Roy Donovan ACP Leadership Team responds to Bishop Coll on Synodality…
Bishop Coll is quoted in an Irish Catholic article (see below)
Michael Sean Winters writes in NCR that ‘the documents and the historical event of Vatican II were the result of twin impulses, aggiornamento, or bringing the church up to date, and ressourcement, returning to the sources’. Surely Synodality seeks to continue those same impulses by listening to what the Holy Spirit is saying through all the baptised?
At the recent launch of Transformative Renewal in the Catholic Church written by Fr John O’Brien CSSp, Bishop Niall Coll spoke of integrating Synodality and tradition. Yet, Mary T. Malone, in her book, The Elephant in the Church, argues that Vat 11 did not go back far enough into the tradition. She suggests it needed to go back to St Paul when women shared leadership and ministries alongside men, before a patriarchal model of Church took hold and became dominant. Is Bishop Coll willing to revisit that earlier tradition, prior to the emergence of the patriarchal model? His emphasis on doctrinal certainty seems to suggest otherwise.
Meanwhile, women are increasingly being placed at the top of the agenda in global Synodal listening processes, with calls for greater participation in decision-making, policy, ministries, to challenge long-standing patriarchal structures.
Bishop Coll spoke about the ‘I-Gen’ young Catholic generation not demanding doctrinal change but wanting doctrinal solidity. Little is said about the many Catholics who have left and are leaving the Catholic Church, and who may never return under its present structures. He stresses formation and catechesis but one must ask if this is more conditioning into the patriarchal system? Many Catholics who attend Mass every weekend want a quick Mass – the best of luck with catechising them!
Are certainty and doctrinal solidity just another form of cultural Catholicism? Where does faith fit in? Where in all of this is Jesus whose relationship to God is to a God of unending compassion? Is faith reduced to satisfying God through doctrinal precision?
Does Bishop Coll’s position echo that of other Irish Bishops on Synodality – that Synodality might threaten episcopal authority by requiring genuine listening to the laity? Does he want an episcopal-led Synodality with controlled outcomes firmly enmeshed in the safety of the pyramidal, patriarchal model of the Church?
Bishop Coll: Young Catholics seek ‘doctrinal solidity, not adaptability’
Garry O’Sullivan February 26, 2026
While Church debates continue about synodality and reform in preparation for an Irish Synod in October, Bishop Niall Coll of Raphoe has delivered a clear and sometimes firm message: the next generation of Catholics is not looking for endless discussion or progressive experimentation — they are looking for truth.
Speaking to a gathering of over 100 people at Kimmage Manor for the launch of Transformative Renewal in the Catholic Church, by Fr John O’Brien CSSp, Bishop Coll spoke about what he called the “I-Gen” — young Catholics born from 1995 onward and “Gen-Z”.
Far from demanding doctrinal change, Bishop Coll said this generation is showing signs of renewed seriousness about the faith. “Growing up (since 1995) entirely in a post-Christian, digital, morally fragmented culture they have no inherited memory of Catholic Ireland. Paradoxically, this leads many of them to seek clarity, coherence and tradition. Often converts they are drawn to doctrinal solidity, sacramental depth and continuity with the Church’s tradition. For them the Church lies in truth that is intelligible in body and demanding, not adaptability”, he said.
The Bishop suggested that while synodal conversations often focus on structures and processes, many young Catholics are asking a more basic question: What does the Church actually believe? “Having grown up amid constant choice, information overload and moral ambiguity, they are less interested in conversation and more in formation that produces conviction and confidence.”
In a pointed remark, Bishop Coll observed that the Catholics he encounters are not consumed by progressive agendas. “If you are in a leadership position today, most people you meet are not on fire with progressive questions and it is hard for me to say that to you.”
Instead, he warned that synodality detached from doctrine risks drifting into directionless debate. “And this leads me to propose that synodality, if not anchored in scripture and doctrine risks endless discussion without direction. This highlights one of the most pressing challenges: catechesis and catechist formation. Renewal cannot be sustained without formation.”
He pointed to weak catechesis as a central factor in the Church’s present fragility, warning that many young Catholics now encounter the faith online — often through fragmented and polarised sources — rather than through structured teaching in parishes or schools. “A synodal church requires not only participation but understanding, not only voice but formation. The People of God cannot discern together unless they can articulate what they believe and why.”
Bishop Coll said that the book’s author offered a framework that seeks to hold tensions together. “His emphasis on mutual learning with integrity indicates a framework by which the hunger among i-Gen Catholics for coherence and tradition might be received as a gift to the Church not a problem to be managed. Synodality must hold together listening and teaching, discernment and authority. The task is not to choose between synodality and tradition but to integrate them.”
And he issued a sober reminder to those expecting quick fixes. “Renewal will be slow and sometimes uneven. It requires sustained theological clarity and spiritual depth.”
And he concluded: “Transformative Renewal in the Catholic Church offers the Irish Church and indeed the Church in Britain, a welcome, hopeful and realistic vision beyond institutional collapse and I’m delighted to be part of its launch. Its reception must include serious attention to formation, catechesis and the theological instincts of i-Gen Catholics, while situating ecclesial failure within a wider societal crisis. The future of Irish Catholicism will depend on whether the Church can become both synodal and coherent: a church that listens deeply, teaches clearly, forms intentionally and bears warm witness in a wounded world.”
Well said, Roy an excellent response to our new bishop in my home diocese of Raphoe sounding less than positive about what is surely the Spirit led initiative/ process that is synodality.
Back to the writing of St. Paul indeed.
For example, Andronicus and Junia “prominent among the apostles” to quote Paul and they were husband and wife, imagine that!!
The sad fact of the matter is that most young people – even those brought up in the faith, like my children —- couldn’t give two hoots whether it’s back to tradition or renewal. They are seriously browned off with our institutional church though still retaining their faith in the good news expressed by Jesus in the Gospels.
Doctrinal tradition, for example, the continued vilification of men and women and boys and girls with a homosexual orientation and the continued belittling of women, will not stop the exodus of young people and older people too from the church.
The Synod at least presents the opportunity of reversing the medieval instincts that still seem to blight our church.
Thanks, Roy.
Does Bishop Coll’s ‘doctrinal solidity’ include the YouCat assertion that Christ’s death “did not come about through tragic external circumstances” but solely through the will of God – inevitably compromising the Father in the plotting, cruelty and violence of the Crucifixion? (YouCat Q98)
It is one thing to claim that young people are looking for ‘solid doctrine’. It is something else entirely to claim that Catholic doctrine as outlined in this standard Catechism for Catholic youth is clear or ‘solid’, and likely to appeal to young people. Especially because YouCat totally lacks a framework within which young people can make the vital intellectual connection between SIN and VIOLENCE.
What Catholic tradition calls the root of all sin and all violence – superbia, traditionally translated as ‘pride’ – is totally missing from this work, and ‘pride’ is not even indexed. Inevitably also there is no explanation of the shameful covering up – by the magisterium – of clerical sexual abuse, a grave and violent sin that was also obviously a result of ecclesiastical pride. Every intelligent young person has a right to that explanation of the historical disaster that has totally undermined the authority of the magisterium to which Bishop Coll belongs.
As personally a committed and observant Catholic aged 84 I could not at this moment recommend any of my grandchildren (all female and in their teens) to consider joining the church until doctrinal clarity and integrity (holiness) has been recovered by the magisterium, including St Paul’s belief in the radical equality of all Christians and the inclusion of women – by Jesus Christ himself – in the apostolic call, charism and office.