Most Reverend Vincent Long Van Nguyen OFM Conv DD STL, Bishop of Parramatta
Keynote address at the Walter Silvester Memorial Lecture Series
‘Inverting the Ecclesial Pyramid 60 Years after Vatican II: The Evolution of a Synodal Church in Australia’
27 October 2022
INTRODUCTION:
It is a privilege for me to speak at this Walter Silvester Memorial Lecture on the occasion of 60 years after the Opening of the Second Vatican Council and also 50th anniversary of the founding of Catholic Theological College – which has formed many people, including myself – in the spirit of this reform-oriented ecumenical council. John O’Malley SJ who was one of the greatest Catholic Church historians until his death recently described Vatican II as decisively responsive to change and crisis of modernity. He observed perceptively that while Trent was “quintessentially bishop-centred,” and Vatican I “pope-centred,” Vatican II was a council for the emerging new world church, the goal of which was to explore in depth the Church’s identity, to recall and make operative its deepest values, and to proclaim to the world its sublime vision for humanity.
This lecture series is a tribute to a priest who in many ways foreshadowed the reforms that the Second Vatican Council. One of the key insights that the Council Fathers recovered was the role of the faithful, not as passive recipients, but as protagonists. There was a paradigm shift in respect of the preceding councils: the Church is understood predominantly and primarily as a People of God. In this understanding, the working of the Holy Spirit was granted not only to the ordained to all the baptised. Pope Francis has given a fresh emphasis on the importance of this mode of revelation by the practice of synodality that requires the participation of all the baptised in deep listening, discernment and decision-making processes. Thus, the reception of the Council has moved to a new phase which involves the whole Church and the active participation of the faithful in particular.
Walter Silvester embodied the spirit of dialogue, accompaniment and engagement that the Council called for in its seminal document “Lumen Gentium”. He embraced the doctrine on the Church as the People of God and on the sensus fidelium in earnest. It was clear through his collaborative style of ministry, his emphasis on the role of all the baptised and the many lay groups that he helped form as a young priest in Melbourne. The Pallottine Younger Set emerged from this period; another was the Mariana Community, a group of single consecrated women who live out their callings in the wider world but are united by prayer and shared undertakings.
Walter was a German U-boat commander in World War II. He might as well have commandeered a tugboat in his second half of life – ecclesiologically speaking – since the Barque of Peter needed to make a significant change of course as a result of the far-reaching decisions of the Council. Walter was up to the post-conciliar task of reorientating the Church’s self-understanding that involved a recovery of baptismal consecration, discipleship, participation and mission of the faithful and the Church in Australia and in Victoria especially is indebted to him for his visionary leadership.
FROM AN UNEQUAL SOCIETY TO PEOPLE OF GOD:
Indeed, at the Second Vatican Council, there was a fundamental shift in the Church’s self-understanding. The dominant metaphor of “a societas perfecta” which implies a certain isolation from the world gave way to a more biblical image of a pilgrim people. The priesthood of faithful was rediscovered along with the affirmation that the working of the Holy Spirit was granted not to the ordained only, but to all baptised.
This shift did not occur without rigorous debate. In fact, the draft Schema which was eventually rejected echoed “the unequal society” that Gregory XVI famously pronounced more than a century earlier. It was significant that Lumen Gentium speaks of the Church as the People of God before it acknowledges its hierarchical structures. It is this foundational understanding that leads Pope Francis say that synodality as a constitutive element of the Church, offers us the most appropriate interpretive framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry itself.
In the light of the paradigm shift, it is possible and indeed necessary to speak about new ways of being Church as we leave behind any remnant of the Christendom and the pyramidal ecclesiology that has dominated since the fourth century. Australia was not part of the Holy Roman Empire or the Papal States. But the way of our being Church – like everywhere else in the pre-conciliar era – has been steeped in the old paradigm of clerical order, control and hegemony.
The transition into a church as the People of God was not without birth pangs. There was a concerted effort to hold on to the old paradigm and this resulted in an ecclesiastical phenomenon known as restorationism or the reform of the reform, rooted in traditional theology and practices. For a time, therefore, the so-called “hermeneutic of continuity” apparently prevailed over the “hermeneutic of reform” that had characterised the popular reception of the Second Vatican Council.
It was a movement to “renew the renewal” of Vatican II by bringing traditionalist approaches to liturgy and governance of parish life. Young clergy attempted to incorporate costumes, vestments, music and other elements that have their roots in practices preceding the Second Vatican Council.
