Dr Elissa Roper, a theologian with a strong focus on synodality, will be the keynote speaker at the Diocesan Assembly on 15 February. Dr Roper says it is time for us to move on to being a 'mature, responsible and loving' Church and synodality will help us get there. “Transformation is not about obedience, it’s not about reading a book and knowing what to do; it’s about developing our community together. it’s fundamentally about asking questions, seeking, and being intelligent, reasonable, responsible and loving,” she says.
When talking about reform, Dr Roper emphasises that the Church is not a building, or a third party, but us, the people of God — “If the Church is one, holy, Catholic and apostolic, that’s us,” she says. Dr Roper sees a reformed Church as one where people have agency, feel they can question, have their voice respected and can act on their baptismal calling in a way which is meaningful to them. A synodal Church is open and supportive to this, whilst being aware that clericalism is a barrier that needs to be removed.
In discussing reform, Dr Elissa points to the experience of Vatican II and two concepts which were often used to define the nature and extent of renewal:
Aggiornamento: an Italian word which means to ‘bring up to date’, essentially, a broader contexualisation to find new ways to effectively communicate the Gospel in a way that is effective today.
Ressourcement: a French word meaning to return to our roots, to the authoritative sources of Christian faith, so that we rediscover their truth and meaning in order to face our challenges today.
“These two movements, aggiornamento and ressourcement, really do reform us as people and therefore reform us as Church,” says Dr Roper.
“Synodality is retaining that which in our history is authentic; it’s retaining what is true to Christ and to us, being the body of Christ. It's also removing that which is inauthentic. So, there is a continuity, and there is a break with what we name as clericalism. People are very aware that the time is right. It’s a Kairos. It’s God’s time.
Dr Roper says synodality gives us a new perspective, “It’s not about learning new stuff. It’s actually about using a new vision, a new pair of goggles for our eyes so that we don't see ourselves as gatekeepers or holding all the rules and all the information.”
Indeed, Dr Roper offers us a fresh perspective on our faith, and a large depth of field. Partly because she has experienced firsthand the difficult predicament of young people who have a strong desire for God in their lives but have no access to a faith community; partly because she had never met a Catholic until she was an adult (and he just happened to be the man she married); and partly because of her searching nature, which has led her to complete a doctoral thesis, “Synodality and Authenticity: Towards a Contemporary Ecclesiology for the Catholic Church.”
“I value my pre-Catholic experience,” says Dr Roper, “because it’s made me aware of where people are when they’re looking from the outside.” Dr Roper grew up in a non-religious family, and from a young age she felt a constant desire for God in her life and was fascinated with Jesus when she learned about him at the Uniting Church of Australia school she attended. Dr Roper says that searching for God can be a difficult place for people to be in, especially if the opportunity to access a faith community doesn’t present itself.
“When I first met my husband, I didn’t know anything about Catholics. I’d been taught that they were gullible people!” laughs Dr Roper, but says her thinking changed after attending her first Catholic Mass with her (now) husband. “It opened my eyes – not just to a new community, but to a whole new world,” she says.
“What struck me about the Mass, was that this perse mix of people all got down on their knees in worship; I’d never seen that in my life.” What Dr Roper said she experienced was not a group of gullible people, but a group of warm, genuine, and reasonable people. Naturally she started asking her husband “all the hard questions.”
Dr Roper says her experience of her first Mass clarifies that as Catholics, we need to live as communities of hope, faith and warmth, so that this comes across in all that we do.
“Jesus made it simple when he said in John’s Gospel, '‘By this shall all people know that you are my disciples, the love you have for each other’ [John 13:34-35]. I mean, it boils down to that. If you genuinely love each other, and I’m going to use a different wording from the Reading, I’m going to use the word friendship, and Pope Francis uses the word ‘fraternity’. If we unpack that a bit, it’s that desire to know each other, to be friendly, to look out for each other and to ease each other’s sufferings. When we’re good at that as a parish, we will be a light to the world. People sense that far more than doctrinal perfection. “
After continuing to attend Mass, Dr Roper said she felt drawn to her husband as a person, then to the parish as a community, and then reached a point where she felt a personal call from God and felt compelled to join the Catholic Church.
