Author takes readers on journey through Synod’s proceedings

In his new book about the Roman Catholic Church’s groundbreaking Synod on Synodality, Michael W. Higgins begins his entry for Oct. 2 this way:

“On the same day that the synod formally opened with a solemn pontifical Mass with several thousands in attendance, a small group of women — including representatives from the Canadian Network for Women’s Equality — staged a gentle, humour-laced, and earnest demonstration on the Lungotevere Castello near the Castel Sant’Angelo, variously a papal citadel, residence, and prison.

“The group was stating their opposition to the exclusion of women from ordained ministry — diaconal and presbyteral.

“While watching the protestors kick their empty tin cans (which they dubbed their ‘vati-cans’), I noticed two young cassock-wearing clerics walk by them with studied indifference, if not a smirk of condescension. And that is clerical Rome.”

In the book, titled A Synod Diary: Sixty Days That Shook the Church (Paulist Press), Higgins takes readers on a daily journey through the two month-long assemblies that took place in Rome in the falls of 2023 and 2024.

As a Canadian scholar of the Roman Catholic Church, along with being a frequent commentator on the Roman Catholic Church for media in this country, Higgins is well qualified for this task. His entries give readers a knowledgeable behind-the-scenes view of the Synod’s proceedings, including descriptions of key personalities, controversies, crises and — yes — the politics.

Along the way, Higgins also covers topics such as the role of women in the church, full inclusion of LGBTTQ+ members, the sexual abuse crisis that still rocks the Church, and the ongoing challenge of clericalism.

His approach to the book was to create a “gallimaufry,” a French word that originally referred to a hash made with various meats. For Higgins, it means the book is a “potpourri of perceptions, characters, factions and tensions, intrigues and turmoils, epiphanies and graced moments of insight.”

In an interview, Higgins spoke about the book and why the Synod is significant for the Roman Catholic Church today.

“It’s a record of what I was experiencing and thinking as it happened,” he said. “It’s not an apologetic, but a record of what happened at the time it was happening.”

Later, other books on the Synod will “go deeper,” he said. His diary is meant to be a start of the conversation.

Regarding the Synod, Higgins sees it as Pope Francis’s “premier and most accomplished project.”

Through it, Francis was not trying to change doctrine or policy, Higgins said. Instead, he was attempting to create a climate where all Roman Catholics, lay and clergy alike, could listen, discern and make decisions as they walked together — to be synodal.

“His goal was to create a climate in which Catholics could think seriously about being church in a different way,” Higgins said. “He set in motion all the machinery that would help make that possible.”

Francis didn’t know where it would go or how it would end up, once he set things in motion, Higgins said. “It was experimental, but I think it was the product of the Holy Spirit,” he observed.

Like Pope John 23rd, who convened Vatican II in the 1960s, Francis opened the windows of the Church in this century and created a template for how Catholics around the world can begin to discuss the challenges facing them now — something that is supported by Pope Leo. “He is quite committed to synodality,” Higgins said of the new pope.

Now the challenge facing Roman Catholics is what to do with what Pope Francis started, Higgins stated. On that score, he is disappointed by what is happening — or not happening — in Canada.

For him, what happens depends on how seriously Canadian bishops take Francis’s call for lay people and clergy to talk together about their roles in the Church, and its overall mission, in the 21st century.

“The bishops are expected to begin the process of creating the experience of synodality in their dioceses,” he said, adding that so far “there’s not a lot of evidence that many of them are doing that.”

Some bishops might be waiting for more information and direction from Rome, Higgins said, or they may be anxious about where discussions might take the Church — that it might lead to decisions that make them feel uncomfortable.

That’s why lay people are so important to making sure something happens, he suggested. “Synodality will be driven by the lay people on the ground.”

And that, Higgins said, is why he wrote the book.

“I want to allow lay people to have access to some ideas around what synodality is. It’s not just a buzzword. It’s not just Francis’s private undertaking. It’s a meaningful ecclesiology, a way for the Church to come together to discuss what their faith means today,” he said.

Catholics in Winnipeg will have a chance to hear Higgins speak about what synodality can mean for their Church today at a Q & A session and at a book launch on March 8, 2 p.m. at Saint Boniface Cathedral, main hall (basement). For more information, click here.

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