Towards a Synodal Church

As an event of communion that originates in the mystery of the one and triune God, the Church manifests and realizes herself in gathering as the “people of God” that walk together. We could say that synodality is the form in which her original vocation and her intrinsic mission are historicized: to call together all the people of the earth, of every time and age, to make them sharers in the salvation and joy of Christ.

On many occasions Pope Francis has stressed how synodality grounds, models and strengthens both the life of the Church and the witness and service it is called to render to the human family: “Walking together is the constitutive way of the Church; the figure that allows us to interpret reality with the eyes and heart of God; the condition for following the Lord Jesus and being servants of life in this wounded time. Breath and synodal process reveal what we are and the dynamism of communion that animates our decisions.”[1]

Synodality – “way,” “figure,” “condition,” “breath” to experience of belief – is the modus vivendi et operandi by which the Church disposes all its members to co-responsibility, enhances their charisms and ministries, and intensifies the bonds of fraternal love.

For the pope, the reform of the Church takes place “from within,” that is, by virtue of a spiritual process that changes forms and renews structures. Drawing on the legacy of Ignatian mysticism, Francis emphasizes the intimate connection between inner experience, language of faith and reform of structures.[2] Initiating conversion processes is, therefore, a practice of radical governance. It is the only real guarantee that the institutional structure of the Church can undertake and successfully pursue the communal path of following Jesus, that is, synodality. The insight is this: not only does the Spirit want us to make good decisions, but, through the process of synodality, he also assures us of his assistance in achieving that goal.

In the documents of the Second Vatican Council we find no trace of the term “synodality” and, although the word itself is a neologism and is the fruit of subsequent theological reflection, it nevertheless translates and synthesizes the ecclesiology of communion expressed by the Council. The Church of the first centuries, in fact, faced critical issues with which it was engaged as a community listening with the Spirit.

Recovering first of all the instances of the conciliar teaching on the Church will be useful to show how synodality represents a ressourcement, a return to the sources, that is, to the mode of government present in the Church from its origins.

The ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium, presupposition of synodality

In Lumen Gentium (LG) it is possible to discern the theological presuppositions underlying the post-conciliar conceptualization of synodality. The universal Church is presented there as “sacrament” (LG 1) and “people of God” (LG 4), and this return to biblical and patristic categories has certainly contributed to overcoming the ecclesiological societal model (Church as societas perfecta). In this sense, one of the most innovative aspects of the document is given by the recovery of the doctrine of the “common priesthood of the faithful” (LG 10), which includes the importance of the laity in the life of the Church. It affirms that by virtue of baptism all members of the Church are invested with the “dignity of children of God” and that their active participation in the mission of the Church is to be considered indispensable and necessary. With these affirmations the Council put a definitive end to the centuries-old custom that had led to a distinction between a teaching hierarchy and a listening laity.[3] Many lay people felt encouraged to reflect on their vocation in a completely new way.

Endowed with the dignity of sonship and the gift and responsibility of proclaiming the Gospel to all, the laity are called to participate in the government of the Church according to their own tasks, roles and ways. The Spirit, in fact, dispenses special charisms and graces upon them, “He makes them fit and ready to undertake the various tasks and offices which contribute toward the renewal and building up of the Church” (LG 12). It is also specified that “by reason of the knowledge, competence or outstanding ability which they may enjoy, permitted and sometimes even obliged to express their opinion on those things which concern the good of the Church” (LG 37).

If the Holy Spirit is the principle of unity, which concentrates in a single dynamic subject all the members of the Church, different by ministry, vocation and mission, the Eucharist is the “source and summit” of the believing community (cf. LG 11; Sacrosanctum Concilium [SC], No. 10), in which the many grains of wheat become one bread. Vatican II thus points to the action of the Spirit who enlivens the Church through sacramental grace, and in a particular way at the moment of the Eucharistic celebration, as the original reality from which the ecclesial “we” springs.

