Sr Joan Chittister on 'Discipleship for a priestly people in a Synodal Church today'

Source: Spirit Unbounded

At the end of the Spirit Unbounded synod which took place in Rome in place parallel to the World Synod of Bishops this, Sister Joan Chittister delivered a hard hitting address on 'Discipleship for a priestly people in a Synodal Church today.'

She asked the question: "What do the people REALLY need?" in a period when the sacraments are being lost in a sacramental church. In diocese after diocese parishes are being merged, closed, and turned into sacramental way stations served by retired priests or married male deacons, both of which are designed simply to keep the church male, whether it is ministering or not.

The number of priests is declining while the number of Catholics is increasing

At the same time the number of certified lay ministers Is shrinking because their services are being rejected or redundant everywhere.

The question and the answer are clear: The people need what they needed when the temple became less important than the torah. They need what they needed when the faith was more a heart-beat than an institution. They need what they have always needed: they need community, not patriarchal clericalism. They need discipleship.

We must understand the nature of discipleship. Second, we must recognize the signs of true discipleship, And third we must be willing to give ourselves over to what discipleship demands now. Christian discipleship is -by nature- a very dangerous thing. It has put every person who ever accepted it at risk.

Real discipleship meant the rejection of real things and the risk of the new: It meant among many things the rejection of emperor worship, the foreswearing of animal sacrifice, the acceptance of women! And the supplanting of law with love, of nationalism with universalism, of a chosen people with a global people.

To follow Jesus, here, now, and everywhere, is to follow the one who turns the world upside down - even the religious world.

People with high need for approval, for social status, and public respectability need not apply.

"Following Jesus" leads always --to places where 'nice' people do not go,

Indeed, the nature of discipleship is passion and risk. To the true disciple the problem is clear: The church must not only preach the gospel, it must not obstruct it. It must be what it says.It must demonstrate what it teaches.It must, then, be judged by its own standards.

The church that silently colludes with the lower wages of women workers, and the homelessness of the abandoned , or the economic enslavement of immigrants in order to garner special favour with the State becomes just one more instrument of the State. The church that blesses oppressive governments, but fails to speak out for those who live in lean-to barrios In order to gain privileges for the church makes itself an oppressor as well. In the same vein, Religion that preaches the equality of women but does nothing to demonstrate it within its own structures, proclaims a theology of equality that is Biblical but constructs for the church an ecclesiology of superiority that is out of sync with its best self and so itself keeps discipleship in bondage.

The life of Jesus shows us that the invisibility of women in the church threatens the very nature of the Church. Real discipleship refuses to legitimate the sin of sexism. Jesus's "Come, follow me" becomes an anthem of public equality from which no one Is excluded and for which no risk is too great.

Discipleship is an attitude of mind, it is a quality of soul, which changes a church into the Church that is more communal, more global, more equal than it is ecclesiastical, clerical, or male. The disciple takes aim at institutions that call themselves "freeing" but which keep half the people of the world -Women suppressed. True discipleship takes the side always of the poor, the minority, the outcast, the other. To see a Church of Christ ignore the little ones or refuse the invisible their due, and so institute the very systems in itself that it purports to despise in society, is to see no church at all. In this kind of church, the gospel has been long reduced to the catechism.

Are women simply half a disciple of Christ? To be half commissioned, half noticed, half valued and half acceptable. The discipleship of women is the question that is not going to go away. Indeed, the discipleship of the church in regard to women is the question that will, in the long run, prove the church itself.

Women are beginning to wonder if discipleship has anything to do with them at all. When "The tradition" becomes synonymous with "The system" and maintaining the system becomes more important than maintaining the spirit of the tradition, Discipleship shrivels and becomes at best "Fidelity" to the past but not deep-down commitment to the presence of the living Christ here and now confronting the leprosies of the age.

God Loves Unconditionally

To say that God is love and not ourselves love as God loves may well be Catholicism but it is not Christianity.

How can the Church call convincingly to the world in the name of justice to practice a justice it does not practice itself? Men who do not take the woman's issue seriously may be priests but they cannot possibly be disciples.

The only question for the church now is whether the humanization of the human race will lead as well to the christianization of the Christian church. Otherwise, discipleship will die and the integrity, the truth, the Jesus life of the church with it.

We must take discipleship seriously or we shall leave the church of the future with functionaries --

but without disciples. The fact is that Christianity lives in Christians, not in catechisms.

It's time to bring into the light of day the discussions that lurk behind every church door, in every seeking heart. If as Vatican II says, preaching and community building are the foundations of development, then proclaiming the coming of this new synodal church, sacrificing ourselves to bring it, and shaping a community new with the notion of a new kind of priest and permanent woman deacons may be the greatest priestly service of them all. We need now to do what they really, really need.

And that is a synodal church--that listens.

Remember that if the people of God will lead … eventually the leaders will follow…

Alongside Joan Chittister and the former Irish President Mary Mcaleese a diverse group of over 115+ voices from all over the world shared their stories at the 'People of God' synod either in person from Rome or Bristol or virtually. Spirit Unbounded is a global network of Catholic reform and other Christian and Ecumenical groups that actively embraces diversity and includes groups marginalized by the hierarchical Church. "We are grateful for all our speakers and over 50+ volunteers to make this event happen." emphazised Claus Geissendoerfer, Spirit Unbounded implementation team lead.

LINK

Spirit Unbounded: https://spiritunbounded.org/