24 Nov Tea Time Theology: Engaging Synodality Locally

“When Pope Francis tells us that the Holy Spirit is the protagonist of the Synod on Synodality – indeed, the protagonist of a synodal church and of synodality itself – he is also telling us that we’re not in charge. We’re not calling the shots. We don’t get to define the process or project the correct outcome.

“This is not going to happen overnight. We’re talking about a generation, at least, in terms of people taking on board a synodal culture,” Professor Gill Goulding told Regis Friends Quarterly.

Goulding isn’t just another theology professor with an opinion about the most consequential synod in the Catholic Church since the Council of Trent. She’s been part of the Theological Commission of the Synod since 2021, reading and synthesising synod reports from bishops’ conferences and continental assemblies, then contributing to the working documents which guided synodal conversations in 2023 and 2024 in Rome. She’s also a past synod delegate to the 2012 Synod on the New Evangelization.

The systematic theologian and Sister of the Congregatio Jesu sees synodality in terms of culture change. Goulding’s good friend Sr. Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, told this reporter in 2022, “Sometimes, to put it into a nutshell, I say synodality is about getting rid of the pattern of domination to go to a pattern of co-operation.”

But we live in a hierarchical church, and synodality is not going to change that.

“We are not a democracy. That’s not what the church is. It’s what politics are meant to be. Whether they are or not is another question,” Goulding said. “Individual discernment and communal discernment are offered to the leadership. The leadership then is to take that into account, into discernment and decision-making.”

For most Catholics, offering up their discernment to bishops and their representatives may not seem like much of a change. But then, do most Catholics know how to engage in either a personal or a communal process of prayerful and open discernment?

Culture change, the necessary foundation of a synodal church, casts us all as students who must learn new skills, in Goulding’s view. Except that it’s not very new for Goulding.

“The way in which I have taught theology since I came to Regis is an integration of theology and spirituality, which is what the synodal process is – and our way of going on as church,” she said. “I don’t think we’re making a synodal church at Regis. We have been living a synodal reality for at least 20 years.”

The synodal reality of the church was never a precious secret Goulding wanted to dole out exclusively to an elite of graduate students. Come spring, Goulding will offer a taste of synodality to anyone with a few afternoons free for tea and cake with friends.

From March 12 to April 9, at weekly sessions of the Regis College Windows on Theology program, Goulding will lead tea time theology conversations, both online and in person.

“It may attract a number of older people, that’s part and parcel of it. You have people who have time,” she said. “But really, why it’s in that vein is because what Pope Francis is most concerned about is not what goes on in the synodal assembly. What he’s most concerned about is what’s going on on the ground. Where are we taking this forward in our local settings?”

What happens at Goulding’s Onwards and Upwards! Windows on Theology gatherings will be unique. It won’t be anything like what happens in Brazil or Belize or Britain. It will be local and will carry with it the DNA of a local church. Becquart put it this way:

“There is not one model (of how) to be a synodal church. It’s also through the local situation, the context, the culture. It’s also learning how to be a universal church, a global church – but through the diversity of the local churches. It’s very clear nowadays that synodality is the core of the church in the third millennium.”

That synodality is knit into the fabric of Regis College is not surprising to Goulding, whose religious congregation swims in the same stream of Ignatian spirituality as the Jesuits. But it is essential.

“Anyone going for ministry should know about the whole synodal process,” she said. “It’s vital for us moving ahead. Because this is the way we are going and there’s no turning back.”

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Interested in learning more? Register for the Windows on Theology course at RegisCollege.ca/WoT or by clicking here.