.

In his patient drive for a synodal Church, Pope Francis speaks of a "different Church" (not a new Church). In doing so, he is picking up the wisdom of Yves Congar OP from all those years ago.

A different Church can only come about only with change.

The motion on the equality between women and men

The papal prescription for that change is synodality. That does not mean a free run, or a lot of hot button demands, or a majority vote as in a parliament, but a genuine listening, active hearing and prayerful consideration to reach a discernment of what is right.

The Holy Spirit is mostly blamed for what is claimed to be the right answer.

Clearly, the Holy Spirit was temporarily rejected during the Plenary Council. One may rail about the unfortunate circumstance of the Australian bishops' rejection of the motion on equality between women and men.

Surely after four years of discussing and preparing the Plenary Council, the bishops were well aware of the equality issue. The terms of the decree had been on the table for months.

Where was the application of a synodal approach? What conversations occurred? What attempt was made to reach a proper accommodation?

Where was the benefit of four years of preparation, appreciation of the significance of the issue, the importance of the second assembly of 277 members, the consciousness of the Catholic faithful (a majority of whom are women)?

We all appreciate that the synodal journey is not a straight downhill run. We know that potholes and delays abound.

But, apparently, not even nationwide shame and disbelief among Catholics, women and men alike, served to offer help to some bishops to work out an acceptable course before voting in the negative.

Sister Patty notes that the subsequent good news of the endorsement of the decree may be drowned out by the initial outrage. Fair call.

But there is a bright side.

Humble pie will be food for the journey, with a dollop of trust and goodwill

Plenary members did re-group. They worked to revise the language of the motion and, ultimately, it was enthusiastically supported. Importantly, that included the support of most of the bishops.

The Holy Spirit is still alive and well!

But much more than that, the journey of this decree on the equality of women and men — including its major blemish — may be seen as an outstanding synodal example that has the capacity to open a national conversation among all the People of God.

That means a less hierarchical conversation with more trust and fortitude.

Unavoidably, we go into that conversation with wounds. We may assert they are self-inflicted and demeaning wounds, but against an outcome that should become a watershed for future deliberations.

The event (not the spin) presents an opportunity for a different way of doing things; of trying a journey on the same track and eschewing the parallel precipice.

Humble pie will be food for this journey with a large dollop of trust and goodwill.

A disposition to genuinely embrace synodal change for a different Church will be the shared goal.

• Justin Stanwix is a deacon at St Mary's Star of the Sea Parish, Milton in the Diocese of Wollongong (Australia).
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

It's also a particularly important axiom to reflect on as we continue the journey through the synodal process.

Over the last twelve years as a community organiser, I've come to see first-hand how an emphasis on building relationships brings about a radical shift for those who are active in faith-rooted organising: a full understanding that we can't accomplish anything meaningful in our communities if we go at it alone or remain in isolation.

Though we have heard it said many times by now, it really is the case that the only way of coming to know another person is through listening and dialogue.

And it is only through knowing the other person—what they care about, what they worry about, what stirs and moves them, and what they hope for—that we can begin to discern and understand the points of mutuality that bind us together.

This is why I believe faith-rooted community organising can make vital contributions to the synodal process. There are three key elements in community organising that we can draw on.

The first is the intentional commitment to building, deepening, and sustaining relationships.

The second is a recognition of the vision and aspirations expressed by the people who should guide our efforts.

And the third is devising a clear, practical, and effective strategy for achieving the goals we've identified in going through the first two steps.

How does this look in practice?

I'll use an example from my work with the Coalition for Spiritual & Public Leadership (CSPL), a local faith-rooted community organising federation in Chicago, as an example.

Several years ago, a group of approximately forty parents and their children gathered in the basement of a former parish school on the west side of the city.

The gathering had been organised by the parish religious education coordinator with CSPL's support.

It was immediately clear that the opportunity to listen intently to one another, to form and deepen relationships and discuss their shared hopes and concerns for their community, was an uncommon experience for most of those gathered.

As they split off into small groups and began to talk, they soon began to recognise the daily experiences that they shared and how these common struggles, concerns, hopes, and dreams shaped their lives.

It soon emerged that many had the same feelings of loneliness and isolation, the sense that there was really no one else to confide in about worries and anxieties.

It turned out that what was weighing most on people's minds was the safety of the kids who travelled to and from school every day on foot.

Harassment, solicitation, bullying, traffic incidents, and gun violence were distressingly common.

They continued to talk, and the opportunity to share experiences and ideas set the stage for what came next.

Following the meeting, several parents stepped forward to lead a grassroots initiative that would address the concerns raised that day.

Their efforts resulted in Smart Routes to School, a publicly funded program that began in 2019.

Local adult residents received training to be present along students' routes to and from school in the mornings and afternoons, with an eye toward creating safer conditions.

Within weeks of its launch, the program had reduced conflicts and fostered greater community care; in one case, a Smart Routes community worker helped stop an adult male who had tried to abduct a teenage girl into his van.

The vision for the program, along with its logistics and implementation, were all the work of the parents, elders, and youth—a true community-led safety initiative.

These same parish and community leaders also provided the grassroots energy that persuaded a village board, a township board, and a school district board to publicly support and fund the program.

It took a year of disciplined and dedicated organising, by parents who had multiple jobs along with family responsibilities at home.

What sustained them in their work were the relationships they had first formed on that day in the basement of the old parish school, and that they then developed in the wider community through their commitment to mutual listening.

Now, this brief story illustrates the impact that parishes and faith-rooted community organisations and other civic groups can have when they work together.

But it also reflects a challenging reality about the synodal process overall: success is possible only as far as the "on-the-ground" relationships go.

Once they are formed, local communities also need nurturing and support, the things that equip them to carry the process forward.

We know that social change on a grand scale is not easy. Success is dependent on a number of critical factors.

First, there needs to be a powerful, strategic, and well-organised coalition of people and groups at the grassroots level.

Then, on the political level, there need to be shrewd and dedicated allies capable of advancing the agenda in the face of opposition and skilled in the art of negotiation and power politics.

These players need to act in a coordinated way to bring about the change they seek.

But as the synodal process gets underway, we still don't really see this type of interaction on a large scale.

More typical is a "grasstops" approach than a grassroots one.

There seems to be an emphasis on panels, think tanks, and expert opinion, while the deliberate, serious, and long-term work at the grassroots level is given short shrift.

If we don't give more attention to the relationship-building part of the process and the vital yet tedious work of implementation that must happen on a daily, weekly and monthly basis for years to come, then we're not likely to be successful in driving and sustaining the fundamental shifts we want to see in the Church.

This is where the lessons from community organising can be helpful. For many decades, community organisers have understood that it's impossible to get anything meaningful done—at the institutional or societal level—without a group of people who are organised, disciplined, and committed.

The energy must come from them

Local faith communities looking to bring such a group together—a group that can coalesce around common aspirations and goals—can use the methods of community organising to do so.

One of the first key steps is what we call a one-on-one.

A one-on-one helps us to form, nurture and sustain public relationships with people we may often come across in our parishes, schools, and neighbourhoods but perhaps don't get to know.

The method of one-on-one consists of setting aside thirty to sixty minutes for an intentional conversation.

But rather than running it as a back-and-forth dialogue, the person conducting it is there mostly to listen.

They'll ask open-ended questions such as: What brought you to this parish or community, and what keeps you here?

What are some of your hopes and dreams for the future? What are some of the challenges in your neighbourhood or parish that you would like to see addressed?

Even questions that might seem personal are important to ask if we want to form meaningful public relationships: Where did you grow up, and what was it like growing up there?

Who were the people most important to you growing up?

How did the environment that informed your early years influence who you are today and the things you value most?

(In spiritual terms, listening is the path through which we encounter the "thou," according to Martin Buber. In contrast to an "I - It" relationship, an "I - Thou" encounter emerges when one sees the other not as a means to an end, but as a reflection of God's divine image in the human person. It is through a person's genuine encounter with the "thou" that we meet the beauty and mystery of God most profoundly.)

Next is to recognise the visions and hopes expressed in one-on-ones, to be open to what we've learned through deep listening. As people of faith, we must be able to imagine a world beyond our current state.

The ideas and aspirations for a better world that emerge from the bottom up are imaginative stirrings of prophetic defiance.

They have their roots in the divine and in a basic desire for the good of humankind and the natural world.

Moses

In the Exodus story, there's an aspect that's often overlooked, according to the Jewish scholar Avivah Zornberg: there was not only a struggle between the Jewish people and Pharoah and his empire; there was also a struggle between God and Moses, with God prodding and nudging Moses, but being met with stubbornness and reluctance.

Central to Moses's initial resistance was his inability and unwillingness to imagine a world beyond the present reality.

God had to push him in order to break open his imagination.

We are often like Moses, waiting to be pushed and nudged out of our limited ways of thinking and seeing. We have to be open to creative and dynamic ideas and possibilities.

Those parents and students who worked successfully on a community safety initiative realised that they shared a vision; they then co-created a community-led program that made their vision real through their reliance on God and one another.

Lastly, any meaningful effort requires a practical and realistic strategy.

In his book Why David Sometimes Wins, Marshall Ganz describes strategy as "how we turn what we have into what we need to get what we want."

This straightforward description of strategy provides a helpful and succinct framework for shaping a plan and course of action.

