Pobal Dé

Comment is hardly necessary. Still, I was happy to hear the Cardinal urge his fellow-bishops to listen not alone to the happy laity -but to those who criticise (shades of Pobal!); his animadversions on he 'giving church'/'receiving church' dichotomy were well taken, as as his recognition that 'large scale animation' of the laity must be preceded by similar 'animation' first of the bishops and then of the priests; and his 'few words about the role of women' were excellent. Clearly he sees no limit to that role in the non-cultic side of the Church - and I would be surprised if he were a hard-liner on ordination.

What the Cardinal had to say was warmly commended by Bishop Jean-Guy Hamelin of Rouyn-Noranda (Canada), who is also worth quoting at some length:

The question of the participation of women in the life of the Church is a question of primary importance for the life and future of our Church.

What the Cardinal had to say was warmly commended by Bishop ean-Guy Hamelin of Rouyn-Noranda (Canada), who is also worth uoting at some length:

The question of the participation of women in the life of the Church is a question of primary importance for the life and future of our Church.

First task: agree to look at the reality. The movement of affirmation of women constitutes a fact characterising present social evolution, a 'sign of the times' (John XXIII).

Second task: exercise discernment. This movement carries seeds for the humanisation of society, but it also carries risks of deviations. We are in the middle of a collective effort of discernment to be followed with openness and perseverance.

Another task: recognise and accompany this movement which is breathing inside our Church. For this, it is necessary to open concrete paths:

•   Call for and recognise the contribution of Christian women in the vital debates of society: peace, bioethics, violence, family, etc.

•   Call for and recognise, in fact and by right, the full participation of women in ecclesial life: their voice is essential to the sacramentality of the Church and to her witness.

•   Remove canonical obstacles that block the access of laypersons to positions which do not require ordination (pastoral councils, tribunals, etc.).

•   Repeal regulations which exclude women from sendee at the altar and open the ministries of acolyte and lector to women.

From the preparatory consultation, we see that the question of women's access to ordained ministries remains controversial. One notices that the arguments used until now to limit ordination to men are not convincing, particularly to the young. It is suggested that there be set up, in individual interested churches, study groups for this question, gathering together men, women, pastors, and male and female theologians.

Access to the diaconate could represent a special case. Could we not recognise the charitable services of women present for centuries to the poverty and to daily service (homes, schools, hospitals, missions, etc.)?

Full participation of women is not a new need. It is the intuition of Genesis. There is no humanity that conforms to the heart of God without the coalition of man and woman.

After all that, it was interesting to hear another view, from Father Thomas Forrest, an American Redemptorist nominated to the Synod by the Pope. He didn't take an anti-feminist line, but he gently reminded his listeners that MEN are or should be a matter of deep concern too. In the USA about forty per cent of 'faithful churchgoers' are men, and it's even worse elsewhere. He went on to say that priests can spend so much time working for, or with, women that they become shy and insecure when called on to 'pastor' men: because it is easier to win response from women, a priest may tragically confine his ministry to them.

It would be foolish to deny that he has a point. One doesn't have to cross the Atlantic or even the Irish Sea to find the Church regarded as 'a place for women'. However, I believe that this attitude (and consequent practice) belongs to a dying sub-culture, deriving from a time when women had few other places to go outside the home. It may be cold comfort to say that today agnosticism and indifferentism are nearly as common among young women as among young men. As to priests' communication with men as against women, I suspect that the situation derived from regarding the priest as a 'safe' sexless thing. Though it didn't always work that way.

Considerably less persuasive to Irish ears was the summary we received of Cardinal Bernardin Gantin's contribution - or rather the first part of it. The second part was perfectly acceptable and timely dealing as it did with the world's 'wanderers' - '50 million emigrants, 15 million refugees, 10 million sailors, 15 million nomads'. . . No, it as the Cardinal's opening remarks that made me, for one, want to ly: 'You're joking of course'. I quote from the summary: On behalf of the Congregation of Bishops [of which he is Prefect] the Cardinal . . . indicated a new and very difficult and important question for the life of the Church: the part the laity can play in the requesting and furnishing of information with regard to candidates to the episcopate.

Canon 377 (3) provides for the eventual consultation of lay persons of outstanding wisdom in sworn secrecy. Such information is gathered with respect and careful consideration by the legitimate authorities: in fact, this participation of the laity is not considered a formal honour, but a true call and a duty of great importance . . .

My comment on this will be brief and restrained.

We in the Church of Dublin are not unaware of the provisions of anon 377: it has been frequently cited since the death of Archbishop McNamara in spring of this year. We know that consultation of the laity is completely at the discretion of the Nuncio. I for one have never met anyone who was so consulted. But then, as I've already suggested, maybe I don't know the right people particularly those of 'outstanding wisdom' . . .

The final speaker this evening was the Bishop of Down and onnor. He spoke of the struggle for peace and justice as a field arked by the 'sign of secularity and belonging in a special way to the laity:

I shall speak first of political activity. Political involvement is not as greatly esteemed as it should be by many and particularly by young people. It is highly important that men and women, inspired by their Christian faith and urged on by the love of Christ, should engage themselves in politics and should find here their own Christian vocation and indeed their own call to holiness. They must of course be careful not to identify the faith of the Church with any political option; but rather they should evaluate all political programmes by the light of the Gospel and strive to permeate them with Gospel values.

Women too must take their place in political activity. Society too often belittles their dignity and pays too little attention to their rights and their welfare, it is to be hoped that through the beneficial influence of women in politics society may come to assume a more human face, may show true respect for the sanctity of human life, may defend the rights of infants and of children, and may pursue a genuine politics of the family.

Among the truly grave political problems of our time a prominent place belongs to the untiring search for peace. Inseparably connected with this is the intense and persevering pursuit of justice. Sad to say there are many today who attempt to take the noble name of justice and to annex it for an ideology of revolutionary violence. But the fruit of violence is only to intensify oppression and to increase injustice. The so-called 'armed struggle for liberation' becomes itself a new instrument of injustice. We who live in the North of Ireland can state this with all the greater conviction because we have had nearly twenty years of sad experience of the effects of violence.

For many centuries a false glamourisation of war exercised a fatal fascination on the mind of generation after generation of people. This false glamour has now at last been, so to say, 'demythologised'. Regrettably at the same time another myth has been developed, namely the glamourisation of the so-called 'armed struggle for liberation'. This myth too is in urgent need of being 'demythologised' . . .

In order to operate competently in the political sphere lay persons need an appropriate formation. This formation must obviously include the sciences and the techniques of politics, the social sciences and economics and so forth. But above all a spiritual and biblical formation is required, so that political and social action may be motivated and guided by a truly evangelical spirit. There can be no genuine human liberation except in the Gospel of Jesus Christ . . .

Bishop Daly's appeal for political involvement and activity reminded me of a similar call by the Pope on his visit to Ireland in 1979, when he referred to politics as a 'noble profession\ and suggested that violence was an inevitable consequence of the political vacuum. The Bishop's own vigorously expressed views on violence in the name of justice have implications going far beyond the island of Ireland. It will be interesting to see if they evoke any dissenting voices — from South Africa, say, or Central America. At the very least, no one can deny his authority to speak on this matter.

As to the other speakers this evening, I will content myself once again with some brief quotes:

Unjust structures can only be changed by a change of heart.

Bishop Quezada Toruno, Guatemala

We must provide more spaces in the Church to promote participation at all levels of lay commitment.

Bishop Morera Vega, Costa Rica

Our 'yes' to the world and its demands must be in harmony with our 'yes' to God. In this sphere, the laity are called to collaborate with persons of different convictions while remaining faithful to their Christian faith.

Bishop Werbs, German Democratic Republic

There are many in the Church who still have a very 'disincarnate' faith' and for whom the social, economic and political areas appear as something foreign to their being Christian . . . The preferential option for the poor is for the Church as a whole ... As Pope John Paul said: The poor are unable to hope'.

Bishop Ariztia Ruiz, Chile

A synodal call to holiness . . . runs the risk of being understood as a supernatural escape' . . . Let us rather propose a notion of sanctity which is the opposite of an invitation to leave this world and seek union with God elsewhere.

Bishop Lescrauwaet, The Netherlands

True hierarchical communion and discipleship are first experienced l the liturgy. From the liturgical assembly the faithful are to go forth as sons and daughters of the Lord to transform the world.

Archbishop Powathil, India

here must be. just as much concern for the formation of the laity as r the formation of candidates to the priesthood. It need not be academic: it must be born of the joy of living as Christians without e feeling of being exploited . . . Professional competence is essential if Christian witness is to be a true sign to the world.

Archbishop Fernandes de Araujo, Brazil

One other speaker should be noted, not so much for what he said as for what he represents. This is Monsignor Luigi Guissani of Commu- nione e Libemzione, an organisation to which I have already referred and of which we will be hearing much more very shortly. His name, by the way, is on the list of Papal nominees to the Synod.

Saturday 10th October

This morning's session heard contributions from several 'stars' of the Synod — Cardinal Hume of Westminster; Cardinal Etchegaray, who is President of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace (and of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum); Cardinal Ballestrero of Turin; and Vatican II veteran, Archbishop Mark McGrath of Panama. All of them said good things - especially, perhaps, Cardinal Etchegaray, who spoke of the Church-World relationship as 'always unstable, never perfect'. Human values are 'weighed down with ambiguity: it is up to the Church to give them their full meaning'. He reminded us that 'eschatology is not a reality of tomorrow; it is an experience of today.'

But for me the most memorable and substantial of the session's contributions - indeed one of the most remarkable heard since the Synod began - was that of Bishop John Sherlock of London (On­tario) one of the four representatives of the Canadian Episcopal Con­ference. I have no hesitation in quoting his summary in full.

The split between culture and the Gospel is 'the drama of our time'. Traditional cultures, organised around religion, are in full retreat before a new culture which assigns to religion an unimpor­tant private corner.

Recent Popes have advocated that lay Christians learn to 'read the signs of the times', and involve themselves directly in the com­plex, ambiguous process of the transformation of culture. This can only be done in collaboration with others, including non- believers.

Lay Christians are everywhere in this global culture. God's Spirit helps them to discern the seeds of life and the seeds of death in the world. Such discernment in faith is ordered to action in the world. It is an inspired prudence. We struggle in Canada to act discerningly and socially, in coalitions with fellow-citizens who are shapers of culture, and in solidarity with suffering people.

The recent visit of the Holy Father to Fort Simpson highlights one area where a shared work towards cultural justice for aboriginal peoples has been under way for a long time. It has made possible a particularly 'incarnated' proclamation of Christ.

We now believe that it is in such a process of involvement, discernment, and negotiation that Catholic social teaching must be forged. Its formulation requires not just a statement of church principles but 'the contribution of all charisms, experiences and skills'. (Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, no. 72.)

I would ask the Synod to foster this way of practical discernment through action in the world, in faith, as a common way of Christian formation. I would ask that this way of developing Catholic social teaching become normative at all levels of Church life.

For lay Catholics, this mission of transforming the world, of breathing Spirit into the world, is not a power game. It progresses by the way of the Cross. It identifies the laity profoundly with Jesus' own crucified self-giving. The least we can do is to offer those brothers and sisters of ours our own lives, as pastors. And the first gift we can offer is our willingness to listen and to learn.

One need not accept every word of Bishop Sherlock's analysis to recognise its rare quality of realism and vision. It is not the least of several outstanding contributions made by the Canadian church to the church universal over the past twenty-five years.

I must however quote from one more of this morning's nterventions, that of His Beatitude Stephanos II Ghattas, Patriarch jf Alexandria of the Copts. In reference to the 'specifically important nart' played by the lay faithful in the churches of the East, not least hat of the Copts, he had this to say: Aware of their baptismal character and of the obligation that they had of preaching the Good News . . they were missionaries to foreign countries, according to the example of the early Christians. Think simply, by way of example, of Ireland and Switzerland evangelised by the Egyptian soldiers of the Theban legion . . .

Veil, now! Mind you, I remember the Coptic observer at Vatican 1, when I told him I was Irish, remarking 'Ah! yes: the Irish. We inverted you, of course.'

Of course. That's why so many of us think of the Church as pyramid . . .

No session this evening. But don't imagine it was all golf, football matches, and visits to the cinema. Far from it. All the Synod members, including the auditors, were taken off to visit Roman parishes.

As for me, I settled for afternoon tea. Or something.

Sunday 11th October

On this morning, twenty-five years ago, Pope John XXIII, of happy memory, presided at the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Those of us who were there — as Council Fathers, periti or mere journalists and allied riff-raff, are now getting thin on the ground, and not quite as young as we used to be.

There were, I imagine, a few moist eyes in St Peter's this morning among those at the Commemorative Mass. And not a few ghosts. Two of them were remembered by name in the Roman Canon — John himself, and his great successor Paul VI — and, of all the others who were not named, each of us was thinking of the special ones we loved and worked with and argued against. And as we sang Kyrie eleison our prayer was for them all, for us all . . .

Not that my own 'dispositions' on that October morning 1962, the feast of the Motherhood of Mary in the old calendar, were altogether appropriate to the occasion. For one thing we had to be in St Peter's at the crack of dawn, hours before anything happened. Whether this was Vatican bloody-mindedness, or anxiety or for the good of our souls, I never found out. Nor why the 'tribune' that was supposed to accommodate journalists was three-quarters occupied by NUNS - a variety of them dressed in voluminous habits that are now probably museum pieces. By sheer brute force and ignorance, and refusing to take lip from the 'black' aristocracy who patrolled the Basilica (one learns quickly in Rome), I eventually squeezed into a corner which I shared sardine-like with, as I recall, the Daily Express (a devout Anglican), the News of the World (an old Downside boy) - both alas! no longer with us - and dear Molly McGee, then representing The People, who still flourishes, and I'm sure remembers Cardinal Newman as a small boy. Lest I should be completely Anglicised by contiguity, I turned my eyes to another loftier tribune where among the foreign delegations I could just glimpse the Irish, lead, as I seem to remember, by the then Taoiseach, Sean Lemass.

