Father Timothy Radcliffe’s Designation as Synod on Synodality’s Retreat Master Stirs Anxiety

National Catholic Register ^ | January 27, 2023 | Joan Frawley Desmond

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­Father Timothy Radcliffe’s Designation as Synod on Synodality’s Retreat Master Stirs Anxiety

NEWS ANALYSIS: While the prominent Dominican has decried political polarization in the Church, his appointment itself could fuel the polarization in the synodal process, given his public dissent from Church teachings on homosexuality.

Last year, in an August 2021 video posted on the Synod of Bishops’ website, Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe —  a controversial British theologian who has publicly contradicted Church teachings on homosexuality — decried political polarization and the fact that the “Church itself has been touched by these sterile culture wars.” 

Father Radcliffe, who served as head of his Dominican order from 1992 to 2001, urged Catholics to “transcend this fear of difference” by imagining the experiences that shaped the opinions of fellow believers with opposing views. 

But now, Father Radcliffe himself has become part of an already contentious debate over the goals and methodology of Pope Francis’ global Synod on Synodality. 

Barely a week after the late Cardinal George Pell’s posthumous critique of a “toxic” synodal process prompted Francis’ supporters to rush to his defense, the Dominican priest’s unexpected appointment to preach a three-day retreat before the October session of the synod is stirring additional concerns about the direction of this complex process.

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Support for Same-Sex Relationships

Over the last two decades, Father Radcliffe, 77, has publicly challenged Church teaching on homosexuality.

In a 2005 article, “Can Gays Be Priests?” published in The Tablet, a British Catholic publication, Father Radcliffe challenged a papal document that directed seminaries to bar candidates with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.

In the 2013 Anglican Pilling Report, he wrote that when considering same-sex relationships, “we cannot begin with the question of whether it is permitted or forbidden! We must ask what it means and how far it is Eucharistic. Certainly it can be generous, vulnerable, tender, mutual and nonviolent. So in many ways, I think it can be expressive of Christ’s self-gift.” 

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Homo Sin-Nod Ping