What we have often constitutes our relationships—no matter how few or how many people we start with.

We can and should begin there, and gradually expand through a process of listening and forming more relationships.

Moreover, relationships are our most sacred and valuable resource.

Every relationship holds the potential for unanticipated possibilities that often strengthen a group's capacity to achieve the desired end.

The parents and young people who envisioned the Smart Routes program initiative needed a year's worth of planning meetings, petition campaigns, negotiation meetings with elected officials, and other actions.

But it worked, thanks to a pragmatic strategy that emerged from their lived experiences and a process of bottom-up discernment and collective decision-making.

Ground up - Smart routes

This moment offers an invitation to strive towards a profound reorientation in our approach to parish life.

We need to commit to an approach of bottom-up discernment that recognises the intrinsic expertise of grassroots leaders from local contexts, and of practical and pragmatic organisation informed by people's lived experiences.

Many of the grassroots members of the parishes, Catholic universities, and community organisations that my colleagues and I work with have applied what they learned through their engagement in faith-rooted organising to address the urgent issues facing their communities.

There are two examples that I'd like to draw on to show the importance of building substantial relationships in the community through deep listening to the issues of concern.

Early in the pandemic, it became clear just how severely a shortage of hospitals and health care in an area of low employment was going to affect the people living there.

Together, we fostered a vision and strategy for addressing two key issues. We first mobilised hundreds of people to urge the Illinois governor's office to reopen Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park, a predominantly Latino community in Chicago's western suburbs that had been closed the year before.

Through our mobilisation efforts in collaboration with a key local public official, the hospital was reopened as a COVID-19 treatment site, one that was desperately needed.

Additionally, we were able to leverage the moral energy, social capital, and purchasing power of parishes and faith communities across Chicago to support one of the worker-owned cooperatives that our organisation has incubated over the last several years.

The team of worker-owners from this catering cooperative, Living La Fiesta, temporarily shifted their business focus from catering meals for churches, universities, organisations, and family events to producing and selling facemasks that were sustainably made from recycled garments.

By using their skills as seamstresses and maintaining their strong connections with parishes and community residents, they were able to sell thousands of dollars worth of masks.

This in turn helped them support their families during some of the most economically devastating months of the pandemic.

This type of bottom-up approach, rooted in listening and relationship building, collective discernment, and effective strategic planning, is what faith-rooted organising offers the Church in the synodal process.

There are no shortcuts when it comes to building a Church that reflects the liberating spirit of Jesus.

Over the course of the next two years, each of us has an opportunity, if not an obligation, to contribute to the synodal process.

Building relationships with one another will help in forging a robust and ambitious moral and spiritual path for our Church so that we can advance justice and equality and realise a greater approximation of God's kingdom.

• Michael N. Okińczyc-Cruz is the executive director of the Coalition for Spiritual & Public Leadership and an adjunct professor at the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University of Chicago.
• Published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

They '"let rip" at the Germans.

The Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland Church leaders' letter is an excellent example of one group of bishops seeing the synodal process as another country's "problem."

The Synodal Path "must be seen against the backdrop of the concrete situation in Germany", the Scandinavian bishops argue, because it gives the reason for the "felt demand/need for change".

How else could this be?

Should the German bishops reply to their episcopal confreres about the problems in the Nordic countries?

The Scandinavian bishops want to put themselves on the map and distance themselves from the "German problem".

Their letter begins in a condescending manner that continues throughout as if they bring a depth of learning and insight that is lacking in the German Church.

At the outset, they acknowledge their historical reliance on Germany from the Post-Reformation period, neatly forgetting their much earlier reliance on Germanic Christians.

They also acknowledge their financial dependence on the German Church, which they continue to enjoy.

An attempt to avoid the real challenges and issues

The "immense challenges" facing the Church, according to the Scandinavian bishops, are global and "overpowering" — challenges they wish to "negotiate" or "approach" in faithfulness to Christ.

"Avoid" might have been a more accurate sentiment. The implication of negotiating rather than confronting or addressing is clear, and it sets the overall tone of the bishops' letter.

Although they see the "felt demand for change" in Germany as the hub of the German problem, the issues raised by the Synodal Path are not "purely" or exclusively German.

The Scandinavians acknowledge that the issues raised by the Germans are "overpowering, global challenges for the Church", but as the bishops of the Nordic countries, they take issue with them. They only acknowledge ecclesial sexual abuse as a matter of justice and a Christian imperative.

The implication is that the other issues of priestly life-forms, such as celibacy and formation, the place of women in the Church (ordination and governance), and a broader understanding of sexuality are not matters of justice or Christian imperative for them.

The Scandinavians address sexual abuse with the now hackneyed episcopal condemnations.

They address this issue from the point of justice and Christian imperative because it is the "safe" issue. Safe, because everyone agrees that something should be done, and every bishop wants to be seen to be doing something.

The primary reason for their condemnation is not the ecclesial sin committed against believers but their concern for the continuing believability of the Church.

"Dangerous topics"

Again, they put the institution and the structures that created the sin first. But later in their letter, they seem to want to protect the same structures.

The other issues such as clerical life and formation, women in the Church and teaching on sexuality are treated differently, probably because they demand proactive change rather than reactive apologies.

The problem with these issues — for the Scandinavians — is they touch on the immutability of teaching and, at the same time, reflect the Zeitgeist or spirit of the age. They are "dangerous topics" that should be avoided.

Consequently, the search for answers to these issues needs to be pulled aside and reviewed by the unchangeable elements.

Clearly, the Nordic bishops have not found a dogmatic or Zeitgeist objection to ecclesial sexual abuse.

Given this context, they conclude that the "direction, methodology and content" of the Synodal Path are worrisome.

They accuse the Germans of being driven by "process thinking" and the desire for structural Church change without clearly outlining Prozessdenken and why structural change is problematic.

As a result, both process thinking and structural change are presented negatively because they reduce reform in the Church to a project.

Implicit is the notion that reform is neither structural nor human by design when applied to the Church.

The argument is that Church does change differently from every other human institution. Where the Church becomes an object of human change, it is no longer the subject of God's salvific will.

"Process thinking" and a richer theological debate

Process-thinking is an end-to-end process, that is non-hierarchical in its structure.

According to the Nordic bishops, non-hierarchical thinking threatens the non-changeable sources of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium, and must therefore be eliminated.

The danger of process-thinking is that it can break down sacred theological silos and open discrete theological categories to investigation and scrutiny.

But on the positive side, process-thinking can enable a richer theological debate, better theology and Church structures, thus optimizing Church life.

Concretely, this means having laypeople sitting beside bishops making decisions in a fundamental "equality of equals."

Some would argue that this is a model of the early Church, while others would disagree.

By contrast, the Scandinavian bishops appear to want to disempower the image or metaphor of the People of God. They write that this is "only one of the images with which the living Tradition describes the Church".

That's true, but it is a crucial image or metaphor of the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.

A Church with passive members

The Scandinavian bishops suggest three other images should be used to describe the Church

• Corpus mysterium
• Bride of Christ and
• Mediatrix of graces.

These are more passive and receptive than they are active and dynamic.

The curious metaphor of the Church as the "mediatrix of graces" is a reference I have not found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).

They might be meaning that the Church "is like a sacrament" (CCC 775) and "as a sacrament, the Church is Christ's instrument" (CCC 776). If so, their theology is unclear and needs greater precision.

Having not paid sufficient attention to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, the bishops have missed other vital images of the Church that Pope Francis has used explicitly and implicitly.

These include the Church as sheepfold and Christ as the shepherd; the Church as God's farm or field and God the heavenly farmer; the Church as building; the Church as Pilgrim People; and the Church as Body, for whom the "one mediator is Christ" (Lumen Gentium 6-8).

I believe the Scandinavians are correct to say that the Church "cannot be merely defined by the visible community".

But neither can it be defined without it.

For some, addressing the day's issues might be a capitulation to the current Zeitgeist. Still, for others, this is "reading the signs of the times".

The type of Catholic the Scandinavian bishops appeal to—and want the German bishops to hear—are those who sit quietly in their parishes with a strong sense of sacramental mystery.

These people "carry and set" the life of parishes and communities. They are not people who engage in questionnaires and debates, the bishops say, to defend them.

There is a "quietest" element to this type of person and a sense that the person who keeps his or her head firmly in the snow is the true type of Catholic.

Radical conversion and a radical image of God

But are these the people with whom Pope Francis wants us to communicate? His message is more outward-focused, asking us to engage with the sheep who have left the farm.

Consequently, the reference to Lumen Gentium 9 is double-edged.

How does the Church, in Christ's name, "approach the world and be its sure hope and source of salvation" if it does not also engage with the questions and push-back of the people of this age? Is it sufficient to live the ad intra life of the Church in peace and serenity by ignoring the ad extra "mess" we call human society?

The Scandinavian bishops then return to the "German problem" and the crisis of the German Church and its potential for renewal.

Condescendingly, they remember the dead saints, the past German theologians, and the humble and obscure German missionaries as examples of the life-giving patrimony of rich blessing for the Church in Germany.

Although they write of the need for radical conversion, they seem to want to avoid radical conversion that isn't spiritualised.

They misunderstand that the image of the People of God is a radical image of God, not of the people!