Two further clarifications make it possible to grasp the revolutionary significance of Lumen Gentium for the subsequent understanding of synodality as an ecclesial “style,” that is, one that is consonant with the Church of Jesus Christ.

The first concerns the sensus fidei of the people of God (cf. LG 12), that is, that supernatural instinct[4] with regard to the truth which is manifested in the totality of the faithful and which allows them to judge spontaneously the authenticity of a doctrine of faith and to converge in adherence to it or to an element of Christian praxis.[5] Since this convergence (consensus fidelium) constitutes an indispensable criterion of discernment for the life of the Church, it is a valid resource for her evangelizing mission.

The second clarification concerns the sacramentality of the episcopate (cf. LG 21). The Council teaches that with episcopal consecration the fullness of the sacrament of Orders is conferred and the offices of sanctifying, teaching and governing are also conferred (unity of the potestas sacra). These offices, however, by their nature cannot be exercised except in hierarchical communion with the Head and with the members of the College. Because of the properly collegial character of the episcopal order, the unity of the bishops constitutes a universal reality that precedes the diakonia to the individual particular Churches, that is, the fact that one is constituted pastor of an individual diocese.[6]

Moreover, supreme collegial power over the whole Church can be exercised by the bishops, together with the pope, either in the solemn form of an ecumenical council or in contextual and dislocated activities in various parts of the world.

Synodality and collegiality in the Church: the inverted pyramid

Renewed ecclesial awareness with respect to the sacramentality of the episcopate and collegiality represents a fundamental theological premise for an adequate theological hermeneutic of synodality. In fact, it allows us to establish how the concept of “synodality” is broader than that of “collegiality”: while synodality implies the participation and involvement of the whole people of God in the life and mission of the Church, collegiality refers to the specific form in which it is defined through the exercise of the ministry of the bishops cum et sub Petro.

The episcopal ministry combines the particular dimension, relating to the portion of the people gathered in a local Church, with the universal dimension, relating to the exercise of the ministry in communion with the other bishops and with the pope. Therefore, every effective manifestation of synodality requires the exercise of the collegial ministry of the bishops.

Developing the implications of the analogical relationship between the mystery of the immanent Trinity and the forma ecclesiae, envisaged in the prologue of Lumen Gentium (cf. LG 2-4), post-conciliar theology has highlighted how the agapic-trinitarian reality governs the life of the Church: the circumincessio of the Trinitarian persons reflects on the Church, structures it, and disposes it to make explicit its communal essence through the “perichoretic processuality” that takes the name of “synodality.”

Francis uses the terms “synod” and “synodality” in a broad sense, that is, with the intention of translating theological orthodoxy into pastoral orthopraxis: “synod” does not express exclusively that ecclesial structure headed by collegial government, but is the visible form of communion, the path of ecclesial fraternity, in which all the baptized participate and contribute personally. A  Church that, striving for universality, intends to safeguard the diversity of cultural identities, considering them an inalienable richness, cannot but assume synodality as the trait d’union between the unity of the body and the plurality of its members.

Assuming the ecclesiological perspective of Vatican II and in accordance with the teaching of Lumen Gentium, Pope Francis affirms that “the path of synodality is the path that God expects from the Church of the third millennium.”[7] He emphasizes that synodality “offers us the most adequate interpretive framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry itself” and sketches the image of a Church that – like “an inverted pyramid,” in which the summit is below the base – harmonizes all the subjects involved in it: the people of God, the College of Bishops, the Successor of Peter.[8]

In Evangelii Gaudium (EG), Francis gave renewed impetus to the doctrine of the sensus fidei fidelium (cf. EG 119), arguing that the path of synodality is an indispensable prerequisite for giving the Church a renewed missionary impetus: all members of the Church are active subjects of evangelization and “missionary disciples” (EG 120). The laity represent the vast majority of the People of God, and there is much to be learned from their participation in the various expressions of the ecclesial community: popular piety, commitment to ordinary pastoral care, competence in the area of culture and social coexistence (cf. EG 126). And if the status and experience of clerical life sometimes give rise to a series of unconscious prejudices, we should hope for the presence of a devout laity who, like attentive and loving observers, see the need to become more aware of who they are. We should also remember the words with which St. John Henry Newman responded to those who questioned him about the role of the laity: “The Church would seem foolish without them.”[9]

It is therefore necessary to overcome the obstacles represented by the lack of formation, the deleterious effects of a clerical mentality that risks relegating the lay faithful to a subordinate role, in order to increase the spaces in which they can express themselves and share the richness of their experience as disciples of the Lord (cf. EG 102).

