But we already know that the synodal process is a crucial moment in making real the transition from a Eurocentric Catholic Church to a global Catholic Church.

We are now in a crucial moment of the multi-stage process that will culminate in two Rome-based assemblies of the Synod of Bishops in October 2023 and October 2024.

The continental assemblies for Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania have already been held. And a group of delegates representing 268 dioceses in the United States and Canada gathered in Orlando (Florida) from February 13-17 to compose the response to the Working Document for the Continental Stage.

The Latin America and the Caribbean assembly is unfolding in four different regional meetings between now and the end of March. The assembly for Asia took place at the end of February in Bangkok (Thailand), and the assembly for Africa and Madagascar was held from March 1-6 in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).

Every continental assembly for the synodal process is revealing and exposing the complexity of what the Catholic Church is going through at this moment.

The assemblies for the Middle East and Europe offer a good example.

The Eastern Churches and synodality

"Synodalism is a core of the heritage of our Eastern Churches," noted the closing statement of the continental assembly for the Middle East, which took place in Bethania from February 13-17.

Besides the neologism "synodalism" — which is used instead of synodality in the translation from Arabic to English - it was interesting to see how much the Catholic Churches in the Middle East have in common with those in other parts of the world.

It was also interesting to see how this continental assembly escaped the Vatican's somewhat romantic view of the synodal tradition in the Eastern Churches (Catholic and Orthodox), which Rome sometimes evokes against more progressive demands that surface in other synodal assemblies.

At the same time, the Eastern Catholic Churches can singularly demonstrate the long tradition on which Pope Francis' synodal process is building and how synodality is helping ecumenical dialogue move forward. (In November 2022 the Pro Oriente Foundation in Austria and the Angelicum University in Rome organized two conferences on listening to Orthodox and Eastern Churches on their theology and experiences with synodality.)

The Eastern Catholic Churches are essential - and this was very visible already at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) - in offering a more catholic view of Catholicism: the Church's Roman and Latin identity has often been ideologised (see the ongoing and exacerbating controversies on the pre-Vatican II "Latin Mass") to make it co-essential with the Catholic faith - something that is both historically and theologically erroneous.

Europe and the East-West rift over Vatican II

The second example is the Continental Assembly for Europe which took place in Prague (Czech Republic) from February 5-12.

Besides the obvious and expected attempts to contain the bold theological proposals coming from the German "Synodal Path", a series of rifts emerged within Catholicism on the Old Continent.

There is a rift between the Eastern and Western parts of Europe on the reception and perception of Vatican II.

For the Churches that have survived Communism and the Cold War on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain, it is much more difficult to have an optimistic view of the possibility for the Church to coexist peacefully and creatively with secular culture.

Czech theologian Tomas Halík has often talked about the fact that the Catholic Churches beyond the Iron Curtain during the Cold War had a very different relationship with Vatican II compared with the Catholic Churches in Western Europe, and how that has created a certain mindset of denial about the abuse crisis in the Church.

There is also an intra-continental divide between Southwestern Europe and the small but militant Churches north of Germany, with Catholicism in Scandinavia and the Baltic States concerned that Church reform must always defend Catholic teaching and never "capitulate to the Zeitgeist" - as the Scandinavian bishops wrote in their March 2022 letter to the German bishops.

The list of signs and symptoms of intra-continental rifts that emerged from the synodal assemblies could go on and on.

But what's important to note here is that the synodal process is more than a battle between progressives and conservatives - even though there are clearly different and opposed agendas in play.

The de-Europeanization of Catholicism

The defining feature of this process is that it is redesigning some important features of our common home, the Church, because it coincides chronologically and is part of a historical turn towards a de-Europeanization of Catholicism.

This is more complex in the United States than it is in the geographical area stretching from the Baltic States to Portugal - not to mention the question of whether contemporary Catholicism in the UK is culturally and theologically closer to, say, France and Germany or to the United States.

Church leaders are adamant in emphasising that the synodal process is not primarily about changing structures.

But the process is already doing that, by letting different continental Catholic styles and traditions express themselves in unprecedented ways.

John Paul II had "invented" the "special assemblies" of the Synod of Bishops dedicated to each individual continent. But they always took place in Rome and under strict control of the Roman Curia.

This time is different, as it was different already at the Synod assembly for the Amazon region in 2019.

We will see how the different continental synodal assemblies of February and March 2023 will inspire the assembly of the Synod of Bishops' assemblies that take place in Rome in October 2023 and October 2024.

Important procedural aspects of these two assemblies are not clear yet. For instance, who will be included among the members will be, how will they be chosen, and who will choose them?

The institutions of the Catholic Church - the Synod included - are still largely based on institutions of the Roman Empire.

Canon law is also still largely based on Roman law.

Already decades ago, legal historian Stephan Kuttner said the Catholic Church's law must redefine its relationship with its roots in Roman law. This is one of the things that the synodal process, which deceptively has very little to do with canon law, might be able to accomplish.

• Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia) and a much-published author and commentator. He is a visiting professor in Europe and Australia.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

I laughed, and turned to Adil Rashid: "Allah's with us, isn't he?"

Rash agreed he was.

Later, at the end of a crazy day, I mentioned that comment in the post-match press conference, because it seemed to sum up the kind of team we had become: a team of different backgrounds, races and religions, a team which derived strength from diversity, and represented the best of our country.

That's right: our country.

I've lived in London longer than in Ireland.

It's my home, and has been for a long time - longer than many realise.

And the fact that I've experienced so many cultures here makes me feel as if England's World Cup winners stand for us all.

Last summer, that feeling mattered as much as ever.