In this image, God is not the property of the people, but the people are the chosen of God.

Regarding the mission of the Church, the Scandinavians have forgotten that the Church — the People of God — are called to be salt and light for the world through living immersed in the world.

People sitting safely at home not participating in the life of the Church cannot be the synodal image of Scandinavian Catholicism the bishops wish to promote, can they?

The Scandinavian bishops should send another letter apologizing to the German Church.

They could explain why they are so frightened of facing the world's reality and why they want to hide from key contemporary questions.

Joe Grayland is a theologian and a priest of the Diocese of Palmerston North. His latest book is: Liturgical Lockdown. Covid and the Absence of the Laity. (Te Hepara Pai, 2021).

In early January, the megachurch announced it was selling its building and continuing to hold services online, as it had been doing for nearly two years.

Pastor Toure Roberts said the building needed "significant repairs" and COVID-19 shutdowns had made maintaining it impractical, although some in-person activities — such as the church's food bank — would continue.

As the pandemic enters its third year, more churches are having to weigh the costs and benefits of online versus in-person worship.

While most will not choose to go the way of Potter's House and become fully virtual, the dramatic shifts brought on by COVID-19 restrictions are forcing nearly existential questions about the nature of worship and the purpose of the community.

"COVID-19 forced every church in America to rethink how to best serve their parishioners and the broader community," Roberts told The Denver Post.

"We decided that the best way forward would be to sell the property, continue our online offering that had proven a successful alternative, and maintain our hands-on community outreach operations."

For some, shrinking congregations and dwindling donations have forced closures: More than 4,000 churches shut their doors in the U.S. in 2020, according to research from Barna Group, an evangelical polling firm.

Others have experienced a broader reach as new viewers have tuned in from afar — and as sometimes-alienated groups such as the elderly and disabled have found virtual church homes.

What will these churches do with this new online audience?

What was once a temporary measure has begun to feel like a necessity for many churches.

Many of them "spent a lot of time and resources to get online" in the pandemic and don't want that to go to waste, said Heidi Campbell, a researcher studying digital religion at Texas A&M University.

But in doing so, they're having to figure out what it means to worship online in meaningful ways.

"Over the holidays, a lot of them saw that not as many people have come back face-to-face," Campbell said.

"And so churches are trying to make this decision about … how might this be not just a season of change but a long-term change for churches and how people see church integrating into their lives."

The idea of virtual worship has been around since long before the pandemic, said Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford International University.

As long as the internet has been around, groups that felt shut out of physical spaces have taken their religious practice online.

In recent years, some churches have hired dedicated "online pastors," while others are now making inroads in the metaverse and on social media platforms such as TikTok.

And the pandemic spurred some people to start online-only ministries from the jump, seeing an opportunity to attract diverse congregations while freeing themselves from the financial burden of physical buildings.

Many religious traditions see the online space as a "new mission field" to reach people who otherwise wouldn't be drawn to worship, Thumma said.

Life.Church, a pioneer in the digital space and creator of the YouVersion Bible app, has been holding online church services since 2006 "as a way to reach people who might not otherwise come to church," said Bobby Gruenewald, one of its pastors, in an email.

Life.Church has also created an online streaming platform it offers to other churches free of charge, Gruenewald said, and has seen an explosion of demand during the pandemic.

The platform helps churches go "beyond one-way video streaming" and offers chat translation, a donation function, and ways to connect congregants with service opportunities and small-group meetings.

But providing a fully online platform for worship poses unique challenges.

Thumma said that virtual worshippers can very easily become spectators, watching a service without fully participating and being present in the service.

In January, a New York Times column drew heated debate by calling for a return to in-person worship, arguing people "need physical touch and interaction," but Thumma said the community can be formed online — it's just a matter of putting in the effort to make it happen.

"How do you move from just watching to actually being involved, actually engaging with people, actually getting committed enough to give money and to do service and volunteer and things?" Thumma asked.

"And I think that's going to be a challenge for clergy."

For most churches, online services will continue to be a supplementary measure, if they exist at all, Campbell said.

Pew research from August 2020 found just 2% of people who regularly attend religious services say they'll watch more of them remotely and attend fewer in person than before the pandemic. Though more than a year of pandemic measures may have swayed some minds since then, Campbell said online-only churches will continue to be the exception rather than the rule.

But as the pandemic subsides, she said she expects to see churches that have been providing "hybrid" services either drop the online option entirely or lean into it as a permanent fixture, especially in large urban centres, where a virtual model better fits the preferences of their congregants.

"For some people, it's like, ‘This meets my needs, and I like this style of worship,'" Campbell said.

"There is a lot of opportunity there. But how much of that is just … because people are looking at different options, and how much is that a long-term strategy?"

• Diana Kruzman is a writer who writes for RNS.
• Published by Religion Unplugged. Republished with permission.

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich - the 63-year-old Jesuit who leads the Archdiocese of Luxembourg and who is president of COMECE (the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Union) — speaks frankly about these and other issues.

La Croix: You are a former missionary to Japan, a Jesuit, an archbishop of Luxembourg, a cardinal... Have you always sought God in the same way?

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich: When I arrived in Japan as a young priest, it was a great shock. At that time I was a young man steeped in the popular Catholicism of Luxembourg.

With other Jesuits, each one coming from a different Catholic background, we arrived with a model of Catholicism that we all saw very quickly did not correspond to the expectations of Japan.

For me, this represented a crisis.

I had to put aside all the piety that had been the richness of my faith until then and give up the ways that I loved.

I was faced with a choice: either renounce my faith because I could not find the ways that I knew, or start an inner journey. I chose the second option.

Before I could proclaim God, I had to become a seeker of God. I said with insistence: "God, where are you? Where are you, both in traditional culture and in postmodern Japan?"

When I returned to Europe ten years ago, I had to start over again.

To be honest, I thought I would find the Catholicism that I had left in my youth. But that world no longer existed.

Today, in this secularised Europe, I have to do the same thing: seek God.

Has Europe today once again become a land of mission?

Yes, it has been for a long time.

The Luxembourg of my youth was a bit like Ireland, with great processions, strong popular piety, etc. When I was a child, all the children went to church. My parents didn't go, but they sent me, because it was normal to do so.

I remember at school, a child in my class didn't make her first communion and that created a scandal. Now the thing that causes the scandal is when a child actually does make it.

But upon reflection, I can see that this past was not so glorious. I obviously didn't see that as a child, but I realise now that there were already many cracks and hypocrisies in that society back then.

Basically, people didn't believe any more than they do today, even if they went to church. They had a kind of cultural Sunday practice, but it was not inspired by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Do you think this cultural Catholicism is finished?

Not quite yet. It varies in different parts of the world. But I am convinced that Covid will accelerate this process.

In Luxembourg, we have one-third fewer churchgoers. I'm sure they won't come back. Among them are people of a certain age who will find it painful to return to religious practice, to go to a church.

But there are also those Catholics for whom Sunday Mass was an important ritual, providing stability to their lives.

For many, calling oneself Catholic is still a kind of disguise endowed with a general morality. It helps them to keep up with society, to be "good Christians", but without really defining what that means.

But this era must end. We must now build a Church based upon faith.

We know now that we are and will be a minority. We should not be surprised or saddened by this.

I have the sweet certainty that my Lord is present in Europe today.

And you have no doubts about that?

Oh no. No doubts at all. It's not a question that haunts me anymore.

When I was younger, I was afraid I wouldn't find it. It was as though I was haunted by this fear. I had to find out or I would sink. Now I am much more peaceful.

Is that the wisdom of age?

I don't know if there is such a thing as wisdom of age. (Laughs.) I would be happy if there were!

But deep down, we always do the same stupid things, and we always come up against the same wall. At least we know that the wall is there, and that it will hurt.

I also know now that I am only an instrument of the Lord. There are many others. This awareness makes me always a little suspicious of all those who say they have the unbeatable formula for announcing God.

There is no magic recipe?

No. There is only the humility of the Gospel.

And when you were younger, did you believe in magic recipes?

Yes, of course, I believed in them. But it is a beautiful folly of youth. It also shows the enthusiasm of young people.

Why is the message of Christianity still relevant today?

Because people have not changed in two thousand years.

We are still looking for happiness and we don't find it. We are still thirsty for infinity and come up against our own limits.

We commit injustices that have serious consequences for other people, which we call sin. But we now live in a culture that tends to repress what is human.

This consumer culture promises to fulfil human desires, but it fails to do so.

Yet, in moments of crisis, of shock, people realise that a whole host of questions lie dormant in their hearts. The message of the Gospel is exceptionally fresh in responding to this search for meaning and happiness.

The message is still relevant, but the messengers sometimes appear in costumes from times gone by, which is not the best service towards the message itself.

This is why we need to adapt. Not to change the message itself, of course, but so that it can be understood, even if we are the ones announcing it.

The world is still searching, but it is no longer looking in our direction, and that hurts. We must present the Gospel message in such a way that people can orient themselves towards Christ.

This is precisely why Pope Francis launched the Synod on Synodality last October, for which you are general rapporteur. You said recently that you do not know what you will write in the report?

I have to be the one to listen. If I make a lot of proposals, it will discourage people who have a different opinion. So it is the people who have to fill my head and the pages.