But that was little help to a man with a hangover and no breakfast, nor indeed was the 'warm-up' by the Sistine Choir, members of whom, I couldn't help recalling, had got stuck, with their conductor Bartolucci, in a lift in the Shelbourne Hotel a couple of years before, while the old Theatre Royal, packed to its 4,000 seater capacity waited and waited - and this unfortunate commentator waffled and waffled into a microphone. (It all ended reasonably well.)

And then at long last the great procession entered the Basilica, over 2,000 strong, and, like all such processions, part impressive, part (because of all those bobbing mitres) slightly comic. My own memories of the beginning of the Liturgy are, as they say, fitful, but I do remember the beloved face of John as he sat in Peter's chair, like a mother hen with her chickens, as he looked with evident delight at the circle of guests who sat in places of high honour above all: the Observers from other Churches, of the East and of the West, whose presence was the tangible sign of a new Christian era, and the fulfilment of John's own ardent hope.

The pontifical liturgy continued in its stately Tridentine way. If my memory serves me right, Pope John was not the celebrant — 'presiding' without celebrating was quite common in those days. And, of course, only the celebrant (Cardinal Tisserant, I think, as Dean of the College of Cardinals) took Holy Communion. This would, thank God, be unthinkable now — at today's Mass everyone in the Basilica, I imagine, took part (also in the singing and the prayers) even though I have to say the method of bringing Commu­nion to the people left much to be desired.

I have to confess that St. Peter's is not my favourite place of wor­ship. Like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Notre Dame in Paris, St Patrick's in Dublin, it attracts tourists who, with the best will in the world, can hardly be called pilgrims — not so much the Church in the World as the world in the church! (Who's being elitiste now?) . . . However it must be said that conciliar reform is triumphantly vindicated on occasions like today, when a Papal Mass is a genuine community celebration, stripped of the accretions of the past - many of them admittedly 'impressive' and, all in all, a splendid example of that 'notable simplicity' the Council sought.

At the beginning of the concelebration, Pope John Paul called for an acknowledgement of the many ways in which we have failed the vision of the Council: this was spelt out in three 'invocations', spoken by three of the concelebrants - one in French, one in Spanish, and one in English which declared:

. . . We have set out on an ecumenical path that in desire, in prayer and forgiveness seeks to embrace all the sons and daughters of our heavenly father. The road that leads to unity is long, tiresome, and requires patience and trust in God together with an evangelical love of our brothers and sisters. Too often we have become weary, and relied on merely human energies . . .

The first two readings were in Spanish and English, respectively; the Gospel (Matthew 22:2-24) was sung first in Latin and then in Greek (traditional in Papal Masses). The gospel book was then enthroned before the altar as it was — the very same book — during Vatican II and Vatican I.

The Pope for his homily took as his text the words of the psalmist, 'The Lord is My Shepherd'. He quoted John XXIII who insisted that the Church's 'certain and unchangeable doctrine, which must be faithfully respected, be deepened and presented in a way that cor­responds to the needs of our time.' He went on to say:

All the Council documents did nothing more than to develop these suggestions offered by Pope John. The Council accomplish­ed an immense work of reassuming the preceding doctrinal patrimony and, at the same time, drew up, on the basis of that patrimony, a vast programme of renewal which regards almost every area of Christian action, on the personal as well as on the communitarian level.

The teachings of the Council, rightly understood and inter­preted in the context of the preceding Magisterium, can well be called the plan of action for the Christian of our time.

On this Sunday, we desire, therefore, to thank the Lord, the Good Shepherd, for the work carried out by Vatican II, inaugurated twenty five years ago.

In the course of these years, the Church, and in her individual communities have also experienced many trials. Many faithful had to 'walk in a dark valley', in the midst of various tribulations that were able to arouse in their souls sentiments of trepidation and fear.

Still the psalmist says: ^CI will fear no evil, because you are with me.'

Yes, the Lord is the true Shepherd. The Lord is our Shepherd.

Amen.

At the Prayer of the Faithful, intercessions were offered in French, Fanti, Tamil, Ukrainian, German and Polish. The Council was again recalled twice during the Eucharistic Prayer, including, as I've already said, the Memento for the departed. And at the end we sang the Magnificat, to thank God and honour Mary . . .

But over and over again, memories of that first morning kept crowding in: memories of physical discomfort; an almost reluctant response to the grandeur of the ceremony; a certain scepticism (shared by many) about what it was all going to add up to (it was commonly believed that the proceedings were 'all sewn up in advance' by the Curia), struggling with an inescapable sense of occasion . . . and then, suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the sjeat, clear trumpet-call from Peter's chair, as John aroused us from our torpor, bade us cast off fear, listen to the lessons of history, stop moaning and condemning, and go out into the world in the hope of the Holy Spirit - into his world and ours, and let our light shine before men.

It was the end of an age, the beginning of an age, a revolution, a leap into the future, a new call to faith and hope and love . . .

For what we have failed to do, Kyrie eleison.

Monday 12th October

Good news this morning! This is to be the final day of general iscussion in plenary session: There will in fact be two such sessions omorrow, the morning being given over to the auditors, and the fternoon to Cardinal Thiandoum's second Relatio ..... I say good news, because I believe it was generally felt inside and outside the vnod that more than enough formal statements had been heard, nd that the sooner the Fathers got down to work in the smaller roups the better. Still, everyone entitled and wanting to speak had 3 be heard: so it was announced the other day that the lists would lose at the weekend. With, it is clear, good effect.

I mentioned that on Friday evening the Synod heard from the rpresentative of Communione e Liberazione. This morning's first speaker was Monsignor Alvaro del Portillo, Prelate of Opus Dei — another Papal nominee. These two organisations are perhaps the best-known and (blessed word!) controversial of the several 'movements' which have come to prominence in the Church of our time. (Our own Legion of Mary is, of course, another.)

The word 'movement' has in fact become one of the buzz-words of the Synod, not alone in relation to 'Opus' and 'Communione', but because of certain questions touching the structures of jurisdiction and authority in the Church. Some regard them with enthusiasm, others with considerable reserve. It would however be very wrong to regard the arguments on either side as purely 'institutional' in the narrow sense: even in matters of organisational autonomy vis-a-vis the local church, far deeper issues are involved — issues touching the nature of the Church, evangelical and pastoral issues, response to the Spirit, 'discernment of charisms' and so on.

I have avoided this topic until now, not least because the third ses­sion with the auditors - now taking place tomorrow - has been signalled as dealing with it in, presumably, a fairly detailed manner. There have indeed been several interventions on the subject since the opening of the Synod, but perhaps what Cardinal Martini of Milan had to say this morning can be regarded as a judicial summing-up:

I wish to speak of the new associations and movements in the Church (see Instrumentum Laboris, nn. 59-60) in the context of Italy and Europe. The Holy Father has spoken to the European Bishops more than once of the need for a new quality of evangelisation in Europe. It is a question of proclaiming the Gospel in a climate of growing secularisation.

Though she, too, finds herself in this general context, the Church in Italy can today count on many lively forces. Besides the major traditional associations (e.g. Catholic Action, the Scouts), we find at the base of our parishes very many groups, both organised and not, whose action is incisive and efficacious. In Italy there are also many associations which are referred to as 'new', in­sofar as they were born or have grown in recent decades. These are very different one from another, and it is almost impossible to treat them all under one common denominator. They are com­mitted and capable of arousing enthusiasm. Our principal pastoral duty before these new realities is discernment, which means not only evaluation and judgement, but also accompaniment over time. Such discernment is the responsibility first of all of pastors but also of the group members themselves, who must let themselves be assisted in better understanding the ways of the Lord for the service of the one Church.

The particular Church, in the communion of the churches, is the natural place for the discernment of the path chosen by a movement. This is all the more necessary where movements have specifically pastoral goals and involve the Christian presence in society.

The faithful have the right freely to found associations with religious, charitable or apostolic aims (Canon 299). But this itself does not guarantee the evangelical value and the Christian authen­ticity of these entities. Furthermore, every association or move­ment necessarily places itself in the context of a particular Church, in which it is the bishop's responsibility to plan, promote and unify the pastoral activity of the diocese. To the degree that an association or a movement represents a real and recognised good for the particular Church, it should be sustained for the values and enrichment that it brings, as long as it is disposed to the process of discernment and docile in letting itself be accompanied on the path towards a more organic form of ecclesiastical discipline.

The Cardinal's view was also echoed very succinctly by Bishop Mendes de Almeide (a Jesuit like the Cardinal) from Brazil.

Christian associations and groups, when they place their gifts and charisms at the service of communion, bring about the growth of the whole people of God; when, instead, they close in upon themselves they can be detrimental to the whole ecclesial body.

Also from Brazil, Archbishop Colling of Porto Alegre said:

Autonomous movements or pastoral ministries which do not have a real link with the Church must take responsibility for their own success or lack of success.

It should be noted, by the way, that the last two bishops named, and indeed many, many others, refer approvingly to another kind of organisation, the basic christian community. This seems now to be taken for granted, and not only in the Third World, as a way of bringing new life to the local church from within. (It was, as I recall, given a general blessing at the Synod on Evangelisation.) Before leaving this morning's session I must mention two more voices from the Third World, both from countries torn by civil war. The Archbishop of Khartoum in the Sudan spoke of

. . . the kind of Islam that is propagated by force, deceit and injustice; that is used as an instrument of oppression, exploitation and political power; that disregards human dignity and rights . . .

and of a

. . . poverty which by reducing many to live in conditions unworthy of human beings has deprived them also of their sense of being human . . .

And the Bishop of Santiago de Maria (El Salvador) had a word of hope, long-deferred, based on the recent Central-American Peace Plan:

The accord . . . and the dialogue between the Governor of El Salvador and the rebels, which took place in the Nunciature, with His Excellency Archbishop Artura Rivera Lamas acting as mediator, with all the results these have already achieved, have awoken in our long-suffering people a very real hope of peace.

This evening's is the last scheduled plenary session involving general interventions by the Fathers. However, some have not yet spoken, so we may have a few tomorrow morning.

*

I have referred to the fact that some of the Third World speakers chose Latin - one of these was the first to be heard this evening, Ar­chbishop Saen-Phon-On of Thailand. He recalled that 'Buddhimus in Thailandia religio nationalis recognoscitur' and that the small Catholic minority have frequently been in difficulties: indeed, in 1940, seven were martyred 'propter odium fidei'. And still this small minority seems to have considerable influence. Recently a move by the government to legalise abortion 'legalisare abortum' was opposed by a Catholic medical-lay coalition who conducted their campaign so successfully that the proposed legislation never appeared 'legislatio il­ia nunquam apparuerat!'

From Malawi, the Bishop of Dedza tells of a laity who seem to be able to turn their hands to everything:

With the new teaching of Vatican II in mind, the laity in Malawi are all out to play their role in the church. They take up their role at every level of the diocesan setting. They are in pastoral councils, parish councils and church councils. They assume responsibilities in the small christian communities. They assume such roles as Sunday prayer leaders. These conduct prayer-services on Sundays or feasts of obligation in the absence of the priest. There are voluntary teachers among them who teach first communicants and confirmandi. They also teach catechumens in their various groups. They give instructions to those who are getting married. There are choir leaders who prepare and conduct the singing dur­ing the Mass or Sunday prayer services. It is the laity who join and keep alive the different movements in the Church.

On the material level, we note with satisfaction that the laity are more than ever before carrying out self-help projects. They put up school blocks, build teachers' houses, plant trees for timber and firewood but also for soil conservation. They dig wells for clean water.

The Church's option for the poor, solidarity and identification and communion with them must now be shown in being united with their spirit and power for non-violence. A strong programme of non-violence on the part of the Church will sustain people's non-violence. Non-violence is so urgent and challenging that both clergy, laity and religious in the Church and people of good­will of other religions and cultures will join hands and forces together in the task. This itself will bring communion in the Church and other peoples.

Non-violence heals the hardness of heart that comes from violence. It brings also a spirit of reconciliation. Our many devoted priests will find in the programmes of non-violence a way of calling people to penance and reconciliation.

And from India, Archbishop Padijara, speaks of the 'missionary' duty of the laity:

Only Christians who live in Jesus can attract their fellow men to Christ. Conversions are made not by syllogisms but by prayer, charism and witnessing the faith.

The laity who are active in politics and other public affairs have an obligation to give testimony to their faith. The indifference of the good people is the cause of the victory of the wicked. When justice, freedom, religious or human rights are violated and trampled upon in public life, let the laity speak aloud. Politics, good or bad, affects everybody. This is the time for the laity to come forward and to spread the message of Christ in the world . . .

Tuesday 13th October

I was right in my guess that this morning's session might include a few final interventions from the Fathers. There were in fact four, all of them interesting. Once again, an Indian Archbishop, this time the Metropolitan of Trivandrum of the Syro-Malankarese, brought very old and very new together in linking the ancient liturgical piety of the laity, with their desperate current economic and social needs. He suggested 'Health for All by A.D. 2000' as a target.

The new century was also the preoccupation of Archbishop Tonini of Ravenna-Cervia. He looked forward to the impending 'globalisation' of all human realities, and specifically to the likely 'Islamisation of Europe' due to a falling birth-rate. In the future then, the term 'salvation' will take on 'an ever fuller and more radical meaning, one embracing the whole destiny of individuals and peoples'.

From Cuba, the Synod heard Bishop Pena Gomez of Holguin. The circumstances of the Church there make his report of especial interest.

During the '60s lay organisations diminished, but a very active participation on the part of the laity in intra-ecclesial life was growing. Results of this progress:

•    A laity well integrated into the community and united to their pastors.

•    Lay services or lay ministries with which we cannot dispense, especially because of the scarcity of pastoral workers.

•    Silent testimony in front of the commitments of life and of the individual apostolate.

•    Pastoral councils.

This present situation matured, expressed itself and was pro­jected in the entire reflective process which culminated in the Cuban National Ecclesial Meeting, Havana, February, 1986, (and still continues).

The Church in Cuba will concentrate her major efforts on being a more evangelising Church, more a Church of prayer, more in­carnate in an attitude of dialogue.

This orientation is not foreign to the laity; but it is the laity, for the most part, who with their fidelity to the Church and to their people made it possible. There follow these options for the Cuban Church:

•                New areas of evangelisation as a specific service to our people, through ecclesial communion, are opening to the awareness of the Cuban laity.

