Between June 7th and September 6th, I helped organize a series of conversations on the Synod on Synodality for the Church in Africa. This was a collaborative initiative of the Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the Confederation of the Major Superiors of Africa and Madagascar (COSMAM), and the Pan-African Theology and Pastoral Network (PACTPAN). For 14 successive weeks, more than 250 African prelates, delegates to the Synod, theologians, religious, priests and laity spent two hours at each session, dialoguing, praying, and sharing a vision for the future of the Church in Africa. Many theologians and Church leaders from other parts of the world, as well as officials from the General Secretariat for the Synod in Rome, also joined this virtual conversation. What are the gifts that African Catholics received through this African palaver series on the mission of a Synodal Church, Family of God in Africa?
First, we gained a sense of unity in a shared space of love and friendship as God’s people in Africa and in communion with our brothers and sisters throughout the world. Every session was rich with wisdom, insights, hope, and a spirit of respect for the opinions of others. There was a genuine desire by all participants to learn from and in the presence of one another. No topic was off limits. We had our differences because there is a diversity of perspectives, wisdom, and vision in the Catholic Church in Africa. The palaver, however, was a depolarizing space, where everyone freely expressed themselves without being judged. In the open disposition and humble reverence for the perspectives of others, we discovered new dimensions of our common faith. By being a listening Church, participants experienced some different but complementary pathways to celebrating the faith as Africans and journeying together to that future that God alone knows.
Second, we gained a fresh understanding of how to be a synodal Church in mission in African Catholicism. As the Christian faith continues to cross different spiritual and cultural frontiers in Africa, and as the population of Christians in Africa continues to grow at an exponential rate, these palavers showed us the rich treasures of faith that we possess as Africans and the opportunities God is opening to Africa amidst some persistent challenges—a dependent church in Africa despite its burgeoning Christian population, crisis of leadership, crisis of state, religious persecution, wars, conflicts, new Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, different perceptions of reform and tradition among us, fear of negative Western influence in African spiritual and cultural traditions, divisions, ethnocentrism, racism, lingering poverty, and humanitarian crisis and climate change among others.
However, from the perspectives and insights we shared, participants appreciated joyfully the statistics that shows that Africa is now the center where the future of the Catholic Church and indeed the Christian faith is being defined. It is the continent where the faith is growing at the fastest rate. African Christians appreciate the weight of this enormous responsibility that God has placed on our shoulders. We Africans have a very deep understanding of the Christian traditions and continue to preserve these traditions in dialogue with our rich African religious worldviews, and moral traditions of abundant life. Our people take the Christian faith seriously and wish to live this faith authentically and fruitfully. However, how to inculturate the Gospel in Africa remains, from the conversations, a mixed baggage.
Third, there are challenges that face the faith in Africa, but the palaver series showed us that we know these problems, we understand the complexities of these problems, and the sessions pointed us forward on how Africans are addressing these challenges as opportunities to bear witness to God in their own unique ways in their own context. It is obvious from these sessions that the voices of African Catholics have resounded as loudly and clearly to the world on the fidelity and commitment of Africans to the mission of proclaiming the message of hope to the People of God. African Catholics are fully committed to the synodal journey not only through an active participation in the forthcoming second session of the Synod on Synodality, but beyond the second session. This is because African bishops locally, nationally, and continentally as well as African theologians, religious and God’s people have wholeheartedly embraced the synodal journey with joy and hope.
Fourthly, we have learned that we as African Catholics can work together and can succeed at anything to which we set our minds. When Cardinal Fridolin in April 2024, the President of SECAM, proposed in Nairobi that the conversation began at the seminar for bishops and African delegates to the Second Session of the Synod on Synodality should continue, we didn’t know how nor did we imagine the huge turnout of God’s family to these 14 sessions. But working together with COSMAM, SECAM, and the Comitol of SECAM, these sessions became a life-changing and significant moment to listen to the voices of God’s people in Africa in an open and respectful way. This was also a history making series because through these special weekly assemblies, Africa became the only continent to have organized a continuous conversation on the themes of the Synod on Synodality attended by synodal delegates, church leaders, religious men and women, pastoral agents, laity from both Africa and other parts of the world.
What we realized through these series, above all, is that the future of Christianity in Africa and indeed the future of the Christian mission will depend largely on how we as African Catholics journey together as God’s people with our brothers and sisters from other Christian communities, and from other faith and non-faith traditions. Humanity is facing many interlinked polycrisis like climate change, deepening inequality, social hierarchies, racism, identity politics, social tension, migration, conflicts, and the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and new infectious diseases. Wars and violence, anger, fragmentation of society and divisions, poverty, abuse of human rights, poor governance and rising nationalism and extreme ideologies, and religious persecution are some of the very challenging situations facing Africa and the world. These challenges present us with opportunities to reimagine a different future and a better possible world. And in facing these challenges we need each other, and we need multiple perspectives from diverse religious traditions.
