A synodal campus ministry in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kalookan context

Abstract

Questions about what walking a synodal path means for the Church in different local contexts undoubtedly occupy a central place in academic and pastoral discussions regarding the currently convoked synod on synodality. A particular concern is how the youth can be actively involved in this process. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the campus ministry in living out and actively participating in the process of synodality in response to Pope Francis’ call for a Synodal Church. Vatican documents will be analyzed and compared with local Church and university documents for this study. The result of this study reveals that despite the shared vision of inclusivity in terms of ‘journeying together,’ the local interpretation of synodality in the Philippines takes a different route. Moreover, Campus Ministry programmes that could animate the youth to be engaged in the synodal process also need to provide appropriate avenues for the praxis of the synodal vision from the perspective of both the Vatican and the local context. Since the Church is both global and local, or ‘glocal’ in nature, this paper proposes an assimilation of the global and the local Church vision in navigating the synodal processes in the local context. The direction in which the Campus Ministry must walk must also be further identified. Thus, this study probes into the Synodal Campus Ministries in the Philippines. Researchers’ investigation goes deeper, however, in a specific context of De La Salle Araneta University or its Campus Ministry.