Walter Hughes, Ottawa

On November 23rd, while taking some R&R in Ottawa in November, Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny was invited by the pastor at St. Basil’s Church, Rev. Daryold Winkler, to speak informally to volunteers from a few local parishes about the Synod on Synodality.
Born in Czechoslovakia, Michael Czerny immigrated to Canada with his family in 1948. He joined the Jesuits in 1964, was ordained a priest in 1973, and worked for decades on social justice in various roles. In 2016, Pope Francis appointed him to a senior Vatican post on Migrants and Refugees. He was ordained to the Episcopacy in October 2019, and the next day was created a Cardinal of the Church.

The Cardinal began by describing his prior experiences in three synods. The one most exemplary to him was the 2018 Youth Synod. Prior to the bishops meeting, there were pre-synod consultations with youth – 300 young people from around the world who met in person in Rome, with thousands more engaged online. A concise summary of the views of the young people had an impact on the bishops’ meeting. Particularly noteworthy was the contribution of one break-out group of thirty young people, who were concerned about migration and immigration policies.

The youth identified with immigrant communities as they also feel the pressures of social exclusion, of not being respected for who they were, but are labelled a problem. This small group of youth changed the tenor of both the pre-synod consultation and the response by the bishops meeting in synod. Cardinal Czerny hoped that small groups now being consulted around the world for the coming synod could challenge the Church in a similar fashion.

Cardinal Czerny made observations about the Pope’s views on the Synod. He said that Francis is good at separating spiritual topics from political topics. A synod is not a parliament. Politics involves taking sides, lobbying for one’s own position, castigating the ‘enemy’ and make alliances involving trade-offs. Francis turns aside politics to focus on a spiritual approach, where agreement is sought for the common good with love and respect for all.

The Cardinal spoke about “Church” as a verb. Think of it not as a structure nor a place, but rather as an action. “To church.” It is only conjugated in the plural – we church, you church, they church – because it requires encounters and listening. The Synod too is about encounter and listening. We do not know where it will take us. Quoting Pope Francis, he said “It’s more important to launch processes than to occupy spaces.” The Cardinal added “What we are asking today is what we should have asked 50 years ago, that is, right after Vatican II: ‘How do we want to church together?’”

He described the Synod as reaching out to everyone – the faithful, the hurt who have left any local church, those who never believed, and people from other faiths. He insisted that the original meaning of “catholic” was variegated, not a rigid uniformity.

“We are many peoples who are very different but who come together.” He spread out his arms like the curved colonnades in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. This colonnade represents the arms of the Church welcoming everyone. Czerny asked those present “How large a variation are we able to include among us?” This was his invitation to join the pre-Synod encounters.