•                At this time proposals for the lay apostolate are taking shape, based on the following criteria:

—          ecclesial communion

—          promotion of the commitment of laity in the community.

—              the institution of some lay services as ministries is being looked at.

*

We live with Mary, in hope.

Father John Vaughn OFM, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, spoke of the historic 'Third' or Secular Orders, associated with the great religious families:

Some of the great masters of Christian life gave inspiration not on­ly to groups of religious, but also to groups of laity, not to make them semi-cloistered, but to offer them the same deep experience of God as is available to priests and religious, but in the world, and precisely as lay people:

as married couples

as professional people

as people involved in political life.

In turn, these lay people have prolonged and extended to the Church and the world the charism of their own religious family through a form of secular spirituality and involvement. The struc­ture of these Third or Secular Orders, and similar associations, has enabled the charism of the founder to be preserved by association with a religious family which offers spiritual assistance. But the Secular Order is distinct from, and complementary to, the religious order, and its leadership is in the hands of the laity who in communion with their pastors, exercise their own proper gifts to build up the Church and evangelise society.

The Secular Orders have renewed their legislation and structures in the light of the Second Vatican Council: this renewal stresses the dignity of the laity's vocation, their right and need to assume responsibility, and the rightful autonomy of their action in the Church and in society.

This was an appropriate link with the second half of the session in which lay speakers addressed the Synod on 'The Life of Associations and Movements'.

'May a hundred flowers bloom!' I don't know whether Mr Guzman Carriquiry from Uruguay who is an Assistant to the Special Secretary of the Synod, and has been described to me as the highest placed layman in the Curia, used this phrase with a straight face, when he wished that the 'beauty of the gifts and experiences' of the great variety of associations in today's Church would enrich the communi­ty in unity. (Not that the Age of the Laity is to be compared with a certain Cultural Revolution.)

His address could be read as an enthusiastic apologia for associations and movements. Having saluted 'Catholic Action' (do you remember? . . .), he pointed to the new organisations recognised by the present Pope as 'fruits of the Spirit and reasons for hope'.

They can be characterised by several aspects:

•   Their emerging and surprising newness, not 'programmed', as signs of the liberty of forms with which the one Church is realised.

•   Their growth in ecclesial land cultivated by the Council and in a phase of planting and growth of its good fruits.

•   The tonality which is more charismatic than 'functional'.

•   Their reality as 'ecclesial' movements rather than 'lay', and the transition from 'theologies of the laity' to ecclesiology of com­munion.

•   Their 'in-put' which is more missionary than 'ecclesiastic'.

The next speaker was an old friend, Jerzy Turowicz from Cracow, pioneer and father-figure of the Znak organisation, which fulfilled the promise of its name - it means 'Sign' - in some of Poland's most difficult years since its foundation in 1948.

I first met him during the Council: a gentle intellectual, commit- :d to the Church, but with a sharp critical sense and an equally harp sense of humor. He has been a frequent visitor to Rome since hen — except when petty tyranny at home prevented his leaving. )ver the last decade, however, prudence has no doubt dictated a lore diplomatic approach to this independent-minded man who as also been a close friend of Pope John Paul for many years. He was absent from the 1985 Synod, but for reasons of health: he confessed 3 me the other day that it finally persuaded him to give up smoking!

His work with Znak has been mainly, though not altogether, as a publisher and journalist - frustrated from time to time by a ‘shortage’ of paper, sometimes genuine, sometimes contrived. Such shortage seemed less frequently to affect the publications of Pax, the fellow-travelling Catholic.

It should be said, however, that Turowicz seemed always to be regarded with respect and affection, not alone by Pax journalists at le Council, but also by government news agency personnel. Later, in my own short time in Poland in 1977, I sensed the same regard for one whose writings have always been marked by honesty, restraint and balance, as well as considerable courage.

His intervention this morning, in style and content, came as no lrprise to anyone who had read those careful but unambiguous :flections of his, usually cyclostyled on the vilest of newsprint. His subject now was 'The Laity in the Parish', and he clearly sees the additional parochial unit as full of potential for the future, and the natural nucleus for development. As to the 'great debate', as ever, a balanced line:

Sometimes the parish is opposed as an institutional structure of the Church, in the lay movements which would be part of her charismatic structure. Now this opposition is without founda­tion. These two aspects of the Church should be inseparably link­ed rightly in the heart of the parish.

The most natural path of this transformation of the parish lies in the pastoral councils suggested by Vatican II. It is with such a council — composed of laity, men and women — that the pastor ought to share the responsibility for everything that concerns the parish: pastoral, spiritual, economic problems, etc. In each parish there are the poor, the lonely, the elderly, the abandoned. If the parish is to be a community of love and of shar­ing, each person in need ought not to be taken for granted. It

would rightly be the task of the laity to reach those persons. The care of the poor must also embrace the spiritually poor: wounded by life, strayed, the marginated, who generally remain outside the field of action of the parish. However, the Church must take care of them. This is also the laity's area of action.

The problem of missionary involvement of the laity is broader than the parish framework. But it is the Eucharist which is the source of this involvement. Now, it is the parish which is the privileged place where a lay person, in union with the community to which he belongs, ought to participate in the Eucharistic celebration.

Twenty years after Vatican II in some churches there still are not pastoral councils, neither at the diocesan level nor at the parish level. We have the right to wish that one of the fruits of this Synod of Bishops be the creation of these councils in all parishes of all individual churches.

From another troubled country, El Salvador, Ms Lilian de Perez (again not on the list of auditors) spoke mainly of Basic Communities (CEB): these have been developing in the Archdiocese of San Salvador since the 60s and were given official status in 1970. She went on to say:

In 1972, as a consequence of the current repression, there was a conscientisation at social level, giving origin to political choices, with the setting up of Popular Organisations. In this social frame, Archbishop Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero is to be mention­ed, who marked his pastoral approach in such a way that it led to his martyrdom. Still now his person is very highly exalted in the political field, more than as a pastor consistent with his mission. (Third Pastoral Letter, Monsignor Arturo Rivers Damas).

The last sentence, which I have italicised, is open to more than one reading: perhaps it's a matter of translation, though I don't think so. What a pity Bishop Eamonn Casey isn't here . . .

One gathers from what Ms Perez has to say that the CEB story also involves certain ambiguities: leading to 'politicisation without conversion' on the one hand, and on the other, a 'flight-from-the- world' kind of spiritual emphasis. Still, she believes that such communities 'in the sense in which they are understood by the Magisterium' are totally necessary (unlike the 'Apostolic Movements' which she merely describes as an 'efficacious way of bringing people together'). She believes that, from the basic community

. . . there flows a total pastoral involvement which, in turn, will give rise to new generations to struggle to bring about radical social change, based on the Gospel.

But both clergy, who act in persona Christi, and laity, need a 'constant renewal of mind and heart'.

Mr Raabe of the Federal Republic of Germany took as his theme 'Unity and Coordination of Lay Activities at the National Level', and stressed that lay participation is not limited to family life, the parish or the diocese. He clearly sees 'movements' and other associations as of importance nationally:

The coordination of all the forces of the Catholic laity at the national level is important also for political reasons. The political realm, especially in states with democratic institutions, is the forum in which there takes place the great social dialogue . . . Catholic citizens must not be missing from this realm; they associate to defend their Christian vision of society and so to contribute to the common good. Their voice will acquire more power and importance if they come forward together, if they speak with one voice and are able to act in unity.

In a pluralistic society, the great social dialogue is an unre- nouncable prerequisite for freedom. The future of the world belongs to pluralism, notwithstanding all the hindering or even totalitarian elements at work.

The two final auditors who spoke were women. Ms Genevieve Riviere from France, on 'The Mission of the Laity in International Life', made special reference to

. . . International Catholic bodies [which] are, for the most part, recognised as non-governmental organisations by the United Nations, with a consultative status which permits them to be heard at international level in order to denounce injustices, defend human rights and promote the human development of peoples . . .

Ms Riviere is described as President of the Conference of International Catholic Organisations.

Her fellow-auditor, Ms Chiara Lubich, is foundress of the Focohre movement in Italy. Her subject was 'The Spirituality of the Laity and of Movements' and she appeared to have no doubt that 'through

movements, the Holy Spirit is arousing spiritualities, firmly rooted in the Gospel, which help the laity in a special way to live as authentic Christians in today's secularised environment', and that these laity respond by 'committing themselves to doing his will in the concreteness of daily life'.

As she developed her theme - 'striving to love Christ in the persons with whom they have contact'; 'reciprocal love is translated into the communion of material, cultural and spiritual goods'; 'evangelisation is facilitated, conversions to the faith and vocations mature, and dialogue with other Christians . . . tv/r/i.}// men /s/c/ becomes more fruitful' - [had to ask myself, as often before: 'Isn't this simply about being a Christian? Why the emphasis on "joining" something? Isn't it enough to be in the Church?' Nor do I find it any great help to be told that:

In today's de-christianised world, the Spirit, through movements, underlines a particular presence of Christ: where two or three are gathered in his name (see Mt 18:20), there unity is realised . . .    [_my italics]

Reminding us that one must 'make the mystery of the Cross one's own', Ms Lubich tells us that 'other elements in the spiritual life of today's committed Christians are 'love of the Eucharist and of the Hierarchy'(l) . . . and a 'deep rapport with Mary' oddly described as 'the first lay person' . . . Leor sango fdill.

*

The workings of the Synod are, as they say, something else. I mean the mechanics. It's all set out in a document of some thirty closely- printed pages which (you will be glad to hear) I do not propose to in­clude in this Diary. Neither can I offer a proper summary. The best way of grasping the procedure is to look at it in three phases.

•        Phase One, you may recall, began on 2 October with a first Relatio, in which the 'Relator' or Moderator, Cardinal Thiandoum presented an over-view of the matters to be discussed, and in­dicated special problem areas to be addressed. It ended this even­ing with a second Relatio, which purported to sum up the work of the plenary sessions in which nearly all the Synod Fathers spoke in turn.

•        Relatio II is also a link with the Second Phase of the Synod which begins tomorrow: from then until the weekend, discussion will be in the circuit minores, smaller groups (based on language), who will report back to plenary sessions on Monday and Tuesday next. Then the groups reform, this time to prepare specific proposals, which will be sifted and collated by the following weekend (with some plenary discussions). • The Third and final Phase begins on Monday week next, 26 Oc­tober: from then until the last session on Thursday, 29 October, the Fathers will consider, discuss, amend and finally vote on the proposals which will be incorporated into a collated document for presentation to the Pope. (Remember, the Synod is an advisory, not a decision-making, body.) They may also draw up a general statement message for general consumption.

That's as concise as I can make it. The second phase which we're now entering is, in many ways, the most interesting, although the ideas which emerge from the various groups will not surface until they report back next Monday.

As to Relatio II we were issued this evening with a summary which was as meaty as a well-picked chicken carcass. However, with the help of the diligent and long-suffering Diarmuid it is possible to pro­vide some idea of the document which is (as ever!) divided into three parts.

The first deals with the theology and ecclesiology of communio: the laity as Christifideles, the common priesthood and that of orders, communion and mission, the 'secular' character of laity, the fun­damental action of the Holy Spirit calling all to one holiness, but conferring a variety of charisms.

The second section on 'Unity and Pluriformity' looks at the Chur­ch, local and catholic; parishes and basic communities; movements, associations and religious orders; ministries.

The third part considers 'Contemporary Changes and Dynamisms' of the Church in the world: lay action in family, politics, culture; lay formation; the position of women, young adults and children; 'for­mation' and spirituality.

It all appears rather blandly inclusive, although I gather there were some voices raised complaining of omissions. In any event it's up to the working groups to tease it out, fill in what's missing, and tear all or any part of it up. And, of course, matters can still be raised which were not mentioned at all so far . . . So, end of phase one.

Wednesday 14th October

There are, it appears, twelve circuli mimres. One will work in Italian, three in French, three in Spanish (and Portuguese), one in German and three in English. Oh, yes! And one in Latin.

Where there is more than one group for a language, those taking part are divided alphabetically. Thus in English group A the name Daly (Cahal B.) is flanked by d'Souza (Henry S.) and de Lastic (Alan Basil) - both from India. O Fiaich (Tomas) heads the list for English group C, closely followed by Onaiyekan (John O.) - from Nigeria — and Ott (Stanley J.) of Baton Rouge, USA . . .Talk about group dynamics!

By the way, looking down the lists one is struck by how few Irish names there are, compared, say, to the Council years when they seemed to be all over the place. A large number of these were from Africa, and their near disappearance is surely the best possible tribute to how well those Irish missionaries did their work.

I should say that all the lists (except the Latin one) include names of auditors: Fay (Patrick) is in English group A, and Sweeney (Walter) — a permanent deacon from New York in group C . . . The Latin group, incidentally, is very small indeed: a mere five names, t including Cardinal Vaivods of Latvia (USSR) - and, sadly, Monsignor Hirka of Czechoslovakia who has been prevented from attending.

Suddenly, the Sala Stampa has become very quiet, as many correspondents have gone home — some to return for the final week. For those who remain, it's the time for 'think pieces', as they're called in the trade, which are the reluctant journalist's substitute for hard, or hardish, news. So everybody was glad to go to hear Monsignor Vincent Nicholls, who is Secretary to the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, give his opinion on how things are beginning to shape up. He didn't claim to have either inside information, or x-ray eyes to divine any 'hidden agenda', but what he had to say was clear and sensible, and helped to clarify things for many of us. He saw five main questions to be resolved, or, if not resolved, at least identified and developed:

•        What is the laity?

•        How does one define — or categorise — lay ministry (ministries)?

•        How to 'place' the lay role in the Church and in the world?

•        How to reach a consensus on the 'movements'?

•        How to give substantial expression to the generally positive attitude to women?

I have not quoted Nicholls verbatim, but that's more or less what he said.

Plenty of scope for 'think pieces' there, and one could (even without x-ray eyes) see them beginning to take shape in several busy minds.

