Two Births in Time
Newsletter for December 27, 2024
Mere hours before he died in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1968, Thomas Merton addressed a conference of Asian monastic orders with characteristic pithiness: “[W]e can no longer rely on being supported by structures that may be destroyed at any moment by a political power or a political force,” he said. “The time for relying on structures has disappeared. They are good and they should help us, and we should do the best we can with them. But they may be taken away, and if everything is taken away, what do you do next?”
The tone would be despairing, almost fatalistic, were it not for the implicit promise that final question portends. To ask ourselves what we do next is to conjure a horizon, to remind ourselves that we are going somewhere, that we are on a journey. Even in a world that is institutionally denuded and distrustful of common projects, we are still capable of dreaming of new and better ways to associate collectively and create a society, in Peter Maurin’s famous dictum, “where it is easier for people to be good.”
Within the context of the Catholic Church, many of us saw the Synod on Synodality as an invitation to imagine new social structures that would, in turn, influence secular patterns of dialogue, decision-making, and dispersion of power more fairly and equitably. Perhaps this was too high a bar for the initial three years of what Pope Francis has intimated will be a millennium-long process, but like the proverbial mustard tree, the seed has been sown. Even to have the concept of “walking together” formalized in a word (synodos) and a series of practices means that we now share a common reference point for ecclesial collaboration—a gift we can extend to a multipolar world beleaguered by crises that cannot be solved alone.
As we enter the Synod’s “implementation stage,” there is rightful skepticism about how thoroughly this gift will be developed. “The question is to what extent an ‘awareness’, ‘a renewed way of living’, ‘new dynamics regarding participation’ and a ‘culture of ongoing evaluation’ can have any purchase without new structures and sanctions,” Jon Rosebank wrote in his commentary on the Synod’s final document for Spirit Unbounded. Maryknoll priest Fr. Joe Healey raised an interesting point in a report he delivered on the Synod on December 10—coincidentally, 56 years to the day after Merton’s address in Bangkok—when he observed: “Some say that ‘Synodality’ is Pope Francis’ ‘thing’ just as the ‘New Evangelization’ was St. John Paul II’s ‘thing.’ . . . [The] key is who will be the next pope and his priorities since we still have a hierarchical, top-down structure in the Catholic Church.”
This week between Christmas and the New Year—between celebrations of a birth in time and a birth of time—has always felt to me to be a kind of bounded and sacrosanct period, akin to how I’d imagine new parents feel in their first days home with their child. The pace of life slows down a bit, and the muted qualities of winter begin to seep in after the holiday rush. It is a time for reflection, but more so a time to dream as the landscape opens up, the quality of light sharpens, and we can see farther and clearer than we might on a hot summer’s day.
I think of the Holy Family in their first hours together, of Mary and Joseph dreaming of Jesus’s future, of how we, too, in this season of Christmastide are privileged to dream alongside them and envision the growth of the Body of Christ. I find myself drawn to the need expressed in the Synod’s final document “for a common and shared formation, in which men and women, laity, consecrated persons, ordained ministers and candidates for ordained ministry participate together, thus enabling them to grow together in knowledge and mutual esteem and in the ability to collaborate” (143), and I imagine a new kind of seminary without walls—an interdisciplinary center for spiritual research where theologians, artists, scientists, agriculturists, contemplatives, and a whole range of "social poets" can come together to develop the practice of the priesthood both universal and ordained. It is but one dream among many to cultivate this week. I hope that some of our recent features inspire you to find, as Merton did and as one of our authors writes, “a newness that is glowing within the process of ever-present possibilities.”
Michael Centore
Editor, Today’s American Catholic