On the other side of the great pond, in the city of Rome, the Catholic Church is involved in an important conversation with itself. The Synod on Synodality is meeting from October 4-29, and it will meet again next October. Unlike past synods or assemblies in Rome, this Synod includes a significant number of lay people. Also, unlike past synods, this synod is not focused on a particular issue, but on how the church itself should operate. How can clergy and laity together listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit? Because this Synod is more about process than doctrine, there is no gavel-to-gavel coverage, although there will be a document issued at the end. What is available to all of us is the three-day retreat that English Dominican Friar Timothy Radcliffe offered the participants prior to the opening of the Synod. I want to share with you the essence of one of his retreat reflections, because I believes it speaks to all of us who care about the future of the Church. His topic for this meditation was “authority”.

Fr. Radcliffe noted that all institutions (not just the church) complain about a loss of authority. Part of the problem is that we have developed a narrow understanding of authority, that it is more like a contract. But the world is hungering for someone to speak with real authority, something that the Scriptures repeatedly say Jesus possessed. Within the Church, all of us have authority through our baptism. We were all christened to be “priests, prophets, and kings,” So, the question is: How can the Church as a whole speak with authority in today’s world?

The Greek philosopher Plato said that all of us were seeking beauty, truth, and goodness—what he called the divine concepts that make up the transcendent world. When we speak to all three of these human yearnings, we speak with authority. He described how each of these concepts were revealed to the three apostles on the Mountain of Transfiguration. First, the apostles saw the glory of God or divine beauty. Beauty can reach people who are afraid of other forms of authority. There has been no true renewal of the Church without a renewal in art and music. Beauty opens up the imagination to what is transcendent and reveals to us the end of the journey. It carries us beyond ourselves. Not all beauty speaks of God (Jesus described some of the religious leaders as whitewashed tombs). True Christian beauty is most radiant in what seems most ugly. We must go to places of suffering to uncover God’s beauty. Fr. Radcliffe gave the example of visiting an African nation in the middle of a civil war and going to Mass where there was exuberant singing and dancing. Our challenge is to disclose the beauty of the cross in places of suffering today.

He then described the symbolic significance of Moses and Elijah, who appeared with Jesus on the mountain. Moses was the shepherd who led Israel out of slavery into promised land. Israel feared the freedom of the desert, just as the disciples feared to walk to Jerusalem, and just as some Catholics fear the Synod. Saints, he says, have the authority of courage. They dare to bid us follow them on the risky journey to holiness, to goodness. In baptism we have renounced the right to be enslaved by fear. If we are to have authority in a fearful world, we must be seen to be willing to risk everything. The authority of beauty speaks to the end of the journey. The authority of holiness speaks to the journey to be made. Then there is the authority of Elijah, the prophet, the truth teller, the one who was willing to risk everything for the truth. How can we draw anyone to the one who is The Truth if we ourselves are not truthful. So, we must tell the truth about the joys and sorrows of the world and we must have disciplined scholarship, which resists the temptation to bend the Word of God or the teaching of the Church to our own purposes. We do not own the truth. The truth owns us.

He concluded by saying that beauty without truth can be empty. Beauty without goodness can deceive. Goodness without truth can descend into sentimentality, and truth without goodness leads to the Inquisition. In turbulent times, the temptation for religious leaders is to be confrontational, to condemn. In the Synod we must find a way to preserve tradition and at the same time defend those whom others condemn. We all have authority, but we all have it differently. Truth is not arrived at by a majority vote, but, like a great orchestra, by everyone playing a different instrument.

Yes, I know this got very philosophical; but I wanted to share it with you anyhow. I believe it says so much about how the Church can continue to be relevant and how we can speak to the deep longings of people today.

                                                         Fr/ Joe