The co-responsibility of the entire People of God in the mission of the Church requires the initiation of consultative processes that make the presence and voice of the laity more participatory. It is not a question of establishing a sort of “lay parliamentarianism” – since the authority of the College of Bishops does not depend on a delegation expressed by the faithful through an electoral process, but rather presents itself as a precise charism with which the Spirit has endowed the ecclesial body – but of making full use of the resources and structures already available to the Church.

With this in mind, on September 18, 2018, with Episcopalis Communio (EC),[10] the Holy Father translated into norms all the passages that distinguish the path of a “constitutively synodal Church.” The apostolic constitution marks a step forward with respect to Vatican II: if we must give the Council credit for having recovered the ecclesial subjects and their ministerial nature, this document attempts to translate the theoretical arguments into ecclesial practice. The keystone is listening: every synodal praxis “begins by listening to the people of God,” “continues by listening to the pastors” and culminates in listening to the Bishop of Rome, called to declare himself “Pastor and Doctor of all Christians.”[11]

Since collegiality is at the service of synodality, the pope affirms that “the Synod of Bishops must increasingly become a privileged instrument for listening to the People of God.” And “although structurally it is essentially configured as an episcopal body,” it does not “exist separately from the rest of the faithful”; “on the contrary, it is a suitable instrument to give voice to the entire People of God.” For this reason “in the preparation of Synodal Assemblies, it is very important that consultation of all the particular Churches be given special attention” (EC 7).

This consultation of the faithful must be followed by “discernment on the part of pastors”: attentive to the sensus fidei of the People of God, they must know how to distinguish the promptings of the Spirit “from the often changing currents of public opinion” (Ibid.). This must be the way of “communal discernment,” a practice so dear to Pope Francis, to which he often refers, drawing on his Ignatian spirituality. To discern communally is to pay attention to the will of God in history, in the life not of a specific person, but of the entire people of God. Although this takes place in the sphere of the heart, of interiority, its raw material is always the echo that reality causes to reverberate in inner space. It is an interior attitude that urges us to be open to dialogue, to encounter, to find God wherever he allows himself to be found, and not only in predetermined, well-defined and fenced-in environments (cf. EG 231-233).

Episcopalis Communio divides synodal praxis into three phases: preparation, discussion and implementation, and each Synod celebrated during the current pontificate – on the family (2014, 2015), on young people (2018), on the Amazon (2019) – has sought to implement these phases to an increasing extent. As the Holy Father himself has observed, “the changes introduced so far go in the direction of making the Synods held every two or three years in Rome freer and more dynamic, giving more time for sincere discussion and listening.”[12]

The preferential option for the poor

The preferential option for the poor goes back to the prophets and Matthew 25, and is expressed in similar words in the opening of Gaudium et Spes (GS).[13] It became a focal point in the reflection that took place during the 1971 Synod “Justice in the World,” and later St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI integrated it into the Church’s social teaching. The fact that it represents a distinctive feature of the current pontificate should not be attributed to novelty, but to the vigor with which Francis has embraced its implications for the proclamation of the Gospel. At this point, it will be useful to take a look at how the ecclesiology of communion, collegiality and synodality play an essential role in its implementation.