The eight-month long Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) Programme fuelled Dr Roper’s curiosity. “In the early days I felt that there was this whole new language; there was a whole culture that I initially wasn’t aware of, and I wanted to learn more about it. I’m an academic at heart, so I signed up for theology classes and just loved it,” says Dr Roper.
“It took a long time before I felt like theology connected with the whole of my life, not just the Catholic portion but the whole of my life and then everything just really started to make sense,” she says. Dr Roper then made a commitment to complete a doctorate in theology – focusing on synodality as a path towards a Church that is “intelligent, reasonable, responsible and loving.”
Dr Roper has drawn inspiration from Bernard Lonergan SJ, a Canadian Jesuit Priest, philosopher, theologian and ecclesiologist, who called for us to “be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, and be responsible.” For Dr Roper, this seems like a natural way to be Catholic, but she acknowledges that for many Catholics, and particularly older Catholics, who have to some extent been trained not to question, this could be a radical concept. She believes that as a community, we need to support and nourish each other in our response to God’s vocation.
“As Church, we need to help those who have felt, to some extent, infantilised by the Church to move out of a childhood of faith. It’s time to move on. As Lonergan would say, transformation is not about obedience, it’s not about reading a book and knowing what to do, it’s about developing our community together in the Spirit. It’s fundamentally about asking questions, seeking, and being intelligent, reasonable, responsible and loving.
People naturally detect when we’re not being reasonable anymore. And there are some big issues in society, where society has moved ahead, and the Church has been left behind. You know, we really need to do some more talking about that.”
Dr Roper believes it is time to start laying foundations for a Church that is more dialogical, mature, merciful and authentic. She explains,
“This is the sense of the day; it’s the people saying, there is something broken and we need to remove that from our culture, from our institution, from the way we do things. If we aim for transformation within a clerical culture, we are going to struggle. So, the spirit is actually starting to, in the words of Pope Francis, ‘kick the table over’ and start to shake things up.”
Dr Roper sees two obstacles to synodality, clericalism and closely related to that, is that Catholics, in general, have been trained to be without agency. “We’ve diminished ourselves to the point of not being able to give our gifts. And that makes us really ineffective,” she explains.
Dr Roper says that Clergy will always have a place in the synodal Church. It’s important to understand that clericalism is not a product of the Clergy – we all must take responsibility for clericalism. We all need to co-author the transformation of our Church. Dr Roper says, “We need to use the imagination of synodality to reimagine our relationships in a much more healthy way, in a way that is true to the early church and to the heart of being a healthy body of Christ.”
If synodality is the key to reform, what does ‘living synodality’ look like? Dr Roper explains,
“I think at the heart of it, Jesus would say, it is being loving, Pope Francis would say, we must be evangelising. So, there’s our internal life as Church – we are friends with each other, which will help repair our broken relations of clericalism. And then, that which propels us outwards. Living synodally means being friends with God, friends with each other and then being propelled outwards in friendships. Catholics tend to turn away from the word evanglise, or be intimidated by it, so I think we need to reframe it in terms of friendship.”
Dr Roper believes that if Catholics come to understand that our acts of friendship are acts of missionary discipleship, it could be transforming for parishes. “It can be life-giving to know that all of the hard work that you’re doing, which has never had any light shone on it, is God’s work.”
For Dr Roper, it is now time that, as Catholics and as Church, we work out how to engage people. Diocesan Assemblies are part of the way forward, part of the journey towards living synodally.
“It’s my heart’s desire that the assembly will light a spark for the average Catholic in an average parish, who perhaps is now feeling burdened and unhappy because we've lost so many brothers and sisters in our gatherings, in our worship, yet Pope Francis asks us ‘to be joyful’. I hope this Diocesan Assembly will help us to reignite our response to our baptismal call — we’ve got our relationship with Christ, we’ve got our faith, but sometimes we need a spark.”
Elissa’s Keynote at the Diocesan Assembly on Wednesday 15 February will be livestreamed. You can view it on our Facebook page, our YouTube Channel or Website homepage.
