One person’s reaction the Root and Branch Synod in Bristol

I only head about the Bristol Synod at the CPW meeting on Synodality in June 2021 led by Greg Ryan. Jacinta and I booked in late but were lucky to get places to be there.

The seeds of the Synod were sown in January 2022 by a group of women who responded to the journalist Joanna Moorhead’s challenge in The Tablet, that the Catholic Church needed ‘a synod that starts with women’ rather than tagging them on the end or ignoring them altogether.’ This was a reaction to the Pope’s call for a Synod on synodality in Rome in 2023. However the women soon understood that they needed to look at all areas of reform in the Catholic Church, and hence the name Root and Branch. They started a year of discernment in which they listened and corresponded with many eminent thinkers and produced the ‘Bristol Text to Reform’. This is now freely available online and as they state ‘It is intended to give ordinary Catholics the reassurance that there are changes we can make in our practice that are in keeping with the best of Catholic tradition and have the endorsement of deep pastorally sensitive and well-informed thinkers and theologians, including many who are clergy.’

The Bristol Synod started on-line on the Sunday with one session each day until Wednesday, with several eminent speakers discussing the Bristol Text. The Synod then culminated in the real-time meeting in Bristol starting on the Friday; a truly amazing festival of talks, given by speakers on-line and actually present. It was held in an impressive Anglican conference centre, St Michaels, next to Bristol Parkway station. There were many delegates present and also hundreds of participants online, some from CPW and others from all over the world.

I counted 38 speakers and panellists, which is too many to summarise and so I will just mention some that impressed me and also some that perhaps CPW could engage with in the near future. The talks are now freely available. For me the highlights of the weekend were the two keynote speeches which were given by Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland (and who has a PhD in Canon Law) and Baroness Helena Kennedy, a Labour peer. They are both outstanding lawyers and cradle Catholics. They both looked at the Church from the viewpoint of the Helsinki Declaration of Universal Human Rights but they differed in tone. Mary was furious with the Church. She argued that the promises made on our behalf at Baptism can no longer justify depriving Church members of the their unalienable human rights to make up their own minds and to challenge the magisterium. She related a story in which her parish priest in Norther Ireland reprimanded her mother, in front of her large family, for having a hysterectomy while she was still of child bearing age without his permission! The poor woman had had eleven pregnancies, nine live children and was at high risk of a fatal hemorrhage! This clearly angered her event to the present day! Mary was also extremely critical of the way the synodal process has been set up, so the Bishops can sanitise any extreme views from the laity. The experience of the Church in Germany is a warning; they have been severely censured by Pope Francis for some of their statements on many contentious matter. He has said that Synods that not places for open debate on contentious teaching, but rather protected spaces for the Church teaching, where the laity can discuss how the Church teaching can be applied in a contemporary context! Needless-to-say, she is not impressed by the contrast between what Pope Francis says and does. You can read her talk here.

Helena’s tone was more of sadness than anger. She also referred to Canon Law and how it contravenes UK law in numerous ways. She spoke of young people today who are baffled by the Churches attitudes to sexuality, women and gays and so have left the Church. She spoke of the pain of couples who, for some reason or other, have relationships not recognised by Canon law, and so as a consequence are banned from participating fully in Mass, whilst the current Prime Minister is allowed to marry in Church because his previous marriages were not recognised as ‘valid’.  She related a moving story of how she went to a Vatican Tribunal with a very senior colleague from Australia, who had been in a gay relationship for 50 years. They wanted the Church to change its attitude to homosexuals because many countries were using the Church’s teaching as a justification to persecute and even kill gay people. Her colleague pointed out to the panel that he knew he was gay from the age of 10; it was not a lifestyle choice. However, they were rebuffed by the Vatican and Helena is now deeply disillusioned by the whole system and fearful for the future of the Church.

My impressions of the rest of the Synod were of some lovely services, particularly from the multi-racial parishioners from St Nicholas in Bristol who also provided some beautiful music, the warm welcome from the Rev Canon Julie Bradley, from the St Michael Centre and from Bishop Vivienne Faull, Bishop of Bristol.   We did get on-line endorsement from the Catholic Bishop of Bristol Declan Lang, and perhaps it was too much to expect him to be there in person.

