The Synodal Church

In October 2021, the Catholic Church officially began the largest consultative process in human history. The entire people of God, some 1.34 billion Catholics worldwide, were asked to participate in a process of listening and engagement together over the course of two years. Why embark on this incredibly novel, time-consuming, and expensive task? Because your church wants to hear from you. This booklet explains and explores why the leaders of the Catholic Church have discerned that the synodal path is what “God expects of the church of the third millennium.” This Synod on Synodality is not just another meeting. It is the beginning of a conversion process that is essential to the life of the church and its mission. And the Church needs you to carry it out.

A hopeful guide for anyone who is a leader, or who aspires to leadership, in the contemporary church. The book explores leadership and culture through the lens of mission, synodality, governance, people and moral discernment. It concludes with practical proposals for the further development of leaders who will promote a culture in harmony with a synodal Church. Leadership in a Synodal Church draws on a wide range of scholarship in theology, leadership, governance and organisational theory to offer, from the theory and practice of leadership, a positive resource for a Church journeying towards greater synodality. The authors honour their explicit intent in this regard. The chapters unfold logically, integrating good organisational practice with a theology of mission; the book is enhanced by practical examples and exercises for reflection. Above all, the book is written with an insider's perspective with a great sense of faith, love for the Church, and hope for the future.

The synodal Church we often hear is one seeking fraternal communion. This involves mutual listening, in which everyone has something to learn. The author of these enlightening commentaries is Fr. Diego Fares, an Argentinian Jesuit, who has known and worked with Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) for many years. The articles in this eBook: Evangelical Imbalances: Francis Writes to the People of God in Germany Pope Francis and his Messages to Latin America Pope Francis and Fraternity Poetry is a Planet of Living Trees: An interview with Ana Varela Tafu The Heart of ‘Querida Amazonia’: ‘overflowing en route’ Spiritual Discernment in ‘Christus Vivit’: Between Ulysses and Orpheus ‘I am a Mission’: Toward the Synod on Young People Young People, Faith and Discernment: The 2018 Synod and indications of an incomplete document

In this ground-breaking book O'Hanlon offers an Irish theology for a Church in crisis, carefully crafted in the light of his experience of having travelled the length and breadth of Ireland over the last ten years. This is not an armchair theology but one that has been chiselled out of the experience of listening to and learning from others in high and low places, engaging with diverse groups, attending to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, and heeding the prophetic voice of the Bishop of Rome. From the Foreword by Dermot A Lane. draws on decades of reflection, by himself and by others, upon the immense challenges facing the Catholic Church in the post-Second Vatican Council period, in Ireland and beyond. We have lacked neither the vision nor the goodwill to move forward; but the institutional and organisational reforms needed to make the Second Vatican Council an embedded reality have eluded us, until now. Pope Francis, the 'gentle revolutionary', has called for a new, 'synodal' way of being church. 'Synod'means 'the path which we walk together', and it looks like the missing piece of the jigsaw. O'Hanlon's wise, critical but hopeful diagnosis offers the glimpse of a longed for sea-change for the Church. Michael Kirwan SJ. Loyola School of Theology at Trinity College, Dublin.

There are one billion Catholics in the world today, spread over every continent, speaking almost every conceivable language, and all answering to a single authority. The Vatican is a unique international organization, both in terms of its extraordinary power and influence, and in terms of its endurance. Popes come and go, but the elaborate and complex bureaucracy called the Vatican lives on. For centuries, it has served and sometimes undermined popes; it has been praised and blamed for the actions of the pope and for the state of the church. Yet an objective examination of the workings of the Vatican has been unavailable until now. Drawing on more than a hundred interviews with Vatican officials, this book affords a firsthand look at the people, the politics, and the organization behind the institution. Reese brings remarkable clarity to the almost Byzantine bureaucracy of congregations, agencies, secretariats, tribunals, nunciature, and offices, showing how they serve the pope and, through him, the universal church. He gives a lively account of how popes are elected and bishops appointed, how dissident theologians are disciplined and civil authorities dealt with. Throughout, revealing and colorful anecdotes from church history and the present day bring the unique culture of the Vatican to life. The Vatican is a fascinating institution, a model of continuity and adaptation, which remains constant while functioning powerfully in a changing world. As never before, this book provides a clear, objective perspective on how the enormously complex institution surrounding the papacy operates on a day-to-day level, how it has adapted and endured for close to two thousand years, and how it is likely to face the challenges of the next millennium.

"I Believe in the Holy Spirit" is a major treatise on the topic by one of the great theologians of the century. Yves Congar's book is one of the few comprehensive treatments of the Church's understanding of the Spirit and the working of the Spirit in the life of the Church by a Roman Catholic theologian, providing "indispensable resources for the development of a Spirit-sensitive theology" (Robert Imbelli).

Watch the Highlights Video of the June 24 live panel discussion from Rome.??????? When Pope Francis' pontificate has passed, it's very likely that one of the nineteen cardinals featured in these pages will be elected to become the next Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, the spiritual leader of over a billion Catholics and the most influential and widely respected moral and religious figure in the world. Yet outside the Vatican walls, despite the considerable roles that some of these men play in the Church and in the world, few of them are known by the public — or even by their brother cardinals. Hence this book, an engrossing and thoroughly documented instrument through which a future pope may be known

This volume provides all who minister to young people with an effective blueprint for building a truly meaningful ministry