Synodality - without discernment?

 In Autumn 2021 I gave some considerable thought to the practical meaning of the term "synodality". I was trying to understand the term, not as a theological or ecclesial concept, but as something that would determine how I might live my life as a lay Catholic (or how a priest/Bishop/religious might live their Catholic lives). The three key words of the synodal process - communion, participation and mission - did not lead me to anything particularly novel.

I ended up thinking that what a synodal ecclesial life demands is that each individual, in their particular office and circumstances in the Church, should live their vocation more fully according to its own principles. The lay person needs to live more fully as a lay person, the parish priest more fully as a parish priest, the bishop more fully as a bishop. And each has its own responsibility that is not derived from the responsibility of other vocations in the Church. It should not be a surprise, I suspect, that an exercise in renewal of Catholic life should attempt to make new what is in a sense "old" and already there to be lived.

Given this sense of the autonomy of the lay life, the thought that, in order to live a synodal life, I should take part in discussions at parish level that would then be fed into deanery or diocesan syntheses appeared contradictory. A choice to volunteer in visiting patients in my local hospital, for example, did not depend on that process at all. I should just get on with it.

So, rightly or wrongly, and perhaps wrongly, I decided that I would not invest any emotional, intellectual or temporal capital in the synodal process.

Now that parish, diocesan and national synthesis documents are available to be read, the common sense of my decision seems to have been borne out. As far as my own diocese is concerned, I cannot fault the way in which the Bishop presented the process and encouraged parishes to undertake their gatherings. I think he perfectly captured Pope Francis' intention in this regard. But reading the synthesis documents I have gained a sense of a "listening" that is being "reported upwards" in a kind of organisational way, without the exercise of discernment that parish priest and bishop, by virtue of their offices in the Church, might have exercised.

It strikes me, for example, that there already exists a discernment that can be offered in response to concerns about the welcome of divorced and LGBT people in the Church. During the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis promoted a very high valuing of participation in the Church's mission of charity and, in the case of those in difficult marriage circumstances, encouraged this as a way of fully engaging in the life of the Church when it may not be possible to be more fully involved in sacramental life (cf Amoris Laetitia Chapter 8).

And it is not synodal to simply pass upwards a discernment that your own office in the Church enables you to make.

Desiderio Desideravi: Pope Francis at his best!

I have enjoyed reading Pope Francis' Apostolic Letter Desiderio Desideravi, finding it a wonderfully enriching account of what we are called to experience in the celebration of the Liturgy, particularly the Liturgy of the Eucharist. I find very striking the idea that what draws us to join the celebration of Mass is, before a response on our part, the desire that God has for us:

Before our response to his invitation — well before! — there is his desire for us. We may not even be aware of it, but every time we go to Mass, the first reason is that we are drawn there by his desire for us. For our part, the possible response — which is also the most demanding asceticism — is, as always, that surrender to this love, that letting ourselves be drawn by him. Indeed, every reception of communion of the Body and Blood of Christ was already desired by him in the Last Supper.

Pope Francis develops this idea very beautifully in the first paragraphs of the Apostolic Letter.

A hope of Pope Benedict, expressed if I recall correctly in his letter to Bishops that accompanied the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum , was that there would be a mutual enrichment between the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms. One perspective from which to read Desiderio Desideravi is that of an indication of how much that could be said of the "antecedent form" of the liturgy can be employed to enrich our celebration of the "unique expression" of the Roman Rite. At the time when Summorum Pontificum was first published, I remember feeling that, whereas I was quite happy to live the ordinary life of the Church's liturgy celebrated according to the missal of Paul VI and John Paul II, I was now being put in a position where I was being asked to adopt a position vis-a-vis the earlier missal when that was something I had no calling to do. Again, I am not reading Desiderio Desideravi in the context of a dialogue with the "antecedent form", and it simply has not occurred to me that I should do so. Part of my pleasure in reading the Apostolic Letter is precisely that it does not ask me to do that, and I believe that those who would read it in that way will not be able to access its richness.

As I never tire of suggesting, I think it is important to read the whole - hence my including the link at the beginning of this post - and I think that is particularly true of Desiderio Desideravi. There is much more than the section in which Pope Francis discusses the art of the priest in his act of presiding at the Eucharistic Celebration which I quote below. Even if  I do not post further on Desiderio Desideravi I will nevertheless be returning to read more carefully the other sections. Why I have chosen to quote this section is that the idea of "presiding" appears to me to have entered into the liturgical vocabulary at the time of Vatican II, and Pope Francis' account is the first I have read that offers a properly theological/liturgical insight into the meaning of "presiding". 

