One of them was Sydney's Professor Renée Köhler-Ryan, National Head of the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia.

On her return from Rome—and after some quality time with her husband and five children, from whom she was separated for a month—she told The Catholic Weekly that after the first assembly a broader range of Catholic women's views and priorities were explored, beyond ordination.

"It is an obvious fact that most women in the church have no interest in being priests, and have no interest in being deacons. Statistically," Prof Köhler-Ryan said.

"Many women, when surveyed, think in principle as a matter of feminist justice that option should be available to them.

"But for the most part they themselves are not interested. So, it's at a very abstract level, almost.

"The question is then, ‘What is it that women in the church need? What do they need from the church?'

"That was where my statements to the [synod press conference on 17 October] came out:

‘What women want will be different because every woman is different.'"

Women are often carers and mothers, and that work needs to be respected, Prof Köhler-Ryan added.

It was a positive development that mothers and grandmothers were acknowledged as the ones who pass on faith to their children and grandchildren.

"But how often do we actually hear that from the pulpit or elsewhere?" she asked.

"Catholic employers should really have this on their radar, so that a parent's right to be with their child—to be with them in their formative years—should never be undermined.

"No woman, or man, should be made to feel lesser because they've made the choice to be there with their children."

The alternative is to give into a "very secular agenda" that wants to see roles within the church from a democratic, rather than complementary, perspective—one that insists women cannot be truly "equal in baptism" until they are ordained to the priesthood.

This perspective had knock-on effects throughout the synod, including in the language used in the synod's final synthesis document.

"What I noticed in the synthesis document especially, was that the church was referred to ‘it' as if it's somewhat neutral, rather than she or her; the church is a mother," Prof Köhler-Ryan said.

"When we lose that sense of the motherhood of the church, we lose the sense of the nuptial mystery of the priesthood in relationship to the church as well."

Spending time away from her family was difficult, and Prof Köhler-Ryan said it was "absolutely essential" that she went to Rome with her husband's "absolute support."

Yet the synod's organisation "would lead one to believe there's not an appreciation of what it takes for a layperson with a young family to go away for four weeks," a frustration she shared with other parent-delegates in Rome.

Nevertheless, these lay voters with families brought the presence of the "domestic church" to the consultations, Prof Köhler-Ryan said.

"When a member of a religious congregation walks into the room, you have a sense it's almost like they've brought the whole order into the room, the whole charism," she said.

"It needs to be appreciated that when a lay member who is married with kids walks into a room, they're coming from that ethos of the domestic church. It's always there, in the back of their mind."

Yet she also said that while lay women were in focus, "the male lay voice still needs to be tapped into more."

"We know that lay men are missing to a very great extent from the pews, and we need to figure out what's going on there, and bring that up as a point of conversation more than we do."

With the synod at its halfway point, and the synthesis document available to the church, Prof Köhler-Ryan said there was more discernment and conversation to come—including on the authority of the synod, now non-bishop voting members have been included.

"The rest of the world seems to be looking on, with some exceptions, thinking: ‘This synod needs to make some decisions, needs to make them now, so that the church can be brought up to the 21st century and we can all go back to being outraged about something else.'"

"But what is actually the case is that the synod cannot change church teaching, that's not going to be an automatic outcome of a synod.

"And the synod can't make the Catholic Church cease to be the Catholic Church.

"And the synod cannot change that fundamental relationship between the Bishop of Rome as pope with his bishops, and with the universal church."

• Adam Wesselinoff is Deputy Editor of the Catholic Weekly.
• First published in The Catholic Weekly

French Jews and Muslims, he pointed out, are a lot more public about demonstrating their religious identity.

But if you ask a Catholic about their affiliation, he said, you're likely to get a more evasive response like this:

"So... it's a bit complicated. How should I say it? Umm... Mum's a Catholic. Sis is an atheist... And Dad.. Dad, where are you on this?"

Religious indifference

That skit humorously illustrates the crisis Catholics face in transmitting their faith.

It is further supported by a study that the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) published in March, which showed that the Catholic population in France continues to fall.

While Catholics represented 29% of the people aged 18 to 59 who were polled in 2020, that is a significant drop from the 43% of the same age group polled ten years ago.

