Summit & synod
Hehir, J. Bryan
Church/world watch The summit & the synod J. Bryan Hehir lighted the cost of six years of superpower silence, of strategic programs begun and pursued with minimal restraint. The impact...
...The synod, too, faces a broad agenda...
...The synod, like the council, will be ecclesial in theme...
...There are people in places of authority in both superpowers who do not believe this...
...What kind of signals the synod sends — what tone and direction it communicates — will be its major function...
...The moral implications of continuing to see control of the arms race as a secondary objective (to modernization) or as a threat to security were clearly stated by Vatican II: "The people of our time must realize that they have to give a somber reckoning of these deeds of war, for the course of the future will depend greatly on the decisions they make today...
...Whenever the superpowers walk away from the discipline of seeking control, they find that, sooner or later, they must return to the process...
...The council renewed the internal life of the church in a striking manner...
...This contrast between where Geneva leaves us and where the council calls us is a good place to link the synod and the summit...
...Like the summit, however, the synod can set a tone and establish themes which need not have specific policy conclusions to be helpful...
...The vision of ecclesial ministry stretched as the council moved from Lumen Gentium in the first session to Gaudium et Spes in the final session...
...This judgment starkly illustrates the paucity of Geneva's final accomplishments...
...Its basic task is to commemorate Vatican II and to assess the postconciliar developments...
...far apart on all proposals for negotiated reductions...
...But the direction it provided for the church's role in the world, and the consequences that direction has had from Washington to Warsaw, from the Soviet Union to Sao Paulo, were the grand surprises of Vatican II...
...The impact of this on the summit's outcome was summarized by Walter Pincus in The Washington Post: "the superpowers remain essentially where they were before Geneva, in the midst of ambitious programs to modernize their nuclear weapons and delivery systems and...
...One memory from Vatican II is sparked by seeing the summit and the synod in tandem...
...Like the summit, the synod has an assignment which exceeds its grasp...
...The results of the synod will be somewhat clear as this is published...
...They think arms control is a favor to others, or a fapade at best...
...j. BRYAN HEHIR 20 December 1985: 697...
...There is no escape from the long road, begun over twenty years ago, to constrain and cut the nuclear arsenals of the world...
...In spite of generous amounts of commentary no one can really predetermine the dynamic of the synod's debate...
...I have no prediction, only a criterion by which we need to measure the product of the synod: That it continue to shape a church which not only worships well and teaches clearly but can provide moral direction to a world which will have to foresee several more nuclear summits...
...As long as views like these have credibility, periodic summits will yield the negligible results of Geneva...
...Exploring the theology of Vatican II and evaluating the pastoral practice of the church since the council is not a task for a two-week synod...
...It will have a life of its own and then, most likely, the Holy Father will give the synod's deliberations a distinct form in a document...
...But Vatican II spoke of the church in terms which pushed ecclesial concerns far beyond the bounds of ecclesiastical issues...
Vol. 112 • December 1985 • No. 22
