A Synod of Ideas

When 207 Roman Catholic prelates from round the world gathered at the Vatican last month for the fourth Synod of Bishops, they faced what appeared to be a "safe" topic. Pope Paul VI had rejected their first choice for discussion, the family, which would have involved the bishops in such touchy issues as abortion, birth control and world population growth. Instead, he decreed, their topic should be evangelization. But just as Protestants have found out in the course of recent and heated debates, the bishops also discovered that evangelization is no easy subject. Spreading the Gospel these days involves ecumenical questions, problems of communication with an increasingly complex world and the difficult issue of how the church should respond to struggles for social, economic and political justice. Indeed, after the synod's first series of wide-ranging presentations, William Cardinal Conway of Ireland complained that "it would need another Vatican Council to deal with all of this."

Activist Vision. Unlike a council, the four synods Pope Paul has convened since Vatican II have no legislative powers; they serve mainly as an advisory body for the Pontiff and informal parliament where the prelates can learn about one another's problems and air possible solutions. By the end of the synod's third week, many ideas had been aired.

Especially in Third World countries, many church thinkers have lately come to espouse an activist vision of the Gospel called "liberation theology." Although they often use the language of Marxian economic analysis to define the world's ills, liberationist thinkers cite the Gospel to argue that Christians must side with the oppressed, even to the point of sometimes backing violent revolution. In his opening address, however, Pope Paul admonished the bishops that the church could never use methods that "are in open conflict with the spirit of the Gospel; neither violence, therefore, nor revolution, nor colonialism in any form will serve as a means for the church's evangelizing action."

Despite the Pontiffs advice, a number of bishops asked the church to take more risks for the world's dispossessed. Stephan Cardinal Kim of Seoul, where Catholics have been fighting the repressive regime of President Park Chung Hee, warned that "if the church refrains from an all-out effort to liberate our fellow man from the root causes of enslavement, she will deservedly bear the stigma of the Levite who left the wounded helpless by the wayside and escaped to his own 'sacramental' functions."

Archbishop Helder Pessoa Camara of Olinda and Recife, Brazil's controversial "pastor of the poor" (TIME, June 24), contended that "we show too passive a vision of Christianity. In a certain way, we have made Marx right, by offering the oppressed of both the poor and the rich countries an opiate for the people. We appease our consciences by telling ourselves that we are charged with saving souls, that the Christian Easter is liberation from sin ... Yet we are pastors of human beings, charged [also with] their bodies. Never has any one of us met a disembodied soul."

Inevitably, the bishops had to face the problem of religion's appeal to the young. The church itself, several prelates conceded, turned off many youths. "The young person is looking for a model of Christ and the Gospel in the ministers," said Archbishop John Quinn of Oklahoma City. "In the eyes of the young those qualities [of Jesus] that are most important--joy, love and kindness, patience and tolerance, an open mind and a willingness to listen, a spirit of compassion and concern, simplicity and directness --are often missing in the ministers ...

[Young people] recognize the paradox of the joyless herald of the Good News and are repelled by it." Even more strongly, Bernard Cardinal Alfrink of The Netherlands asked the bishops to "examine their consciences" to see if they did not "obscure the image of the church and damage her credibility."

Pope Paul had stressed in his opening speech that evangelism was a permanent task of the church, that the Gospel must be preached to all, "to ensure that every tongue confesses that Christ is the only Lord and Saviour." Yet he also noted that even "non-Christian religions must no longer be regarded as rivals, but as a field of lively, respectful interest." In any case, added Ireland's Cardinal Conway, "there must be no boot-in-the-door type of salesmanship."

New Rites. So far as other Christian churches were concerned, some bishops seemed more anxious for closer cooperation than for recruits. Archbishop Samuel Carter of Kingston, Jamaica, even called for "corporate reunion" between some Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church on a regional basis. "Full agreement in doctrine is not needed before some measure of intercommunion is allowed," noted Carter, who urged greater development of joint Protestant-Catholic services. Regional union, he suggested, would eventually mean the incorporation of "new and distinct rites with disciplines different from the Latin Church. This would involve married clergy of new Western rites coexisting in the same regions with the Latin Church."

Carter was not the only prelate to resurrect the idea of married priests. Recognizing that evangelization involves the whole question of the church's ministry, Zaire's Joseph Cardinal Ma-lula asked that the bishops consider new ministries for which married clergy might be suitable. As for women's share in the ministry and their possible ordination as priests, Bishop Paul Verschuren of Helsinki suggested that an entire future synod be devoted to the role of women in the church. The very fact that such proposals could calmly be offered in the Pope's presence suggests how open the synods have become.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.