We were gathered under the auspices of the excellent Pro Mundi Vita [PMV] organisation: they are an international research and information centre with headquarters in Brussels, and located for the duration of the Synod at the Augustinianum which is close (geographically, at least) to what used to be the Holy Office. PMV provide documentation and secretarial services, as well as a forum for discussion each afternoon, centred on a talk, given on alternate days in English and in French. Most of the centre's personnel are, I think, Belgian, but they do include the redoubtable Willy Jenkinson CSSp, sometime Irish Provincial of his congregation.

The PMV's services and 'fringe events' are in worthy succession to those provided during Vatican II by CCCC, an organisation the meaning of whose initials I'm afraid I've forgotten, and also by DOC which was run by a remarkable Dutch priest Leo Alting von Geusau on behalf of his country's bishops. That was where it all happened - well some of it, anyway . . .

Mention of the CCCC reminds me of a colleague who said the 'four Cs' made him think of the four things he disliked most about Rome: cars (even in the 60s they were lethal); coffee machines (the noise they made, he said, 'especially in the morning'); campari which he described as a drink 'fit only for civil servants'; and clerics. On the last of these, I gathered that what he found objectionable was what he called their 'black petticoats', in other words the soutanes which, along with those curious hats with their oddly Anglican appearance, 'made normal young men look like transvestites'. If he were here today he would be hard put to it to find his betes noirs: in fact I can imagine him complaining that he couldn't tell cleric from lay, in a world of sweaters and jeans. A point not without relevance to our Synodal concerns.

Mind you, the Romans themselves aren't bad at re-interpreting initials. Take, for instance SPQR, which you'll find all over the city, on everything from dustbin lids and manhole covers to the doors of municipal offices and civic monuments. It is of course, slightly pretentiously, taken from the ancient Senatus Populusque Romanus — the 'Senate and People of Rome' - proud title of a proud community.

But the Romans aren't content to leave it at that. SPQR, they say, asks a question: 'Sancte Pater Quare Rides' — Holy Father, why are you laughing? And they say, if you turn the letters around, you have the answer: RQPS - 'Rideo Quia Papa Sum' - I'm laughing because Pm the Pope . . .

Thursday 15 th October

Of all the 'movements' we've been hearing so much about, Communione e Liberazione seems the one most admired - and hated. I've heard it variously described as 'a providential instrument for bringing the Gospel to a neo-pagan world' and 'the greatest menace to the Church since Opus Dei'.

So when I read that a speaker from 'Communione' was billed for this afternoon at Pro Mundi Vita, I hastened along to learn what I could from the horse's mouth. Unfortunately this particular quadruped seems to have shied, or strayed, or bolted, and my expectations were dashed: however, I'm told that the stable door remains open, so we may hope to be told all on another day.

In the meantime PMV did not fail to provide a very distinguished substitute speaker, who came along at short notice: Etienne Bisimwa from Zaire, Secretary-General of the International Catholic Students' Movement, who had addressed the Synod itself as an auditor. He is an extremely impressive young man and, if at all typical of his generation, the Church in Africa will not lack intellectual leadership. His subject was much the same as that of Monsignor Nicholls, and his analysis remarkably similar, though with a very different point of departure. He sees the Synod as carrefour, crossroads, and is, naturally, very sensitive to local-universal Church relationships and to processes of'inculturation'.

He was particularly interesting on the mokambi, those lay pastors uniquely characterisic of the Church in Zaire, and who are truly personae eccksiae to so many of the faithful there, except on the all too rare visits of a priest or bishop. They do their not inconsiderable best to maintain a fullness of church life — short of the all-important Eucharistic celebration. I asked him were they elected or appointed. Neither, he replied: rather do they 'emerge', following a lengthy and highly sophisticated process of consultation among all concerned. He emphasised that the process, and indeed the mokambi themselves are historically rooted in the pre-Christian religious culture of the people ... A far cry from all this to the 'movements', about which Bisimwa's main reservation seems to be their essentially European character, which may or may not be suitable for export - although he could see how they respond to the need, in a secularised society, to 'create a space where one can talk about God'.

Listening to him, I couldn't help thinking of those days over a quarter of a century ago when the 'Belgian Congo' was one of the world's trouble-spots and, incidentally, one of the first opportunities for Irish soldiers to show their mettle as part of an international peace-keeping force. There were at the time no shortage of prophets of gloom and doom who saw nothing but darkness and savagery ahead, with the departure of 'Belgian civilisation' (Roger Casement might have a word to say on that). In the event, the new state of Zaire seems to have made as good a job of things as was done nearer home in the 1920s.

Someone suggested to me later that for Bisimwa to be critical of 'movements' was a little strange, since he is the chief executive of one which is internationally widespread. I take the point, and indeed it has helped to clarify my own inchoate feelings on the subject. Briefly, it seems to me that there are two kinds of movement in the Church. (And by 'movement' I mean any organisation or association whose size and/or dynamism make it a significant force nationally, e.g. the early Gaelic League, the 'Pioneers', or internationally - Anti-Apartheid, CND, Moral Re-Armament.)

My dichotomy is one of declared aim and scope. On the one hand we have had with us for some time, organisations like the St Vincent de Paul Society, the Young Christian Workers, Students, Pax Christi. They deserve to be called 'movements', but their 'area' of operation is limited, not by geography or jurisdiction, but from their very raison d'etre. Each of them has a distinct job to do - one might even say a distinct ministry. On the other hand, Opus Dei and Communione e Liberazione seem to offer a total spirituality and indeed a total blueprint for apostolic action. And this is where I have a real difficulty, because it appears to me that they are duplicating, if not usurping, the role of the Church itself. I accept that they are utterly loyal to the Holy See, but their relationship with the local Church is more problematic - not just in matters of jurisdiction and authority, but in the 'focus' they seem to provide. And, if I'm right, it seems to me to represent a sad reversal of one of the great features of conciliar renewal . . . But maybe I'm quite wrong in this.

Friday 16th October

I often think that to call Rome the 'eternal city' is singularly inappropriate, since time and history are of its very pith and marrow. Ancient, medieval and modern; pagan, Christian and, maybe post- Christian; and all the styles and shapes of building and decorating that the changing culture of the centuries produced: Forum and Pantheon, small sturdy bridges and greatpiazze, basilicas and palazzi, and a maze of little streets and alleyways where butchers' shops and art galleries and vegetable stalls and tiny laundries and trendy boutiques and bars, and God knows how many restaurants and tmttorie, share house-room with the apartments where the Romans (native and blow-ins) eat and drink and make love and fight and rear their children and live and die. The centuries live beside each other and on top of each other, and will, I believe and hope, go on doing so unless, and until, we blow the world up for the sake of the past or the future.

One place where the centuries do literally and spectacularly live on top of each other is the Basilica of San Clemente which is only a couple of hundred yards from the Colosseum and which has, since the seventeenth century, belonged to the Irish Dominicans. I enjoyed their hospitality today at luncheon.

It was just 130 years ago that the then Prior, Father Joseph Mullooly, set out on the remarkable adventure of discovery which revealed the layers of history that lie beneath what is now known to be the 'new' church, the twelfth-century basilica which is, to a large extent, a replica of the fourth-century one below. I'm not going to attempt even an outline account of the glories of either: there have been several scholarly works published on the subject since Fr

Mullooly, that inspired amateur, began to excavate, with the encouragement and guidance of his friend De Rossi who has been described as 'the father of archaeological science.'

Two points need, however, to be noted. One, that down below the fourth-century basilica itself, a third level of excavation revealed a temple of Mithras, god of a cult which flourished, especially among the Roman military in the early centuries of our era. (There is an area alongside it described as an early Christian palazzo but this is more problematic.) And, a remarkable link with Eastern Christianity exists in that the body of the great St Cyril, who with his brother Methodius not alone evangelised the Slavs but invented an alphabet for them, is buried in San Clemente. And that's another story still.

I hope my publisher won't accuse me of outrageous digression, going on like this. Too bad if he does: San Clemente is one of my enthusiasms. Anybody who visits Rome and doesn't follow the Mullooly trail doesn't deserve to go anywhere — and every Irish visitor should make it a top priority. And it was hinted to me today that all the secrets may not yet have been uncovered.

Saturday 17th October

I dropped into the Sala Stampa this morning on the off chance that the Pope might have left a message that he wanted me to ring him - or that a new Archbishop of Dublin had been named - or both. Nothing of the sort, I regret to say, but two of the familiar yellow Synod bulletins, each headed 'Summaries of the in scriptis Interventions'. These haven't of course come out of the working groups, but relate back to the plenary sessions that we thought we'd heard the last of. It appears that some of the Fathers may choose not to speak but to submit a written intervention - and, indeed, even those who do speak can expatiate in writing on their subject, at greater length than the eight minutes they are allowed viva voce. And so here we have further contributions from a patriarch, two cardinals, an archbishop, three bishops and the Father General of the Jesuits.

Maximos V. Hakim, Melchite Patriarch of Antioch, was one of the livelier voices of the Council. He can usually be expected to come up with something unusual.

This time he faults the use of the word 'lay' (as some others of us do!). His objection, it appears, is to the ambiguity of its French equivalent — laic, often meaning 'anti-clerical' or even 'anti- Christian'. And he points out that in Muslim countries, it suggests being 'against' the Koran, and God himself ... A nice problem.

Cardinal Vidal from the Philippines, writes of what he calls 'popular religiosity', whose importance derives from the fact that 'the great majority of Christians ... are not intellectuals . . . but simple folk with deep faith, but often little instruction'. He sees popular piety and religious practices as of great value, but stresses the need for 'vigorous promotion of catechesis and genuine incultura- tion . . .' along with 'attention to the social dimension and development of basic communities . . . and ministries entrusted to lay people - the only ones who may be of effective help'.

The Bishop of Uije in Angola, who is a Franciscan, refers to the condemnation of racial apartheid in the Instrumentum Laboris, but suggests that a religious apartheid also exists about which there is 'world-wide silence'.

This happens in countries where there are racialist regimes, marxist ideologies. The faithful cannot become active Party members . . . have no voice in the political determination of their future, no access to government posts and, sometimes, no possibility of entering certain university faculties. When a citizen who is a believer wishes to join the Party in order to acquire these rights, or is invited to do so because of his qualities, he has to renounce the practice of his faith. This amounts to the same thing as racial apartheid, requiring a black person to become white in order to enjoy full civil rights . . .

He pointedly called on the international community to defend these millions of believers condemned to live as 'second-class citizens'.

Bishop Yves-Georges-Rene Ramousse, Apostolic Vicar of Phnom Penh, reminds us of one of the great tragedies of our time:

In Cambodia there have been no Eucharistic celebrations since 1976. All the priests were killed during the Pol Pot revolution, and all the churches and other buildings either destroyed or confiscated. The laity themselves took charge of their communities. Their plea — that we don't forget about them because 'they cannot go on forever without the Eucharist'.

There are about half a million Cambodians living in diaspora.

250,000 of these have been able to find refuge in host countries where they now live. The rest are living in camps on the frontier of their own country and, except for a very few, do not even have refugee status. The normal conditions of these thousands of people is one of total dependence.

The number of Christian Cambodians living abroad is relatively few. Paradoxically, they experience great difficulty in finding that freedom and participation for which they had hoped. They have to overcome many obstacles so as not to give in to resignation and passivity. Given that there have been some happier experiences, a recent survey carried out among them reveals that considerable progress needs to be made with regard to the situation of the Cambodians in diaspora.

The service that the Church owes these members of the faithful is to welcome them with friendship and to do all she can to help them . . . They need to feel that the Church has confidence in them.

Fr Kolvenbach, the Jesuit General, touches on a matter in which his Society have been long and deeply involved: the 'educational mission of the Church', which is, he believes, afflicted at present by a 'vocational crisis'. He refers to 'internal doubts' as to whether Catholic educational institutions can have a 'prophetic function' today, but insists that they can indeed be 'bearers of the Spirit of the Lord' not least when 'other forms of dialogue and contact' are not possible. He goes on however:

There are grave doubts about an educational institution's capacity to serve the preferential option for the poor and the promotion of justice in the name of the Gospel . . . If it is true that the social teaching of the Church does not inspire all Catholic schools and colleges, this should not place in doubt their capacity - especially in universities - to form as followers of the Lord women and men who concretely incarnate the 'New Commandment'.

Sunday 18 th October

Today is Mission, or rather Missions Sunday. I suppose that the plural V gives as a hint that the emphasis is still on 'foreign missions', even if we have all learned that mission, like charity, must begin at home - though neither should stay there - and that several of the younger churches may now send evangelists to those 'motherlands' which have themselves become pays de mission. Not that the 'pilgrim' impulse can ever be left out, whether at home or abroad.

'Go — make disciples of all nations' was the Pope's text this morning when he preached at the solemn liturgy in St Peter's for the canonisation of sixteen men and women martyred in, and near, Nagasaki in Japan 350 years ago. The first name among them is Lorenzo Ruiz, described by the Pope as 'husband and father of three children, who first collaborated with the Dominican Fathers in Manila and then shared their martyrdom': he is now the first canonised Filipino saint.

There were naturally huge numbers of pilgrims present from Asia, especially from the Philippines and Japan — as well as many from Spain, Italy and France where some of the sixteen were born. It was in a very real sense a Dominican occasion. As the Irish Master- General of the Order, Fr Damian Byrne, expressed it:

These sixteen had the same desire as Saint Dominic to shed their blood for Christ. Some of them set out for Japan knowing they were already sentenced to death . . . Like St Dominic they trusted only in God's word. Bishop Salazar had learned in Mexico of the importance of not using the civil power to spread the Church. The Dominicans in the East were inspired by this example and they sought no favours from the civil authorities.

The history of the Church in certain other places might have been very different had their example been followed further afield!

That these canonisations should take place during the present Synod is highly appropriate, in view of the fact that five of the martyrs were lay people: Lorenzo Ruiz; two women, Magdalene of Nagasaki and Marina of Omura; a guide and interpreter (who had contracted leprosy), Lazaro of Kyoto; and a catechist, Michael Kurobioye.

