The pope, bishops, and prests cannot fully awaken the missionary spirit of the Catholic Church alone, so all Catholics must play a more central role in spreading the Gospel, according to participants in the Synod on Synodality, the Catholic News website reports today (Oct. 10, 2024).
In today's Church, where "theological competence is not only a privilege of priests and bishops" and where the lay faithful "demand participation and transparency," synodality must empower all Catholics to actively participate in the Church's mission, said Thomas Soding , a theology professor at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany and a theological expert at the Synod.
Speaking at a theological and pastoral forum in Rome, organized by the General Secretariat of the Synod, Prof. Soding said that the model of the people of God as active participants in the Church's mission is rooted in the New Testament.
In the apostolic era, "we see the slow emergence of a canon of writings that interpret Jesus, that interpret the Gospel in diverse ways, but in ways that all the churches sense are in fidelity to the truth of Jesus Chrst," said Fr. Ormond Rush, a professor at Australian Cathoic University and another theological expert at the Synod.
Fr. Rush noted that the faithful must be careful to avoid conceiving of the Church as an "ethereal subject floating through time," unaffected by worldly circumstance, but must also recognize it as something beyond a purely human institution.
Synod participants look at how all Catholics can serve the Church's mission.
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