New book on provides lay Roman Catholics with access to what synodality means for the church
In his new book about the Roman Catholic Church’s groundbreaking Synod on Synodality, Michael W. Higgins begins his entry for Oct. 2 this way: “On the same day that the synod formally opened with a solemn pontifical Mass with several thousands in attendance, a small group of women — including representatives from the Canadian Network for Women’s Equality — staged a gentle, humour-laced, and earnest demonstration on the Lungotevere Castello near the Castel Sant’Angelo, variously a papal citadel, residence, and prison. “The group was stating their opposition to the exclusion of women from ordained ministry — diaconal and presbyteral. “While watching the protestors kick their empty tin cans (which they dubbed their ‘vati-cans’), I noticed two young cassock-wearing clerics walk by them with studied indifference, if not a smirk of condescension. And that is clerical Rome.” In the book, titled A Synod Diary: Sixty Days That Shook the Church (Paulist Press),...