'Representations of the catechists of all nations and continents' had, said the Pope, been invited to the ceremony. He greeted them as 'the ones who realise in large part, the missionary character of the Church', and he went on to say:

Today the new saints speak to all who, urged by Christ's mandate . . . have gone throughout the world to proclaim the Good News

of salvation to all humanity, particularly to the most needy.

With their message and martyrdom they speak to catechists, to pastoral workers, to the laity, to all especially concerned with this Synod . . . They remind us that 'to die for the faith is a gift granted to few: but to live the faith is a call addressed to all' . . .

*

Lunch with the Franciscans at San Isidoro where the Guardian Fr David introduced me to Bishop Wilfrid Fox Napier OFM of Kokstad, who, with Archbishop Naidoo of Capetown, represents the episcopal conference of South Africa — both are of the non- white majority. Bishop Fox and I discovered a common bond: we had both been students in Galway. He had been there, though, much later than I: I've noticed before that bishops are getting younger every year . . .

He talked freely about the situation in South Africa where, as he said, the bishops are now 'caught in the middle'. Bitterly resented by the government and their supporters for their stand on racial issues and their refusal to 'play the game', some more radical black leaders are disappointed with what they see as a half-hearted attitude to the 'people's struggle' - the issue here being, of course, the use of violence. A familiar problem, but one without easy answers.

Monday 19 th October

Today, according to the Synod schedule, the working groups were due to report to the plenary session, with special reports from the auditors who were attached to the various groups. Following precedent, we all dutifully turned up in the Sala Stampa for a briefing on this morning's instalment. No briefing. This didn't mean that Diarmuid had gone on strike or decided to take a break in Capri - the same applied in all languages. No briefings this evening either. Alright, we'd make do with our bulletin summaries. No bulletins. By way of consolation prize, there will be another Grand Press Conference with star performers tomorrow, at which all will be revealed.

Correction. There were/are bulletins, but all they contain are the 84 names of those who presented the twelve group reports (and, in the morning edition, those taking part in tomorrow's press conference.)

To the PMV centre this afternoon to hear Professor Alexandre Faivre of Strasbourg who is an authority on patristics and early christian history. His subject was dear to my heart: to put it in simple terms, a critical historical examination of the 'lay-cleric' dichotomy. His treatment of the question - on which he has written and published a great deal over the past three or four years (including an article, this year, in English, in Lumen Vitae XLII, 2) - was scholarly and cogent, if perhaps rather too detailed for an hour's talk, giving us little opportunity to digest his exposition of development in the periods surveyed. And it would be quite impossible for me to summarise it here. But I would suggest that what he had to say confirmed and expanded the biblical and historical evidence adduced by Sean Freyne and Werner- Jeanrond in their essays in Pobal.

In his summing-up, Professor Faivre referred to Paul VI's Motu Proprio of August 1972, 'Ministeria Quaedam' which gave the first post-Conciliar encouragement to the institution of lay ministries. He notes that the Pope explicitly deprecated any blurring of the distinction between lay and clerical and he goes on:

The Synod Fathers have the difficult task of identifying what may be expected from lay people within the framework of their mission and vocation. Will they now dare to ask how far their Christian liberty can extend? ? Will they go so far as to ask if they may call into question a distinction whose limitations are evident, while reserving their right to judge what may be opportune in concrete instances?

To me it seems historically clear . . . that not only has the concept of 'lay persons' varied over the first centuries of the Church, but that there was a time when Christian communities lived without being aware of any 'clerical-lay' distinction . . .

As to the immediate implications, he quoted another historian 'of the contemporary period' Professor Giuseppe Albergo:

It has become more and more clear over the past few years that the secular distinction of the Church as 'clergy' and 'laity' has entered a terminal phase, by reason of a crisis provoked not only by external pressures but also by its own internal contradictions. Both show the incurable inadequacy of the 'clergy-laity'

dichotomy as an expression of the profound reality of the Church which would correspond to the degree of ecclesial consciousness evoked by the Holy Spirit in our time. Of course, as Faivre would be the first to admit, historical analysis and argument isn't everything, but we ignore it at our peril.

So where do we go from here? Well, I don't expect the Synod to change course and drop the dread dichotomy overboard. But there are hopeful signs . . .

Tuesday 20th October

The promised (or threatened) Press Conference took place after the end of this morning's plenary session of the Synod (of which more in a moment). The hall where it was held was packed, again including alleged journalists of doubtful provenance. It may be pure coincidence that a couple of hundred Americans 'from forty states' have arrived in town for a 'Gathering of Catholic Lay Leadership in Solidarity with the Synod' (of whom, also, more later).

The panel for the Conference consisted of Archbishop Henry d'Souza of Calcutta, Bishops from Nigeria and Honduras, and Ms Riviere, one of the auditors, who spoke in the Synod last week.

First we were given a run-down on the reports of the circuli minores. Since in the nature of things this was a synthesis, or series of syntheses, on what was said, it didn't really tell us very much about differences of approach, emphasis, even substance.

Some such differences must have been revealed in the actual reports, but the only one referred to (by Archbishop May) was on the matter of ordained and unordained ministries where we were told there was 'less unanimity' than on other questions, e.g. the parish, in regard to which there was (not surprisingly) a 'consensus' on its 'indispensability'. From the different areas of debate, what we were given were, as I've said, synthetic summations which tended to homogenise various shades of opinion — rather as happened to the consultation on the first Lineamenta, as published in the Instrumentum Laboris (see my Prologue above). I don't, of course, blame the five speakers, each of whom dealt with a different area: theology and ecclesiology; the 'movements'; parish and ministries; inculturation, women, young people; the laity and politics. What the commentators present clearly objected to and resented was that we were not allowed to do our own analysis (and perhaps synthesis) of what was said.

Blandness continued to rule during question-time. 'Safe' questions were welcomed and edifyingly commented on, e.g. 'Did the Fathers consider the plight of churches behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains?' But more awkward queries were turned away with soft answers . . . Such performances are, I need hardly say, not peculiar to Vatican occasions: in the political world the Press Conference is recognised as one of the classic methods of concealing information - except, of course, when those in authority want to inform. Practised interrogators can of course often find out what they want to know by a combination of skill, skulduggery and persistence. Alas! Such voices were few and far between at today's event.

This morning's bulletin did unexpectedly provide material of interest, apart from the names of the auditors who reported from their groups. For the two bishops from Vietnam who have at last arrived were given the opportunity of making their formal 'interventions' - both well worth quoting.

The first to speak was Bishop Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Sang, Auxiliary of Ha Noi:

The following are some of the characteristic traits of the South Vietnamese laity, since the time when the whole country fell under the communist regime.

*    After a period of confusion and anxiety, the faithful laity have been able to pull themselves together again and take courage. Enlightened by the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the pastoral letter of the Vietnamese episcopal conference, they have found a way to 'live the Gospel in the heart of the nation'. They mix with their fellow citizens in the factory, school, hospitals, cooperatives, etc.

•   They have won the sympathy of all, even the atheist authorities, with their radiant charity, their honesty and their justice. The faithful laity are a presence there, even where there are no priests, no churches. They exercise the functions of the common priesthood of all the faithful by organising communities of prayer and charity, celebrating the liturgy of the Word of God and by bringing the sacraments to the sick.

Their role has been both useful and necessary because of the lack of priests.

•    After the sixth general assembly of the Communist Party under the new leader, Mr Nguyen-Van-Linh, and as a result of the successful collaboration, in the field of economics, between the faithful laity and their atheist fellow citizens, the government has adopted an attitude of detente and openness towards religion. Two large seminaries have been opened and have admitted a number, albeit limited, of seminarians. New ordinations to the priesthood are permitted.

•   The faithful laity both in the South and in the North have great devotion to the reception of the sacraments: above all, Holy Mass and Confession.

•   An important question that engages our attention is the solid and profound formation of the faithful laity. What makes this work difficult is that the government has banned all movement and assembling together of christians. It has limited religious formation to that which is given in church during the space of one or two hours only on Sundays.

He was followed by Bishop Paul Marie Nguyen Minh Nhat, Coadjutor of Xuan Loc.

The christian lay person in Vietnam, proud of the faith of his forefathers, has found himself forced to affirm in his daily life his awareness that he belongs to the Church:

•    By reception of the sacraments. In distant regions, the priests, who do manage to get there only seldom, soon become very tired because of the very many demands made upon them. Christians experience a very real need for the Eucharist. No distance discourages them from attending Mass, not even twenty to thirty, or at times, seventy kilometres. Every sort of transport is used (on foot, public transport, bicycles, even carts). Obstacles are usually overcome (tiredness, old age, rain). The Mass is understood as a coming together to pray to the Lord, who gives his Spirit and love, bringing a closer union between those who share this meal with the Pope, the Bishops and all those who work for the Church of God.

•    The Vietnamese lay christian is unfamiliar with the texts of Vatican II. However ... he has for a long time now been putting their essence into practice:

—   By fulfilling . . . the duties of a good citizen in the work yards and the cooperatives where he is respected and holds posts of responsibility.

—   In observing God's commandments, which results in less discord, fewer divorces, no abortion in the families, and few social problems: alcoholism, theft, corruption of morals.

—    By enlisting in the army, to defend his country just like other citizens.

I don't know whether the two bishops would use the phrase 'bamboo curtain'. But the strength of their witness puts all our easy platitudes where they belong.

•A-

The American invasion which I mentioned represents a formidable array of organisations - and acronyms. It's hosted by the National Association for Lay Ministry (NALM), the American Catholic Lay Network (ACLN) and the Pallottine Institute for Lay Leadership and Apostolate Research (PILLAR), and sponsors range from the National Office for Black Catholics, and the North American Conference for Separated/Divorced Catholics, to Pax Christi, USA. Each of the two hundred plus participants has paid something over 1,000 dollars - this includes air fare from New York, hotel, and some other perquisites. They actually came to town at the weekend but their first session (apart from liturgies) was last evening when 'a panel of experts' spoke on 'the Church and Society in Asia'. Unfortunately I was unable to attend, and I'll have to give this evening's session ('English-Speaking Countries') a miss also, as I'm bidden to sup at the General House of the Marists.

My invitation there, by the way, comes from their General Secretary, Fr Sean Fagan, whose nationality may be guessed at, and is one of the busiest men in Rome. There are quite a few Irishmen 'at the top' (or near it) of international religious bodies, old and new. The Augustinian General is Fr Martin Nolan, and Fr Damian Byrne is Master-General of the Dominicans — although he is quick to point out that he's only there by default: the first choice of the general chapter was Fr Albert Nolan [sic] of South Africa, who declined the honour, believing he should stay on the battle-ground. (Indeed he has been such a doughty fighter against apartheid and all its works, that, had he come to Rome, he might well have been prevented from returning.)

The actual superior general of the Marists is an Australian - his country and New Zealand are both strongly represented in the Society . . . So, I'm off to their establishment in the suburb of Monteverde. Tomorrow I'll report on an interesting session at Pro Mundi Vita, which actually links with the American Conference.

Wednesday 21st October

The Irish presence is coming back in some strength. A television team from RTE led by Billy FitzGerald is hard at work, and Nuala Kernan and Maureen Groarke (the great and good aforementioned from the Irish Laity Commission) have arrived as promised, along with two other lay women, from Armagh and Down and Connor.

Nuala, Maureen and I were in fact part of the ridiculously small audience who gathered at the PMV centre yesterday afternoon to hear two speakers from the US National Office for Black Catholics, Walter Hubbard of Seattle and Charles Hammock of Philadelphia. What they had to say was fascinating, and one listened with mixed feelings of shame, sadness, admiration and finally great hope.

The story of Black Catholic America is all too little known over here - and, I suspect, in White Catholic America too, or was, until recently. I summarise:

There are approximately 1,295,000 Black Catholics in the United States of America. The Black Catholic population is about 5 per cent of the total Black population, 30,000,000, and approximately 3 per cent of the total Catholic population, 53,000,000, of the United States. The effects of evangelisation, together with the migration of Haitian Catholics to the United States, is evident in the increasing number of Black Catholics. Between 1975 and 1985, the number of Black Catholics increased by 42 per cent while there was only a 17.3 per cent increase in the overall Black population . . .

However, this very growth also represents what is perhaps one of the greatest challenges to evangelisation currently facing the Church . . . Making its liturgy, style of worship, expression of its ancient truths relevant to a people, accustomed on the whole to a  non-Western European approach to God . . . represents an enormous task ahead for the American Church.

We believe there are vast potential and opportunities for evangelisation within the Black community. The Black community must take many steps to initiate action on our behalf; other action requires the cooperation and active encouragement of the entire American Church and World Church.

However, the social and economic condition of Black Americans creates particular obstacles to evangelisation efforts . . . The Black family is significantly poorer than the white family. In 1984, while 85 per cent of white children live with both parents, less than half of the Black children (44 per cent) live with both of their parents. Related to this is the distressing statistic that one out of every two children born of Black parents lives in poverty.

All: Catholic Social Teaching and the US Economy (1986), points out that Blacks are about three times more likely to be poor than whites. It is also widely reported that Black women have two and one-half times more abortions than white women . . . There were about seven million Black Americans a century ago, and only an estimated one hundred thousand were Catholics. Most church leaders were not outspoken in their zeal for racial justice and Black evangelisation ... In the South, Black Catholics studied in segregated schools and prayed in segregated churches, or had to sit in the galleries; Blacks received communion after whites and confessed sins in segregated confessionals . . .

During the 1920s and 1930s, Black candidates for the priesthood and religious life were generally not accepted into American seminaries and convents. Even today, there are diocesan seminaries that have graduated no more than two or three Black priests. The policies of the past explain why today there are fewer than 300 Black priests and less than 700 Black sisters. As late as 1959, five years after the 1954 US Supreme Court school desegregation ruling, Jubilee magazine could state that only two parochial schools were integrated out of 745 in the states of the South. Racism and resistance to integration were deeply rooted in history and culture.

Consequently, today Black Catholics often live a shadow existence in the larger Black community as well as in the larger

Catholic Church . . . The established 1.3 million Black Catholics in the country seem invisible in comparison to the great number of white Catholics. Black Catholics are seen as a negligible minority in the larger Black Christian community, and Black Catholics are seen as a negligible minority in the larger Catholic community. Unfortunately, some white Catholics look upon their Black brethren as a small group within the Church seeking more attention and influence than the numbers merit.

