Introduction: Synodality
Winter 2021
Synodality
Synodality, the Magisterium, and the Faith of the People of God
Roch Kereszty“[W]henever a bishop or priest acts as both father and brother—and, with St. Bernard, we should add as a mother—to his people, the community comes alive, sacramental life deepens, and the coordinated and nurtured gifts of the Spirit transform the Church community into communion.”
Communion, Sacramental Authority, and the Limits of Synodality
Nicholas J. Healy Jr.“Hierarchical ministry is not delegated or authorized by members of the Church; it is a gift of grace.”
Synodality, Sociologism, and the Judgment of History
Michael Hanby“The Christian life and the Church’s evangelizing mission are not administrative programs but a culture and way of life.”
Synodality: Then and Now–in Rome and in Germany
Hans Feichtinger“Questions of power and its exercise in the Church are real and need to be resolved, but we must not let them become a distraction from the more fundamental questions of truth, fidelity, and apostolic mission, to which all authority in the Church is ordered.”
“Paul in Every Letter Remembers You”: The Holy Spirit and the Unity of the Church
Thomas Esposito“[T]he inheritance of Paul’s letters is a function of the common faith and practice that binds all the Christian churches together in harmony and guarantees the fidelity of the present to the apostolic pillars of the past.”
Catholic Politics and the Analogy of Authority
D. C. Schindler“The loss of authority is an evacuation of the substance of political existence—indeed, the radical impoverishment of all community from top to bottom.”
Why We Need
Why We Need Alexander Schmemann
David W. Fagerberg“Our crisis is one in which liturgy is no longer the source of our vision, theology is alienated from life, and piety is fed by soft sentimentalism.”
Retrieving the Tradition
Questions about the Structure and Duties of the Synod of Bishops
Joseph Ratzinger Benedict XVI“The essential ecclesiological purpose of the college of bishops is not to form a central ecclesiastical government, but precisely the reverse: to help build up the Church as an organism that grows in living cells and is alive and one.”