When speaking at a conference in Dublin last June, I emphasised that the entire synodal process, from consultation at parish level to universal meetings in Rome, is intended to be an act of prayer. It is not just that we should say prayers before, during and after the synodal gatherings. The gatherings themselves are intended to be acts of prayer.
In response, someone in the audience pointed out that prayer can sometimes be misused for the purposes of stifling debate and disagreement. Her fear was that if the General Assembly taking place now in Rome is primarily framed as a form of prayer, then it may be more challenging for people to speak with what Pope Francis has called parrhesia.
By this, the Pope means to speak from the heart boldly and courageously, as indeed he has requested people to do.
Prayer as misuse of power
It is the case that the kind of prayers that are recited at Church meetings can sometimes over-emphasise the need for harmony and avoidance of discord and therefore seem manipulative, especially to those who feel the need to speak truth to power.
This can be the case particularly if such prayers are led by the person in charge of the meeting. There is a risk, therefore, that recent remarks by Pope Francis about the prayerful nature of the General Assembly currently underway in Rome will be considered in this light, that is, as an attempt to avoid controversy or the naming of uncomfortable truths, or worse, as an effort to somehow manipuate the synodal outcomes.
On the plane back from his pastoral visit to Mongolia, Pope Francis emphasised that the General Assembly is to be understood as a “religious moment” as distinct from an exercise in politics or parliamentarianism.
Participants are to speak for three minutes each, he said, and after every three presentations there will be three to four minutes of silent prayer. “Without this spirit of prayer,” Pope Francis said, “there is no synodality”.
Along similar lines, Cardinal Mario Grech, the Secretary-General of the Office of the Synod of Bishops, recently wrote to his fellow bishops that the Synod is above all “an event of prayer”, of which he mentions four particular kinds: listening, adoration, intercession and thanksgiving. And he asks local churches to accompany those gathered in Rome by their prayers.
Secrecy or safeguarding the privacy necessary for prayer?
We are becoming an increasingly divided and polarised Church. Both those on the extreme right and the extreme left have voiced their fears that their version of the truth will somehow be kept off the synodal agenda.
Those concerned that emphasis on synodality as prayer is a sinister attempt to keep the lid on things will have their suspicions confirmed by speculation that Pope Francis also wants to apply the “pontifical secret”, a particular Vatican code of confidentiality, to the entire proceedings of the General Assembly.
The evidence for this is scant and such a move would seem at odds with the overall thrust of his papacy, which until now has been characterised by transparency and accountability.
In any case, as John Allen has rightly pointed out, any attempt to impose secrecy during the General Assembly will backfire because it will probably be observed only by the moderate voices, leaving the emerging narrative to be determined by the extremists on both sides who would continue to disseminate their take on matters behind the scenes.
Spiritual Conversation
It is clear, though, that by setting aside the first three days of the General Assembly for a communal retreat, by celebrating daily mass together as well as a prayer vigil and pilgrimage, participants are being invited to approach their participation in the General Assembly as they would a month-long religious exercise.
Such religious exercises are best entered into by distancing oneself from one’s daily routine, by switching off as much as one can the background music and clamour of daily life, and by making a deliberate effort to cultivate interiority.
By inviting participants to be ascetical when it comes to engagement with, say, the media, and to be extra careful in what they communicate about what is, in effect, an ongoing conversation, Pope Francis is interested not in imposing secrecy, which is the stuff of conspiracy theories, but rather in creating the privacy and interior space that is indispensable to what he calls “spiritual conversation” or sometimes “conversation in the Spirit”.
Spiritual conversation requires a high capacity for attentiveness and self-awareness. It requires the capacity to know and understand where in oneself certain ideas and concepts are coming from; whether, for instance, they are coming from a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ spirit.
It also requires the capacity to be attentive not only to the words others are speaking but also to what motivates and concerns them. In turn, this requires a capacity for ‘self-forgetting’ or ‘self-emptying’.
Why is attentiveness to self and others necessary if what we are interested in is discovering God’s will and not our own? Because, as Patrick Kavanagh put it, “God is in the bits and pieces of Everyday”.
The lost art of listening
God’s self-revelation takes the form of an ongoing conversation between God and God’s people (Dei Verbum, n. 25). Spiritual conversation can be understood as the process by which the Church ‘eavesdrops’ on this conversation. This listening, in turn, enables pastors to discern the decisions they need to take to ensure that the Church remains faithful to its mission.
I was very struck by a lecture I heard a few weeks ago given by the Abbess of an Italian Benedictine monastery near Assisi. Though an enclosed order, in accordance with their rule the nuns are required to work as well as pray, and so they make a living through growing and harvesting olives and grapes.
They also welcome guests, and in recent times, the Abbess’ former school classmates, now parents of teenage children, sometimes ask her to allow their teenage children who seem to have lost their way in the world to come to stay at the monastery for some time and work alongside the sisters in the fields.
These young people are sometimes in bad shape, often isolated, addicted to substances or to technology and social media, and so on. I asked her what the monastery has to offer them. “We listen”, she answered.
Listening is the most important gift that she and her sisters can offer to the world today, she said, and she spoke with the credibility and conviction that only someone genuinely a contemplative is able to communicate.
The Abbess conveyed a sense that being listened to, genuinely and profoundly, bestows respect and restores people to a sense of their inherent dignity.
The ‘core business’ of many of us taking part in the General Assembly, is the Church’s mission. Yet the reality is that despite this, we ourselves can easily neglect or even lose the art of how to engage in spiritual conversation.
Given the immense responsibility that comes with participating in the General Assembly, those participating, who are present in a representative capacity for the Church as a whole, owe it to others to dispose themselves as fully as they can to the level of attentiveness and ‘self-forgetting’ required to participate fully and generously.
Synod 2021-2024 is a Synod on synodality. It would therefore be incongruous if the General Assembly did not itself model and practise the very mode of being and operating (modus vivendi et operandi) with which Pope Francis is seeking to imbue the daily life of the Church.
We are still only beginning to understand what this might mean in practice.
Fr Eamonn Conway is a priest of the archdiocese of Tuam and holds the Inaugural Chair of Integral Human Development at the University of Notre Dame, Australia. He is participating in the General Assembly of the XVI Synod of Bishops as an expert appointed by Pope Francis.