56. The priest lives his characteristic participation in the celebration in virtue of the gift received in the sacrament of Holy Orders, and this is expressed precisely in presiding. Like all the roles he is called to carry out, this is not primarily a duty assigned to him by the community but is rather a consequence of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit received in ordination which equips him for such a task. The priest also is formed by his presiding in the celebrating assembly.

57. For this service to be well done — indeed, with art! — it is of fundamental importance that the priest have a keen awareness of being, through God’s mercy, a particular presence of the risen Lord. The ordained minister is himself one of the types of presence of the Lord which render the Christian assembly unique, different from any other assembly. (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 7) This fact gives “sacramental” weight (in the broad sense) to all the gestures and words of the one presiding. The assembly has the right to be able to feel in those gestures and words the desire that the Lord has, today as at the Last Supper, to eat the Passover with us. So, the risen Lord is in the leading role, and not our own immaturities, assuming roles and behaviours which are simply not appropriate. The priest himself should be overpowered by this desire for communion that the Lord has toward each person. It is as if he were placed in the middle between Jesus’ burning heart of love and the heart of each of the faithful, which is the object of the Lord’s love. To preside at Eucharist is to be plunged into the furnace of God’s love. When we are given to understand this reality, or even just to intuit something of it, we certainly would no longer need a Directory that would impose the proper behaviour. If we have need of that, then it is because of the hardness of our hearts. The highest norm, and therefore the most demanding, is the reality itself of the Eucharistic celebration, which selects words, gestures, feelings that will make us understand whether or not our use of these are at the level of the reality they serve. It is obvious that this cannot be improvised. It is an art. It requires application on the part of the priest, an assiduous tending to the fire of the love of the Lord that he came to ignite on the earth. (Lk 12:49)

58. When the first community broke bread in obedience to the Lord’s command, it did so under the gaze of Mary who accompanied the first steps of the Church: “these all continued with one accord in prayer with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus.” (Ac 1:14) The Virgin Mother “watches over” the gestures of her Son confided to the Apostles. As she protected the Word made flesh in her womb after receiving the words of the angel Gabriel, she protects once again in the womb of the Church those gestures that form the body of her Son. The priest, who repeats those gestures in virtue of the gift received in the sacrament of Holy Orders, is himself protected in the womb of the Virgin. Do we really need a rule here to tell us how we ought to act?

59. Having become instruments for igniting the fire of the Lord’s love on the earth, protected in the womb of Mary, Virgin made Church (as St Francis sang of her) priests should allow the Holy Spirit to work on them, to bring to completion the work he began in them at their ordination. The action of the Spirit offers to them the possibility of exercising their ministry of presiding in the Eucharistic assembly with the fear of Peter, aware of being a sinner (Lk 5:1-11), with the powerful humility of the suffering servant (cf. Is 42ff), with the desire “to be eaten” by the people entrusted to them in the daily exercise of the ministry. 

60. It is the celebration itself that educates the priest to this level and quality of presiding. It is not, I repeat, a mental adhesion, even if our whole mind as well as all our sensitivity must be engaged in it. So, the priest is formed by presiding over the words and by the gestures that the Liturgy places on his lips and in his hands. He is not seated on a throne because the Lord reigns with the humility of one who serves. He does not rob attention from the centrality of the altar, a sign of Christ, from whose pierced side flowed blood and water, by which were established the Sacraments of the Church and the centre of our praise and thanksgiving.

Desiderio Desideravi is, I think, Pope Francis at his very best! There is a lot here for me still to read and reflect on.

Roe v. Wade overturned: what next?

I have not been able to keep track of all the reactions to the overturning of the Roe v. Wade judgement by the US Supreme Court. I also have my usual wariness of commenting on a situation whose details are beyond my own immediate knowledge - it is too easy to respond to the reporting of what someone said and to then find out that either they said something slightly different or that the fuller context of the remarks gives the quoted part a rather different sense.

What of President Biden?

His original remarks in response to the Supreme Court judgement can be found on the White House website: Remarks by President Biden on the Supreme Court Decision to Overturn Roe v. Wade. These remarks have worrying aspects to them, and reading them in full adds to that sense concern.

It was three justices named by one President — Donald Trump — who were the core of today’s decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country. 

Make no mistake: This decision is the culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law.  It’s a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court, in my view.