There have undoubtedly been considerable advances over the past thirty years, mainly achieved by Black Catholics themselves, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement. 'The inspiration of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, the struggle for justice, the building of Black pride, freedom, full equality were not just dreams — they became reality.' . . And, however belatedly, the American bishops threw their weight behind the struggle, fully acknowledging the Church's past participation in the 'sin of racism'. In a famous pastoral they wrote:

How great the scandal given by racist Catholics who would make the Body of Christ ... a sign of racial oppression. Yet, all too often, the Church in our country has been for many a 'white church, a racist institution.'

And, as recently as last month, the Pope, speaking to Black Catholic leaders in New Orleans, spoke of 'the providential role' played by Martin Luther King in contributing to 'the rightful human betterment of Black Americans and therefore to the improvement of American society as a whole.'

There are few Black bishops in the American church - one diocesan ordinary and, I think, nine auxiliaries. And the NOBC report pays tribute to Black priests, sisters, brothers and deacons who have been 'very important to the history and growth of the Black community'. However . . .

It is apparent that in the near future we are not likely to experience any radical increase in the number of vocations. Thus the future of the Church in the Black community rests in a special way with the laity . . . Evangelisation now becomes more and more the province of lay Catholics.

And the report insists on the need for training (including leadership training) for this task.

We asked whether US Irish Catholic attitudes had improved.

Walter Hubbard's gentle and kindly answer seemed to add up to 'yes - but not much' ... Is the Church now seen by Blacks to be the 'Church of the Poor'? Well, again, yes - to some extent. Maureen Groarke said her experience in the States some years ago was that the people who cared most about Black poverty were Jews . . . They agreed.

After lunch today (at the Irish College), I had to deal with some urgent personal business which got in the way of my attendance at fringe events. But I have plenty to think about: my encounter with the Black Americans has affected me far more deeply than I might have imagined. After all, we have heard equally moving witness from other voices, especially from the Second and Third Worlds. On reflection, I think two factors have made this one special.

First of all there's the personal element. The two speakers spoke to us close-up: the accident of there being a very small audience at the PMV made it all very intimate. And secondly, the very fact of their coming from a world which is historically and culturally close to us made what they said all the more, literally, shocking. It was 'our kind of people' who did these things to their fellow-Catholics: who put them in segregated churches, or made them sit on their own in a gallery, and made them tell their sins in a separate 'box' and brought them Christ's Body only when we were fed . . . And we talk so easily of reconciliation!

Thursday 22nd October

Up at the crack of dawn - well, a little later actually - in order to be at the Jesuit Curia by nine o'clock for what is described as 'an American think-tank' on 'The Laity and the Church.' And these Americans are addicted to the vice of punctuality - which shows how marginal Irish and Italian influence must be after all.

As I approached the building on the corner of Borgo Santo Spirito and Via dei Penitentieri (very close to the Vatican), there was a bit of a breeze, reminding me that this, they say, is the windiest corner in Rome. And, of course, the Romans will tell you why.

It appears (or so they say) that, once upon a time, the Devil and the Wind went for a walk. As they were passing the Jesuit HQ the Devil said:

'I've just remembered I've something to discuss with Father General. Will you wait a moment?'  And the Wind (or so they say) is still waiting.

The principal speaker at the 'think-tank' is Ms Sally Cunneen. She, and Joe, her husband, who is also here, started the American radical Catholic journal Cross-Currents in the early fifties: it is happily still going strong. Her talk is entitled: 'Women's Issues — Church/World Issues' and, as I listen, there's hardly a paragraph, a sentence that doesn't make me want to say: 'Yes, yes, yes!, I must get her to agree to have it published in Ireland by Austin Flannery in Doctrine and Life!: he doesn't know it yet, but he will. So I'm not going to try to summarise her paper here, or even to quote extensively from it. But I will quote from two of her earlier paragraphs, which I think spell out her thesis that 'women's issues are in reality both church and world issues'. I want to begin by recalling that it was John XXIII who first pointed out, in Pacem in Terris . . . that one of the key signs of contemporary life was the awakening desire of women for free and responsible participation in determining their own lives 'in the social and economic sphere, in the fields of learning and culture, and in public life.

I want to dwell on John's words for they are truly prophetic, issued in the very year Betty Friedan's book appeared. This elderly Italian pope already knew that, if women did not rethink and reshape their own roles, neither the church nor the world could carry out the common task the Spirit called them to: 'The task of restoring the relation of the human family in truth, justice, love and in freedom' . . . His was not the severely rational, bureaucratic mind that divides reality into sacred and secular, or assigns priests to the care of'souls', women to the care of children, and men to the care of the body politic . . .

When Sally Cunneen finished speaking - and was given a standing ovation — the rest was silence. I mean to me.

There were several other speakers but I can't remember a word of what they said, except for one wonderful woman who articulated two of my own deepest antipathies. She said she 'cringes' when she hears the word formation . . . and also when she hears people (especially Catholics) say: 'We have the truth'. Truth, as she so rightly added, is not something you possess — it's something you never stop searching for. I would only add that happiness is when truth possesses us ... As to 'formation', I know it's used quite innocently and with good intention, but we should never, never talk about 'forming' anybody. Only God can do that. In fact he has.

Anyway, what's wrong with 'education'?

Over in the Sala Stampa the recently deserted halls are buzzing with a swarm of hacks, some of whom I recognise but others are oddly unfamiliar. What are they doing? Do they - dreadful thought — know something I don't? Thank God for national solidarity!

Paddy Agnew, the only Irish journalist at present resident in Rome, puts me out of my agony. This, he kindly explains, has nothing to do with the Synod: the whole press corps, native and foreign, have been alerted by the word that a statement on Vatican Finances is to be issued at any moment. At long last, all will be revealed! Not being a 'Vaticanologist', and still less an authority on finance, the information didn't really stir my blood. However, I stood by with the rest, till Paddy, with Ulster good sense, decided nothing was to be gained by hanging around since the agencies would have the story anyway, and comment, if any, could wait. So he took me off to lunch at the Foreign Press Club.

Back to the Americans this evening for a 'Panel on South America'. It was as dull and disappointing as this morning's session was exhilarating. None of the panellists displayed any particular expertise, although they all had, in some way, Latin-American backgrounds, and while I was there (I had to leave shortly before the end) nobody came to grips with any of the questions that such a subject should provoke.

I spotted Gary Mac Eoin in the audience and wondered why he for one wasn't included in the panel in view of his being a recognised authority on Latin-American affairs generally, and the religious dimension in particular. He has been writing on the subject for some years and continues to contribute reports and comments to the National Catholic Reporter and other journals. His exclusion cannot have been due to national prejudice since Nuala Kernan, and a Canadian lay woman, were asked to join the panel and to speak on 'their own countries' - whatever that had to do with the subject.

There was a curious ambivalence of approach, or rather, as it seemed, a confusion between two very distinct though related issues: the 'Hispanic' element in United States Catholicism, and the Church in Latin America itself. (Clearly 'South' America was a misnomer, as there were frequent references to Central America.)

Neither issue was discussed in any depth, or with any great sense of urgency. Having heard the Black story, the situation of the new 'Hispanics' cried out for informed, sensitive treatment with an awareness of the complex social and cultural aspects involved. What we heard were mostly pious generalities . . . The second issue got equally superficial treatment with a degree of what I can only describe as pussy-footing. Nobody seemed to know or care that Christians are suffering in Latin America today under regimes which are supported, not to say propped up, by the United States taxpayer.

Friday 23rd October

Bright and early to the Sala Stampa where copies of the press release on 'Vatican Finances' were waiting, crisp and fresh. Well, fairly fresh: the document was in fact issued late yesterday afternoon. I hadn't intended to comment on it here, as it's not particularly relevant to the Synod. However I think two aspects of its content are worth a thought.

I should say first of all that there are no dreadful revelations. It comes as no surprise that the Holy See is in the red, and looks like staying there for some time. In 1987, total income is expected to be just under 70 billion lire (about IR£38 million) with expenses amounting to over twice that amount. In other words the deficit will be around IR£40 million, It is however noted that this will be under one per cent more than last year: there have been some generous contributions, as well as 'strict' budgetary controls.

The stated purpose of the press release is to announce that the 'Council of Cardinals for the Study of the Organisation and Economic Problems of the Holy See' has approved a letter to be sent next month 'to the bishops of the world expressing thanks for increased generosity' and asking for more of the same. The Secretary of State, Cardinal Casaroli, presided at a meeting of the Council held earlier this week and he is quoted as saying that

. . . the income of the Holy see comes largely from investments made from funds paid by the Italian government in 1929 in compensation for properties taken from the Church during the reunification of Italy. Since the increase in the number of central services offered by the Church in response to the Second Vatican Council, he noted that the traditional sources were no longer adequate to maintain the services offered by the Holy See to the Church throughout the world and expressed the hope that the bishops, religious communities and faithful throughout the world who benefited from these services might be more generous in supporting them.

In recent years, deficits have been covered by the free-will offerings of the faithful made to the Holy Father and by operating reserves. Such operating reserves have now been almost completely exhausted and offerings from all around the world are still far from sufficient to cover the expenses of the services provided.

The first point to be made is the obvious one that it is no longer good enough to issue bland statements in the name of a 'Council of Cardinals' on such a serious matter, involving the whole Church and, at the paying end, especially the laity. If ever there was a practical example of the need for de-clericalisation surely this is it. Nobody, of course, would suggest that the Pope's senior advisers should not have a leading role in this area, as elsewhere, but surely what is glaringly obvious is the need for lay collaboration - including that of financial and administrative experts - in tackling what must be seen as a potential, if not an actual, source of scandal. And, to begin with, details of the 'central services' provided should, as a matter of urgency, be published in plain language. Without this it will be increasingly difficult to maintain contributions at the present level, let alone raising that level.

There has been already far too much speculation, informed and otherwise, as well as plain rumour and gossip, arising out of the Banco Ambrosiano affair, and the role of Archbishop Marcinkus. As I have said at tedious length already, the only antidote to this sort of thing is to publish the facts.

It can't be denied that at parish level most of us are still living in the past as far as realistic 'support for our pastors' is concerned. Even those of us who know only too well what overheads mean, at home or at work, seem to think that the Church is miraculously unaffected by such nasty things as price-rises and inflation. Many good Catholics still give less per week than they do, say, for a week's newspapers - or a single round of drinks. Two often it's still the have-nots who give with a generosity far beyond their means.

But. People have a right to know what they are giving for. This information is now often reasonably available at local level, so why not from Rome?

There is however another side to the whole question, one touching on that local-universal relationship which is the context in which so much of the Synod agenda must be seen. Cardinal Casaroli cites the Second Vatican Council as causing an 'increase in the number of central services offered by the Church'. I'm sure he's right, though I cannot call many examples to mind. On the other hand the Council did emphasise the autonomy (though not of course the sovereignty) of the local Church, and many of us looked forward — and still do - to much growth and benefit for God's people as a fruit of this insight. In many parts of the world, indeed, these expectations have been and continue to be realised, not least in places where poverty and oppression have evoked a response which can only be seen as the work of the Holy Spirit. It would be a tragedy if this kind of growth and pastoral action, rooted in peoples of many cultures and circumstances, were to weaken or fade.

I know I am not alone in fearing such a possibility, due to a clouding of the vision of Lumen Gentium and what some have gone so far as to describe as a new centralism — and indeed 'a new Pelagianism'. This latter accusation may well be an exaggeration, but centralising signs and tendencies are by no means absent. One recognises of course that those responsible are moved by zeal, and by a sense of universal mission which, though genuine, is I believe mistakenly directed. I'll be returning to this topic in another connection, but I see the problem of finance as very much part of the pattern.

For the moment, let me just relate what the very distinguished head of a world-wide and long established Society said to me the other evening (before the press release was issued). He believes that the Vatican's financial problems are providential: that they are a real 'sign of the times', an indication that our present 'top-heavy' system can't survive and that devolution, decentralisation — call it what you will — is inevitable. And he sees it as a positive challenge to new thinking in the Church.

This afternoon, before he attended the evening session of his working group, Fr John Vaughn, Minister-General of the Friars

Minor, spared a little time to talk to me about a matter which I've already referred to (in the Prologue to this volume). Fr John is an American and he was accompanied by an Irish member of his Council, Fr Louis Brennan.

The matter in question relates to the 'status' of the order - is it clerical, or lay or both or neither? The detail is more complex than might appear from reports by which my own interest was aroused, but the central issue is ultimately simple. The Vatican authorities cannot accept the 'mixed' status which the friars claim, on both historical and theological grounds, but the question may still be regarded as open to further study, and Fr John and his associates hope it can be resolved as they see it. (On a practical level, it involves the right of unordained friars to hold any office in the order, without special permission.)

While it is, of course, very much a domestic question for the friars, its implications and possible repercussions could spread very wide. Francis did not see himself as a cleric when he gathered his first community, and was still a layman, it appears, when the Pope confirmed their rule. He was later ordained a deacon, and others of the community were priests, but he did not see those as constituting a ruling class. And in fact his successor Brother Elias was himself a lay member when he became leader of the community.

I know that other orders and congregations have been thinking on similar lines to the friars, and while one can't foresee the outcome, it looks as if 'a third force' neither lay nor clerical may develop in the Church: I refer of course to canonical status. This could be a development of considerable significance for what I see as the ultimately inevitable declericalisation of ministry — ordained as well as unordained.

A bulletin issued this afternoon reports that, at the morning session, a first outline text of Propositions, collated by the special secretary and the reporters from the working groups, was presented to the Synod. The paragraph which followed may clarify the procedure — or then again it may not:

In an attempt to unify as much as possible the various themes under discussion, without at the same time omitting any significant contribution, the formulation of Propositions was preceded in each group by a collation and synthesis of ideas. This attempt, in itself principally a technical exercise, will provide the groups (who meet this afternoon and tomorrow) with a single text. Their task will be ultimately to draw up proposals to be submitted to the Holy Father.

