Dear Editor,
I congratulate the young people of the local, Catholic Church on the successful conclusion of their Diocesan Youth Convention. Their enthusiasm was encouraging.
But one photograph from the Convention troubled me deeply. It showed members of the hierarchy, including bishops and a nun, seated at a head table alongside a sole lay moderator, addressing an audience of young people.
Perhaps it was simply the arrangement for one session. But symbols have always been important in the Catholic Church. This image appeared to capture the very tension that the Church’s new language of synodality and co-responsibility is supposed to overcome: the clergy at the head table and the laity in the audience.
Leonardo Boff, the noted liberation theologian, in his provocative Church: Charism and Power, examined historical models of the Catholic Church and showed how ecclesial power became increasingly concentrated in the clergy, leaving the laity largely as recipients of pastoral care.
Given the background of Pope Francis, the Synod on Synodality was expected to confront this imbalance. Yet, while its vocabulary is undoubtedly different—listening, discernment, participation and co-responsibility—the fundamental distribution of authority remains largely intact.
The clergy still decides. The hierarchy still possesses ultimate authority. The laity are consulted. But consultation is not the same as co-responsibility.
If co-responsibility means that the clergy retains the power to decide but must first listen to the laity, then nothing has changed. Synodality must mean more than “we will listen to you before we decide.”
If synodality merely changes the vocabulary without changing the experience of power, then it risks becoming a new language for an old system. And the local Catholic Church, despite the admirable commitment of its young people, will continue to bleed.
Yours faithfully,
William Cox
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