The authors say the decline is due to the low rate of handing down the Catholic faith from one generation to the next.

While the family transmission is strong in Islam and Judaism - 91% of those raised in Muslim families and 84% in Jewish families continue to claim their parents' religion - Christian families are less likely to pass their beliefs on to their children.

Only 67% of those raised by Catholic parents kept their religion.

Regular religious practice - prayer, pilgrimages, Mass attendance - appears to be a key element for passing down the faith.

"If nothing has been done in families to pass on the value of religious practice, particularly going to Mass, within three generations practicing Catholics will produce non-practicing children who will, in turn, have non-Christian children," observes Yann Raison du Cleuziou, a sociologist who studies trends in Catholicism.

Families that actively pass on their faith

Leaving the Church is all the simpler because, unlike Islam or Judaism, Catholicism has a minimal influence on social life.

"Dropping out of religion then occurs undramatically, almost in indifference, when children leave their parents' home," says Pierre Bréchon, professor emeritus of political science at Sciences Po Grenoble.

But the researcher, who conducted a study on the values of the French, observes an effective transmission of faith "in families that adopt a form of impermeability with regard to other surrounding cultures".

These practicing and rather conservative Catholic families successfully manage to pass on the faith by carefully selecting the religious socialisation of their children (through Catholic schools, youth movements, friendship circles, and so on).

Is this the winning formula?

Raison du Cleuziou says the successful transmission of the faith from one generation to the next is actually the result of the combination of two dimensions: the valuing of rituals and the "totalising" dimension of the faith that a child receives and that permeates all aspects of his or her life.

On the other hand, "Catholic families who delegate the transmission of the faith structures (catechism class, youth group, etc.) - as an aspect of education - have a much lower rate of religious transmission".

Becoming a minority religion could actually help

In fact, La Croix spoke to a number of Catholics with adult children in their thirties who admitted, with regret, that they did not succeed in passing on their faith.

Some questioned whether it was a good idea "to let children decide whether or not to be interested in religion once they become adults".

"We haven't given them enough for them to make an informed choice," said one of them.

"To reject the religion of one's parents, one must still have received it," noted this person, who is involved in catechesis at the national level.

The figures leave little room for doubt: only 2% of adults who grew up in a non-practicing Catholic family experienced a religious conversion as adults.

The fact that Catholicism is becoming a minority religion in France could paradoxically change the situation.

"When it is in the minority, a religion tends to restructure itself in order not to disappear. This reconfiguration leads to an intensification of the 'entre-soi' around significant practices," notes the sociologist Raison du Cleuziou.

But in matters of religion, the law of large numbers always coexists with the mystery of intimate experiences.

Transmission often remains an enigma even for those who have placed faith at the heart of their family life.

Catherine, the mother of seven children, describes her experience.

"The first four have a deep faith and the last three can take or leave religion," says this stay-at-home mom from Dijon.

"I don't know why some of them believe and the others don't, because we didn't do anything differently."

"Lack of authenticity"

But she points out two things that seem essential to her.

The first is having a family prayer after supper.

"To be honest, there were no great mystical flights of fancy during these prayer times, but they had the merit of being there," Catherine says.

"Looking back, I realise that we were able to cultivate gratitude as a family for all that's beautiful and good."

The second key point is the importance of taking ownership.

For this to happen, she says, the ritual must be able to open up to the message of love inscribed in the Catholic faith and find its way to the heart.

The figure of the parent, a transmitter of faith but also a figure of authority, can be ambivalent.

"There can be difficulties in the parent-child relationship that prevent passing on the faith if the relationship with the parents is conflicted, or if the children think they see a lack of authenticity in us," says Frédéric, a 67-year-old retired stock trader.

Only two of his children now feel close enough to the Church to talk to their children about Jesus.

"I think the first two were lucky enough to meet Catholics around them who really lived a relationship with Christ, while the last two were more subjected to Catholic education as a place of social replication for economic success," he says.

This example shows that the destiny of a religion certainly depends on its logic of social transmission but also on the personal experience of coherence and authentically following the Gospel.

• Héloïse de Neuville
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.