Reflections of Card. Czerny on the meditations of Fr Timothy Radcliffe O.P. at Synod
The introduction to the book “Listening Together” is signed by the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
“Radcliffe delivers to the Church and the world an incisive meditation on synodality, high and at the same time accessible to all.” With these words, the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DPIHD), Cardinal Michael Czerny SJ, presents the book by Fr Timothy Radcliffe O.P. entitled “Listening Together”.
As last year, Fr Timothy Radcliffe O.P. is acting as spiritual assistant to the Synodal Assembly on Synodality 2024. And this time too, his meditations guided the two-day retreat that preceded the synodal session.
“Listening Together, Meditations on Synodality”
The book brings together a series of interventions and writings of the former Master of the Order of Preachers on the theme of synodality. At the opening, the Prefect of the DPIHD - who, like the Dominican theologian, is a member of the Synod - described the reading as “an opportunity to look up and imagine a Church with open doors, welcoming and hospitable, in which all can recognize themselves”.
Extracting four “thematic nodes” from Radcliffe's theological reflection, such as hope, unity/plurality, friendship, and authority, Czerny highlights their richness, showing the value of their significance within the Church's synodal process.
In particular, the Cardinal underlines that the purpose of the Synod is to open horizons of hope. As in the Gospel during the Last Supper, hope finds strength and reason in moments of crisis. We read in the book's introduction: “Christian hope is Eucharistic because despite recognizing the vulnerabilities, limitations, and impediments of the present, it confidently surrenders to God's impossible”.
Finally, speaking of the exercise of authority, Cardinal Czerny underlines a good example of the Dominicans from which the Church should draw inspiration, which consists in ‘giving each one the way to find his own “power”’ and concludes: it is an “exercise of shared responsibility”.
