“It was necessary to take courage: it’s another world, another vocabulary, another way of thinking. How was I to bring my own questions and be respectfully present as a guest while being fully Mennonite?” Anne-Cathy Graber asked these questions as she received an invitation to attend the Vatican’s Sixteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod in October 2024.
Having taken the role of MWC Secretary for Ecumenical Relations for MWC in 2023, Anne-Cathy Graber represented Mennonite World Conference at the month-long event, which had 16 “fraternal delegates” representing other Christian churches and communities, 8 Protestant and 8 Orthodox.
Anne-Cathy Graber is an itinerant Mennonite pastor and theologian and co-director of the Chair of Ecumenical Theology at the Faculties Loyola Paris. She serves on MWC’s Faith & Life Commission. Additionally, she has represented Anabaptists at the Global Christian Forum Committee, in the Faith & Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (2014-2022), in the bilateral dialogue between MWC and the Reformed Church. She is also a consecrated sister in Chemin Neuf, a Catholic community with an ecumenical vocation.
The subject was “synodality” which is not the word we use in anabaptist churches, Anne-Cathy Graber says, “but the reality is really inside our churches.” MWC often uses another not-so-accessible theological word, koinonia.
Equality and dignity
“I was astonished that MWC was invited,” she says, because MWC is such a small church in the scope of other communions. “It says something about the place of minorities.”
“In Christ, we are the same body, we are equal.”
The welcome extended to the fraternal delegates was a sign of trust, says Anne-Cathy Graber, because the fraternal delegates “listened to each word; sometimes we were witnesses to differences between bishops.”
In a further sign of equality and dignity, fraternal delegates had the same opportunity to speak as a cardinal or bishop. “It was possible – in fact, they expected – that I could ask my own questions, voice my hesitations and share my own surprises.”
Mutual listening and testimony sharing were key throughout the process.” We could listen to the difficulty of the others,” she says. Particularly as the leaders from the Middle East spoke, “we share their suffering. I am very far from their liturgy, but we were very close in Christ.”
The process was demanding and it took a lot of time, but it allowed for many steps for these conversations in the Spirit, she says.
Conversion is needed
Participants wrestled with a question that MWC also struggles with: “How can we avoid a unity that is uniformity, but instead live out a unity that integrates difference?”
An answer that was received and repeated is that “it isn’t possible to live synodality without conversion,” says Anne-Cathy Graber. “Our logic, our ways of doing, and our ways of reflecting must undergo a conversion.”
The synod was prefaced by two days of silent retreat. In this period of penitential prayer, “We begged for forgiveness for sins against women, against creation, against migrants. It set the tone of a church that hears the calls of the world and admits its own failings.”
At the end of the month of gathering, the synod produced a magisterial text about synodality. In yet another courageous move, the fraternal delegates were invited to propose amendments.
It will take time for the document to be received in practice around the world. “It is necessary,” says Anne-Cathy Graber. “When something is important, very fundamental, it takes time.”
The experience renewed her commitment to ecumenicity: “it was like a parable: to really be the church, we need each other.”
Even in this highly structured, formal process, “I saw how the Holy Spirit can work in the institutional matters. We cannot stop the work of the Spirit.”
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