by Gerry O’Hanlon

In March 2021 the Irish Bishops announced a five year project, the ‘synodal pathway’, to culminate in a national synodal assembly or assemblies. The question: what does God want from the Church in Ireland at this time? In May of the same year Pope Francis announced the universal synod on synodality, to begin the following October. The Irish bishops agreed to fold one into the other. A steering committee was established of 11 women and 11 men, chaired by a married woman, with four bishops, other clerics, religious and lay people. I am a member of that committee. The bishops also established a four person Task Force, a priest and three women, who worked closely with the Steering Committee.

In Ireland, as elsewhere, 2021-2 was a year of consultation at parish, diocesan and national level. The fruits were gathered in May 2022 and shared with a pre-synodal assembly. Would the group resonate with what we presented? It was a day of consolation: we felt that the Holy Spirit was with us and the Babel of many tongues had been transformed into a new Pentecost. The bishops published the Synthesis Document in August 2022.

National syntheses – 112 of them – were gathered together in October 2022 in the Working Document for the Continental Stage (DCS, entitled Enlarge Your Tent), which then, after feedback, became the basis for the seven world-wide continental assemblies in February/March 2023. The European Assembly took place in Prague in February. The fruits of this exercise were published on 19 April, and will be brought to Rome (via the Instrumentum Laboris, June 2023) for the universal synod in October 2023 and again in October 2024. Ireland, in the meantime, will continue with its own synodal pathway, designed to address the situation of the church in Ireland and taking on board what is emerging from the universal synods.

Overlap

There was a great deal of overlap between the contents of the Irish submission and that of the DCS document. There was a strong focus on the need for conversion, reform, and change. This was not least due to the ‘open wound’ of clerical child sexual abuse and how it had been mishandled, with the implicit critique of clericalism it involved. And so there was much talk about co-responsible leadership, focussing on the notion of the church as the People of God with Baptism – not Orders – as the primary and foundational sacrament, and recourse to the theology of Vatican II in highlighting the priestly, prophetic and kingly share of all the baptised in the mission of Jesus Christ.

Gerry O’Hanlon S.J. is a member of the Irish Synodal Pathway Steering Committee writing here in a personal capacity.  This is an edited version of a talk given to the Newman Association in Edinburgh last month.