Julieann Moran: Role of women, married priests and sexuality featured early in the synodal pathway
From the Irish Times, Rite & Reason: Not everything we heard in those early conversations has travelled through the process in the same way
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Five years ago, the Irish Synodal Pathway began with a question: “What does God want from the church in Ireland at this time?” Since then, thousands of people have participated in conversations in parishes, dioceses, movements and communities across the island. Some spoke with hope, others from experiences of hurt, distance or frustration. All of these voices belong within the story of the pathway.
Next Saturday, October 17th, delegates will gather in Gormanston, Co Meath, for the National Synodal Assembly, bringing the pathway to a close.
While the recommendations that emerge matter enormously, these five years have given us something that reaches beyond the outcomes of any single gathering. We have learned that, as the people of God, we can discern together. We listened, brought contributions into synthesis, experienced the circularity of dialogue between the local and universal Church, and through conversation in the Spirit learned to listen for what the Holy Spirit might be saying in and through one another.
The National Synthesis of 2022 was part of this development within the Universal Synod and Towards October 2024 helped us to receive what was emerging from that process. Further discernment found expression in Baptised and Sent, with seven priorities entrusted to working groups for deeper reflection. Their work was then received by the national synodal team as part of the continuing process that shaped the five pathways and 35 proposals presented in the document: “Is not this what God asks of you?”
Read together, all the documents – available on www.synod.ie – trace a five-year process since 2021 of listening. What emerged was received, tested, deepened and returned to the people of God. These documents show that we have been learning how to become a discerning, synodal Church. Discernment does not promise that everything expressed at the beginning will emerge as a recommendation at the end. Not everything we heard in those early conversations has travelled through the process in the same way.
Questions concerning the role and ministry of women, including priestly ordination, healing, married clergy, sexuality, governance and belonging featured strongly in the early listening. Some remain, while others are not among the proposals before the assembly.
That is part of the nature of discernment – it is not like a parliamentary process in which the largest number or loudest voice carries the day. We are learning how to remain in communion while taking seriously questions which provoke pain, disagreement and sometimes impatience with the pace of change.
What we have heard remains part of this journey and will continue to shape the questions we carry forward. This way of proceeding is rooted in Baptism. We often say: “I was baptised.” But Baptism is a living reality. From this flows our equal dignity and shared responsibility for the Church’s life and mission. Synodality gives practical expression to that baptismal identity by asking us to recognise one another’s gifts and to share responsibility for mission.
This is why the five pathways in the working document are more than a framework for the proposals attached to them. Their value does not depend on the fate of individual proposals. Together they express a vision of a Church that proclaims the Gospel, is a community of belonging, is a place of healing, accompanies people and empowers for ministry and co-responsibility.
At the National Synodal Assembly on October 17th, individual proposals may be recommended, require further discernment, or not be recommended, but the pathways can continue to generate new possibilities for how this vision might be lived.
In that sense, the assembly is not only about what we decide, but about our growing capacity to discern how this vision can be lived. To gather as the pobal Dé, discern, pray, listen and deliberate together, and then make recommendations for the Church in Ireland tells us something important. We can do this and because we have learned how, we can do it again.
Here the greater challenge begins. It is one thing to talk and learn about synodality through a five-year national process. It is another to make it ordinary.
Can this way of listening and discerning shape parish pastoral councils and diocesan decisions? Can those who have been wounded not simply be spoken about, but genuinely help shape our conversation? Can we implement what we discern, evaluate it, listen again and change course when necessary?
Structural reform and spiritual renewal must accompany one another.
While the Irish Synodal Pathway will come to an end on October 17th, the journey of becoming a synodal Church will continue for everyone.
Julieann Moran is the General Secretary of the Irish Synodal Pathway
It appears that “Patriarchy” is rebranding as “Synodality”.
That means no equality for women.
That means no equality for laity.
That means no equality for married people.
I resist this rebranding.
I call on all who care for our church to resist this rebranding.
What will the inequality of women and laity in the church mean when there will soon be no clergy in the church to be unequal to?
And if synodality could indeed ever become a clerical/patriarchal monopoly, what term should we use to describe the intercommunion of Christian-lay-people-without-clergy that will nevertheless be necessary?
Why not consider the possibility that the dominant historical trend is the making of a Christian diaspora that is more free of clerical patriarchy than it has ever been – and can now organise itself as it pleases – and that all of this may be today’s equivalent of the Exodus from Egypt, an oppressive model of church that became expert in own-goals – mistakes that raise serious questions over what the church became under Christendom: oblivious of that kingdom of God that was ‘at hand’ for Jesus but became an unvisited mystery for a clerical church that was focused on ‘eternity’ – more concerned to warn us of Hell and promise us Heaven if we only ‘paid, prayed and obeyed’?
Was that Kingdom of God ever ‘indefinitely postponed’? Is it not still ‘at hand’? Could we not be discussing that possibility, synodally?
It seems to me that the topics that would have afforded equality to women have been well erased following the discernment process. I feel that clericalism and patriarchy are still alive and well. When will the breath of the Spirit dislodge the deep roots which have been extending their holt since the 4th century?