For Francis, the preferential option for the poor (cf. EG 48) follows the confronting logic of the incarnation of the Word. It derives from what the Word, Jesus Christ, has taught us, in word and deed, about the poor. Consequently, the Church must recognize in this predisposition the fundamental pre-eminence of the service of charity. The pope points out that this is not a preference of a sociological nature, but of a properly theological kind, because it leads back to God’s saving action: “Without the preferential option for the poor, the proclamation of the Gospel, which is itself the prime form of charity, risks being misunderstood or submerged by the ocean of words which daily engulfs us in today’s society of mass communications” (EG 199).

Moreover, it is not the expression of a naive “goodness” (EG 179), which is expressed in some activity, or in a sort of propensity, without in fact constituting an essential characteristic of the Church’s life; rather, it should be recognized as an integral part not only of the Gospels, but also of the process of ecclesial transformation desired and initiated by Vatican II. The Council Fathers, in fact, seeing in the situation of the least and the derelict a “sign of the times,” argued that the Church was called to move from a charitable practice of a welfare type, in which the poor are reduced to a mere “object” of care, to their recognition as “members” of the people of God and “subjects” of their own liberation.

In the encyclical Fratelli Tutti (FT), among all the situations of fragility that characterize today’s social fabric and to which it is urgent to give a response, the pope emphasizes the emergency involving refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons, otherwise defined as the emergency of the “limit of the frontiers” (FT 129-132). Everyone in the Church and in society is called to “welcome, protect, promote and integrate” those who, for various reasons, are forced to leave their land, renouncing the “right not to migrate” (FT 38; 129). This means moving from a conception of society in which the foreigner is discriminated against to an understanding of social coexistence in which full citizenship is guaranteed to all. Rather than “implementing welfare programs from the top” (FT 129), it is a matter of offering possibilities for integration that are practical and concrete: granting visas, humanitarian corridors, accessibility to essential services and education, religious freedom (FT 130).

Francis’ words, therefore, do nothing but bring us back to that awareness which Vatican II grasped, in the need to give preference to the poor, a call of the Holy Spirit to conversion both of intra-ecclesial structures and of the very way of relating to the Gospel (cf. LG 8; GS 1). Giving the poor a privileged place among the members of the People of God (cf. EG 187-196) does not only mean recognizing them as privileged recipients of evangelization, but considering them as its subjects, as its active agents.

Evangelii Gaudium, in fact, encourages all the baptized to consider the encounter with the poor as a favorable opportunity to let themselves be evangelized by Christ (cf. EG 121; 178). Thus the contours of the distinction between evangelizers and evangelized are blurred: “We must all let others constantly evangelize us” (EG 121; 174). Even the poor are evangelizers because, as members of the people of God, they have much to give and much to teach (cf. EG 48). This is why Francis, addressing the poor members of Popular Movements, did not hesitate to say, “to me you are social poets because, from the forgotten peripheries where you live, you create admirable solutions for the most pressing problems afflicting the marginalized.”[14]

The encouragement addressed to believers with which the pope invited them to start again “from the peripheries” – not only geographical, but also existential[15] – thus takes on different forms and expressions: it means paying attention to the social injustices and personal sufferings of those in desperate conditions (pain, poverty and misery); it means interiorizing what is indicated in Matthew 25 and in the rich tradition of the Works of Mercy; it means appropriating the complex richness of the theme played out at the Synod for Amazonia, “New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology,” with its two intrinsically interdependent and related elements.

From the vocation of the Church expressed in Lumen Gentium and its synodal journey spring evangelization, human promotion in all its forms and care for our common home. And when this new way of addressing the problems of the human family (cf. EG 30) is taken up with determination, as an essential and necessary issue, then the Church is helped to decentralize and is pushed toward the peripheries. The Church must walk as united, carrying the burden of the human, listening to the cries of the poor, reforming herself and her actions, listening first of all to the voice of the humble, the anawim of the Hebrew Scriptures, who were at the center of Jesus’ public ministry.

We can look at all this as a hermeneutical key that informs and redefines synodal praxis. Therefore, it becomes necessary to “put all things in a missionary key” (EG 34) and to adopt a multidimensional model of ecclesial and social unity (cf. EG 234-237) capable of reflecting a renewed intra-ecclesial and ecumenical sensitivity.

