It’s tempting to simply ignore the upcoming Synod on Synodality’s second session, despite its importance for the Francis pontificate. But that would be a mistake. Bishops and other attendees will gather in Rome this October for discussions based on the Synod’s latest instrumentum laboris, or working document, released last month. The session will bring to an end an elaborate, three-year series of global consultations on the meaning and potential application of synodality to Church life. Insightful reviews of How to be a synodal Church in mission – the synodal text – have already appeared on this site. But the material is too problematic to exhaust with just those commentaries. Thus, these thoughts.
Synods of bishops (from the Greek words sun, “together,” and hodos, “way”) have an ancient pedigree. They declined in the West as the papacy grew in influence but were revived in the wake of Vatican II. In their modern, Roman incarnation, their main value has been advisory, providing counsel to the pope on doctrinal and pastoral issues, and building fraternity among bishops internationally.
One of the impulses behind synodality is a desire to modify the overly centralized papacy inherited from the 19th century, the better to involve the entire people of God in the work of the Gospel. In theory, this is a healthy idea. But synodality’s actual content – since its miraculous emergence at the 2018 synod – has never been clear.
How the concept has been pursued, and to what end (see here and here for cautions) is even more concerning. I served as the on-location aide to a delegate at three synods in Rome: 1997, 2015, and 2018. All of them, to one degree or another, suffered from complicated procedures and a sometimes-heavy curial hand. But the synod on synodality sets a new standard in tedious theater.
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