‘Who will educate for a more synodal conversation Church?’

At Network for Researchers in Catholic Education, Annual Conference 2024, Glasgow University 24th-25th October, 2024

This informal paper explores the idea of synodal conversation and asks whether this is an exclusively internal tradition conversation, or one that also speaks with the wider world. Reflecting on the negotiation at the wall from II Kings, and Bible Society CEO Paul Williams’ suggestion that for Christians to thrive in a post Christian world, they might think of Churches or Parishes as embassies in exile. It argues that schools of a Christian character can also be thought of in this way. To do this they must avoid the dangers of Scylla and Charybdis: The call to close themselves off from the world entirely, forsaking the mission to the whole of creation, and the call to so depart from tradition that they are indistinguishable with “the latest thing” leaving the city in ruins. What is required is a hermeneutic that both appreciates the gift of revelation and perceives it in the incarnate presence in the world, with a competency around tradition language and universal language to be bilingual communicators ‘at the city wall’ and not just conversationalists behind the wall. Educators in the classroom and the catechetical space are a profound resource for this purpose.

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