The reform that Francis invites us to carry out works if it is “emptied” of all worldly logic, that is, both of the “ideology of change” and that of “fixism.” The world appreciates the ability to achieve goals or make changes to institutions, anytime and anywhere. The reform encourages everyone to discern times and opportunities for “emptying out” so that mission can better let Christ shine. And when Francis addresses to “every Christian” (EG 3) and “every person” (LS 3), regardless of where they were born or live (cf. FT 1), his call to responsibility[16] that is summed up in “concern for the vulnerable” (EG 209-216), he does not turn his attention only to “poor” people, but also to the “poor” earth.

Becoming sensitive to the “cry of the poor” puts us in a position to listen to the cry of “sister earth” (LS 1). Francis insists on the relationship between caring for the environment and caring for the poor (cf. LS 49), and he returns to it again and more insistently in the post-synodal exhortation Querida Amazonia (QA 52), as well as in the catechesis “Healing the World” of August and September 2020. The connection between the poor and the environment makes it possible to highlight how the future of all humanity is intimately linked to that of the environment, so that protecting the interests of the weakest coincides with safeguarding creation. As Laudato Si’ proclaims, “everything is connected” (LS 16; 91; 117; 138; 240).

Listening to the people of God, hearing in them the cry of the derelict poor and the mistreated earth, enables the Church to avoid the danger of projecting a preconceived scheme onto reality. This error occurs when the Church, in its intent to reform, pursues an ideal project that stems from desires, even good ones, but which are an expression of self-referentiality. If this were to be the case, one would end up obeying another ideology, the merely “worldly” ideology of change. On the other hand, when the Church accompanies the poor in their liberation, they in turn help her to free herself from those pitfalls that her institutional component can always encounter.

How can we make synodality grow in the Church?

The fundamental challenge that the synodal process poses to the life of the Church refers to a renewed understanding of “communion,” understood in terms of “inclusiveness”: to involve all the components of the People of God, especially the poor, under the authority of those whom the Holy Spirit prepares as pastors of the Church, so that all may feel co-responsible for the life and mission of the Church.

But how can synodality grow in the Church? We need to initiate processes of conversion, that is, of “discernment, purification and reform” (EG 30), so that all may acquire and internalize the principles of a spirituality that is open to “inclusive” communion, rather than a spirituality that is limited to seeking individual perfection. Without a real conversion in the way of thinking, praying and acting, without an effective metanoia that implies a constant training in mutual acceptance, the external instruments of communion – the ecclesial synodal structures that have arisen from the conciliar event – could prove insufficient to achieve the end for which they were created.

The pope does not have pre-packaged ideas to apply to reality, nor an ideological plan of ready-made reforms, but advances on the basis of a spiritual and prayerful experience that he shares as he goes along in dialogue, consultation, and concrete response to situations of vulnerability, suffering, and injustice. This is, as St. Ignatius would say, his “way forward.” Francis creates the structural conditions for real and open dialogue. He pursues neither pre-packaged institutional optimizations, nor strategies designed at the theoretical level and aimed at obtaining better statistical results.

Perhaps there is still a long way to go to understand this profound reform of our institutional existence as disciples of Christ gathered in the Church. Even more so, there is a need to understand the Church, semper reformanda, in relation to the times – including the current pandemic – in which we are living, trying to bring together and enhance the local, national, regional and continental Church; not to mention how to imagine the future of Christianity with hope. Evangelii Gaudium is addressed “to all the members of the Church with the aim of encouraging ongoing missionary renewal” (LS 3). This reform consists in the never-completed synodal and missionary conversion of each member of the People of God and of the People of God as a whole.

