Towards a Listening Church, book by Jos Moons, Sjoerd Mulder and Karim Schelkens
This book, subtitled Synodal Experiences, edited by Jos Moons, Sjoerd Mulder and Karim Schelkens, three colleagues affiliated with Tilburg University and KU Leuven, presents a surprising kaleidoscope of existing experiences with synodality. These may include ancient democratic decision-making in religious orders, the way the people chose their bishops in the ancient church, and Anglican, Protestant and Orthodox practices of dialogical decision-making. Furthermore, recent experiments such as the Synodal Way in Germany will be discussed, in addition to experiences from Latin America and African palaver culture.
A process of synodality is underway in the Roman Catholic Church worldwide. The current Pope Francis is pushing for a style of being Church that emphasizes that believers are on the move together.
This is quite searching: for how can believers learn to speak out better and bishops learn to listen better? How do religious traditions deal with disagreements? How do you organize genuine dialogue in the context of an ecclesial culture that has grown weary of it?
Such questions are addressed in the just-published book, published by Halewijn.