Cardinal Rys: The church of ‘we’ saves community from ‘clerical narcissism’

KRAKÓW, Poland (OSV News) — Opening a new academic year at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków, Poland, Cardinal Grzegorz Rys of Lódz posed “the most important question in the church” today for him: “How to be a missionary synodal church?”

The cardinal also asked: “Is anyone interested in the answer?”

“Does it interest the church in Poland? Is it of interest to the church in Lódz? Does it interest the church in Kraków,” he asked Oct. 16 in a room packed with students, university and church officials. He’d flown in from Italy for one day to be a guest speaker, returning to Rome that same night.

He said the latter question came to his mind when the Synod on Synodality, taking place in Rome Oct. 2-27 and of which Cardinal Rys is a delegate, reflected on transparency, accountability and responsibility, “and I had this impression that more and more, we are simply talking about power in the church, not mission,” he said.

He spoke on the day that traditionally inaugurates the academic year at the pontifical university in St. John Paul’s metropolitan see — the anniversary of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla’s election to papacy.

“I do hope this question interests you,” Cardinal Rys told the crowd gathered in the Sanctuary of St. John Paul II.

“If (the question) didn’t bounce back, it would mean that we are creating some kind of … collective that is separate, that is a parallel to the church of Jesus Christ, full of routine and I would say, suicidal inertia — that everything is happening as it has been from the beginning, is now and forever and ever. Amen,” he stressed, pointing to the need for discussion in the church and listening to each other’s voices in a world that is changing.

“The mission sets the way. A common path. Syn hodos,” he said, referring to the Latin for “walking together.”

“There is no mission without a road” that is walked together, the cardinal said. Otherwise, it’s “some drifting in place, some circling around,” he added.

How should this road walked together toward a missionary synodal church look, Cardinal Rys asked, giving an answer that Pope Francis gave during Synod on Synodality sessions: “He said the mission must be a work of mercy,” because “mercy is the key experience of God.” He added that the pope also said, “Who does not accept mercy from God is an atheist. At most a disguised Christian.”

The message of faith, the Polish cardinal said, “is characterized by this simple pattern of discipline: I have accepted — I transmit. I have accepted — I transmit. You have accepted the mercy of God — you can proclaim the mercy of God to the world. There is no mission without mercy.”

Pointing to a second step needed for the church to become missionary, Cardinal Rys said a
“conversion to relationship” is needed, as explained in “instrumentum laboris,” or the synodal working document.

The cardinal reflected on what Mother Maria Grazia Angelini told the synodal delegates: “She analyzed the parable of the good Samaritan and said that you have to look at what the priest and the Levite are focused on. (They’re focused) on worship, on the temple, on the law. … What was the Samaritan focused on? On the person. And this focus on the person from a stranger brought him close,” Cardinal Rys said.

“When we convert to a relationship, the person becomes more important to us than the structures,” he stressed.

“Bishops need to take care of relationships,” the archbishop of Lódz said, referring to what Pope Francis told the delegates in the synodal hall: “It is the relationship with God, it is the relationship with other bishops, the relationship with priests and the relationship with the people of God. All four, Francis said, are dynamic relationships, and woe to the bishop who can’t take care of all four.”

Cardinal Rys also said that there is no mission without a context.

“What does that mean? It means that the church is not some abstract entity, but needs to be rooted in a concrete place, in time, in the community,” the cardinal said, and for that the church needs “courage.”

He also said that 38% of participants in the Synod on Synodality are “non-bishops” — and it’s important to discuss the way forward for the church with them. He listed three permanent deacons, 39 people of consecrated life, including 37 religious sisters, two religious brothers, 65 presbyters and 70 laypeople participating as synod delegates.

Cardinal Rys said that “Pope Francis posed this question — whether the bishop who is accompanied by all these people — is he weaker or stronger? The answer is obvious that he is stronger, that he is stronger with the church that stands by him.”

Such a composition, the cardinal said, “stems precisely from baptismal ecclesiology, from the fact that we respect each other, we believe that we respect each other’s equal dignity.”

He said that bishops should consult the people of God and that Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, said during the Synod on Synodality that such consultation prevents “clerical narcissism.”

If “whatever happens must somehow get the approval of the people of God, then this narcissism is trumped,” the cardinal said, pointing to “community discernment.”

But the discernment, and the decisions that follow, Cardinal Rys said, cannot be such “where the point is to talk to each other.” Discernment has to be practiced according to three rules, the cardinal stressed: “Responsibility, competence and (awareness of) office,” which helps not to fall into the trap of the “idol of discernment.”

The problem today, the cardinal said, is that “a very private, individualistic discernment rises to the level of everything that is most important in the church,” whereas “the synod says we need community discernment, ecclesial discernment.”

Cardinal Rys also pointed out that the “people of God are never a simple sum of baptized people. Rather, it is a ‘we.’ The church. There is a ‘we’ of the church.”

“The ‘we’ is not to eliminate the importance of the person, but it is the ‘we’ that must be guided by such simple principles that we know very well of subsidiarity and solidarity,” the cardinal said.

“If we are ‘us,’ then a whole space opens up for this mission … to be merciful, to be sensitive to the person, and to fearlessly enter every context in which we find ourselves with the Gospel.”

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