We heard from Christine Rees who is a leading campaigner for women priests in the Church of England, and is due to be ordained herself. She pointed out that the battle for female clergy is hard and long. You have to appeal not just to the mind and heart but also to the gut.  We heard from Virginia Saldanha about how badly treated by the Church were women who dared to take on leadership roles in Asia and from Ruby Almeida of how LGBT groups are treated in India . Dr Martha Heizer  related her work with We are Church International , and how she and her husband were given notice of excommunication from the Archdiocese of Innsbruck  A talk with a  different theme was given by Dr Ally Kateusz, a cultural historian. She stated that written texts can be erased and altered, and suggested that revisions of the canonical Gospels in the second century reduced the emphasis on women. However, visual artefacts remain, and there are clear images of women performing priestly rites dating from the time of the catacombs and indeed from artefacts found from excavations directly below St Peter’s in Rome!

James Alison, a Catholic theologian, priest and author gave a fascinating discourse on ‘belonging’.  He distinguished between ‘strong’ belonging and ‘weak’ belonging’. We see strong belonging everywhere.  Example include anti-vaxxers, anti-immigrationists  and priests wedded to clericalism. In strong belonging people define themselves as a group by identifying those not in their group to be ‘other’ and to be derided. This persecution helps make people feel secure because they are not ‘other’ and enjoy sharing this hatred with other like-minded people. . Belonging to a group can override all rationality, so that people who are against the COVID vaccine for example, will risk their lives to be part of the group. In clericalism women are defined as ‘other’ to be kept in their place. Strong belonging is divisive and can lead to scandals such as the Church cover-up of sexual abuse, racism and anti semitism. In contrast Jesus taught us about a weak form of belonging. The meaning of ‘catholic’ is it welcomes all. James argued that Jesus’ sacrifice showed up the dangers of strong belonging, where he himself was treated as ‘other’ and weak belonging offers us a richer alternative whereby our weaknesses can be shared with all and no-one is scapegoated.

James Carroll, a former priest and gave a powerful, measured reflection building on the talks by Mary and Helena and he endorsed a new vision of the Church, based on love not power. He believes the Bristol Text will be compared to the documents of the Second Vatican Council. He compared the recent sexual abuse scandals to the anti-Semitic movements of the last century, often with tacit support of the Church. He identified the ‘deformed gene’ of the patriarchal misogyny.  Like Mary McAleese he is disappointed that Pope Francis promises much, but seems defensive of the current system.  He likened his being an American to his being a Catholic. Underneath both there is a pure idea of human goodness and potential, but both are sullied by lies from their leaders.

Thomas O’Loughlin, a theological historian, gave a concluding address in typical mischievous style in which he criticised people who confuse myth and history. His argument is that much of Church teaching is based on myth, and is not historically sound.  The first myth was that Jesus founded the Church; he didn’t, he was part of a Church. The second myth is that there were 12 apostles, all men who were ordained by Jesus, and that is why, for example, we can’t have women priests. Apostles were in fact messengers from one organisation to another and the number 12 probably refers to the twelve tribes of Israel. In fact there at least 16 names associated with apostles in the New Testament and Jesus did not ordain them. He pointed out that all the Canonical Gospels were written after AD70,  which is the date of the destruction of the Temple. The Gospel writers were faced with creating a new way, since the old way was gone. Tom pictured the dying Moses as the Israelites were about to enter the promised land, either going forward to Israel and a new way of life, or going back to a way of death. He said the Gospel writers faced the same dilemma, and looked forward not back and that now we are faced with it again. We should not hark back to the past and use it as a justification for the way things are done now, but that we should start anew to a way of life based on love of all, and not orders from above.

Overall, I found the Synod extremely stimulating.  All speakers agreed we are at a watershed moment. By its nature, there was not much time for discussion, and there was no-one representing the Church to discuss how the Bristol Synod would be heard by the Bishops. People were Catholics despite the magisterium, possibly because they related to Jesus’ teachings and managed to ‘doublethink’ their way out what they heard from the Vatican. James Carroll said small groups are easy to ignore by those in power but large movements are not; he gave the example of the civil rights movement in the US in the sixties. Thus we should promulgate the message of Root and Branch in parishes and organisations such as CPW, so that a powerful, united message is proclaimed.  It concerned me that there were few young Catholics present at the Synod and indeed some of the young Catholics I know would probably be shocked by what they would have heard. We need to find a way to engage the young who have walked away from the Church because they do not see it as teaching the message of Jesus. They are our future.

The organisers were quite reticent in being acknowledged and I was sorry there was nobody at the meeting to thank them on behalf of the rest of the community. At the risk of excluding people, I think our grateful thanks should go the core organisers: Penelope Middleboe, Pamela Perry, Kerry Poole, Mary Ring, Rhiannon Thompson, Catherine Salmon, Mary Varley, Sue Williamson, Francis Hunter and Colm Holmes.

~ Mike Campbell