I was in Rome for the Year of the Priest in 2010 and I witnessed a manifestation of this restorationist movement. Many religious too, took this in their strides. The streets of Rome were filled with young priests and religious dressed up in every fancy clerical attire and head-dresses that you could imagine. Do we need this type of renewal or something more substantive? I suspect Pope Francis has a different idea when he speaks of the need for the Church to undergo a change of era. Perhaps, it is more like a paschal process that involves dying and rising.
Pope Francis is often the critic of clericalism, especially in the cohort of young priests and seminarians. One cannot fight clericalism without challenging the system that allows it to fester. Indeed, one cannot fight clericalism while subscribing to theology and practices that infantilises the laity. Hence, the Pope often speaks of an “inverted pyramid” which is a radical way of exercising power and authority.
It is not a top-down and centralised approach reminiscent of the monarchical model. Rather, it is a synodal church at every level, with everyone listening to each other, learning from each other and taking responsibility for proclaiming the Gospel. Vatican II already spoke of the key principles: collegiality, subsidiarity and sensus fidelium, all of which pointed to a more listening, dialogical and inclusive church.
Pope Francis has really lived up to his vision of the Church daring to break loose from its comfort zone and self-referential mentality. He has challenged us to be a compassionate, merciful, open and inclusive church. He has privileged a style of leadership, which involves more deep respectful listening and collective discernment.
Francis declares: “The thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity”. That is his vision of the ideal Church. Not a perfect society, nor the enclosure for the privileged but a refuge for the poor, an oasis for the weary and a hospital for the wounded.
The Church is at a point at which a courageous reframing in the way of the prophets must be articulated. What the Church needs is not simply a renewal or an updating of methods of evangelising. Rather we desperately need is an inner conversion, a radical revolution in our mindsets and patterns of action.
We need a radical conversion that acknowledges that we have come up short with our methods, our rigour, our lack of sensitivity to certain issues or groups of people. Yes, but what we need to re-examine is also attitudinal, systemic, structural and cultural. What we need is a deep institutional change that will restore confidence and trust in the Church. Nothing less than a root to branch reform that will align our minds and hearts to the Gospel will do.
The narrative of re-evangelisation or new evangelisation is problematic when it glosses over the deficiencies of the old model of Church and fails to acknowledge the fundamental structures and ecclesiological underpinnings that need to change.
Until we have the courage to admit the old ways of being Church, which is steeped in a culture of clerical power, dominance and privilege, we cannot rise to a Christ-like way of humility, inclusivity, compassion and powerlessness.
The time has come for us not only to admit the need for change but to discern together as to what the process and the agenda for change should look like going forward. Pope Francis said poignantly that we are not living in an era of change but change of era. In other words, what we need is the cultural shift and the conversion of minds and hearts to be a truly humble, listening, inclusive and synodal Church. We don’t just need do the old things better. Carrying on former practices, agendas and priorities without acknowledging the need to change course can be at best futile and at worst defiant against the movement of the Holy Spirit. We owe it to our spiritual forebears not simply by repeating what they did for the people of their times but by reimagining and re-contextualising the Christian story that drove them in the first place. You owe it to them to put flesh on the marrow of the Gospel for the people of our time.
For the Church to flourish, it is crucial that we come to terms with the flaws of clericalism and move beyond its patriarchal and monarchical matrix. What is urgent is that we need to find fresh ways of being Church and fresh ways of ministry and service for both men and women disciples. New wine into new wineskins! The new wine of God’s unconditional love, radical inclusivity and equality needs to be poured into new wineskins of humility, mutuality, compassion and powerlessness.
The Church cannot have a better future if it persists in the old paradigm of triumphalism, self-reference and male dominance. So long as we continue to exclude women from the Church’ governance structures, decision-making processes and institutional functions, we deprive ourselves of richness of our full humanity. So long as we continue to make women invisible and inferior in the Church’s language, liturgy, theology and law, we impoverish ourselves. Until we have truly incorporated the gift of women and the feminine dimension of our Christian faith, we will not be able to fully energise the life of the Church.
THE PRIMACY OF BAPTISM:
For a long time, the culture of clerical dominance had been solidly entrenched in the Catholic Church ever since it took centre stage in the Roman Empire. It is a by-product of the model of church, which sees itself as self-sufficient, superior to and separate from the outside world. The Church as understood and articulated by the Second Vatican Council sees itself as a pilgrim People of God, incarnate in the world. It is a new paradigm – one that is based on mutuality not exclusion, love not fear, “smell of the sheep” not elitism, engagement with the world not flight from or hostility against it, incarnate grace not dualism. It is the Church going out of itself as opposed to closing in on itself.
The time has come for us to embrace and implement unambiguously and decisively the vision of the pilgrim church, that the Second Vatican Council entrusted to us. The time has come for the Church to embrace a new paradigm based on a discipleship of equals, so that all the People of God can create a new culture of humility, accountability and service.