Synodality creates the possibility for a culture of encounter where inter-denominational gift exchanges can take place through listening to the stories that give evidence of the witness of faith and the joyful and sorrow-filled experiences of diverse Christian communities in the wounds and brokenness of our world. Synodality opens us to see God in each other and to hear God’s Word proclaimed through our different Christian communities. Synodality particularly makes those who are open to the movement of the Spirit in history to see clearly how the logic of faith provides hope for people in their daily struggles, and where communal solidarity is emerging through a shared sense of belonging in the bond of love found in every genuine and authentic Christian community of faith. Above all, synodality makes possible an ecumenical disposition that is radically trinitarian in nature because we realize that our common journey emerges from God and mutually leads us back to the Trinity. Through our ecumenical journey, we can together hear in the cries of the poor and the cries of the earth and behold in the dreams in the hearts of all Christians and indeed all people on earth an echo of God that sounds from the heart of our diverse communities. In these communities, no matter how small they are or how separated they are from each other, those who pay attention with a humble heart will find God’s footprints. Indeed, God continues to reveal these footprints to all of us through prayers, liturgical worship, outreach to the poor and quiet and prophetic acts of love and courage displayed when people commit themselves to living faithfully and fruitfully, even in imperfect ways, everything Jesus taught and did.
Catholicism at a Crossroads
The Palaver Series in the African continent showed that Africans are also dealing with some of the contested issues in today’s Catholicism on the following issues: the female diaconate, denial of communion to people because of their personal or marriage situations; how to be an inclusive Church, and the challenges of clericalism, episcopalism, leadership crisis, and co-responsibility in the Church among others. Ultimately, the central question of the Synod on Synodality on how we can be a Synodal Church in mission and what reforms can the Church courageously undertake based on what we all have heard from the most extensive consultation of the faithful ever done in the Catholic Church in its over 2000 years history requires an African response. In other words, will this Synod on Synodality bring any changes in the Church or will it be business as usual with publication of yet another post-synodal apostolic exhortation that does not move the needle?
Each generation of Christians must dig deep into the forces of its history, privileging the resources within the times and tappinginto the rich Christian traditions of the past, and in openness to the surprises of the Spirit to meet the new challenges of thepresent. Reading the Synthesis Report form the first session, one will observe that most of the participants at this Synod—conservatives or progressives—realize more than ever that we are dealing with questions and issues which may not simply bedismissed as cultural pressure or the consequences of a cultural crisis. God continues to reveal to the Church and the worldtoday new realities in the conditions and circumstances of many people today—minorities, the poor, those who have left theChurch because of their marriage situation, and those who are hurting from sexual abuse as well as those who feel insignificant, voiceless, unappreciated or invisible in the Church.
The Synod on Synodality is only a beginning and not a conclusion of the internal dialogue on what kind of Church God is calling us to be for today. The Synod has shown the deep attachment of some Catholic leaders to a normative notion of Catholic unity and to some restorationist agenda; and their fears of the consequences of any change in the Church on its teachings andpractices. For many Catholics today, the blessing of a mono-cultural Catholicism is that it offers them a romantic and an idyllicimage of Catholicism as a bastion of spiritual strength, a reliable source for creedal certainty in a world ideologically awashwith diverse theological, moral and spiritual standpoints. Most Catholics take pride in their church—for better or for worse—as the gold standard of Christian orthodoxy. But the reality from history is that Catholicism for those outside of it, and moreso for those inside of it, remains a cultural heritage which can never be contained in one single vessel, historically, theologically,spiritually, and otherwise. Catholicism is much more than a single narrative because it is like a deep ocean, with manytributaries, canalizing through different channels to the vast and boundless fountain of Divine Love. Sadly, the antinomies ofinclusion and exclusion which have often been legitimated by mono-cultural Catholicism in the interpretation of Catholicorthodoxy and fidelity and the negation or objectification of other cultural or moral subjects and realities outside of the establishedCatholic canon is the curse of historical Catholicism. It is a yoke which must be laid down to meet the evangelical ideals andmission of the Lord Jesus of the Church as a community of missionary disciples (Evangelii Gaudium, 24).
Whatever perspective one admits in the cultural battles or doctrinal warfare in Catholicism today, it seems that there is the need for a consensus on some of the recurrent issues of our times. These relate especially to how the synodal process should function not as a solution to every problem in the Church, but as an ongoing reflective and open process that allows the People of God to listen to each other and the new voices through which God is speaking anew today. This patient and courageous listening and responding could lead to prophetic decisions on how to faithfully and fruitfully proclaim the Gospel to the world today.
In addition, world Catholicism reflects a changed world and there will never be a one-rule fits all pastoral and canonicalpolicy that will be anything close to the absolute teachings and practices which came out from the Council of Trent or Vatican I.Furthermore, the answers which Westerners may give to the main challenges facing Christian families today or on the role of women in the Church or same-sex persons may be different from the answers Africans may offer as they reflect on the challenge of the Gospel in their witness and response to the God who calls. The times seem appropriate for the emergenceof new prophets in the Catholic Church today who will lift our gaze beyond the imprisoning certainties about the things we donot know; or the pride of an ecclesial mindset which seeks to provide definitive answers to indefinite questions and mysterieswhich define what it means to be human in an infinitely boundless cosmos. The Catholic challenge today is for a new Catholicimagination, a new Catholic center of love, and creative appropriation of the treasures of the Church to meet the challenges of thetimes. Pope Francis even in his physical infirmity is still showing the Church and the world today that it is possible forCatholicism to find within her bosom a new way of being Church, and new pathways for meeting the challenges of today infidelity to the God of surprises and renewal. Will Catholicism be the same after the Synod on Synodality? I do not know. But my concern is not a fear about a doctrinal and dogmatic fortress which may wither because of what we heard or dreamed of through the Synod, but rather of the renewing fire of the Spirit which will be smothered if the Church does not open herself to the gift ofprophecy from the Spirit whose wind blows wherever and whenever she pleases. Faith entails among other things, stepping intouncharted territory in humble obedience to the God whose plans are better and bigger than our humanly constructed andlimited approximation of divine revelation in our claims, doctrines, and laws.