It is the idea that a judgement in law that opens the way to pro-life legislation to take effect in states of the US represents an "extreme ideology" that should give cause for thought. First of all, we should resist the idea that to be pro-life is to be an advocate of an "extreme ideology" - and in this phrase, the word "ideology" is as significant as the word "extreme". An ideology takes an aspect or part of a reality, and absolutises it at the expense of the complete picture; and, in doing so, it adopts a position that separates itself from objective reality itself. To be pro-life on the contrary recognises a reality - that abortion takes the innocent life of an unborn child, an unborn child who would otherwise be able to live their dignity as a human person. To argue, on the other hand, that abortion represents health care is to misrepresent the genuine meaning of the term health care as it would be applied in the wider generality of medical practice.

President Biden's reference to Donald Trump, though, highlights a hazard of that style of pro-life activity that allies itself to a particular political stance, a politics that can be fundamentally ideological in its real intent rather than having a genuine concern for the common good. More is needed to build a genuine culture of life in America than the legislative actions of Republican administrations, and too close an alliance to those legislative actions will be counter-productive to the wider building of a culture of life.

It is also interesting to contrast President Biden's narrative that:

The Court has done what it has never done before: expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans that had already been recognized.

with the rather different narrative from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops statement:

“America was founded on the truth that all men and women are created equal, with God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This truth was grievously denied by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized and normalized the taking of innocent human life. We thank God today that the Court has now overturned this decision. 

So far as I can tell, the essential import of the judgement to overthrow Roe v. Wade is that abortion should not now be seen in the United States as some form of right guaranteed by the constitution, and should never have been seen in such a way. And yet the barrage of criticism of the decision, following the lead of politicians such as President Biden, ignores this and continues to talk in terms of abortion as some form of human or constitutional right.

What of the culture?

In both the United States and here in the UK, abortion has been legally permitted for so long that it has embedded in medical practice and in the wider culture. The legal permission is only an aspect of that cultural embedding; the widespread hostility shown to the overthrow of Roe v. Wade exemplifies how deep this cultural embedding now is. I have thought for some considerable time now that our conversation about abortion should no longer be one characterised by "a woman's right to choose" or a "woman's right to have control over her own body". The stories of women who have had abortions - both those gathered by supporters of legalised abortion and those opposed - demonstrate the range of constraints that influence their decisions. In many stories, the experiences are such that the word "freedom" (in the full, philosophical sense of the term as applied to human actions) is difficult to apply as a descriptor of the decision making process. I cannot help but feel that, if our public conversation were to focus more clearly on the different narratives of  women seeking abortions, the practice of abortion in our society would change significantly. That conversation would need us to reflect more deeply on the nature of freedom in human acting, and how women seeking abortions can be supported to make decisions that manifest a fuller freedom of choice rather than expressing instead determining constraints. 

Perhaps the jolt given to the idea of abortion as a constitutional right by the recent Supreme Court ruling will enable this wider conversation to take place.

Pope Francis to Families: "..you get married because you want to build your marriage on the love of Christ"

 On Wednesday, Pope Francis joined with families attending the Tenth World Meeting of Families in Rome for the "Festival of Families". This festival takes the form of a celebration with testimonies from different couples and their families; it is the part of the World Meeting that can be most readily described as a celebration of the family.

In his address Pope Francis responded to the testimonies that he had just heard, indicating some "steps forward" that need to be taken together and using the testimonies as stepping off points for his reflections. A brief summary of the testimonies can be found in the report here: Pope to the Families: Let us live with our eyes fixed on heaven.

Speaking of a "step forward towards marriage, in response to a testimony from a couple who had cohabited for many years, the Holy Father said:

We can say that whenever a man and a woman fall in love, God offers them a gift; that gift is marriage. It is a marvellous gift, which contains the power of God’s own love: strong, enduring, faithful, ready to start over after every failure or moment of weakness. Marriage is not a formality you go through. You don’t get married in order to be “card-carrying” Catholics, to obey a rule, or because the Church tells you to, or to have a party… No, you get married because you want to build your marriage on the love of Christ, which is solid as rock. In marriage, Christ gives himself to you, so that you can find the strength to give yourselves to one another. So take heart: family life is not “mission impossible”! By the grace of the sacrament, God makes it a wonderful journey, to be undertaken together with him and never alone. The family is not a lofty ideal that is unattainable in reality. God solemnly promises his presence in your marriage and family, not only on the day of your wedding, but for the rest of your lives. And he keeps supporting you, every day of your journey.

The other "steps forward" that Pope Francis proposed were towards embracing the cross, towards forgiveness, towards welcome and towards fraternity. The full text of the Pope's address can found on the Vatican website here.