The time has come to apply the trinitarian theological framework as a basis for restructuring the Church as a circular, symbiotic and cooperative relational paradigm rather than a linear pyramidic power structure. Trinitarian theology today stresses love, equality and distinction as key in our attempt to grasp the meaning of a relational God, linking our faith with action for the environment, and Trinity is the template for restructuring a church, so that the equality of the baptised is actually lived, rather than pyramidic power. Only in such a church will everyday Catholics come to recognise that their lives offer countless opportunities for ministry.
Pope Francis affirms that ‘this path of synodality’ is precisely what “God expects of the Church of the third millennium.” He gave new impetus to the doctrine of the sensus fidei fidelium, stating that the path of synodality represents an indispensable prerequisite for infusing the Church with a renewed missionary impulse: all the members of the Church are called to be active subjects of evangelisation and “missionary disciples”.
If synodality is the new way of being Church for the third millennium, then we must seek to understand more deeply what it means to be a synodal Church. Vatican II addressed the relationship between the Pope and the bishops through the doctrine of collegiality. It declared that a bishop by ordination and hierarchical authority is a member of the college of bishops. The Synod of Bishops was instituted by Pope Paul VI as an expression of the understanding of the relationship between the papacy and episcopal collegiality, but not yet as inclusive of the whole Church. In other words, it was not an institution intended to give expression to the relationship between the local churches and the universal church. This explains why Synods of Bishops – at least up until recent times – have been an exclusive preserve of bishops with the Pope and have not enjoyed the competence some might have wanted it to have.
One seasoned feminist theologian has lamented the lack of ecclesial framework in which meaningful synodal discernment and decision-making processes can take place. Until the cleric-centred framework is changed to accommodate non-cleric participants as equals, she likens the exercise to the “structural impossibility of squaring the kyriarchal circle”. Perhaps, the desire for a new ecclesial framework was the reason why the German Church opted for a different route to the “textbook” method the Australian Bishops had chosen. Meanwhile, the first ecclesial assembly of Latin American that was held early this year comprised of 20% bishops; 20% clergy; 20% religious; 40% laymen and women, including peripheral groups. It was a structure that better reflected ecclesial diversity.
Many would say that such reservations are not without justification. The idea of synodality and co-responsibility means that all members should be given equal voice and opportunity as we walk together. But modern synodality is grafted onto the old clerical and hierarchical Church where power and authority are vested in the ordained. The process of “walking together” can be fraught with challenges when it comes to decision-making and good outcomes. Our experience of the Plenary Council in Australia has illustrated these challenges. Many felt that at crucial points, the process was controlled by those with power. As the synodal Church evolves, we need to address the issue of equity in ecclesial structures in order to promote the culture of discernment, consensus and decision-making.
It was recorded that when Pope Paul VI announced the formation of a permanent synod at the 4th Session of the Council, the bishops welcomed the decision with a spontaneous sustained applause. The Council Fathers felt that finally they would occupy their proper place in the leadership of the universal Church -even though whether or not the synod subsequently lived up to its true expression of episcopal collegiality is debatable. Meanwhile, many Catholics long for the day when the structures that surround the universal synod reflect the Council’s recovery of the primacy of baptism and so such a gathering become a truly “ecclesial” event, as distinct from a merely “ecclesiastical” or cleric-centred and male-dominated one.
EVOLUTION OF SYNODALITY WITH POPE FRANCIS:
With Pope Francis, synodality has evolved beyond collegiality to include the totality of the Church. He has engaged an ecclesiological gear shift with regard to the understanding of revelation and the transmission of the faith. Since the Council of Trent, revelation was understood as a transmission of the faith in an hierarchically ordered way through the Pope, bishops and priests. The Spirit, accordingly, was given to the hierarchy to guarantee the truthfulness of what they teach while in the laity the Spirit was given for their personal sanctification and growth in holiness. The laity were recipients of the faith, often through a series of propositions, rather than active participants.
Once the role of the Spirit in the life of the baptised is diminished and the link between baptism and mission increasingly neglected, the ministry of the laity declines in favour of the ministry of the ordained. Baptism became less a consecration for mission and more a remission of Original Sin. For centuries, baptism was pushed into the background while religious life and orders enjoyed a first-class citizenship. Indeed, it has been said religious life and the priesthood became “baptismal surrogates” meaning that the function that should have been proper to baptism, namely mission, became synonymous with the priesthood and to a lesser degree with religious life. It would not be until the Second Vatican Council that the link between baptism and mission would be restored.