This is a synod. It must be open. As the pope says, it is the Holy Spirit who is the master builder. So we must also leave room for the Holy Spirit.

This method is important today because we can no longer be satisfied with giving orders from the top down. In all societies, in politics, in business, what counts now is networking.

This change in decision-making goes hand in hand with a real change in civilisation, which we are facing. And the Church, as it has always done throughout its history, must adapt to it.

The difference is that this time the change in civilisation has an unprecedented force. We have a theology that no one will understand in 20 or 30 years. This civilisation will have passed.

This is why we need a new language that must be based on the Gospel. And the whole Church must participate in the development of this new language: this is the meaning of the synod.

As president of COMECE, you took part in a meeting in Rome at the beginning of October with the European right-wing and centre-right parties. On leaving, Cardinal Pietro Parolin encouraged them not to consider Christianity as a supermarket from which only certain values can be chosen. Does this temptation exist among politicians?

Yes, clearly.

On the right, they take up Christian symbols. They like rosaries and crucifixes, but this is not always linked to the mystery of Christ.

This is related to our past European culture. They want to refer to a culture in order to keep it. This is a misuse of religion.

On the left, I also know politicians who say they are committed Christians, who fight against climate change, but who vote in the European Parliament to make abortion a fundamental right and to limit freedom of conscience for doctors. That is also taking religion like a supermarket.

One can be a Christian Democrat, a socialist, an environmentalist, etc., and still be a Christian. This diversity of political formations is of great benefit to society.

But politicians often tend to keep their religious preferences private. In this case, it is no longer a religion, but a personal conviction.

Religion requires a public space to express itself.

But isn't it more difficult for Christians to get involved in politics?

First, it is true that there are fewer Christians. Secondly, it is true that they are less and less involved in politics.

We see this after each election.

On the other hand, it is obvious that the message from the bishops to society is no longer getting through. You have experienced this in France for several years.

This is the consequence of our being in the minority.

To help people understand what we want, we must enter into a long dialogue with those who are no longer Christians, or who are Christians only on the periphery.

If we have certain positions, it is not because we are conservative but because we believe that life and the human person must be at the centre.

To be able to say this, I think we need to have dialogues and friendships with decision-makers or politicians who think differently.

Even if they are not Christians, we share with them an honest concern to collaborate for the good of society. If we do not want to live in a compartmentalised society, we must be able to listen to each other's stories.

Does this mean that the Church must give up defending its ideas?

No, it's not about that. We must try to understand the other, to build bridges with society.

To speak about Christian anthropology, we must base ourselves upon the human experience of our interlocutor. For although Christian anthropology is marvellous, soon it will no longer be understood if we do not change our method.

And what use is it to us to speak if we are not heard? Do we speak for ourselves, to make sure we are on the right side? Is it to reassure our own followers? Or do we speak to be heard?

What are the conditions for this listening?

First of all, humility.

I think that even if it is not necessarily conscious, the Church has the image of an institution that knows everything better than others. So therefore it needs a great deal of humility, otherwise, it cannot enter into a dialogue.

This also means that we must show that we want to learn from others.

Here is an example: I am totally opposed to abortion. And as a Christian, I cannot have a different position.

But I also understand that there is a concern for the dignity of women, and the discourse we had in the past to oppose abortion laws is no longer heard today. So what else can we do to defend life?

When a discourse no longer carries weight, we must not be obstinate in using it, but look for other ways.

In France, many believe that the Church has lost a large part of its credibility because of the sexual crimes committed within it. How do you position yourself in relation to this crisis?

First of all, I want to say that these abuses are a scandal.

And when we see the numbers in the Sauvé Report, we can see that it is not the lapse of a few. There is a systemic fault somewhere, and it needs to be addressed.

We should not be afraid of the injuries that this might inflict on us, which are absolutely nothing compared to those of the victims. We, therefore, need to be very honest and be prepared to take some hits.

A few weeks ago I was in Portugal, where I was celebrating Mass. There was a little boy there who, while serving Mass, looked at me as if I were the good Lord. I could see that he saw me as a representative of God, which I was, in fact, during the liturgy.

Abusing such children is a real crime. It is a much more serious offence than if a teacher or a sports coach were to commit such acts. The fact that this was tolerated to protect the Church hurts. We turned a blind eye! It is almost irreparable.

Now I come to your question. Some people have lost confidence.

In order to regain it, when possible, one must have great humility. When one accompanies a community or a person, one must always keep in mind the principle of absolute respect for those whom one accompanies. I cannot put aside even one person.

It seems obvious to me that these questions will be on everyone's mind and in everyone's heart during the synodal process. We need to embrace change.

If there is a systemic fault, do you think systemic changes are needed?

Yes. Obviously, in my diocese, like many others, we have a charter of good conduct that everyone has to sign, priests as well as laypeople who work for the Church.

Before ordination, we also subject seminarians to eight psychological sessions designed to detect paedophilia.

We are doing all we can, but it is not enough. We need a Church that is structured in such a way that these things are no longer possible.

What does that mean?

If women and young people had been given more of a voice, these things would have been discovered much sooner.

We must stop acting as if women were a marginal group in the Church.

They are not on the periphery of the Church, they are in the centre. And if we do not give a voice to those who are at the centre of the Church, we will have a big problem.

I don't want to be more specific: this question will inevitably be asked at the Synod, in various cultures, in diverse contexts.

But women have been ignored too much. We must listen to them, as we do to the rest of the people of God.

Bishops must be like shepherds who listen to their people. It's not just for them to say, "Yes, I hear, but that doesn't interest me". They need to be in the midst of their flock.

What other changes need to be made?

The formation of the clergy must change.

It must not be centred only on the liturgy, even if I understand that seminarians attach great importance to it.

Lay people and women must have a say in the formation of priests. Forming priests is a duty for the whole Church, so the whole Church must accompany this step, with married and single men and women.

Secondly, we need to change our way of looking at sexuality. Until now, we have had a rather repressed vision of sexuality.

Obviously, it's not about telling people they can do just anything or abolishing morality, but I think we need to say that sexuality is a gift from God.

We know that, but do we say it? I'm not sure.

Some people attribute the increase in abuse to the sexual revolution. I think exactly the opposite: in my opinion, the most horrible cases occurred before the 1970s.

In this area, priests also need to be able to talk about their own sexuality and to be heard if they are having trouble living out celibacy. They must be able to talk about it freely, without fear of being reprimanded by their bishop.

As for homosexual priests, and there are many of them, it would be good if they could talk about it to their bishop without the latter condemning them.

As for celibacy and the priestly life, let us ask frankly if a priest must necessarily be celibate.

I have a very high opinion of celibacy, but is it indispensable?

In my diocese, I have married deacons who carry out their diaconate role in a marvellous way, who give homilies through which they touch people much more powerfully than we who are celibate. Why not have married priests too?

In the same way, if a priest can no longer live this solitude, we must be able to understand him, not condemn him.

I'm old now, so this doesn't concern me as much...

Have you felt the difficulty of living this solitude?

Yes, of course.

At certain times in my life, it was very clear. And it is also obvious that every priest falls in love from time to time. The question is how to behave in this case.

First of all, one must have the honesty to admit it to oneself and then act in such a way that one can continue to live out one's priesthood.

• Interview by Loup Besmond de Senneville. First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Which way is this going to go?

Not long ago, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, echoed a 50-year-old passage from a book by ... wait for it ... Swiss theologian Hans Küng.

Speaking on Spain's church-owned COPE radio network, Parolin underscored the Good Friday theme of Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher for the papal household, and (perhaps unknowingly) brought forth a concept delineated by Küng 50 years ago: Some things can change, but internal church divisions are dangerous.

Dangerous they are, and many divisions fostered by the well-funded hard right in the United States are fixated on pelvic issues and incorporate forms of Trumpism.

The relatively disorganized progressive left can tend to cross the line as well, in the opposite direction.

Still some things, Parolin said, can and should change, although "there is a level that cannot be changed, the structure of the church — the deposit of faith, the sacraments, the apostolic ministry — these are the structural elements."

So, who can change what?

Canon law maintains power in the priestly class, although the combined power of the secular purse and the power of media can present checks and balances to clerical power.

But money also supports clericalism.

Money and media, especially social media, demonstrate the dangers of a clerical-political cash-infused soup.

No doubt about it, there are many people only too happy to replace anything vaguely post-Vatican II with their 1950s imaginings.

There are probably just as many people annoyed at the ill-informed preaching of lace-dressed younger clerics and some bishops. (Recently, the bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, preaching during Ireland's RTE radio Mass, spoke about "Mary Magdalene with her colourful past.")

For those who think the Second Vatican Council was a good idea, there are many legitimate issues to discuss and many "merely ecclesiastical laws" that can and should be modified.

And the majority of the church — the lay 99% — want to have a say.

That is where the question of justice rises to the discussion.

Aside from women ordained as deacons, a fact continually affirmed by historians, there are well-researched, well-documented, well-established facts that support lay participation in church governance.

Over the centuries, the church froze the laity out of any participation in governance and jurisdiction, and the Code of Canon law nailed that door shut.

Canon 129.1 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law — written by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — firmly states that laypeople can cooperate but not participate in the power of governance.

Cash, clericalism, divisions and authority

So how does the church — that means all of us — view what is going on with cash, clericalism, divisions and authority?

