Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the General Secretariat of the Synod, told members of the Irish National Synodal Assembly, “Do not measure the future of the Church simply by what is disappearing. Discern what the Holy Spirit is bringing to birth.”
“Do not simply manage a diminishing ecclesial landscape,” Cardinal Grech added in his October 17 letter. “Re-position the Church for mission within it.”
As he called for a shift from “maintenance to mission,” Cardinal Grech asserted that “synodality exists to ensure that the Church is constantly at the service of mission, constantly ‘mission ready.’”
Turning to marriage and family life, Cardinal Grech said that “our pastoral task” is “not simply to hold up the Christian ideal and measure people against it, but to discern the movement of grace already present in their lives, to accompany it patiently, and to help them take the next steps towards the fullness of the Christian vocation.”