Cardinal Grech: The Church must be synodal and missionary
November 05, 2021
» Continue to this story on Fides
CWN Editor's Note: Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, delivered the opening lecture of the academic year at the Pontifical Urban University, which is run by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
The prelate’s address, entitled “A Constitutively Synodal and Missionary Church,” offers insight into how one of the Church’s most influential prelates defines “synodality”—a word that he notes was coined in French in the 1980s.
Synodality, he told the students, “expresses the subject of the whole Church and everyone in the Church. Believers are ‘synodoi’, companions on the journey, called to be active subjects insofar as they participate in the one priesthood of Christ and are recipients of the various charisms conferred by the Holy Spirit for the common good.”
Synodality, he added, is an “antidote to a static and ahistorical vision of the Church”; it “jolts the ecclesial body, putting it back in motion.”
For all current news, visit our News home page.
All comments are moderated. To lighten our editing burden, only current donors are allowed to Sound Off. If you are a current donor, log in to see the comment form; otherwise please support our work, and Sound Off!
-
Posted by: Randal Mandock -
Nov. 05, 2021 8:56 PM ET USA
Is he saying that the post-Vatican II Church is a static institution with an ahistorical vision of Christ's Church? I doubt it. However, the reality is much more stark than that. The post-Vatican II Church is a spiritually ill beast that is rapidly shrinking in its most "civilized" sectors. In parallel with the newest U.S. government, the post-Vatican II Church has become an authoritarian mimicry of the true Church founded explicitly, unequivocally, by the pre-Resurrection Christ of the Gospels.
