Former Anglican Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali speaks at an event. Photo: CNS A former Anglican bishop of Rochester who converted to Catholicism late last year has warned against the danger of viewing the synod as a “democratic process”.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic newspaper, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali said that the Anglican communion has sometimes been “misled” by this kind of thinking and that while consulting laity and clergy is fine, bishops must make sure to “effectively exercise their teaching authority”.
Once considered a possible future archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Nazir-Ali was received into the Catholic Church last September and granted the title of ‘monsignor’. Msgr Nazir-Ali said that the Church of England suffered for lack of a universal primate who could exercise teaching authority.
Example
“Just to give a recent example, the Church of England about a year ago I think published a 500-page document called ‘Living in Love and Faith’ on sexual identity and so on and sexual relationships and so on…it didn’t in the end say what the Church taught, it just gave you a variety of opinion. But secondly, the variety of opinion that was given clearly could be seen as having a drift in a particular direction.
“A few weeks later, the Vatican, I mean, Pope Francis with the CDF’s assistance, issued a two-page statement saying that the Church could not bless same-sex unions because it’s contrary to Scripture and the unanimous teaching of the Church down the ages.
“There is a time for exploration and there is a time to say, ‘This is what the Church teaches about a particular subject’,” he said.
Useful forms of Church consultation can include focus groups and surveys, rather than voting, as is being implemented in the German Synodaler Weg, Msgr Nazir-Ali said.
“I think that is a danger, that people may think that, well, if we’re being asked, something will be done. So, I think the synod and the Pope shouldn’t leave things just hanging in the air now as has sometimes happened in the past after synods, that something definitive will need to be said because the Faithful are expecting something definitive to be said.”
To read Jason Osborne’s full interview with Dr Michael Nazir-Ali click here.
