I'm coming to the end of my time here at the Youth Synod of 2018
which has been just a real privilege a real interesting experience for me
And one of the more intriguing aspects of it is
I was elected reletory of my small language group
Now that's all Synod speak for
the one who is on for taking notes
when the group speaks and then
synthesizing all the material into a report which is then given
before the whole Synod, including the Pope
So its been a way to really keep your mind in the game.
You know your mind can sometimes drift off during long meetings
but as reletory I had to listen to what everybody was saying, take notes
on it and then compile it
And it enabled me to just to get my mind more deeply into the
themes that were intriguing the Synod Fathers
so we heard interventions from the floor in the general sessions
but then the small groups
we had about 35 people in our group
now all English speakers but from all over the world
don't think for a second they are all from, you know
the US and Canada and England
they were from Iraq, they were from Nigeria, they were from the
far East, the middle East etc.
So it was a very interesting world wide perspective
Now what were some of these themes, and there were tonnes of them
I'll just discuss a few of them with you
The first one is I think the, something close to my own heart,
the social and digital media
We had young people of course at the Synod including in the small groups
Some of the young people who were here were
very active participants in the small group discussions
We had some younger Bishops I think who are using
social media. Some of the older ones aren't
digitally skilled, but
everybody gets it.
Everybody understands that this is the world that young people
inhabit and that the Church has
an enormous opportunity to use the social media
for evangelical purposes. I tried to make that
argument whenever I could, both on the grand scale
and in the small group, that it is a kind of
miracle of Divine Providence.
That at a time when so many young people are leaving
the Church, and they are not going to come to our programmes
we can't expect them to come to our parishes and so on
But we can reach them through the social media
The Fathers' certainly see the dark side of
social media, you know how
superficial it can be, how it can encourage
isolation, it can really
get in the way sometimes of
real interpersonal relationships, everyone gets that.
However, they also get
the enormous evangelical potential of the social media
You know, something else that really struck me, that came through
very strongly in our group, what I'd call an
'Anthropology of Vocation". It comes of especially
in part two of our working document.
So much of the contemporary world is predicated upon
an anthropology of self-invention, right
is I'm free and in my freedom I decide
who I'm going to be, decide what my values are
decide who I am. Well, see that is
repugnant to a Biblical anthropology
which says fundamentally we are all 'called'
'Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you', the Lord said
uh, we're 'summoned'
Paul says there is a power already
working on, that can do infinitely more than we can
ask or imagine. See how that stands a thwart
an anthropology of self-invention. I think
what the Synod Fathers were seeing was that we need to
awaken our younger people to a deeper sense of this
Now here is Pope Francis on discernment, 'See, now what am I discerning
ultimately? We're not some vague
superficialist, what am I going to do tomorrow
I'm discerning who is the person
God wants me to be. Notice it's not
I'm deciding the person I will be, I'm discerning
I'm seeking to understand to know who
God wants me to be. And see relatedly, now
a third thing, I heard so many of the young people
both in the Synod floor and in the small groups saying
'What we want is practical
training in the ways of Holiness'
Young people are hungry for Holiness
and I don't mean that in some pious way, I mean Holiness
'wholeness', that's becoming the person
God wants you to be, that's finding peace, that's finding joy
your purpose in life. How do I discern that?
What do I do? Help me! What they want is spiritual
paternity and
spiritual maternity. The Church as
Mother and Church people as mothers
and fathers teaching and helping
young people to understand.
Training in Liturgy, training in
prayer, in lectio divina
Uh, one of the things that stays in my mind from
the general sessions, one of the young people said
'We don't want bureaucrats, we want fathers' talking about
priests and bishops and I think that is dead right
That stayed in my mind. You know we do have a bureaucratic
role to play, that's true, I mean any administrator, but
nevertheless, young people, they are not looking for bureaucrats, they want
fathers, they want people to help them in
this great act of discerning what God wants. I
heard that theme an awful lot, in and around the Synod
Um, you know relatedly, the first part
of our document, and we'll see now when the
final document has come out, what has changed
there's a lot of sociology in it and I think that's all good.
you know part of the task here is to see
what is the world like for young people, what is the world they are living in
and you know, the Catholic tradition is happy to use sociology
psychology, philosophy, whatever is available
so there is a lot of sociology in the document.
But a lot of the Synod Fathers
said we need an over riding, an over
arching Biblical vision that is as
what controls the sociology and the one that kept coming up
over and over again, the two disciples
on the road to Emmaus, which of course is, you know
one of the great classic expressions in the New Testament
but is really applicable to this situation
Look at these two erstwhile disciples of Jesus
and in Luke's vision, walking the wrong way
walking away from Jerusalem
Nevertheless, Jesus joins them
Not in judgement
not reprimanding them
but gently asking, 'Well, what are you talking about as you go'
Jesus enters in a listening mode into their world
even as they walked the wrong way. Well
there's all the Pope Francis themes right
of listening, accompaniment, discernment etc.
But then that key moment Jesus begins to teach
and He teaches them
from, what we call the Old Testament, all that has to do with
Him
He is the lens
through which life is properly read
So, why did the Synod Fathers' said 'let's use Emmaus
as a controlling sort of icon'
throughout the document and, uh,
I thought that was a very powerful thing.
Another theme, boy it was present
right from the beginning, the sex abuse scandal
It would be pointless for us to turn away from it
to bury our heads in the sand. I mean this is a major
crisis for our Church, and a crisis
of many levels, but certainly of evangelical
credibility. How can young people take us seriously
if we're not willing to
discipline ourselves in this very
important way. I love the language of
Arch Bishop Anthony Fischer, very early on
and maybe it was the first night of the Synod, asking young people
for forgiveness, for all the ways we have betrayed
them, we've let them down. Many of
the Synod Fathers, both in the grand Synod hall
and in the small groups, calling for
accountability, transparency, at
all levels of the Church's life. You know again
its not just an issue to look at for its
legal and canonical implications, its got evangelical
implications. If we don't do this
we will not have credibility to proclaim the Gospel.
Just one more theme that is
really struck me, and I must say, I say it in kind of an
attitude of confession, you know I'm a
first world person and I do
sometimes have a myopic vision, I see the Church from a stand point of
the first world, from the West
How wonderful to hear voices from
all over the Catholic world, but especially
voices from persecuted Christians
The strongest reactions in the
Synod hall during the whole time were from
Christians talking about those being persecuted
A young man from Iraq who was actually in our small language group
very powerfully witnessing to this, also a Bishop from India
talking about the active
persecution going on in India
And you know it just links you, doesn't it, to
all the martyrs across the ages. I was in the
catacombs this morning saying Mass and
some of the early martyrs were buried there.
That to me was a tremendous eye opening experience
You know, as we may fuss a little bit about our
first world concerns, as important as they are
with social media and all the thing I've talked about
but you realize that in other parts of the world
especially young Christians are dying for their Faith
That to me was a really powerful
witness and that came up a lot in the
small groups. So its been a privilege
I really mean that, its been a privilege to be here in Rome to be
with the Holy Father, to be with my
brother Bishops, and especially with these young people
and it certainly broadened
my perspective on a lot of things and I hope
it will bear fruit now in the lives of our young people.