During the lockdown, the Core Group of the Scottish Laity Network began reflecting on The Future of the Church After a Time of Pandemic and how that related to our core vision of enabling Scottish laity to come together as disciples of Jesus, and through prayer, dialogue and discernment find ‘new ways’ of being Church in Scotland in the 21st Century.
We asked: how could we come together and pray, dialogue and discern new ways of being Church during the pandemic? Reflecting on Pope Francis’ leadership, we saw clearly the centrality of discernment in his life and in his papacy and that his hope is for a discerning Church that finds full expression as a synodal Church. In his address on the 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis powerfully articulated this vision:
A synodal Church is a Church which listens, which realises that listening “is more than simply hearing”. It is a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn. The faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other, and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the “Spirit of truth”, in order to know what he “says to the Churches”.
So during lockdown, we reflected on how we could nurture the process of becoming a discerning Church and engage in a process of mutual listening and learning.
The initial fruit was to initiate an online Journey of Discernment. At the end of April we invited renowned Christian speakers to share their thoughts and reflections with us and to be part of this stage of our journey. We believe their positive response was an affirmation of the Spirit for our journey that began on Thursday 28th May.
We have had presentations from Fr Jim Martin, Massimo Faggioli, Austen Ivereigh, Mary McAleese and Lorna Gold. Our final session is with Jim Wallis.
Each speaker has shared insights into the ‘signs of the times’ and engaged fully in question and answer sessions. We are profoundly grateful to them.
Our journey reaches an important stage with our Assembly tomorrow, Saturday 11th July, when Fr Augusto Zampini will share the vision and hope of the Vatican’s COVID-19 Commission, and Mary Cullen will help root us in the ‘signs of the times’ in the Scottish Church. We will try to discern what the Spirit is saying to the Scottish Laity Network at this crucial time, not only for our nation, but our planet.
It was never the idea that our speakers would give us a definitive way forward: there was always the understanding for the participants in our journey to discern both individually and communally. We each need to discern where the promptings of the Spirit are calling us to act. As the late Dan Berrigan, America’s finest poet-prophet-priest said:
One cannot level one’s moral lance at every evil in the universe. There are just too many of them. But you can do something; and the difference between doing something and doing nothing is everything.
Each of us may discern a different call and we will look at ways that we can affirm people in their discernment and support them in their action.