In her synodal life, the Church deliberately offers herself in terms of a diakonia aimed at promoting an economic, social, political and cultural life marked by fraternity and social friendship. The priority commitment and criterion of all social action of the People of God is to listen to the cry of the poor and that of the earth (cf. LS 49), urgently recalling, in the determination of the choices and projects of society, the fundamental principles of the Church’s social doctrine: inalienable human dignity, the universal access to goods, the primacy of solidarity, dialogue aimed at peace, care for the common home.

Francis’ encouragement for “the Synod of Bishops to become more and more a privileged instrument for listening to the people of God” is both a prayer and an invocation: “For the Synod Fathers we ask the Holy Spirit first of all for the gift of listening: to listen to God, that with him we may hear the cry of the people; to listen to the people until breathing in the will to which God calls us.”[17]

Let us pray, then, for those who have responsibilities in the Church, for those engaged in religious life, in Catholic education and in other services, that they will receive the same graces: listening, walking, and serving.

DOI: La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 5, no. 2 art. 3, 1020: 10.32009/22072446.0221.3

[1].      Francis, Introductory speech at the opening of the work of the 70th General Assembly of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, May 22, 2017, in http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/speeches/2017/may/documents/papa-francesco_20170522_70assemblea-cei.html

[2].      Cf. A. Spadaro, “The Government of Francis. What is the driving force of his pontificate?”, in Civ. Catt. English edition, October 2020, https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/francis-government-what-is-the-driving-force-of-his-pontificate/

[3].      This intention of the Council Fathers can also be deduced from the order in which the treatise was subdivided: the chapter dedicated to “The People of God” (Ch. 2) precedes the chapter on “The Hierarchical Constitution of the Church” (Ch. 3), so as to clarify how the ecclesiastical hierarchy plays a role of service to the totality of the Church and is aimed at it. The whole is superior to the part.

[4].      The sensus fidei is compared to an instinct, because it is not primarily the result of rational deliberation, but rather takes the form of a spontaneous and natural knowledge, a kind of perception (aisth?sis).

[5].      “The totality of the faithful, having the anointing that comes from the Holy One (cf. 1 Jn 2:20, 27), cannot err in believing, and it manifests this property by the supernatural sense of faith of the whole people, when from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful it shows its universal assent in matters of faith and morals” (LG 12).

[6].      The Council specifies that the College of Bishops has authority only if it is conceived as united to the Roman Pontiff as the subject of supreme authority in the Church (cf. LG 22). The affirmation that episcopal ordination primarily entails a reference to the universal Church also remains in the 1983 Code of Canon Law (cc. 330-341). According to some scholars, the Council did not make it sufficiently clear on this point how the relationship between the collegium episcoporum and the communio ecclesiarum is articulated. Cf. H. Legrand, “Les Évêques, les Églises locales et l’Église entière”, in Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 85 (2001) 210f.

[7].      Francis, Address on the occasion of the Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Synod of Bishops, October 17, 2015: AAS 107 (2015) 1140.

[8].      Cf. Ibid.

[9].      J. H. Newman, On the Consultation of the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine.

[10].    Francis, Apostolic Constitution “Episcopalis Communio” on the Synod of Bishops, in www.vatican.va

[11].    Id., Discourse on the occasion of the Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops, op. cit.

[12].    Id., Ritorniamo a sorridere. La strada verso un futuro migliore, Milan, Piemme, 2020, 96.

[13].    “The joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of the people of today, of the poor above all and of all who suffer, are also the joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of Christ’s disciples” (GS 1; italics ours).

[14].    Francis, Letter to Popular Movements, April 12, 2020, at www.vatican.va

[15].    Referring to the teaching of St. John Paul II, Francis describes poverty not only in material terms as indigence, but also by referring to every form of impoverishment of the person, as a limitation or injury to the dignity and fundamental rights of the human being. Cf. John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, No. 15.

[16].    The intention to address everyone is in continuity with the choice of the Second Vatican Council, which “no longer hesitates to address its word solely to the children of the Church and to all who invoke the name of Christ, but to all men” (GS 2).

[17].    Francis, Prayer Vigil in Preparation for the Synod on the Family (October 4, 2014).