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Get rid of resistance, narrow-mindedness, and mental projections. This is what is being asked of the 368 members of the assembly of the Synod on Synodality. They will be meeting for the second general assembly (the first was in 2023) in Rome throughout October.
On September 30, 2024, Dominican Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, the event's official preacher, opened the spiritual retreat that preceded the proceedings. He urged participants not to see the Synod as a confrontation between conservatives and reformers.
The two-day spiritual retreat, which concluded with a prayer with Pope Francis, kicked off at the Vatican without the Pontiff, who was busy with other commitments. Having returned the day before from a four-day trip to Luxembourg and Belgium, the Pope had five appointments on his agenda that morning.
Introducing the day's proceedings, the Synod's Secretary General, Cardinal Mario Grech, urged participants to put aside “any resistance to the voice of the Holy Spirit” and to rid themselves of “approaches and models that may have made sense yesterday, but today have become a burden for the mission and jeopardize the credibility of the Church.”
Numerous delicate issues, such as the place of women and shared governance, are on the table for discussion at this Synod.
“Small fearful imaginations”
Fr. Radcliffe, who delivered two meditations over the course of the morning, addressed those who feel disillusioned and who doubt “whether anything is going to be achieved.”
This Synod, he warned, “is not a place for negotiations about structural change, but for choosing life, for conversion, and forgiveness.” This involves moving out of the “small places in which we have taken refuge and in which we have imprisoned others” and leaving behind “small fearful imaginations.”
The Dominican in the white habit enjoined the members — 75% of whom are bishops — to see in the assembly around them “people who are like us, searching.” He added humorously, “Not representatives of parties in the Church, that 'horrible conservative Cardinal,' that 'frightening feminist!'”
“Our fierce love of the Church can [...] make us narrow-minded,” he noted, citing the conservative current's fear “that it will be harmed by destructive reforms which undermine the traditions that we love,” or the reformist current's fear “the Church will not become the wide-open home for which we long.”
The preacher took his cue from the British apologist G.K. Chesterton to give everyone a lesson; as the British author said, “There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it.”
“The Church may be blown up”
Fr. Radcliffe urged everyone to confront their own “fear of being hurt,” their fear of not finding “recognition and acceptance” or of being “invisible.”
And to the fearful, he offered a reassuring profession of faith: “Victory is won. [...] One of the brethren may have a sex change, the bursar may run away with the money, the Church may be blown up! But Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.”
“Perhaps for many of us, the most profound challenge is to be at peace with ourselves,” added the religious. He encouraged his listeners to “look at our own troubled and divided hearts” so as not to “project onto others what we fear and dislike in ourselves.”
Finally, he urged participants to “bring to this Synod the deepest questions in our hearts.”
“If we have no questions, or superficial questions, our faith is dead,” he warned.