Tomorrow afternoon the relator, the special secretary and the group reporters will draw up an elenchus defmitivus — a definite list of proposals to be submitted for the Synod's approval.

We are also informed that 'a first draft of the Message of the Synod to the People of God' was presented this morning by Bishop Castrillon Hoyas of Colombia (Memo: find out why he?)

Saturday 24th October

Does anyone remember a cartoon-advertisement that used to appear every weekend in one of the Irish daily papers based on the phrase 'This is Saturday'?: the idea being that once you realised that the shops would be closed next day, you rushed out to stock up on the brand of sweets in the ad. I take it that in Italy today you go out early to the news-stand to make sure of your copy of II Sabato, a journal now in its tenth year, published in Milan, appearing every Saturday, and selling for the equivalent of one Irish pound. Very well produced in tabloid form, with excellent lay out and illustrations (mostly black and white, but some in colour), it runs to forty pages and does well on ads.

Today's edition has Cardinal Ratzinger on its front page, smiling a knowing smile: inside, we are told, we can read a long 'conversation' which Sabato journalists had recently with him, 'touching on the most crucial aspects of Catholic life today'.

There are substantial articles on political and social affairs, at home and abroad. There are features on science, ecology, the arts, books, theatre, television, the cinema, motoring. What is different is the 'angle', the point of view, the approach. For II Sabato is not just a 'Catholic' weekly, it is the voice of Communione e Liberazione . . . Well, one of its voices. For its monthly publication, 30 Giorni [Thirty Days] is equally well-produced, even more glossy and sophisticated in its well-heeled way: clearly there's no lack of money. It appears simultaneously in Spanish, French and Portuguese, as well as Italian, with separate Spanish editions for Spain and Mexico. I await the English edition with interest.

Again, the text is as professional as the lay out, and, yet again, the 'movement' rules OK. The October edition naturally features the Synod, with 'close-up' views of personalities and issues. A commentator in the influential and highly readable Rome daily La Repubblica remarks that if 30 Giorni's 'politicisation' of the story appeared in a secular 'journal' there would be an outcry on the grounds that the writer failed to recognise that the Church (and accordingly the Synod) is mystery!

One of Communione e Liberazione's main targets seems to be the American Bishops' Conference, or at least their spokesmen, both here and during the Pope's visit to the States. As well as direct sniping (especially at Cardinal Bernardin and Archbishop Weakland) by their own hacks, 30 Giorni features a rather smarmy interview with Jean-Loup Dherse (remember, Mr Channel Tunnel?) in the course of which he is quoted as expressing admiration for papal and Vatican statements on socio-economic issues, but describing the US bishops' pastoral on the same subject as 'a deliciously American exercise'. I will not quote him further, as I suspect that some of the interview may be libellous. But when I read what this former Vice- President of the World Bank — who seems to have had a charismatic conversion experience - is purported to have said, I can only recall a famous remark made in another context: Well he would, wouldn't he?'

Both Sabato and 30 Giorni, it is only fair to say, do, from time to time, publish useful and well-informed articles on public issues. But neither has a reputation for excessive charity when dealing with those of whom they disapprove, especially within the Church . . . My own overall reaction is rather like that of the great Duke of Wellington, when presented with some new recruits: 'I don't know if they'll frighten the enemy, but by God they frighten me!' . . .

Sunday 25th October

This morning the Pope performed the final canonisation of the Synod period, and once again the newly declared saint was a layman. Giuseppe Moscati was a doctor from Benevento, a graduate of

Naples medical school and a distinguished physiologist. He died in 1927 at the age of forty-seven, having worked 'with extraordinary intensity' on all levels of his profession. In his homily, the Pope said: By nature and vocation, Moscati was first and foremost a doctor who heals: response to the needs of men and to their sufferings was for him a pressing demand which could not be denied . . . The human warmth with which he visited the sick - especially the most poor and abandoned - was such that people sought him out. He was a forerunner and protagonist of the humanisation of medicine ... In his own words: 'Not science but love has transformed the world; only a very few have made history through science; but all can be signs of life everlasting, in which death is only a stage, if they dedicate themselves to the good.'

it

The Synod, and all of us whom it has brought to Rome, have been very fortunate in that at least it has been a remarkably fine October. There was some thunder and lightning early on, accompanied by the kind of rain that makes the worst we get in Ireland merely a 'soft day, thank God'. But it all passed over very quickly and these autumn days and evenings have been like a good Irish summer.

So when I was invited to get away from it all - I mean the Synod and all its works - and get out of Rome for a few hours today, I jumped at the chance. Friends (Tony is Irish, Julia English) are reluctantly moving out of their tiny flat in Trastevere, and they took me to see their new place in Trevignano, about forty kilometres north west of Rome. It's a charming little lake-side town, and even though there were a lot of Romans there for the day, and it attracts many visitors, it has kept its character - and its 'characters'. At least, that's what the tourists would call them.

I mean the semi-circle of men in their Sunday suits, sitting outside the cafe, not drinking (though one was eating a bun), not playing cards, and hardly talking. Sitting and thinking. Or maybe just sitting. But looking at those stern Etruscan faces, not so much carved as broken from stone, I knew this was a parliament to be treated with respect. A sort of Synod. Quieter, but perhaps wiser.

They did turn their heads a little when a christening party passed on their way to the church (whose electric campanile played the Lourdes hymn every quarter-hour on the quarter-hour - or maybe it only sounded like that). This being Italy, the child was robed like a prince.

And later into the Postiglione, an old coaching-inn on the Via Casia, outpouring from another church, came a wedding party this time, to eat and drink and celebrate. Need I say that the bride outshone the shining shimmering afternoon? — and I don't mean the shimmer effect of all those litres of vino bianco.

In the rites of passage, sacred and secular are still as one.

Monday 26th October

The definitive list of Synod proposals which were to have been drawn up over the weekend are due for presentation and discussion this morning. However not a word is being allowed to trickle out till tomorrow when amendments will, it appears, be taken (based on the thinking to be done this afternoon by the Fathers 'at home'. In a more worldly assembly this would be the time for alliances, lobbying, horse-trading and backstairs intrigue. Not having the resources of 30 Giorni I won't speculate).

Pro Mundi Vita have really been doing a great job in bringing us voices from all over the world. This afternoon we hear from Sri Lanka in the person of Father S.J. Emmanuel, Rector of St Francis Xavier Seminary in Jaffna, who despite his initials and his job is not a Jesuit. He has been acting as a theological advisor to the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences and addressed their assembly in Tokyo last month. In the unhappy conflict between the Singhalese majority and the Tamil minority in the north, he makes no secret of his loyalty: within the minority (mainly Hindu), he represents a smaller christian minority.

He is severely critical of the Church, the majority of whose bishops are Singhalese, for its 'Red Cross' behaviour - burying the dead and caring for the wounded - instead of assuming its 'due prophetic role of evaluating and reacting to the human situation of suffering and oppression'. He concedes that, belatedly, the bishops expressed their concern in a pastoral letter, issued three years ago, but that it did not carry 'a hard-hitting message to those responsible for evil'. He attributes this over-cautious attitude to an old fear among Singhalese Catholics, once accused of colonialism: they feel now is the time to prove their patriotism, in order to 'ensure a safe future' at the expense of suppressing their 'concern for justice and solidarity with the distant suffering'.

One would like to hear another side of the story, but Fr Emmanuel's sincerity and authority cannot be gainsaid. And his dilemma about violence is, he says, that of 'the church of the minority' who can only 'condemn terrorism in general but not act concretely against the militants' without whom the people say they would have been 'wiped out long ago' by undisciplined state forces ... A not unfamiliar tale.

Another very different part of the Third World, but one also where it is easier to generalise about violence than to deal with the concrete situation, is Colombia (not the Sri Lankan capital but the South American state). At an earlier PMV session, Hector A. Torres, a journalist from Bogota, editor of the review Solidarided, which is published by a group of basic communities and other christians, provided some chilling statistics on the violation of all human rights in that country. To the question 'Who are responsible for the campaign of terror?' his reply was unhesitant and unambiguous: the army, the wealthy classes, and 140 'death squads' whose existence has been officially confirmed by the government, and who are being openly armed from the official arsenal. It is, he says, a war designed to crush finally the struggle for the land — especially that of the 'Indians whose claim to their ancient patrimony is theoretically conceded '- as well as to prevent the development of genuine trade unions, and of a progressive political party which would break the present tweedledum-tweedledee duopoly of alternating liberal and conservative governments. The campaign has resulted in political assassinations, disappearances, torture and widespread repression.

The facts and figures quoted by Torres reveal a situation which, literally, cries to heaven for vengeance, and surely has a claim on the active concern of christians everywhere. But he indicated that the attitude of most of the bishops in Colombia is, to put it mildly, ambiguous. Here again is an example of the plain people of God living their faith in a situation of appalling injustice, and doing so for the most part with little leadership from on high.

And what can we do? I mean people like you and me in Ireland and elsewhere in the lands of comparative justice and comparative affluence. Some of you are doing quite a bit — Franciscans and Columbans, and young men and women going out at their own expense to help the Nicaraguans to save the coffee crop, and all the other good things that our sisters and brothers are doing for their sisters and brothers . . . But it's not nearly enough. Now that our rulers have decided (on our behalf) to cut development aid, we need to do more and more in other ways . . . (Memo: what the hell can or will I do?)

One of the most puzzling aspects of this Synod has been the ecumenical dimension. Like the dog that didn't bark in the night. On this of all subjects, surely the witness and experience of other christians would have been invaluable: but, not alone was there no provision made for this, but it wasn't even mentioned in the Lineamenta, the Instrumentum Laboris, or as far as I am aware, in any of the interventions in plenary session. The only indirect reference made to the laity, in either theology or praxis, outside of the Latin tradition, was in the interventions of some of the speakers from eastern churches (within the Roman communion). It might have been imagined that, over twenty years after the Vatican II decree on ecumenism, and, indeed, in the light of all the interchurch dialogue that has been going on, not alone with the 'dissident' churches of the east, but also (and this has been equally if not more important) with those of the post-Reformation tradition, that it would have been impossible not to invite representatives of some of these churches to speak to the Synod. The fact that this didn't happen is a rather disturbing indication of the superficiality of our ecumenical awareness.

Those of us who remember the remarkable contribution made by the observers at Vatican II may well be saddened at what must be regarded as a valuable opportunity stupidly missed. I was reminded of this at dinner this evening, with one of the pioneers of the Secretariat of Christian Unity, John Long, an American Jesuit, who is now vice-rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, and a distinguished ecumenical theologian, specialising in the orthodox and other eastern traditions.

I learned a great deal from him about the complex history of the lay-clerical situation in the Greek and Russian churches. As in the west, imperial politics and the establishment of Christianity played a crucial role, as did, at a later stage, the long Turkish hegemony in the near east, and in Europe itself. And I was particularly interested in his account of the way theology, as a professional academic discipline, has become almost a lay preserve. (I recalled an afternoon

» in Zagorsk when I had a long conversation with two Russian orthodox theologians, both of them laymen. They were very open and pleasant, but also very conservative indeed. I remember asking them was there any move to bring the modern Russian vernacular into the liturgy instead of Old Slavonic: they said that 'the people wouldn't like it'!)

But, of course, to us in Ireland and in the west generally, the Protestant and Anglican traditions are of more immediate relevance. In the Church of Ireland the laity play an important part in government and administration, at parish and diocesan level, but also in the national synod. Among the Presbyterians 'lay power' seems more evident still, not always with benevolent effect — as more than one ecumenically minded minister in the north has learned very painfully. But it is precisely the fact that the situation both east and west is very varied, and by no means as simple as some Catholic radicals would like to believe, that it would have been immensely helpful to the Synod to have been given informed and balanced accounts of what goes on. And on the theological and ecclesiological levels too there could be much to learn. The ordination of women in the Presbyterian church is now fully accepted, if not yet widespread, in Ireland, while women are being admitted to the ordained diaconate in the Church of Ireland: their admission to the priesthood is unlikely to be long delayed, as elsewhere in the Anglican communion. It is ironic that 'ecumenical' arguments have been adduced in that communion against ordination!

Tuesday 27th October

Black Tuesday

Well, what would you call it, if you were a newspaper reporter ready to send home the first fruits of the long incubation period which has been going on since the Synod Fathers broke up into their working groups nearly a fortnight ago - and now you're told that the only news is that there's no news? That it has been decided not to release any details of the proposals which have been submitted by the different groups and have now been collected and put into a definite list on which this morning modi, (amendments) were to be offered.

And that even when the process is completed, the final vote taken (on Thursday morning), and the final version of the proposals incorporated into the synodal document which will be submitted to the Pope - even then, we have as now no guarantee that any information as to the content of the document will be published.

I've never seen so many flabbergasted journalists in one place at the same time. Maybe we shouldn't have been. Most of us are all too well aware that when it comes to communicating with the media the Vatican runs the Kremlin a close second. But hope keeps putting up a brave fight against experience and, as today, it continues to go down fighting.

Since I've no incredulous news editor waiting at the other end of a phone line, or watching for telefax or whatever, I'm not as directly affected as are many of my colleagues. But I can sympathise with them — I can remember holes of fifteen or thirty minutes waiting to be filled on a radio schedule in the early days of the Council, and the desperate attempts to find material and beat the deadline. It's the sort of thing you look back on years later with a nostalgic glow, but it is not, as they say, funny at the time. Not at all funny.

But of course to regard the whole thing as a battle of wits between the Synod authorities and the media is to connive in a fiction which only trivialises a very serious matter. For, like it or not, in a democratic or pseudo-democratic society the 'media' are precisely that: the means of communicating with the great mass of the people. To keep information from the press, the radio, the television reporters, is to keep it from the ordinary citizen who has no other, privileged, access to what is, in theory, a matter of public concern and therefore public knowledge.

If that's the case in civil society why or how can it be any different in the Church? Or are all the fine and noble words about the people of God in the documents of Vatican II just that: fine and noble, but empty and meaningless? And isn't it particularly ironic that this 'blackout', this decision to keep the people in the dark, this paper wall erected around the sanctuary of secrecy, should come from a Synod which was called to celebrate the dignity of the ordinary Christian?

