The current aggressive polarisation within the Church shows how important it is to re-establish synodality as a form of ecclesial life and leadership, the international Catholic reform group, We Are Church has said.
Marking the eleventh anniversary of Pope Francis’ election, the group said his reform process has already fundamentally changed the Church despite strong resistance.
“In the eleven years of his pontificate so far, Pope Francis has brought the Roman Catholic world Church back onto the theological course of the Second Vatican Council, which his two predecessors had largely abandoned,” the group said in a statement.
According to the chair and vice chair of We Are Church International, Colm Holmes and Dr Martha Heizer, this “urgently needed course of reform”, which includes in particular the worldwide Synodal Process 2021 - 2024 initiated by Pope Francis, “must be continued so that it becomes irreversible”.
They also commended Pope Francis’ “bold social and ecological commitment”.
But the Church crisis is far from over they warned and the strong resistance to Pope Francis’ reform course was of a level “previously unimaginable”.
“It is now a matter of enduring these tensions and overcoming divisions if our Church wants to be truly inclusive,” they said.
Revelations about spiritual and sexualised violence and its cover-up, they warned, are shaking the credibility of the Catholic Church in more and more countries and this requires the Church to address systemic issues such as the abuse of clerical power, the subordination of women and outdated sexual doctrine.
Calling for co-decision making with the laity, they said decentralised solutions must be possible.
Separately, the leaders of three international Catholic reform groups including We Are Church International, along with Catholic Church Reform International and Spirit Unbounded, have said that for the Church to be synodal bishops will have to accept a new model of authentic co-responsibility with the laity.
“A centring on a deposit of faith guarded by the hierarchy shuts out the living Spirit,” the three groups said in a statement.
Acknowledging criticisms of some that Pope Francis has thus far not changed any significant Church rules, they stated: “That may be true on the issue of women’s ordination. But he made a significant rule change for women by making 54 women voting members at the Synod.”
They said he had also realised important reform steps theologically such as outlawing the death penalty and reforming the Curia. “These steps are irreversible and must be continued,” they stressed.
Referring to the opposition and hostility in some quarters to Pope Francis, the three groups said the challenge for the reform community is to be “sure that the snowball gathers as wide a swath of others as it rolls; the bigger the snowball the more likely all are listening to the Spirit as an ecclesia, and not simply listening to ourselves as a ‘parliamentary’ body.”
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