April Enews 

The next ACTA Leeds meeting will be via Zoom at 2.00pm on Thursday 4 May 2023. 

REDEFINING THE ROLE OF PRIESTS AND PEOPLE IN AN EMERGING SYNODAL CHURCH 
 
A Suggestion for synodal prayer, discussion and discernment.
 
‘New wine - new wine skins.’ 
‘Feed my lambs, feed my sheep.’ 

This was the original pastoral mandate given by the Resurrected Christ to Simon and then taken up by the followers of the Way of Jesus. Simon protested his love as the climactic conclusion to one of the last fellowship meals of thanksgiving on the beach with bread and fish. We need to re-connect to that mandate, paying close attention to its pastoral intent.  
 
This command to feed the ‘flock’ was then shared out in an original synodal style by members of the early church. They were not religious officials but laymen and women householders - discerned by the growing community, emerging and designated from and by the early community. The Eucharist was first celebrated in their households, presided over by them, under the guidance of those men and women who had known Jesus. The pattern evolved under the guidance of the Holy Spirit certainly but necessarily taking on elements of the dominant European cultures, imperial from 313 and Constantine, then Byzantine, feudal, medieval, regal, nationalistic through Church Councils to Trent in the 1550s and the First Vatican Council in the mid nineteenth century and finally to Vatican 2.
 
That development has been filtered to us as ‘tradition.’ It has been refracted through the lens and transcription of male, celibate, scholastic, European, ordained priest theologians. Scattered with examples of truly holy and self-sacrificial men, women and saints, it nevertheless resulted in a  self-regarding and self-perpetuating clerical male caste which colonised the story, air-brushed out some features, selected others, all at the service of a developing theology and largely Papal and centralised exercise of leadership, governance, power, teaching, authority a ‘magisterium’. It exists down to our own day. It has been reformed and restructured again and again - by the religious orders and in other ways.  It has culminated in enough of a self-serving clerical caste as to produce, alongside much humble, dedicated priestly service given by individual holy priests, our present conflicted church. It is characterised by the ‘cancer’ of clericalism, an unconscious ( at times conscious) misogyny, an unequal ‘two-tier’ church and the terrible damage, hurt and suffering caused by child abuse and its on-going clerical cover-up. This European church is haemorrhaging numbers of clergy and laity, but also its life and vision – despite the transfusion of new blood being offered by a Pope from the global south, with contributions from Africa and Asia.
  
And yet, and yet, ‘for all this’ to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins:
 
- ‘nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights of the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah, bright wings’.
 
So, nurtured by the Holy Spirit, the seeds of renewal, of a return to that first mandate ‘feed my lambs, feed my sheep’ to all those who like Simon, son of John, humbly protest their love of Christ, are taking root in the shape of the ways of synodality. Every dawn forecasts resurrection. 
 
 There promises a renewed much broader envisaged priesthood shaped by synodality. It will be the result of a communal, prayerful, discernment of the Holy Spirit. The seeds have been planted. The first shoots hint at its full flowering. It will be open to all - men, women, married, single, celibate discerned by and emerging from the companionship of the People of God. It will be of those empowered for service and mission. By what criteria? By the original pastoral mandate given to Simon. It will be for those blessed with the baptismal gift of ‘feeding’ caring for, nurturing, discerning and hence serving the different and varied baptismal charisms of the members of the community for the building up of a community turned outwards towards mission. It will be a network of ministers of service. Pope Francis has already decoupled priesthood from governance. All those tasks which have been aggregated in the past to clergy, whether they possessed the necessary charisms or not, will be allocated to those with those charisms. How could we have ever thought differently? Clerical male, celibate ‘gate-keepers’ will be replaced by men and women empowered through the gift of baptism to empower, feed, care for and nurture in turn all members of Christ’s Body, the Church. Empowerment for a purpose – to create a church on permanent mission outwards in love of the world for the building up  of the Kingdom of God. 
 
These charisms conferred by baptism include:
 
For worship: the charism of presiding at the Eucharist; of leading other liturgies; of lectio divina and contemplative prayer; of sacramental and catechetical preparation; of spiritual direction.
 
For building up the community: care of the sick; requiem services; growing Old Gracefully; the bereaved; young people. All financial, ecological, sustainability and management tasks.
 
For mission: Cafod, ACTA, J&P, Laudato Si, SVP etc. Working ecumenically to identify local social, economic needs, matching these with parish resources to work with food banks, housing, poverty, fuel poverty, loss of income, family and marriage breakdown and support. To become a community permanently composed of missionary disciples.
 
But this is to pretend that a synodal church is visible. It will emerge under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as the synodal process takes root. We can but plant the seeds, water the ground and marvel at
the results. 
When did you last feel empowered? To be co-responsible for the worship and life of the community? When did you last feel empowered to equip you to be a ‘missionary disciple’ in the ‘loving service of all that exists’? 
One valuable spin-off of this process will be the lightening of the terrible burden carried by many priests. Their baptismal charisms were and are many. They have had to develop many they found tiresome or ill-equipped to carry. They were overcome by a clericalised system which demanded they exercise every charism. Now their role can accurately reflect their charisms. The burden of being omni-competent can now be lifted and their myriad tasks shared out amongst the members of the community whose charisms have been affirmed and recognised by the community.  
The exact shape of this synodal church will only emerge slowly from the embedding of the synodal process in our diocese, in its parishes, schools and organisations. These thoughts are offered as a contribution to the dialogue of mutual listening and speaking which will lead us all into that process of discernment of the will of the Holy Spirit which must fashion our Church.  
‘There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.’ 
 
David Jackson    January 2023