Ironic, and more than a little sick. Of course, within an hour of the announcement (made by an embarrassed and stonewalling Diarmuid Martin), the forbidden information became available — for the price of a photocopy. Or rather two photocopies: one of the first collection of some sixty proposals, as they emerged from the circuli minores, and one of the second, edited, collation in which the proposals - now reduced to fifty-four — are presented for voting and amendment.

This second text will have been through the mill this morning (I gather the amendments run into several hundreds), and will be replaced by a third and final elenchus to be voted on, on Thursday. So I will spare you any comparison of marks 1 and 2, except to note an apparently significant discrepancy between them.

Proposal 4a (in text 1) suggests that 'ecclesiastical offices - liturgical, included - which may be exercised without holy orders should be open also to women and girls as appropriate'. This has disappeared without trace from text 2 ... I look forward to text 3.

So the 'blackout' has proved, not just bad, but mad. The blinds are pulled down but they turn out to be transparent. Or nearly so. In fact, this last situation is much worse than the first from everyone's point of view. It has simply meant more work for the journalists, and, since the texts are in Latin, their reports may in many cases leave much to be desired in the way of accuracy. And if there are any serious misstatements, the blame must rest squarely with the Synod secretariat. An authorised translation, officially available, would have made amateur 'versions' unnecessary, and so helped to avoid that 'misrepresentation by the media' of which all institutions love to complain. And while I should be the last to pretend that media people always do their job well, the one way of ensuring that they'll do it badly is the kind of mindless behaviour that we were exposed to today . . . Who was responsible? Well, no doubt we'll soon be told - on all sides.

This afternoon the admirable Jerzy Turowicz talked to an overflow audience at Pro Mundi Vita. I missed most of it, as I had to do a piece for BBC Belfast. But clearly, Jerzy, speaking both in French and in English, gave his usual balanced view of things as they really are in Poland, and how the laity there serve the church in their unique world.

I recalled a visit in 1977 when the present Pope was still archbishop of Cracow. It was Corpus Christi and the great folk festival surrounding the traditional procession was in full swing. No one could believe that the regime was antagonistic to religion — or to freedom of expression. But they were, and only the determination of a united people could win what gains they could, like the new church at Nova Huta which after many refusals and obstructions rose to serve a new community industrialised and removed from its traditional roots.

I asked Jerzy about similar communities in the continuing transformation of agricultural Poland into an industrial nation. (Farming is now a minority occupation.) He was able to report that several new churches had been and are being built, but that there is still a shortage: in the meantime, people meet elsewhere in liturgical assembly, often breaking the law to do so.

Back to the Sala Stampa for another briefing. This time at least we learned a little of what was going on, e.g. the voting for the new concilium or council of the Synod, the body which maintains continuity from year to year. And there was some speculation on what the next Synod might discuss: faith and culture; youth; a further investigation of previous synodal topics.

As to the real matter in hand, it appears the proposals are being reconsidered in the light of the amendments, which are said now to number nearly 800. We must wait and see.

Wednesday 28th October

Breakfast this morning consists of caffe latte and a bun in the excellent and inexpensive bar of the 'Greg' - the Gregorian University, one of Rome's two chief Catholic academies: the other being the Angelicum. They have both gradually moved from being deeply conservative institutions to a position where scholars, like Liam Walsh OP, can hold a chair (in the Angelicum), and the Australian Gerald O'Collins can become dean of theology (in the Gregorian).

It was an appointment with O'Collins that brought me so early there. He is as unpompous and lively-minded as when I first met him on the printed page, writing with courageous clarity of insight on the virgin conception and the resurrection of Jesus — and always with radical biblical orthodoxy. He is now devoting a considerable proportion of his time to administration, a necessary evil, it seems, if we are not to let the bureaucrats take over. He has all the air of a man who is happily 'stretched'.

On the Synod, his expectations are not high but he takes the view that as an institution, or rather as a process, it is of considerable value - with all its limitations. It does preserve the idea of 'collegiality in action' which was one of the insights of the council and is exceeding­ly important just now, when there might appear to be a certain centralising tendency gaining ground.

His remarks were, in a way — a very different way — echoed this afternoon by Peter Hebblethwaite when he gave the final talk of the session to Pro Mundi Vita. Pessimistic as to the outcome of the month's deliberations, he felt that effective collegiality was pretty well a dead duck (my phrase, not his) and that the central authority was determined to keep it so. But what is sometimes called affective collegiality — the experience, perhaps the dynamic, of coming together and working together in however constrained a way — continues to maintain a sense of fellowship among local bishops from all corners of the world ... As ever, Hebblethwaite's talk as a whole was shrewd, well-informed, and rooted in a deep (if unbiddable) commitment.

Another English voice this afternoon - this time from within the Synod — Patricia Jones, who is a full-time pastoral and administrative worker in the Archdiocese of Liverpool, and one of the auditors: you'll remember that she spoke at one of the early synodal sessions. She is very emphatically glad to have been there, and to have taken part in what she sees as a very substantial move forward towards bringing 'us' and 'them' together.

By no means uncritical of the process in detail, she is convinced that it nevertheless is of enormous value as a living sign of the living Church - ordained and unordained. She spoke with particular enthusiasm of her experience of the small groups, the circuli minores, where her presence as a laywoman was gradually taken for granted - and not alone her presence, but her full participation in what was said and done. She is firmly of the opinion that such practical initiatives at all levels are pointers to the way forward. After all, pastoral councils and basic communities are now taken for granted — and these are obviously dependent on the cooperation of cleric, religious, laymen and laywomen. Praxis will, she believes, lead eventually to acceptance of principle.

I nearly forgot to mention today's 'news' as issued at briefings and in bulletins. Nothing substantial. Voting for the Synod council still goes on (the first ballot failed to produce a result), and the 'heads of office of the Roman Curia' presented 'reports' to the Synod — some a general view of their work, some on a special theme. Thus Cardinal

Palazzini, Prefect of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints, spoke on 'The Sanctity of the Laity', suggesting that more lay names should be put forward for beatification and canonisation. This led one irreverent colleague to make the outrageous comment: 'Apparently the only good layman is a dead layman'!

A hint, the merest nod, from you-know-whom that journalists may not, in the long run, go home empty-handed: that a summary of proposals may be made available . . . Again, the irreverent (and ungrateful) comment: 'big deal'!

Thursday 29th October

At last we've reached the final working day of the Synod. The Fathers were given the definitive text ('mark' 3) of the proposals last evening, as revised in accordance with such amendments as were accepted (out of 780!). Acceptance depended (apart from duplication of previous contributions) on whether the amendment was consonant with the general thrust of a proposal — if it wasn't, it was thrown out. The decision-makers are those officers of the Synod who had the thankless job of collation: no doubt they will be blamed for the dilution of some of the stronger suggestions. This is a problem neither unique nor easily resolved.

However, voting took place this morning and the results will be announced this evening — though probably not outside the hallowed walls. The names of the new Synod council were announced — they include Archbishop Naidoo of Cape Town, Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago and Cardinal Martini of Milan (among those elected by the Synod) and, perhaps inevitably, Cardinal Ratzinger (nominated with two others by the Pope).

An interesting interlude in this morning's session — if not of immediate synodal relevance — was a statement by Ratzinger on 'the dialogue in progress between the Holy See and Archbishop Lefebvre' — who has apparently agreed to accept an apostolic visitor (named as Cardinal Gagnon), to gather all information required for regularising the situation of Lefebvre's dissident 'Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X'. Cardinal Ratzinger added that 'naturally the hoped for definitive solution is based on the pre-supposition that there exists the obedience due to the supreme pontiff and loyalty to the Magisterium of the Holy See'. There was apparently no explicit reference to Lefebvre's acceptance of the constitutions and decrees of Vatican II, and of consequent papal instructions - which seems a little curious in view of the fact that his rebellion centred precisely on this . . . Again we'll have to wait and see.

The main item this morning was the presentation to the Synod of the text of a 'Message to the People of God' under the title In the Path of the Council.

These 'messages' issued at the end of Synod assemblies are regarded generally as essays in 'cop-out': substitutes for any real information. However, in all fairness, it must be said that their aim is rather different - as we saw at the last 'extraordinary' Synod, when we were also given an account of the statement and proposals put forward to the Pope, and released at his express wish.

The present message will not, I'm afraid, excite any of those members of the people of God who read it: but there are good things in it. Thus:

As she walks in human history, the Church too must look for new horizons, new challenges . . .

We condemn the discrimination which proceeds from sin and still continues in our own day in many countries . . .

If you possess the smallest measure of authority, it is to put yourselves at the service of the human person and not to enslave it

But on the whole, little to stir the blood.

There was thunder today, Roman thunder, as if Jove himself had decided to take a hand, lightning (as advertised on TV), and buckets, or rather continuous vats, of Roman rain. It reminded me that Vatican 1 ended to a similar celestial explosion . . . coupled with Garibaldi's guns, it made some faint hearts wonder if they had been right, after all, about infallibility ... It doesn't appear to have affected today's proceedings except in so far as this poor outsider was trying to keep a date with a Canadian bishop — and was just, quite simply, prevented from doing so by a consortium involvng absent taxi-drivers, the weather people, and of course the curia (with, probably, the active support of Communione e Liberazione and all my other enemies). Just because I'm an Irish Catholic.

Anyway I arrived at last, like a drowned rat, at the Sala Stampa for a report on the very last working session. The final vote on the proposals did take place - there are no figures, but I'd be surprised if the results (even if we were given them) contained many or any surprises. The acting president of the session, Cardinal Pironio, delivered himself of some unexceptional thoughts in the manner of a traditional fervorino — although he did so following what he saw (and most of us would see) as the triple synodal concern: holiness, communion, mission. He was followed briefly by Pope John Paul.

This afternoon we picked up our copies of the final sub secreto version of the Synod proposals, as presented to the Pope. A couple of synodal bishops were there also, seeking to replace the documents they were 'told to hand in'.

And here surely is the biggest let down of the whole month. For it would appear on a rapid run through of the document that the mountain has truly 'conceived, and brought forth a mouse'. The same idea was being freely expressed all round me this evening, by friends of the Church, as well as those not so friendly, but also had been willing to be convinced.

This evening we (the Irish team) went up to the Irish College. The Cardinal and Bishop Daly were quite forthcoming, and the Cardinal for one did not conceal his disappointment over what now is more and more apparently a non-event - as far as tangible results are concerned. They both, again, reflected warmly the importance of the synodal experience, and the Cardinal was quite lively in defence of the Synod as a collegial institute. But . . .

But as far as hard or clear statements are concerned where are we? Well, certainly, on the question of women in the Church, which the Cardinal raised with great clarity, humour and eloquence (not alone in this Synod, but in the 'extraordinary' one of 1985), there seems to be damn all on offer. He didn't say that, but I doubt if he'd disagree with me.

A suggestion by one of my colleagues that it seemed the Church had 'lost its way' drew Cahal Daly to a vigorous and clearly heartfelt rebuttal: to him, the Synod was an assembly of people from local churches all over the world, determined on bringing the Good News to humanity, with an energy of mind and heart. And, he said, one fundamental fact was made crystal clear: the call to holiness was also a call to the work of justice. To be holy, for priest or layman, could not mean a flight from the human realities, but a dedication to serve and make good in the spirit of the Gospel.

Friday 30th October

And so to St Peter's for the closing liturgy. The usual frustrations: tourists taking pictures all over the place, as well as genuine pilgrims who haven't actually planned to spend two hours here — and of course, one's own guilt at looking down the nose at all of these. But, what the hell! It is a celebration of the whole Church . . . well, of the church united with the See of Rome: and the realities of prayer and sacrament shine through . . . Once again, a multi-cultured input: lessons and prayers in Spanish and Creole and Polish and Malay and so on, and of course the omnipresent witness of universality in the great range of race and colour, evident both around the altar and in the whole assembly. The Church may not have yet learned that women could be, and should be, clerics or curial officials or cardinals (to go no further), but, thank God, black and white and yellow can be and are.

The Pope gave a homily, emphasising the three themes of mystery, communion and mission. He looked back to the 1985 'extraordinary' Synod as providing an introduction to a new understanding of the place of all the people of God in the great communio of the Church. He spoke of women and young people, without any particular reference to their roles . . .

After the liturgy, the Synod members were entertained to lunch. I understand that in his informal address to his guests, the Pope said that he 'could understand the annoyance of the journalists' . . . 'Okay,' they say, 'but who allowed it to happen?' — 'it' being the 'secrecy' decision. Was it the group moderators, as we were told? And were Hume and Lorscheider the unlikely chief censors (as Awenire claims)? Or, what? Will we ever know?

This afternoon, the final press conference - again all-star, multilingual. And also, need I say it? - of minimal value to any authentic journalist who has been doing his homework. (Oh! Yes: the 'summary' of the elenchus of final draft '3' of the proposals has been made available. Thanks to those responsible — one of whom I believe was Diarmuid. But of course, the full text itself is also 'available'.)

I don't want to sound like a nag, but I have to put it on record that this afternoon's conference was another exercise in futility. Prelates in fancy dress and a tame lay person handing out bland platitudes cannot answer the needs of the media, the church and the world . . .

The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.

Dinner tonight at the Embassy to the Holy See in honour of the Cardinal, as guest of Ambassador Brendan Dillon and his charming wife Alice. I didn't feel it was an occasion to press the Cardinal, but, as last night, he didn't pretend to be over the moon, while still 'enthusiastic' about the Synod process. A pleasant evening, at the end of a none-too-easy month.

The phrase 'love-hate relationship' might have been invented to describe my feelings for Rome. I've been coming here for twenty-five years, and every time I'm charmed, exasperated and moved to something like love. I'm glad that I'm leaving to-morrow morning: this is the first time my wallet has been lost or lifted, and I've had other practical problems. The traffic is awful. Prices have gone up through the roof. And yet, and yet . . .

Saturday 31st October

I'm on BA 503. It's all over and I'm not sure what to say about it. However, to quote the immortal words of Scarlett O'Hara: 'I'll think of that to-morrow' ... In the meantime, nostalgia is already creeping in. A rividerci, Roma.