Conciliar teaching on the People of God reveals the fundamental equality of all believers rooted in baptism which makes them sharers in the common priesthood of Christ and confers on them charisms for mission. This baptismal consecration takes precedence over all subsequent consecrations. The pre-conciliar two-states ecclesiology which precludes the laity from pastoral ministry is juxtaposed with a new ecclesiology centred on the dignity and primacy of baptism.
Vatican II also taught that revelation occurs within the whole People of God and that the working of the Holy Spirit is not only granted to the ordained, but to all the faithful. Dei Verbum, for example, presents revelation in terms of God inviting men and women into fellowship with him. Instead of a package of set doctrines about God, it speaks of the Holy Spirit bringing believers into deeper understanding of revelation.
This rich trinitarian understanding of revelation implies that there is a need of mutual obedience and respect of laity and hierarchy, and even more importantly, that a participation of all the faithful is required for discerning the voice of the Holy Spirit. In other words, if revelation occurs within the whole church and not only through the ordained, then it requires the reconfiguration of the protagonists and the cooperation among all the people of God from the laity to the Pope.
Pope Francis affirms the importance of the sensus fidei in Evangelii Gaudium “all the baptised, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelisation, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelisation to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would be simply passive recipient.” The sensus fidei renders dichotomy of the teaching church and learning church inadequate. A synodal church is a church that listens and the listening is not one dimensional or linear but mutual because everyone (including bishops and the Pope) has something to learn.
In fact, the traditional distinction between the hierarchy as teachers and the laity as believers can now be inverted. The teachers can learn as much as the learners can also teach. In his address to the Synod on the Family, he stated that the sensus fidei prevents a rigid separation between an Ecclesia docens and an Ecclesia discens, since the flock likewise has an instinctive ability to discern the new ways that the Lord is revealing to the Church. Pope Francis went on to consider how this affects the understanding and practice of the Petrine ministry. The Pope, he said, isn’t above the Church but very much part of it. Therefore, as the Church becomes more synodal, the papacy itself will change – not in essence but in the way it is exercised.
60 years after Vatican II, Pope Francis gave new expression of the Church as the People of God by expanding the understanding of the relationship between the Pope and bishops. Primacy and collegiality are now located within the People of God. Collegiality is located within the context of synodality. The hierarchy is understood as standing in serve to God, to the Church and thus to the People of God. This leads him to say that synodality is an expression of the Church understood as a journeying together of God’s flock, each according to his or her task.
Pope Francis has applied a critical lens through which the Church is renewed for the sake of its mission for the poor. The Church is helped to decentralise and impelled towards the peripheries. The Church, the People of God, should walk together, sharing the burdens of humanity, listening to the cry of the poor, reforming itself and its own action, first by listening to the voice of the humble, the oppressed, the marginalised or the anawim of the biblical tradition, who were at the heart of Jesus’s public ministry.
CONCLUSION:
Pope Francis’ decisive embrace of the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council and particularly his resetting of the sensus fidei have given the new lease of life to the Church and its mission. Synodal journey can be messy, painful and uncertain. But it can lead to renewed and deepened commitment and even transformation. The various synodal exercises around the world, including our own Australian Plenary Council marked by disruption, were marked chaos and drama but also by a deep sense of dialogue for the common good or ‘parrhesia’.
In the end, what was invigorating about them was not only the documents that they produced or the decisions that were made. Rather it was the journey of synodality that energised the Church. As far as I am concerned, it is the unleashing of the energy long locked up beneath the ice of institutional security that truly matters. The energy that had been trapped in a rigid control was released by boldness, freedom and frankness.
The Australian Plenary Council was an act of enormous trust, or perhaps in betting terms, a massive gamble. It was an Abrahamic journey from the start. We gambled on the invitation of Pope Francis to be the People of God, walking together, sharing the burdens of humanity, listening to the voice of the most marginalised, reforming its structures and ways of doing things. We did not set out to resolve every question of importance. For instance, on matter of sex and gender, there was very little on the agenda. The acceptance of LGBTIQ+ as the reference to non-binary brothers and sisters was perhaps not a small consensus among the members.
In the end, the significance of this synodal exercise was much more than what was decided. What was highly symbolic and paradigm-shifting was the fact that we met as a community of equals. The emphasis on the superiority of the ordained gave way to an ecclesial communion based on common baptism. Bishops, priests, religious and lay were all addressed by our first names. No one’s voice counted more than another’s. There was a profound sense of being together and working together even if we have distinct roles in the Church.
Ultimately, the Plenary Council was not merely an event but a process and a template for a new way of being Church going forward. One hopes that embracing an ecclesiology of the People of God that nurtures a more dialogical and ecumenical, interfaith, ecological and indeed cosmological reimagination, we can rise to become a more fit for purpose Church and vehicle of the Gospel for humanity and all creation.
