Anthony Akinwale, OP, who participated in the Synod of Bishops “For a Synodal Church: communion, participation and mission”.
“Dominicanes in synodi coetu de synodalitate”
“Synodality is listening and listening enriches our charism. Without a spirituality of listening, all our efforts to exercise the charism of preaching disfigure us to the point of becoming agitated and noisy ideologues. To preach is to speak of God having listened to God. Our own Order, by our motto, serves as a mirror and memory of the Church, whose witnessing value is rooted in and nourished by contemplation”, underlines in the following interview granted to the Ordo Praedicatorum media Bro Anthony Akinwale, OP, who participated in the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops “For a Synodal Church: communion, participation and mission”, invited by the Nigerian Episcopal Conference as expert of the Nigerian bishops participating in the Synod.
1. What was your personal experience of the Synod like?
I can only speak of my “personal experience” at the Synod in a nuanced sense. I was neither a synod delegate nor an expert invited by the Synod Secretariat. I was invited by the Nigerian Bishops’ Conference as an expert witness for the Nigerian bishops participating in the Synod. So I speak in a nuanced sense. There were sessions whose discussions were made public through the electronic media. I was able to listen to what was being discussed. I was also constantly engaged in conversations with other theologians who were interested in what was happening at the Synod, and I shared my views with the bishops. Speaking even in that nuanced sense, I think you have to refer what has happened so far to the Second Vatican Council. That Council will always be a point of reference. The Council was a movement of the Holy Spirit that keeps the Church ever young, but always faithful to its apostolic origins, mediated through the long and continuing conversation that is tradition. A synodal Church must walk with the past and the present into the future, and the Second Vatican Council is a guide that cannot be ignored on this journey. The beautiful teachings of the Second Vatican Council will nourish our ecclesial conscience as we reflect on a Church that is synodal. I am thinking in particular of the extremely enriching insights of the four conciliar constitutions: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum and Gaudium et Spes. These four precious constitutions summarise for us what a synodal Church should be and should do in the world. The idea of synodality is already illustrated in the seventh chapter of Lumen Gentium, the chapter that describes the Church as a pilgrim Church. From Lumen Gentium we learn that the pilgrim [synodal] Church is an assembly of the people of God called to be, in Christ, the light of the nations, a sign and instrument of communion with God and of unity among men. All belong to or are in some way related to the people of God. The people of God is an inclusive assembly. Thus the whole Constitution, and not only its seventh chapter, is in reality a teaching on synodality. This assembly of the people of God is called together, as we learn from Sacrosanctum Concilium, to worship God and listen to the Word of God, as we learn from Dei Verbum, and, at the end of its worship, to go into the world in mission, as we learn from Gaudium et Spes. The Church must listen to God in contemplative worship to enrich its mission of witnessing to the Gospel. And we are able to listen to God when we are able to listen to one another. As I shared with my African Dominican brothers and sisters at the 2017 Inter-African Summit of the Order of Preachers in Ibadan, we Dominicans cannot be an Order of Preachers if we are not an order of listeners: listeners to God, to our brothers and sisters, to the depths of our own hearts and, indeed, to the whole of creation. If we do not listen, we cannot carry out the prophetic mission of saying: “Thus says the Lord”. These beautiful insights into the identity and mission of the Church that the Second Vatican Council teaches us must not be lost in the fog of pre-synodal, synodal and post-synodal polemics.
2. As an expert in systematic theology, what, in your opinion, are the theological elements specific to Africa that can contribute to the synodal journey of the universal Church?
At the 1994 Synod on the Church in Africa, an African self-understanding of the Church as the family of God prevailed. This analogy represents an African reception of the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. It represents an ecclesiology of communion in diversity. It is not an abolition of differences, but a communion of differences, communion even in our differences. It speaks of the Church in Africa, a continent of breathtaking diversity. In Africa, where the political elite is adept at manipulating ethnic diversity to gain and maintain access to public office and thus access to the riches of the earth, the Church, in its clergy, lay faithful and consecrated persons, must prophetically resist the temptation to fall into separatism and provincialism, ethnocentrism and racism. It must be a prophetic assembly of men and women from divergent ethnic communities. Transcending ethnic bigotry and xenophobia, it must be, as Vatican II teaches, a sign and instrument of communion with God and unity among people. To paraphrase Archbishop Albert Obiefuna, of blessed memory, the water of baptism must be thicker than the blood of ethnicity. But this also says something to the universal Church. To Africa it says no to ethnocentrism. To the universal Church it says no to racism. Ethnocentrism and racism are like identical twins. The Church that says no to ethnocentrism in Africa must say no to racism worldwide. The Church in Christ is a communion from which no one should be excluded. Baptism makes each of us a member of the family of God. The dignity of each member of the family matters. In this Church-family of God, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, men, women and children share the same baptismal dignity. All have something to offer and all have something to receive as we seek to understand the faith and bear witness to it in the world. To repudiate equally would be a facile “inclusivism” that would overlook repentance, the fundamental prerequisite and imperative of discipleship. One becomes a disciple when one is converted, and one is converted when one becomes a disciple. The Gospel, the good news of the Son of God, the good news that the Son of God is, has brought us into communion with God and with each other. This demands a change of mind and heart.
