An Outsider on the Inside: Anglican Reflections on the Synod on the Consecrated Life

Extract

To be catapulted, at very short notice, into the deliberations of a worldwide gathering of Catholic bishops and religious was inevitably something of a culture shock, compounded no doubt by the sheer effort of concentration involved in listening, five hours a day for the first fortnight, to individual members’ interventions in their own languages (with instant translators whose command of Latin idiom tended to survive in their English versions). Yet the comprehensive overview of the present situation of the consecrated life in all its manifestations that emerged could hardly have been projected in any other way. We heard moving accounts from sisters, still young, from the countries of eastern Europe of the way they had not only maintained the religious life underground in the face of communist government restrictions, but continued to attract new vocations and to carry out their formation. We heard from African bishops (speaking confidently, I thought, for a church come of age) of an explosion of vocations that promises to give the lie to the assumption that celibacy will always be something alien to the African male; of the inherent dangers in a society where so many, in the secular sphere, are looking for ways of self-betterment; of the need for higher levels of education, for which outside help will be needed, and at the same time for a process of inculturation which the indigenous can only achieve themselves, and to which the assumptions and living standards of expatriates can be a serious hindrance.