The money behind the alt-right is lay money aimed at affecting the way the church reacts to questions of justice: for the poor, for the needy, for women, in addition to the fixation on sexual matters.

Change or no change?

The "no-change" folks have a lot of clerical support. Some "change" folks continue to speak, but many simply walk away.

We know the church can change because it has, usually to maintain clerical power.

Over centuries, the church moved to remove women from any role in the celebration of Eucharist, to keep women outside the altar rail "fence" of superstitious misogyny. (The ridiculous beliefs remain: A bishop told me just the other day that his cathedral rector apologized because a woman was in the sanctuary during the Easter Vigil.)

Yet, there is some light at the top of the clerical ladder.

Pope Francis changed the law so women can be installed as lectors and acolytes. Cantalamessa warned against divisions. And Parolin's talk sounded like a passage from Küng's 1971 book, Why Priests? Küng writes:

A multiplicity of opinions, criticism, and opposition have their legitimate place and require a constant dialogue and the constructive display of contrary ideas.

In all this the private sphere of every member of the Church should be respected (whether they are avant-garde or conservative in nature).

In "matters of faith and morals" nothing can be attained with mere votes. In this regard, where it is impossible to obtain some sort of consensus (not unanimity), it is better to leave the question open according to ancient conciliar tradition.

Echoing Küng, Parolin said: "Sometimes ... one fails to distinguish between what is essential that cannot change and what is not essential that must be reformed, must change according to the spirit of the Gospel."

The secretary of state continued, "There is a whole life of the church that can be renewed."

But is there fear that change will cause the far right to take their money and run? You may recall that the church leaves many questions open because, as Küng points out, "it is impossible to obtain some sort of consensus."

I am not so sure avoiding decisions is the best route.

It is never good to prefer peace to justice.

• Phyllis Zagano is a senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, New York. Her most recent book is Women: Icons of Christ, and her other books include Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future. Study guides for both books are available for free download at sites.hofstra.edu/phyllis-zagano/.
• First published by ncronline.org. Republished with permission.

For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science.

In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite 10,000 times smaller than a grain of salt.

COVID-19 attacks our physical bodies, but also the cultural foundations of our lives, the toolbox of community and connectivity that is for the human what claws and teeth represent to the tiger.

Our interventions to date have largely focused on mitigating the rate of spread, flattening the curve of morbidity.

There is no treatment at hand, and no certainty of a vaccine on the near horizon.

The fastest vaccine ever developed was for mumps. It took four years. COVID-19 killed 100,000 Americans in four months.

There is some evidence that natural infection may not imply immunity, leaving some to question how effective a vaccine will be, even assuming one can be found.

And it must be safe.

If the global population is to be immunized, lethal complications in just one person in a thousand would imply the death of millions.

Pandemics and plagues have a way of shifting the course of history, and not always in a manner immediately evident to the survivors.

In the 14th Century, the Black Death killed close to half of Europe's population.

A scarcity of labour led to increased wages. Rising expectations culminated in the Peasants Revolt of 1381, an inflection point that marked the beginning of the end of the feudal order that had dominated medieval Europe for a thousand years.

The COVID pandemic will be remembered as such a moment in history, a seminal event whose significance will unfold only in the wake of the crisis. It will mark this era much as the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the stock market crash of 1929, and the 1933 ascent of Adolf Hitler became fundamental benchmarks of the last century, all harbingers of greater and more consequential outcomes.

COVID's historic significance lies not in what it implies for our daily lives.

Change, after all, is the one constant when it comes to culture.

All peoples in all places at all times are always dancing with new possibilities for life.

As companies eliminate or downsize central offices, employees work from home, restaurants close, shopping malls shutter, streaming brings entertainment and sporting events into the home, and airline travel becomes ever more problematic and miserable, people will adapt, as we've always done.

Fluidity of memory and a capacity to forget is perhaps the most haunting trait of our species. As history confirms, it allows us to come to terms with any degree of social, moral, or environmental degradation.

To be sure, financial uncertainty will cast a long shadow.

Hovering over the global economy for some time will be the sober realization that all the money in the hands of all the nations on Earth will never be enough to offset the losses sustained when an entire world ceases to function, with workers and businesses everywhere facing a choice between economic and biological survival.

Unsettling as these transitions and circumstances will be, short of a complete economic collapse, none stands out as a turning point in history.

But what surely does is the absolutely devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the reputation and international standing of the United States of America.

In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism.

At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America's claim to supremacy in the world.

For the first time, the international community felt compelled to send disaster relief to Washington.

For more than two centuries, reported the Irish Times, "the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the U.S. until now: pity."

As American doctors and nurses eagerly awaited emergency airlifts of basic supplies from China, the hinge of history opened to the Asian century.

No empire long endures, even if few anticipate their demise.

Every kingdom is born to die.

The 15th century belonged to the Portuguese, the 16th to Spain, 17th to the Dutch. France dominated the 18th and Britain the 19th. Bled white and left bankrupt by the Great War, the British maintained a pretence of domination as late as 1935, when the empire reached its greatest geographical extent. By then, of course, the torch had long passed into the hands of America.

In 1940, with Europe already ablaze, the United States had a smaller army than either Portugal or Bulgaria. Within four years, 18 million men and women would serve in uniform, with millions more working double shifts in mines and factories that made America, as President Roosevelt promised, the arsenal of democracy.

When the Japanese within six weeks of Pearl Harbor took control of 90 percent of the world's rubber supply, the U.S. dropped the speed limit to 35 mph to protect tires, and then, in three years, invented from scratch a synthetic-rubber industry that allowed Allied armies to roll over the Nazis.

At its peak, Henry Ford's Willow Run Plant produced a B-24 Liberator every two hours, around the clock.

Shipyards in Long Beach and Sausalito spat out Liberty ships at a rate of two a day for four years; the record was a ship built in four days, 15 hours and 29 minutes. A single American factory, Chrysler's Detroit Arsenal, built more tanks than the whole of the Third Reich. Continue reading

World War II changed Western history. The post-war Catholic parish was an institutional wonder.

It took off with the baby boom, reached its peak in the 1980s, started its decline in the 1990s and may well be mortally wounded by the COVID-19 epidemic in the 2020s.

The parish of my wartime infancy appeared timeless.

It was an identifiable part of the wider culture but, for Catholics, it was a mainstay of life. Baptisms, marriages and funerals happened there. Most Catholics started formal schooling there.

That is where you ritualised being a Catholic. Lifelong personal and family friends were made. It had its social oddities such as not eating meat on Friday, the practice of confession and regular Sunday Mass. Adherence was tribal.

Post-war reconstruction for Catholics brought new vitality to the parish. With population growth came new parishes and schools.

The baby boom brought not only a large new generation of members but increased vitality and vision to the whole of society. The times - they were a changin.

Vatican II was in tune with that change

The fortress church lowered its drawbridge and out streamed the People of God on a march towards establishing a new Kingdom of God - a new world order marked by identification with the hopes and joys, the griefs and anxieties of all, mutual respect, the discarding of bygone enmities, diminished sectarianism an improved life for everybody and a fairer society.

Parishes implemented that new vision. The laity moved into active mode. There were youth groups, senior citizens groups, social justice groups, parent groups, social groups sporting groups.

And all had their formal coming together in the parish liturgy which, while led by clergy, was no longer a clerical preserve, and was in a language all could embrace and understand.

Lay action and leadership became a top policy in the renewed Church - especially with the youth. The Young Christian Worker movement (YCW) formed a whole generation to see, judge and act. Loads of young priests who were mentors of this movement.

The parish was a scene of action and vitality.

But an undertow was forming under this enthusiasm.

Paul VI went along with the awakening vision but was still a product of the Ancien Regime of Christendom and a lifetime operative of its clerical bureaucracy.

He feared that the new enthusiasm would get out of hand. So, he put on the brakes. He re-affirmed priestly celibacy and condemned contraception. His technique of moderating the exuberance was by appointing conservative bishops.

Ten years later, Restoration became the official Church policy with the election of John Paul II.

By the end of the 1980s fault lines started to show in the Church. You noticed them in the parish. The earliest pointer was a drop in Mass attendance and affiliation.

Adult parishioners in their day had found their social life in the parish. But, now, the new generation found their social stimulus in a wider world. Once they reached adulthood, they dropped Mass.

No longer compelled to set an example, their parents started to drift away themselves.

As society became more secular, the Church hierarchy grew more rule-insistent and less pastoral.

Rather than re-discovering the core of the Jesus message and recontextualizing it, the hierarchy, supported by revisionist Catholics, chose to stick more tightly to their guns only to be left irrelevant and increasingly alone.

The bishop in mitre and crosier - once an image of authority - became a curio from the past.

Enter COVID-19

The numbers tell the tale.

Already by the time the pandemic hit, Mass attendance had dropped to about 10 percent. Catholic school enrolments are not as solid. Locally born clergy are dying out. Foreign priests are struggling. Parishes are being closed or amalgamated. The ranks of committed supporters are ever thinning. The institutional decline is clear to all.

And now COVID-19 lockdowns have hit.

Large areas have not had a church gathering for months. Where religious gatherings have been resumed, only a fraction of the former congregations seem to have come back. Social distancing results in unrecognisable liturgies. It's not the way it used to be.