3. In your opinion, what is the relationship between the theme of synodality and the charism of the Order?
Ours is the Order of Preachers. But, as I said before, we cannot be an Order of Preachers if we do not become an Order of listeners. But today it is difficult to listen. Megaphones and powerful media compete for attention, and the result is a cacophony that causes conflict. In our hands we have ever more sophisticated means of communication. However, communication is scarce. This is because communication is not just the transmission of data. Communication is an act of love in which, to use St. John Newmans motto, the heart speaks to the heart (cor ad cor loquitur). We would not be communicating if we paid almost exclusive attention to the techniques of communication, without paying attention to the meaning of the existential event that is communication. For the heart to speak to the heart, the heart must listen to the heart. Synodality is listening and listening enriches our charism. Without a spirituality of listening, all our efforts to exercise the charism of preaching disfigure us to the point of becoming agitated and noisy ideologues. To preach is to speak of God having listened to God. Our own Order, by our motto, serves as a mirror and memory of the Church, whose witnessing value is rooted in and nourished by contemplation.
4. How can a Dominican contribute to peace building in the world?
This follows from who we are. We are an Order of Preachers. Therefore, the greatest contribution a Dominican can make to building peace in the world is to preach the Gospel. Preaching in this case is not a matter of oratory, of carefully constructed sentences presented logically and eloquently. Of course, logic and elocution are of vital importance. But preaching is first and foremost a witness to the Gospel, that, in Jesus Christ, God makes peace with the world, God gives the world peace. The peace that the world needs is a gift from God. We can receive it when we are willing to act justly. And we are ready for justice and peace when we open our hearts to the Gospel of Christ. Justice is the righting of relationships with God, with others, with creation and with oneself. I reiterate here again the paramount importance of listening. Unwillingness to listen is not only a threat to our preaching mission, but also to peace. It manifests a troubled heart that disturbs other hearts.
5. Is there anything you would like to add?
I would like to add some of my reflections with the African delegates to the October 2024 session of the Synod on Synodality who met in Nairobi, Kenya, last April. The Church, in its synodality, bears the mark of apostolicity and catholicity. Its apostolicity is in fidelity to the apostolic tradition. However, this fidelity to tradition must not be confused with a nostalgic attitude towards the past. Jean-Marie Tillard, OP, for whom fidelity to tradition in the mission of the Church is a “courageous updating” of the content of her memory, which is the memory of what Christ taught in the memory of the apostles, a memory that she must guard, respect, question and transmit in every context and culture. It is a matter of allowing the Holy Spirit to lead the Church towards an unceasing remembrance of Christ “in the constant newness of cultures, contexts and turns of history”, whereby “the Church remains always herself, but never the same (semper ipsa, nunquam idem)”1. To further clarify that fidelity to apostolic tradition is neither a simple attachment to the past nor a fixation with the present, but a safeguard against the ascription of the Church to right-wing or left-wing ideologies, Tillard said: “Tradition repudiates this contestation of the past and of the movement towards the future. It is not a slavish return to a sclerotic past. It knows that the old is not necessarily true or better. Nevertheless, it continues to sink its roots in all that the Church has ‘received’ as authentic and, moreover, it does so in order to be itself, today as yesterday”2. Included in the imperative of fidelity to apostolicity is the imperative to be attentive to the past and the present. In the present, while facing a hostile world and hostile ideologies, the Church must not be afraid to bear witness to the Gospel. Dialogue is an imperative. However, dialogue does not dispense us from proclamation. The early Christians bore witness in the face of a hostile world. They could have sought comfort in conformity. But they did not. They were willing to give their lives and die for the Gospel. Our generation is not the first to evangelise. Others have evangelised before us. Their courageous fidelity to the Gospel, even when it was dangerous to do so, prepares and inspires us to evangelise. The Church must be mindful of the witnesses of past ages, men and women of faith, to whom, in the spirit of synodality, we must listen. In addition, there are witnesses of our time, Christians of heroic evangelical spirit, men and women in places where it is dangerous to be a Christian, dangerous to bear witness to the Gospel. Today, the Church in Africa has its own martyrs in those who are persecuted because of their religious beliefs, who live in parts of Africa such as the far north of Nigeria, where it is not safe to be a Christian; and in those deprived of their fundamental human and civic rights because they have taken a stand against the political and moral vices of society. The martyrs of Africa are those who bear witness to the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, even though they live in misery in African countries notorious for massive injustice and corruption, poverty and repression, countries where the state has been personalised in heads of state emerging from dubious electoral processes, countries of weak constitutions and weak institutions, unable to guarantee the security of the land and the people. The Gospel we must preach is memoria passionis Christi. It is the memory of Christ, the Son of God, who saved us by his death and resurrection. The memory of his passion is celebrated in the Eucharist, even when it is represented in the suffering inflicted on the weak, I should say the weakened. As an African, the massive injustice to which Africans are subjected, “sandwiched” between foreign and indigenous Pilates, constantly reminds me that today, as preachers, we must bear witness to the Gospel before the powerful and the powerless, before the oppressed and the oppressors, before the exploited and the exploiters, before the enriched and the impoverished. Our public is heterogeneous. Very heterogeneous. In all this, we must proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God has begun. Even in the midst of distress, God’s love is present and active. And that offers us hope. Hope that we must share with our brothers and sisters.