Until the 2016 EU referendum, most of us probably thought life in the UK was pretty harmonious.

Since then, it's become completely divided, which is sad.

But sport, I think, generally gets it right, because it is driven by a common goal.

Most of the time, people are committed to that, and so they have to be honest with each other.

In sport, you can't get away with lies - at least not for long.

It's more important than it's ever been that the national side epitomise the culture we live in.

In that final, Jason Roy (born in South Africa), Ben Stokes (New Zealand), Jofra Archer (Barbados) and I all started life somewhere else.

Rash is Muslim, and so is Moeen Ali, who didn't play at Lord's but was an important part of the squad.

Let's be honest: the England team have never really been made up of 11 white Christians, anyway; these days more people seem comfortable about that.

Attitudes have changed even during my time.

When I first played for England in 2009, I remember being told by someone that, with all the money that goes into the county academies, the cost of producing a home-grown player like Stuart Broad, who has gone through the system, was about £6m - that's the rough figure you reach, in other words, if you divide the money that goes into the academies by the number of England players the system produces.

The implication was that the figure was higher than it would have been had the national side been made up of 11 born-and-bred Englishmen.

For a while, there was a stigma about being born abroad and playing cricket for England, especially when there was an influx of South African guys coming here to make a living.

When I started out, we had Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott, as well as players who were born in South Africa but bred in England, like Andrew Strauss and Matt Prior.

English cricket didn't fully embrace the influx - and that was the biggest mistake it could have made.

That kind of attitude just creates a bigger divide between the players and their public.

I was struck during the World Cup by the different ethnicities who turned up to cheer us on.

I never thought, for example, that we'd have so many England-based Indian fans supporting us but, when you look at the footage from the tournament, you can see how many were wearing England shirts.

It was amazing, and a change for the better. Continue reading

Speaking to bishops, cardinals and pastoral care workers, Thursday, at the International Pastoral Congress, on the World's Big Cities, Pope Francis urged them to be creative in order that everyone in these cities can feel the closeness and mercy of God.

He told the Barcelona meeting that the Church needs new maps to help us reposition our thoughts and attitudes.

However, Francis warned, it is important "we must not be disoriented."

"(Disorientation) would lead us to take the wrong road", confusing the people who are looking for life, truth and a sense of purpose, the pope told the Big City Pastoral Congress.

Building on his experience as Bishop of Buenos Aires, with a population of 13 million, Francis highlighted four challenges facing Big City mission as:

• making a change in our pastoral mentality
• dialogue with multiculturalism
• religiousness of people, and
• the urban poor.

"Today we are not the only ones that produce culture, we are not the first nor most listened to", he told the pastoral congress.

Francis told the participants the Church needs to transform itself in order to evangelise in the big cities.

"It's all about going out and meeting God who lives in cities with the poor. Meeting, listening to, blessing, walking with the people; facilitating the encounter with the Lord".

Asking for a concrete witness of mercy and tenderness, Francis said we can go where culture is born and sow the mustard seed in the heart of new cultures generated by urban reality.

In concluding, he proposed a two-fold pastoral nuclei

• Go out and facilitate, and
• The Samaritan Church. To be there.

"God lives in cities. We must go and look for him and remain where He is operating" ... We must not ignore or despise experiences of God that may be dispersed or mixed up: these experiences ask to be "revealed and not constructed", Pope Francis said.

Source

• News.va

The theme for the three-day celebration is '125 years of multiracial education.

The school's 607 students made the most of their day off from classes, with a formal celebration in which they were addressed by former scholars and items were performed by students.

Head teacher Dan Burese said that the school worked towards the theme of 125 years of multiracial education.

"It means that the education the brothers brought was for everybody and not for one particular race," Burese said.

Source

• Fiji Times
• Fiji Times
• Image: Marist solidarity

However, most of South Canterbury's international residents have some form of celebration, including classic Christmas symbols such as the Christmas tree.

Hindu Ketan Kolhe, of the Elizabeth St Dairy, said a lot of people celebrate Christmas in India.

Being a multicultural country with people from many religions, people tended to take part in other religious festivals as well as their own.

As well as getting bigger, the study found that parishes are getting more complex, more diverse and more than half of all parish staff are women.

The study also shows:

• more than 50% of parishes celebrate 4 or more masses on Sunday
• 28% of parishes celebrate 5 or more masses on Sunday
• the average number of Sunday masses is 3.8 per parish
• 27% of parishes involved in the survey are "clustered"
• 29% of parishes celebrate mass in a language other than English
• 81% of non-English masses are celebrated in Spanish (about 6% of the total number of all masses celebrated)
• the number of diocesan priests celebrating these masses has declined by 11%
• the long-term decline in US Catholic mass attendance has dropped and mass attendance is now steady.

The significant increase in the size of the average Catholic parish is a combination of US Catholic population growth and the closing or consolidation of many, especially smaller parishes.

The number of Catholic parishes peaked in 1990 at 19,620 and dropped by 1,359 or 7.1% in the last decade. The current number of parishes is like that in 1965, but unlike the 1965 figure, the Catholic population is 77.7 million, 75% higher than it was around this time.

The decrease of priests priests has been off-set by part-time paid lay parish workers and an increase in permanent deacons and 5% of parishes have a parish-life co-ordinator, a deacon, layperson, religious brother or sister as their leader.

The study, published by the Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, reinforces earlier studies on the growth of lay ecclesial ministries. It projects the Catholic population in 2050 will be between 95.4 - 128 million.

Sources

• NCR Online
• Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate - Super-sizing parishes (PDF)
• Image: Schonstatt Movement