At a practical level, income has dropped - perilously - and with no signs of reversal. There is a critical level of income below which you cannot run a parish.

The institutional parish as we knew it is on its knees. Hence the grieving for lost glory days.

Mind you, it is an institution that is being mourned - not the central vision articulated by Vatican II.

The church as an institution is in trouble but not the Church as the People of God.

All institutions rise and fall. Visions endure and can find new institution vehicles. There are millions of true believers out there. They just find the current institution is not fit for purpose.

The shape of future Christianity

Synods and regional councils are institutional attempts to address the challenge.

A German synodal assembly seems to be making progress. The Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Union (COMENCE) is doing its own soul searching on the problem.

An Australian Plenary Council is in preparation but getting mixed support. Some, including many bishops, don't want it. Others, browned off by past efforts which went nowhere, are cynical.

One hopeful sign is the emergence of small groups of well-informed Catholics with Church renewal as their shared objective.

They are not well received by the institutional leadership but are persistent in their wish to re-invigorate Catholic Christianity.

They are active in synod and council preparations but do not rely on them for their future. Groups of them meet regularly to remember and celebrate the Lord as the first followers did.

The institutional parish may have run its course, but the Christian spark is not extinguished. It is just taking new forms.

• Eric Hodgens is a theologian and senior priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne (Australia).

As a pastor, he's also offered us hope.

Now, a collection of his messages on the pandemic put together by Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Canadian Jesuit who works closely with the pope in Rome, has been published as "Life After the Pandemic."

It contains eight papal addresses given in March and April that show how the pope thinks about living in this time.

Two of the pieces, "Urbi et orbi" addresses to the city of Rome and the world, may be familiar to some. Others are talks he gave to individuals and groups, even a message to those involved in street newspapers sold by the homeless and poor.

As he often does, Francis in these speeches calls to account the world's powerful, politically or economically. He is also concerned with the "small part of the human family (that) has moved ahead, while the majority has remained behind."

The pope fears the world will respond to the pandemic with "the selfishness of particular interests."

We may "be struck by an even worse virus, that of selfish indifference. A virus spread by the thought that life is better if it is better for me, and that everything will be fine if it is fine for me." This will lead to "discarding the poor, and sacrificing those left behind on the altar of progress."

Rather, he hopes that we will "be profoundly shaken by what is happening all around us."

If we recognize that we are one family, then our response must be "to eliminate inequities, to heal the injustice that is undermining the health of the entire human family!"

The pandemic, and our response, is as much a symptom as an illness in itself.

The pope asks us to "take a frank look at the facts to see that our common home is falling into serious disrepair.

We have polluted it, we have despoiled it, endangering our very lives. … We have no future if we destroy the very environment that sustains us."

"Greedy for profit, we let ourselves get caught up in things, and lured away by haste," he laments.

"(W)e were not shaken awake by wars or injustice across the world, nor did we listen to the cry of the poor or of our ailing planet."

Francis notes the other epidemics we face: hunger, "wars fueled by desires for domination and power" and "lifestyles that cause so many to suffer poverty."

Returning to business, as usual, is not an option.

In the preface, Czerny asks: "Why reinvest in fossil fuels, monoculture farming and rainforest destruction when we know they worsen our environmental crisis? Why resume the arms industry with its terrible waste of resources and useless destruction?"

Francis calls on governments to put people first, even as he realizes this entails economic hardship.

To opt for the contrary "would lead to the death of many people, in one sense a kind of viral genocide," he says.

The pope encourages "political leaders to work actively for the common good, to provide the means and resources needed to enable everyone to lead a dignified life and, when circumstances allow, to assist them in resuming their normal daily activities."

At the same time, the pope hopes "that governments understand that technocratic paradigms (whether state-centred or market-driven) are not enough to address this crisis or the other great problems affecting humankind. Now more than ever, persons, communities and peoples must be put at the centre, united to heal, to care and to share."

The example of caregivers and frontline workers gives the pope optimism that we can think this way. He thanks "all who work diligently to guarantee the essential services necessary for civil society … (who) have helped ease people's difficulties and suffering."

He singles out the ordinary but often forgotten people: "doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, caregivers, providers of transportation, law and order forces, volunteers, priests, religious men and women" as well as "fathers, mothers, grandparents and teachers."

He mourns those we've lost, praying that God might "welcome the departed into his kingdom and grant comfort and hope to those still suffering, especially the elderly and those who are alone."

He singles out those in nursing homes and prisons.

He sympathizes with those who are homeless or "live in tiny, ramshackle dwellings."

Francis acknowledges the fear we still face.

"Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by." He confesses, "We find ourselves afraid and lost."

The pandemic "exposes our vulnerability and uncovers those false and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules, our projects, our habits and priorities."

He calls for a relaxation of international sanctions and a reduction if not the forgiveness of debts so those poor countries can care for their citizens.

He hopes that fighting might cease so that the world can attend to the needs of migrants and refugees.

More than that, Francis wants people to remember that the Lord is still with them.

"In the midst of isolation when we are suffering from a lack of tenderness and chances to meet up, and we experience the loss of so many things, let us once again listen to the proclamation that saves us: He is risen and is living by our side."

"Embracing the Lord in order to embrace hope," he says, "that is the strength of faith, which frees us from fear and gives us hope."

A quote on the back cover of the book summarizes Francis' thoughts and prayer:
If we act as one people,
even in the face of other epidemics
that threaten us,
we can make a real impact.…
May we find within us the necessary antibodies of
justice, charity and solidarity.
We must not be afraid
to live the alternative—the civilization of love….
In this time of tribulation and mourning,
I hope that, where you are,
you will be able to experience Jesus,
who comes to meet you,
greets you and says: "Rejoice" (cf. Mt 28:9).
And may this greeting mobilize us
to invoke and amplify the Good News
of the Kingdom of God.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

The Roman Catholic Church's mishandling of sexual abuse and a series of financial scandals had challenged the credibility of the institution and emptied its pews.

For Francis, the root of the church's problems was clericalism: the belief that religious people belong to a superior caste, insulated by favoritisms, which has helped promote an air of moral superiority among clergy.

"Clericalism is our ugliest pervasion," the pope told seminarians last year. "The Lord wants you to be shepherds; shepherds of the people, not clerics of the state."

The mentality behind clericalism, according to Francis, has helped spread corruption within the Catholic Church. Victims of sexual abuse were not taken seriously, and predator priests were moved instead of removed in order to save face. The belief that only those who are ordained have authority has helped marginalize laypeople in the Catholic Church, especially women.

Like activists in the United States and around the world trying to break the stronghold of systemic racism, the pope was faced with a malady that has its roots in centuries-old traditions and practices and structural sin.

To change it — or at least to start making a change — the pope needed a combination of big gestures and long-term strategy, to ensure that the changes he makes today resonate in the future.

According to Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the head of the Vatican think tank for matters promoting life, Pope Francis has tried to implement a "revolution of fraternity."

"This ‘fraternity' starts with paying attention to the excluded, with the care for existential and geographical peripheries," the archbishop told Religion News Service on Friday (June 12).

The first step involved changing the "style" of the papacy, Paglia said.

Francis' decision to live in Domus Sanctae Marthae instead of the traditional papal palaces sent a message of simplicity and humility. The Argentine pope opted for simple clothing, avoiding the colourful flourishes of his predecessors and helping to promote a public image that portrays the church and its clergy as closer to the people.

The pope also tries to use simplified language and communication to make the Catholic message more appealing, according to the archbishop.

Pope Francis "expresses the same gospel in a new language, understandable to the men and women of the 21st century," said Paglia.

While using a new language and public image is an important first step for Francis, the biggest challenge lay in changing the culture within the Vatican and its institutions.

That starts with the bureaucracy that makes up the Roman Curia.

In this case, the pope has chosen a "long process" aimed at "changing hearts and minds," Paglia said.

The 2013 papal document "Evangelii Gaudium" serves as a manifesto for Pope Francis' reform. It hoped to inspire "a new chapter of evangelization," rooted in care for the poor and a renewed sense of mission. The document also set out to change the centralization of power and doctrine within the Catholic Church in order to encourage "creativity and openness," Francis wrote.

"Pope Francis is drawing up a Curia that is ‘at the service' of local churches," Paglia said.

Francis' "green" encyclical, "Laudato Si'," changed the way the Catholic Church and the Vatican relate to society and the international community. It placed the message of the gospel in defense of the environment and the many migrants created by climate change and pollution, an approach that had already been proposed by previous popes but was brought to the masses by Francis.

Reform, as Francis says, is about "starting processes." It includes concrete steps as well as theological imagination.

Francis' words on creating a church that serves like a "field hospital" will be sterile if they don't permeate the culture of theologians and canon lawyers.

Pope Francis speaks during a news conference aboard the papal plane on his flight back from a trip to Thailand and Japan on Nov. 26, 2019. (Remo Casilli/Pool Photo via AP)
Theologians are called to be "men and women of compassion, touched by the oppressed life of many, by the slavery of today, by social wounds, by violence, by wars and from the enormous injustices suffered by so many poor," Francis told participants in a theology congress in the southern Italian town of Naples in June 2019.

