The Church in Ireland and all the local churches of the world have been told by the Office of the Synod in Rome that they can put reforms suggested in the synodal listening process into practice now. They don’t have to wait on the rest of the universal Church to discern the way forward in a Synod of Bishops in October, nor do they have to wait on the Pope, if those reforms do not require the Pope or a Synod to get involved.
This echoes the growing consensus among organisers of the Synod of Bishops in Rome in October that more deference and freedom be given to local Church authorities. “The call to recover the centrality of the ecclesiology of local churches is perhaps one of the most important contributions of the current phase in the reception of the Council,” writes Prof. Rafael Luciani in this issue.
The focus now then, is not on Rome except for the so-called ‘hot button’ issues and is in fact back on the national and diocesan Church here in Ireland. Therefore, the President of the Bishops’ Conference in Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin should now focus on driving that vision that will lead to action on the concerns of the Irish Catholic faithful so clearly outlined in the synodal listening process.
There is no need to be concerned about, as he was in the recent Synodal conference in Prague, “prevailing question-marks over how to correctly apply this new approach [synodality]”. The legalistics of Synodality which concern the Archbishop Martin are for lawyers and canonists; the call now led by the Vatican is for bishops as pastors to start implementing reform in their own local churches.
As Primate of All-Ireland and Chairman of the Episcopal Conference, the ball is now firmly in Archbishop Eamon Martin’s court. Will he act? The future of the Church in Ireland may depend on it.
