Church Reform
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Synodal journey shifts from excitement to episcopal control
When Irish bishops launched the Synodal Pathway in 2021, they had no idea Pope Francis was about to announce a global process weeks later. The coincidence forced a rapid restructuring of Ireland’s entire approach, folding its national ambitions into Rome’s wider timeline.
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Peter’s failures were preserved for a reason
The word “constitutive” was applied freely across Church documents to evangelisation, charity, canon law, and even the male-only diaconate. The one thing it was never again permitted to describe was the Church’s relationship to justice.
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When clericalism becomes narcissism, the altar turns into a stage
Clerical narcissism perpetuates itself when a newly ordained priest is assigned to a pastor who demands unquestioning obedience, creating successive generations of leaders hostile to collaboration.
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Catholics and other Christians thanking God together: has the time come to change our practice?
When Pope Francis visited Rome’s Lutheran church in 2015, he reframed the Eucharist not as a doctrinal reward but as sustenance for a pilgrim people. That shift in language was small but significant, opening theological space that had been closed for decades under two conservative popes.
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‘We,’ not ‘I’: An Ohio archbishop called Catholics to talk their way to consensus
Cincinnati’s Archbishop Robert G. Casey has announced a 2027 archdiocesan synod, making his diocese one of the very few in the United States to formally respond to the Vatican’s call for local synodal assemblies. His vision of leading with “we” rather than “I” is drawing attention well beyond Ohio.
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Five small parishes model the future of the Church
Perhaps the wider Church does not need to invent new models of synodality. In some places, the model is already there — faithfully lived, week after week, in ordinary parish life. Mizoram is one of those places.
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Synodality, local churches, and the end of Eurocentric theology
Asian theologians shifted the language of mission from ad gentes (“to the nations”) to inter gentes (“among the nations”). That single preposition change carries enormous weight: it replaces a one-directional, subject-to-object model with a dialogical encounter between communities, cultures, and equals.
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The forbidden tree and a troubling picture of God
Placing a forbidden tree in a garden created out of love raises hard questions about the nature of God. Read literally, the Genesis story portrays the Divine as setting a trap, then punishing all humanity when the trap is sprung.
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Surprise! Vatican shelved another report on women deacons, again.
Regressive induction begins with the answer Church leadership wants and works backwards to find arguments that support it, while persistently ignoring inconvenient historical and theological evidence.
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Cafeteria bishops
Once a term of conservative scorn aimed at progressive Catholics, “Cafeteria Catholic” has taken on new meaning — now it arguably describes bishops who selectively apply official church teaching and ignore synodal reforms they find personally inconvenient.
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