Getting theologians and canon lawyers to buy into reform won't be easy. At the Vatican, there are rivalries between theologians and canonists at different pontifical universities that could jeopardize "any attempt at reform," said canon lawyer Claudia Giampietro.

"The changes proposed by the pontiff will have a future only if it inspires a process of reflection within the People of God, even among those who are dedicated to the study of ecclesial discipline," she told RNS in an email on Saturday.

Francis has also sought ways to foster conversation between church leadership and laypeople, often through the use of synods, where bishops from all over the world gather to address specific topics.

He overhauled the summit of bishops to promote a multitude of points of view, which allowed for conversations about priestly celibacy, homosexuality and distributing Communion to the divorced and remarried.

Those topics had been off-limits in the past.

"I was the relator general (chief secretary) of the 2001 synod and there was a cardinal who told us what should be discussed and what should not," Pope Francis told the Argentine newspaper La Nación in 2014. "That will not happen now."

Among Francis' biggest changes is the complete makeover of the cardinals.

To date, Francis has appointed 66 out of the 124 cardinals who will elect the next pontiff, which will likely cement his legacy into the future. Those new cardinals have come from a wide range of cultures, backgrounds and religious congregation.

"We need a new vision for the world," Paglia said. "We have seen it in these months of pandemic. We need hope. And hope runs on two inseparable rails. The first is to care for one another without discarding anyone, aware that people are a part of a single family. The second is to find a new relationship between humanity and creation."

• Claire Giangravé - Vatican Correspondent RNS. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Yet to assume that the institution is exclusively the Church is to miss the point: Cardinal Pell has been sentenced, not Australia's Catholics.

Believers, and those who identify with the Catholic faith tradition, are the real Church. The institution is but an organised mechanism to give expression to some of that believing community's social and practical activities.

For the Church to survive, its members need to take responsibility for their future.

The clerical caste has failed us in its mismanagement of the abuse scandal. The protectionism and closed shop mentality that comes with clericalism is a curse for my Church.

Too many clerics have been too self-interested to seek the health of the Church above their own sense of entitlement and advancement. Organisationally they hold all the cards.

What should be done now?

Accountability

The Australian bishops must act. They are accountable only to the Pope and he is struggling to get on top of the issue.

They should voluntarily subject themselves to a transparent accountable mechanism that is not run by clerics. They must not use Canon Law as an excuse to avoid being accountable to both the Catholic and wider communities.

Governance

It is time for an independent body, perhaps an ombudsman model, to oversee the cultural reform of the Australian Church and the performance of bishops.

This body needs to be separate from the hierarchy, conducted under accepted public service principles and staffed by experts in fields of governance, cultural anthropology and ecclesiology.

Equality

The bishops have instigated a Church-wide future directions dialogue within the Catholic community. Known as a Plenary Council, it is an important initiative but risks being clouded by perceptions of overt clerical control. To date, only bishops chair the important forums and only bishops and male clergy have full voting rights.

The medieval patriarchy of the institution is starkly out of touch. Continue reading

• An Australian perspecrtive, offered by Francis Sullivan is the former CEO of the Catholic Church in Australia's Truth, Justice and Healing Council.

This is what Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, said to reporters at the Foreign Press Association in Rome two days before the Vatican summit on the protection of minors in the church is scheduled to begin.

But if nothing substantial comes of the meeting, Ms. Barrett Doyle said it is her hope "the energy of change" can be assumed by secular forces "so that changes will come from the outside, through attorneys general, grand jury investigations and so on."

"The Catholics of the world are grieving, disillusioned," she said, because of "the sexual abuse of thousands of minors by clergy in past decades and bishops who covered up."

"We all know," she added, "that canon law has to be changed so that it stops protecting the priesthood of ordained men over the lives of children.

"I believe the church is no way close to enacting the reforms to end this epidemic," she said, "which consists of two aspects: the sexual assault on minors by priests and the cover-up by bishops."

BishopAccountability.org is one of the many advocacy groups for survivors of abuse by clergy that have descended on Rome this week from all over the world to highlight the problem ahead of the summit.

Ms. Barrett Doyle explained that in advance of the summit her organization had reviewed the church's response to abuse in eight countries with the highest numbers of Catholics—Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, the United States, Italy, France, Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which together represent 50 percent of the world's Catholics.

She said the review showed that Brazil, with 172 million Catholics, has not posted a policy for handling abuse allegations on its website.

"The crisis is invisible there," she alleged, though her group had identified some 90 priest abusers in Brazil in 2012 and believes there are "thousands" of cases.

The church in Mexico, with the second largest Catholic population, claims to have dealt with only one abusive priest, while just four have been convicted of this crime.

But, she said, the president of the Mexican bishops' conference described clergy sex abuse as "a bottomless well" and is seeking "unusual new faculties" from the Vatican to deal with the problem.

In the Philippines, the third most Catholic country in the world, the church has had "a lax policy" since 2003 (though it has been removed from the website) and "no priest has been convicted of child sex crimes."

Ms. Barrett Doyle said the church the Philippines "lets offenders return to the ministry" and "bishops don't report priests" because they "have a relation that is analogous to father-son with them."

She charged that the Philippines' church also tolerates "priest fathers" on "a one-child quota system."

BishopAccountability.org found that globally eight bishops conferences—Brazil, Congo, Peru, Venezuela, Nigeria, India, Ecuador and Uganda—have not published guidelines on how to respond to child abuse and that only one of 20 nations in the world with the highest number of Catholics has a zero-tolerance policy—the United States.

The importance of this summit of the presidents of the world's 114 bishops' conferences and of the Eastern-rite churches, which Pope Francis has convened, was underlined by the BishopAccountability.org survey.

Pope Francis has said that he wants all of the church's national conferences to be "on the same page" in terms of the response to the abuse problem.

Ms. Barrett Doyle added that Pope Francis is "the first pope to have said that bishops have to be held accountable" and "the first pope to have said that there has to be an end to cover-up." Continue reading

• Image: Vimeo

The pope described our time in the church and wider society as "not so much an era of change as a change of era."

The conviction and sentencing of the highest placed cleric in the Catholic world - Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide - and the forthcoming criminal trial of Cardinal George Pell are only the most obvious challenges faced by the Church in Australia and globally for that matter.

The pope's elliptical expression could mean just about anything you want it to. But it certainly refers to something we all know is going on - that where we've been in the church internationally and in Australia is no sure indication of where we will be soon enough.

Think about women's participation in decision making in the church, gender and identity issues and we have hardly begun the discussion.

There are so many other issues too.

What adds urgency and the unavoidability of profound change is the misnamed crisis of clerical sexual abuse.

I have believed for a long time that it's more the crisis of incompetent leadership in the church than anything to do particularly with sexual abuse.

But the challenges facing the church in need of a makeover in a new era start with "core business."

On one outstanding issue, the Catholic Church is disturbingly not even noticing the elephant in the middle of the room.

The stubborn fixation with clerical celibacy means that vast numbers in the church are deprived of the Eucharist - the "source and summit" of the church's life.

That in itself is the tip of an iceberg called ministry.

Who is admitted to what ministry?

How can the church organize and arrange its ministries so that it can do what it is founded to do - preach the Gospel and enliven the world with vibrant communities at its service?

That's why what we are experiencing is a change of era.

You don't have to be an actuary to see that the way the church was for its first 150 years in Australia is over.

The sight of half-empty churches with ageing congregations across the country is the visual representation of something far less visible: the death of a culture that kept the church afloat.

But what are we to make of the evaporation of a culture that sustained the church probably until the 1960s?

As I was part of it, I think I am experienced and qualified enough to comment.

The first thing to ask is how it could have collapsed so completely if it was so good.

And I think the answer is quite simple: it was paper thin.

If the faith was so robust among Australian Catholics, how has disintegration, alienation and dissatisfaction occurred, if not quickly then quite extensively?

"Pray, pay and obey" was the clichéd description of what was expected of lay people in a clerically dominated, authoritarian and pious church.

But first let's ask what has disintegrated?

It's not just the complete collapse of confidence in the church's leadership.

It's not even the perception that the church in Australia is just a club run by old men who have a rule book and keep telling everyone what the rules are.

It's more simple and actually very easy to understand.

Until I was about 18 years old (1971), two things fortified Catholicism in Australia and had since the 1840s.

They were tribalism and ritual conformity. Catholicism meant you were Irish or Irish-Australian.

Post-war migration had not made an extensive impact by then and the contest with the wider non-Catholic and often Masonic society still affected job opportunities, where Catholic families lived and, of course, the schools children went to.

And reinforcing the relative simplicity of the culture of the 30 or so years after the second world war was the Cold War.

It was a world where good and bad and right and wrong in an "us and them" world made us right, them wrong and the choices we had to make a great deal easier to identify.

The pre-Vatican II hierarchies of clergy and religious, the perception of priests, brothers and nuns in parishes and schools as our cultural heroes melded with the devotions, sacramental rituals, seasons and feasts that shaped Catholic faith.

The church kept growing in numbers, increasing its buildings and services.

It was boom time for a very externalized understanding of Catholicism.

A lot of it had to do with economic self-interest, upward social mobility and institutional machismo.

But that's all gone for the most part and life as a Catholic now approximates more to another favored image of the current pope than anything else: a field hospital for the wounded and dying.

And in my experience, time in hospital is always challenging and brings the patient back to basics.

