AMECEA: On Synodality, It’s Not Yet Time For Church in Africa to Congratulate Herself
Dr. David Kaulemu
Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
At a recent webinar on better ways to be a synodal Church, a panelist pointed out the need to develop a culture that stretches beyond the three-year synodal journey, to being a Church that journeys together to eternity.
“I feel that Synodality is a call for more serious work. A lot is required of us so that the synodality processes take root in our day-to-day lives individually and communally, locally, and globally,” Dr. David Kaulemu a professor and Dean of the School of Education at Arrupe Jesuits University (AJU) in Harare, Zimbabwe shared with online participants.
Even though the synodal journey started in October 2021 and will end in October 2024, Dr. Kaulemu who was one of the panelists during the Thursday, August 29, webinar, disclosed that the Church cannot be fully synodal in three years but “needs to develop a culture that will go beyond three years.”
Addressing how to be a more relational Church Mr. Kaulemu highlighted that as much as some people think that the Church in Africa is already Synodal in her operations, “It is not yet the time for self-congratulations.”
He warns, “We are congratulating ourselves too early when not enough work has been done on the ground and I feel that we are not being authentic and honest enough about the process.”
Mr. Kaulemu was speaking ahead of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops to take place next month October in Rome, during a webinar organized by the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) in partnership with the Association of Consecrated Women in Eastern and Central Africa (ACWECA) the Pan-African Committee for Communication (CEPACS), and in collaboration with the African Synodality Initiative (ASI).
The Dean of the School of Education at AJU stressed the aspect of listening as one of the virtues synodality has exalted so much. He notes that listening has been a challenge for the Catholic Church given the relation to European imperial history.
“The Synod challenges us to pay attention to the Holy Spirit in a way that challenges our sense of the Divine. Many Catholics are less comfortable with the tradition of the Holy Spirit than with emphasis on Christ and God the Father. This has been seen in problems of acceptance of the Charismatic tradition,” the panelists underscored and posed a concern, “How shall we understand and embrace the tradition of listening to the Holy Spirit as a source of communion, participation, and mission?
He suggests that as the webinar’s theme focused on: ‘How to be a synodal Church, responsive to the call to conversion: A reflection on the Second Instrumentum Laboris,’ “We should learn by practicing especially the Spiritual Conversations in all their different forms.”
Therefore, according to Mr. Kaulemu, “Continued, repeated Spiritual Conversations in the Culture of Encounter should help us to negotiate through the challenges and synodality must become our way of life since solutions are in the conversations led by the Spirit.”
