In the United States, there is a growing gap between Catholic academia and the institutional Church, one that hinders our ability to understand the sex-abuse crisis.
“Authentic collaboration in the Church is possible only when women are seen as whole and necessary, not as challenges or threats to the ‘purity’ of clergy.”
If the institutional Church takes seriously the call to synodality, then its clergy must be willing to humbly consider the Spirit that moves its people.
The German synod expresses a different Catholic culture, one rooted in Vatican II, but without the qualms about the compatibility between modernity and faith.
The challenge of engagement facing the synod is real. But these readers point to the progress at their own institutions as a model of how we can move forward.
