The meeting is an effort to manage simmering tension in the church.
Pope Francis speaks during the first general congregation of the Synod on Synodality at the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Wednesday. The assembly that Pope Francis opened in Rome last week is radical, though not in the sense that his right-wing critics have in mind. Its purpose is downright revolutionary for our era: He’s trying to get the Catholic Church’s warring camps to listen to each other.
“I think he wants to create the conditions for the church to have a future,” said a Catholic official involved in planning the synod who preferred not to be named, “and if it’s to have a future, it has to learn to get along with itself, and outsiders, too.”for the synod spoke of an imperative “to manage tensions without being crushed by them” .
In the short term, the synod is unlikely to meet liberal hopes or justify conservative fears. But this will not reassure Francis’s critics because his definition of the church’s central task differs from the prescriptions of his predecessors, Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II. “Pope Francis is attempting to move us away from the culture war mind-set,” said Cathy Kaveny, a professor of law and theology at Boston College. “John Paul and Benedict were responding to the problem of relativism. Pope Francis recognizes that the real problem is nihilism, the view that nothing and no one has value. What overcomes nihilism is not an argument but personal encounter that reveals the value of people and the communities they build together.
The synod will meet until the end of the month, and there will be another session next year. A lot could happen, or people might just keep talking. In hisopening the synod, Francis urged participants to be “open to the surprises of the Holy Spirit.” Given the stresses the pope is trying to ease, the Holy Spirit has a lot of work to do.
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