Corpus Christi reminiscences

Last Sunday saw the celebration of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi. After the principle Mass in our parish there was a short Eucharistic procession round a block of the local streets, ending with Benediction in the garden outside the Church. Five photographs can be seen here. The parish's first communion children led the procession; an A5 sheet with the words of hymns to be sung during the procession was provided - though, as I suspect is quite typical of these occasions, the head of the procession tended to be singing a line or two ahead of those of us further back. During Mass we were treated to a homily that resoundingly affirmed belief in the real presence of Jesus Christ, true God, in the Eucharistic species.

Last Sunday's procession reminded me of when I was still at school, and a memory of a visit we made to a parish where an aunt was the housekeeper, for the Eucharistic procession in that parish. A procession in the nearby street was followed by Benediction in the garden beside the Church, more or less as happened on Sunday.

The day prompted us to reminisce about other occasions on which we had taken part in Eucharistic processions. One of the largest such occasions was during the International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec in 2008: International Eucharistic Congress: the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament. Another notable occasion was during a visit to Lake Como, when we were able to take part in the procession in  Bellano: Corpus Christi by Lake Como. We have also been in Assisi (twice if my memory serves me correctly) for the Solemnity, when we joined the parish in Rivotorto for Mass and a Eucharistic Procession. All of this takes place with Assisi itself overlooking the Church and the procession route. There are also the occasions when we have taken part in the Eucharistic procession in Lourdes: Following the Eucharistic Procession. 

Whilst it can be the larger celebrations that prompt the most vivid memories, it may well be the case that the celebrations which most deeply express the faith of the participants are the slightly makeshift efforts of ordinary parishes. I was reminded once again on Sunday last of Pope Francis' observation that manifestations of popular piety represent the inculturation of the Gospel in a particular place, and it appears to me that small parish processions do exactly this.

Pope Francis speaking to the Bishops and Priests of Sicily

I have just read the address that Pope Francis gave when meeting with the Bishops and Priests of Sicily. It can be found on the Vatican website, but only in Italian: here.

The very major part of the address discusses the social and pastoral situation of the people of Sicily, and of the Church in relation to that situation. It demonstrates an extensive interest in the problems faced by Sicilian society and how the Church can and does engage with the people experiencing those problems.

It is rather misleading to concentrate comment on the last three paragraphs, and to read them outside of a Sicilian (or, at least, a south Italian) context as if they are remarks intended of a universal application. It is unfair, too, to remove them from the context of the concerns of the major part of the address that precede them.

I would draw particular attention to the two paragraphs immediately preceding the last three, in which Pope Francis speaks highly of, and encourages, the Marian devotion of the priests of Sicily.

As far as popular piety is concerned, I have a memory of a remark from early in Pope Francis' pontificate that suggests he has a very high valuing of popular piety. He observed that popular piety represents the inculturation of the Gospel. (If anyone can find a reference for this remark, please put it in the comments box - I have not been able to trace it yet.) That is the context of Pope Francis' remark about popular piety, and it should be read as encouraging such piety rather than discouraging it.

My own experience of Italy means that I can readily identify with Pope Francis' remarks about lace and about people leaving the Church for a cigarette during the homily (perhaps not literally a cigarette); and I can certainly recognise the long homily that does not really have very much of substance. Pope Francis' way of expressing things may be either rather amusing or heavily sarcastic depending on your taste. I expect that, if I had been in Pope Francis' audience, I would have had a quiet chuckle at these remarks.  But then I am not a fan of liturgical lace or of birettas. 

There is a very Italian context for these remarks, and it is quite misrepresentative to suggest that they are intended for some kind of universal application.

Perhaps we who comment should pay more attention to that last paragraph of Pope Francis where he talks about the problem of gossip....

Mary, Mother of the Church

One of Pope Francis' contributions to our liturgical life has been the establishing in the universal calendar of the Monday after the Solemnity of Pentecost as a Memoria of Our Lady, Mother of the Church.

The Collect that I used in the office that I prayed this morning:

Lord our God, through your power and goodness the Blessed Virgin, the fairest fruit of your redeeming love, shine forth as the perfect image of the Church; grant to your people on their pilgrim way on earth that, with eyes fixed on Mary, they may follow closely in the footsteps of her Son until they come to that fullness of glory, which now they contemplate in his mother with hearts filled with joy.

And the Preface that would be used at this Mass from which this Collect was taken:

You have given the Blessed Virgin Mary to your Church as the perfect  image of its role as mother and of its future glory. She is a virgin unsurpassed in purity of faith, a bride joined to Christ in an unbreakable bond of love and united with in his suffering. She is a mother by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, filled with loving concern for all her children. She is a queen adorned with the jewels of grace, robed with the sun and crowned with stars, sharing eternally in the glory of her Lord.