October 6, 2023 at 12:13 p.m.
Synod participants discuss formation, building a welcoming church
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The formation of seminarians, the Catholic Church as a welcoming home for all, migration and ecumenism arose as common themes of discussion among participants of the assembly of the Synod of Bishops Oct. 6, the Vatican said.
In book given at synod, Pope warns against idolatry camouflaged as sacred
Christian life is a battle each person must fight against the temptation to be self-sufficient and against a paganism disguised as sacredness, Pope Francis said in an introduction to a small book distributed to participants at the synod on synodality.
Such "spiritual worldliness," he wrote, "though it be camouflaged with the appearance of the sacred, it ends up being idolatrous because it does not recognize the presence of God as Lord and liberator of our lives and of the history of the world. It leaves us prey to our capricious desires."
The booklet contains two republished essays by the pope that are "united by the concern, which I feel to be a loud call from God to the entire Church, to remain vigilant and to fight with the strength of prayer against every concession to spiritual worldliness," he wrote in the introduction.
Titled, "Holy, Not Worldly: God's Grace Saves Us From Interior Corruption," the booklet was released by the Dicastery for Communication and the Vatican publishing house Oct. 6 and was offered to the more than 350 participants attending the afternoon session of the Synod of Bishops on synodality.
"I offer these texts to the reader as an opportunity to reflect on his life and on the life of the Church, with the conviction that God asks us to be open to His newness, he asks us to be unquiet and never satisfied, searching and never stuck in comfortable opacity, not defended within the walls of false certainties, but walking on the road of holiness," the pope wrote in the introduction.
"Christian life is a battle" against the temptation of closing in on oneself, he said, and instead to let God's love dwell within.
"The battle we carry out as followers of Jesus is first of all a battle against spiritual worldliness, which is a form of paganism in ecclesiastical clothing," he wrote.
This battle is not in vain or without hope, he wrote, "because this battle has already been won by Jesus," who, with his resurrection, "has made it possible for us to become new persons."
The cross of Jesus is "the criterion of every choice of faith," he wrote, because "it is the sign of a limitless love, humble and tenacious. Jesus loved us to the point of the ignominious death on a cross in order that we no longer be able to doubt that his arms will remain open even for the last of the sinners."
The pope offered a lengthy quote from Blessed Pierre Claverie, the 20th-century martyred bishop of Oran, Algeria: "I believe that the Church dies if it is not sufficiently close to the cross of her Lord. Though it may seem paradoxical, strength, vitality, hope, Christian fruitfulness, the fruitfulness of the Church come from here. Not from elsewhere."
Divided into 35 small groups of 10-12 people ranging from cardinals to college students, the participants spent the third day of the synod assembly sharing what they had discussed in their small groups in the previous days and listening to individual remarks made to all synod members present.
The assembly spent Oct. 5 holding small-group conversations on forming a synodal church. Reports on the discussions, voted on in each working group to ensure they accurately reflected the work of the group, were shared with the entire assembly Oct. 6 followed by individual remarks made to the assembly, each expected to last about three minutes.
Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery for Communication, told reporters that 18 small-group reports were presented and 22 individual interventions or speeches were made as of midday Oct. 6.
"Practically everyone has underscored the fraternal climate of welcoming that has been created in the synod," he said, adding that participants also discussed how to be in communion with those who did not participate in the synodal process due to persecution, indifference or apathy.
Ruffini said that the formation of seminarians was widely discussed, including ways to increase their participation in the community and engagement with people on the margins of society.
"There are few seminarians, sometimes their selection has created problems and there are seminaries that could have improved organization," he said, summarizing participants' comments.
Participants discussed the role of women in the church and the promotion of their active participation in the church's decision-making processes, he said, as well as ways of continuing to accompany migrants after they have migrated.
One small-group report, Ruffini noted, asked about ways the church can consider revising its structures through canon law and altering the Curia.
"How does the church become welcoming? Should something be changed to make a welcoming church? What should be changed?" he summarized.
Ruffini was asked about the synod rule of confidentiality and Cardinal Gerhard Müller, a synod member and former head of the Vatican doctrinal office, giving an interview and speaking about the synod discussions. "Each synod member makes their own discernment" about how to maintain the environment of sharing created in the synod assembly, Ruffini said. The rules given to synod participants require them to maintain confidentiality on what they, or others, say during the assembly, but "there is not a police force that punishes you."
He also shared that a participant's remarks underscoring how the church suffers in certain parts of the world, particularly in Ukraine, solicited applause from the entire synod assembly.
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