One of the basics is an interior life and in all the hugger mugger of tribalism, rituals and a focus on success, there was not much opportunity provided for the development of the interior life - helping us to become more self-aware, reflective and prayerful.

In fact, I've found throughout my life as a priest that real (rather than notional) faith usually only comes to someone when they get sick, fail, lose their job, get divorced or suffer one of the myriad reversals that come along in life.

Moments of failure, rejection and disappointment are turning points.

You either dig deeper or you just park the whole subject and forget it.

We are in the first five minutes of a long day.

We are in a change of era and the shape of that era is only just beginning to be explored.

• Father Michael Kelly is a Bangkok-based Australian Jesuit who led ucanews.com from 2008 to 2018 and is now the publisher of the English editions of La Croix International and La Civilta Cattolica.

The double blow of not knowing God and not knowing anybody at all brought me to a place of loneliness and crisis.

Once I was able to acknowledge my complete inability to cope, God was more than able to meet me, and in fact brought me to a small but loving fellowship in which I began to learn what it meant to walk with God.

For the remainder of that year my faith was flying as I grew in understanding and dependency.

Sometimes I feel a wave of sadness looking back - why isn't my faith still like that?

In fact since then (almost 30 years) my faith has changed, several times.

Like most Christians I have had to work through doubts, think about why God "doesn't do what he's supposed to", and even my understanding of who God is has changed.

But in fact it's OK, even necessary, for our faith, our understanding of scripture, and our idea of God himself to change over time:

Our relationships change over time
Think about your relationship with your wife or husband.

Over the years it has changed.

You have both grown as individuals and you have also grown in your understanding of each other.

Perhaps some of the early romance or unpredictability has gone, but then so has much of the arguing about nothing.

You may have new shared interests and have lost old ones you never imagined you could do without.

Or think of your relationship with your parents.

As we grow older this changes as we transition from dependency to a kind of equity, to finally being depended upon.

In all our close relationships as our knowledge of each other grows, we can increasingly anticipate each other's reactions, moods, and even thoughts.

God made us in his image, to be in loving relationship with him, but good relationships develop. Continue reading.

Sources

• Chris Goswami is Director of Marketing & Communications at Openwave Mobility and is studying and training for ordained ministry in the Baptist Church.
• Image: 7minutes.net

Her pakeha friends ask if the traditional role of women in the powhiri is sexist.

"I just try to explain that females have their own type of mana. Traditionally Maori really revered their women, and looked after their women, and I guess it's about maintaining that kind of whakaaro."

That view is a stark contrast to some older women.

Parliament could change its protocol to allow women to speak in Maori welcome ceremonies after complaints from some female MPs who felt the current tikanga belittled their status.

The Speaker of the House, David Carter, is in the process of reviewing parliamentary protocol after two senior female Labour MPs raised the red flag last year in July.

During a powhiri for Youth Parliament, Labour MPs Maryan Street and Annette King were made to move from the front row of seats or paepae, which is the orators bench usually reserved for men.

Street believes it sent the wrong message to the youth MPs, and says it was time for Parliament to develop its own kawa [protocol].

"This isn't how I want young people to see Parliament. I want them to see Parliament as a place of equals, and this kawa doesn't reflect that".

Suggestions by MPs include making provisions for women to speak in welcome ceremonies, and allowing high ranking female MPs to sit in the front seats or paepae. Continue reading.

Source: The Wireless

Image: RNZ

Forcades — a Benedictine nun, activist, feminist theologian and physician from Catalonia in Spain — and Francis — a Jesuit pope from Argentina — share a kindred vision of empowering the poor through nonviolence.

Both understand the relationship between capitalism and poverty.

Francis has denounced the "idolatry of money" and implored world leaders to assure all people "dignified work, education and healthcare."

In a way, Forcades takes it further by advocating that the state must be challenged from the bottom up. The people must be the agents of change.

"When I talk about church, we talk about how the Gospel inspired us. There are many kinds of church, and I identify with the people at the bottom, at the base.

"Many people have a hope that the Catholic church might change because of the pope, but if you look at history, change comes from bottom up, not from top down," Forcades said to a room overflowing with "local radical activists" Continue reading.

Source: National Catholic Reporter

Image: psalmboxkey.com

Throughout the world, but particularly in Ireland, the sense of the end of an era that delivered the largest growth in the history of the Church, something foundational is happening.

In Ireland for 150 years from the Famine in the 1840s, a cast of Catholicism was exported worldwide. It's plain that this phase in the Church's life that seemed as though it would last forever is in fact over.

For example, the Irish Jesuits who sent hundreds and hundreds of missionaries to Asia, Africa and Australia now have more members aged over 90 than they do less than 50 years of age.

They have four under 50 and can only look at "consolidating", also known as shutting up shop.

One British Jesuit told me that on current figures, there would not be a Jesuit in Britain NOT on the aged pension by the middle of the next decade.

It's not as though the statisticians throughout the Jesuits and the wider Church in Australia, Europe and the USA haven't seen it coming and haven't already been advising the Congregational and diocesan leadership for a long time on the unsustainability of various Provinces, dioceses and works.

In Europe though it appears that 'the future has arrived a little earlier than expected', as former Archbishop of Brisbane John Battersby once said of the Archdiocese!

Such has been the case for many congregations of religious women across the world far earlier than for some male clerical religious congregations and for the supply of clergy in dioceses.

For clerical religious, the provision of the sacraments has been an enduring need to meet and one that provided relevance.

That has kept numbers up quite apart from any special focus offered by the charism of founders and their relevance and attractiveness to prospective members.

But not now.

As far as absorbing the impact of these well-known and common experiences, not much work has been done apart from scaling back, sometimes done with an energetic press of the panic button by superiors and bishops to underline the urgency of their actions.

For the rank and file among religious and clergy, even if these realities were not anticipated when most joined their congregations or dioceses, the challenge is great.

The most common reaction is something I have come to call the spirituality and missiology of the last of the Mohicans.

Everyone can see the reality; everyone is reluctant to utter the D word for DEATH; everyone hopes that at least there will be something around for when the inevitable admission to the aged care facility occurs.

'Don't ask me why it's all evaporated; I'll be the last of the tribe and I don't want to have my life complicated by being asked to "please explain". The 'collapse' is the way many respond'.

At the turn of an age, as the early 20th Century French Church historian Peguy once remarked, the Church always arrives a little late and a little breathless. The turn of this one is no different because the reality is that there are no reinforcements coming from traditional sources to support existing ways of delivering the service.

For believers, the future belongs not to fears but to God.

The only authentic and spiritually persuasive response to being in the middle of a change of eras like this is one that allows the Spirit to do what the Spirit does. And what the Spirit does is always surprise.

Discipleship asks that we be attentive to the unexpected ways we may be drawn.

What I find very discouraging about ways of addressing this inescapable reality is the abject failure to see how the mission of the Church is actually delivered today.

Despite our blindness to it at times, God is still vigorously at work.

Only a conception of mission and the resources needed for it entirely reduced to clergy and religious as until recently trained and authorized could see it as something where God hasn't been energetically active.

To borrow from what Bill Clinton did to beat George Bush Senior twenty years ago - "the economy, stupid, the economy!"

The real context for the Catholic Church in Australia and much of the developed world is "the laity, stupid, the laity".

There actually has been an explosion in lay participation in ministry at every level, except the sacramental.

What's needed is to acknowledge that fact.

The acid test of whether there has been any acknowledgement of the facts is whether any real power sharing has occurred whereby lay people have become part of decision making processes of dioceses and congregations.

Lay people and women especially have taken leadership roles in the services that are offered - in health, welfare and educations - because they require a professional expertise that these days the congregations and dioceses don't have among their members.

But do lay people, and women in particular, actually become part of the processes where the most significant decisions are made - on Congregational Councils and in the diocesan bodies often reserved for exclusive clerical membership?

At a strategic and organizational level, acknowledgement of and decisive involvement by lay people in mission, leadership and ministry can go a couple of ways.

One currently proposed response to this change of eras adopted by some in the Church, and reinforced by Emeritus Pope Benedict, is quite happy to welcome this decline in the Church as we have known it.

This 'proposal of decline' as they see it, gives God an given opportunity to scale the Church back to a faithful remnant.

A faithful remnant that would be distinctive because of its orthodoxy and compliance with what Rome and its utterances required under the management of the last three decades.

Shame about the mass of Catholics, you might say. They can amuse themselves. There is the elite and that's all there really needs to be any concern for.

The more recent, but also more ancient, view - proposed by Pope Francis who also accepts a reduced size and presence of the Church as inevitable and perhaps desirable - is to say that elitism is for the birds and what is needed is for the Church to be present and make its contribution as leaven: distinctive, even vital and decisive, but not all consuming and dominating.

The faithful remnant - and not the usual clerical and religious suspects - in this view will be distinctive because it engages directly with the issues and concerns that the average person has, is in the market place and is ready to give an account of the hope they have.

It is not hidden away behind sacristy doors and locked into conversations with the already signed up membership.

However as the present becomes the future, one thing is sure, the latter won't be like the past. We might just be in a situation of such abject poverty and resourcelessness that we can allow God to be God.

Michael Kelly SJ is executive director of ucanews.com

Source: Pearls and Irritations

Image: ucanews.com