If Synodality Is Not a Programme, Why Is the Church Implementing It?
Bishop Mutsaerts asks perhaps the most important & most awkward question about the Synod on Synodality: where are the fruits? Not more committees, consultations or documents, but conversions, vocations, stronger Catholic families, fuller churches, better catechesis, greater reverence for the Eucharist and a clearer proclamation of Jesus Christ. This is surely the test by which every programme of ecclesial renewal must ultimately be judged. Synodality can be a means by which the Church listens & discerns, but once the process itself becomes the object of endless discussion, there is a danger that the Church becomes preoccupied with the mechanics of travelling together while losing sight of the destination. The criticism from the beginning was that this was naval gazing; the Church looking inward instead of outward. Mutsaerts’ Emmaus analogy is particularly powerful: Christ walks with the disciples and listens to them, but He does not merely affirm what they already think. ...