Pope Francis has invited many bishops and others from around the globe to Rome in October 2023 for a synod, an important meeting to look at the future of the Roman Catholic Church. He has made it clear that the best path that local churches can take in preparing for this meeting is to find creative ways of listening to the experience of church members—clergy and laypeople, men and women, old and young, those fiercely attached to the Church and those alienated from it. At present dioceses worldwide are drawing up ambitious plans to enable this to happen. What will be the result? Only the Holy Spirit knows! What the Pope has recognised in this way of proceeding is the importance of allowing people to tell their story, to explain what the world looks like from their own particular perspective, and to be heard to do so, by each other and by those in power. This, it is hoped, will have a result very different from the kind of meeting where a few explain to the many what has already been decided, even when the intention is to gauge the response to such explanations. The outcome may well be messier, less clear-cut, than might otherwise have been the case. But Christian belief is that God speaks through all people, and so it is important that all people be heard.
Richard Boileau, ‘The End of Religion’, 7–21
In 1971 Dom Aelred Graham OSB published a book with the title ‘The End of Religion’. This title suggested both the purpose of religion, and the fact that in 1971 regular church-going, at least, was in decline. Here Richard Boileau takes Graham’s book as the starting-point for an exploration of how to sustain Christian spiritual practice and its relationship with those of other religions
Gabriel Roblero Cum, ‘Spiritual Exercises and Abuse of Conscience: A Process of Liberation from Submission and Affective Manipulation’, 23–32
One effect of the widespread disclosure in recent years of sexual abuse within the Church has been an opening up for victims to speak of other forms of abuse that they have suffered. Here a Jesuit psychologist, Gabriel Roblero Cum, considers how abuse of conscience can occur, and how it can be addressed in the context of the Spiritual Exercises.
Christine Burke, ‘Mary Ward’s Later Years’, 33–38
In the first half of the seventeenth century Mary Ward tried to found a congregation of active apostolic women, using the recently written Jesuit Constitutions as a basis. After twenty years of intensive action and lobbying, the church authorities fiercely rejected the idea, and for a time imprisoned her. Christine Burke looks at what happened next, a part of Ward’s story that is less well known.
Barbara Crostini, ‘The Four Gospels and Kurosawa’, 40–48
In 1950 the Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa released Rashomon, which tells the same story from four different perspectives. In watching it Barbara Crostini was reminded of The Ways in which the Gospels offer four contrasting yet complementary accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus, a comparison she develops in this article.
Oscar Momanyi, ‘The Ignatian Year and the Pandemic: Reflections from a Field Hospital’, 49–61
The second half of the COVID pandemic has coincided with the celebration of an Ignatian anniversary year, marking the fifth centenary of Ignatius Loyola’s conversion. In this article Oscar Momanyi, a Kenyan Jesuit, reflects on how his own community’s marking of the anniversary has been given a particular shape by the experience of the pandemic.
Sarah Young, ‘Understanding’, 63–66
How do you work to bring about a change of understanding, in yourself or in another person? In an article originally published in Thinking Faith, the online journal of the Jesuits of the British Province, Sarah Young suggests that imaginative prayer can play a key role here, illustrating this with the gospel story of Peter walking on the water to meet Jesus.
John Stroyan, ‘Holy Theatre and Holy Worship’, 67–73
The theatre director Peter Brook has written extensively about his craft, and how theatre works as a medium of communication. Here John Stroyan, Anglican bishop of Warwick, applies the ideas of his Brook’s book The Empty Space to the experience of Christian worship, echoing the challenge to the theatre-goer: ‘Does he want anything different in himself, his life, his society?’
Kirsty Clarke, ‘Journeying on the Way: What Do We Understand by the Ministry of Spiritual Direction?’, 74–86
Over the years The Way has published many articles on the nature of spiritual direction. For the most part these have been written from a Roman Catholic perspective. Here Kirsty Greenaway-Clarke, an Anglican priest, offers a view of direction from within her own tradition, focussing on the image of journeying, in which a director ‘walks alongside’ the directee.
Gerald O’Collins, ‘Retrieving Lectio divina at Vatican II and After’, 87–100
A principal method employed by the Second Vatican Council in its aim to renew the life of the Roman Catholic Church was ‘ressourcement’, a rereading of traditional and biblical sources. Here Gerald O’Collins argues that a revival of the ancient practice o
Kevin Leidich, ‘‘If Your Most Holy Majesty Desires to Choose and Receive Me’: The Grace of Poverty in Jesuit Life and in the Spiritual Exercises’, 101–113
Retreatants are encouraged at times by Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises to ask for the gift of poverty, spiritual and actual. This can be, as indeed Ignatius intends, a challenging request to make, and the director may have an important role in helping