Root and Branch

by Sue Williamson

Root and Branch is an exciting new forum for reform, working for a safe, just and inclusive Roman Catholic Church. Begun just before Pope Francis initiated the current Synod on Synodality 2021-2024, Root and Branch has organized two very successful lay-led Synods, the latest in October 2023, an online and physical event in Bristol and in Rome. with contributions from many prominent reform minded Catholics, including Joan Chittister, Mary McAleese and Tom O’Loughlin.
Root and Branch ‘a movement that starts with women, but does not end there’ has a website which we can give to anyone who may be interested.

Some of the issues which Root and Branch have dealt with are contained in the Bristol Text for Reform put together from 2020-2022 and added to in 2023.
The Bristol text for Reform embodies some of the discoveries we (Root and Branch) have made in our journey of discernment..

It exists both in a readily accessible, and in a more complex learned form. It is intended to give ordinary Catholics the reassurance that there are changes we can make in our practice that are in keeping with the best of Catholic tradition and have the endorsement of deep, pastorally sensitive and well-informed thinkers and theologians, including some who are clergy.

It offers practical and often challenging visions for the Church, calling it to be Christ-like in its structure, its thinking and its practice. It is offered in the spirit of Canon Law 212.3, ‘the Christian faithful have the right and even at times, the duty  to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters that obtain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known’.

The four topic areas addressed in the Bristol Text are:

 Moral Theology ’embracing the entire person, a living response to the prophetic vocation to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.. 

 
Church Authority is the next area to be addressed ‘What touches all must be discussed and approved by all’. Then follows ‘Redefining and reclaiming liturgical ministry.

 
We all belong to a royal priesthood where Jesus’s call to celebrate his presence in the Eucharist requires no priestly caste. All ministries are open to all, as they were in the early church.

Embracing diversity is the next issue. as a hierarchy, especially an all-male leadership, precludes the church from affirming the goodness in the diversity of creation, and the dignity and sanctity of all.

The postscript to the Bristol Text is the need to acknowledge the systemic causes of clerical sexual violence  and other forms of abuse… ‘The Church as a whole must embark on a world-wide ‘process of truth and reparation beginning with the acknowledgement of responsibility. The Church in its entirety must ask survivors, victims and their families how to achieve healing and forgiveness.’

SPIRIT UNBOUNDED

Following the success of R&B’s first lay-led Synod in Bristol in 2021, Spirit Unbounded was conceived as a platform for reform organisations around the world, and which currently has 47 Companion members. They and R&B amassed a treasury of 115+ short videos from around the world, of people grappling in a very practical way with the complexities of church teaching. We trust that these beautiful videos will be freely available before too long.

Root & Branch are devoting this year of the lead-up to the concluding Synod in Rome, to bringing these exciting, more thoughtful ways of being church, into parishes and communities across the UK, and indeed, internationally. All too often, Catholics have been taught to fear reform, but, as Pope Francis says, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living’. Tradition lives in conservation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide.