A synod is (was) by definition an event: it was convened, celebrated, and closed. That is how it was for twenty centuries. The Synod on Synodality concluded in October 2024. Its Final Document was delivered. The matter, one might think, is settled.
But it is not. The closed Synod was followed by an “implementation phase” (2025-2028). Implementation is now followed by an “evaluation of the implementation”: diocesan assemblies in the first half of 2027, assemblies of the Episcopal Conferences in the second half, continental assemblies in 2028, and an “ecclesial assembly” at the Vatican in October 2028. And in case anyone still hoped that would be the end of it, the Notes warn: “the path does not conclude, but opens to a new phase.” Among the criteria for selecting assembly members is, in black and white, that they “be available to sustain the process beyond 2028.”
In other words: today we are recruiting the personnel for a process whose object, mandate, and end no one knows, because it does not exist. The Synod has discovered perpetual motion. We will evaluate the implementation, then implement the evaluation, then evaluate the implementation of the evaluation. This is not a caricature: it is, literally, the official calendar.
What is all this, juridically speaking? Nothing
Here lies the scandal. The reader may ask: what canonical nature does a “diocesan evaluation assembly” have? And a “synodal team”? And an “ecclesial assembly” at the Vatican—note: ecclesial, not episcopal—scheduled for 2028?
The answer is: none. They do not appear in the Code of Canon Law. They are not a diocesan synod (canons 460-468), which has regulated convocation, composition, and effects. They are not a particular council. They are not presbyteral or pastoral councils, which do exist in law and whose “propositive and consultative” function the document itself acknowledges in passing, only to immediately link them with “synodal teams” that exist in no canon. We are faced with a complete institutional architecture—diocesan, national, and continental teams, registered in a Roman database via an email address, synodus@synod.va—built entirely outside the Church’s law.
And this is no oversight. It is the method. What has no juridical nature has no defined competencies, no enforceable responsibility, and no channel for appeal. A canonical diocesan synod obliges the bishop to precise procedures; a “synodal team” obliges nothing and answers to no one, and precisely for that reason it can do everything: convene, filter, draft, synthesize, and send to Rome “the voice of the People of God.” Informality is not a flaw in the system: it is its competitive advantage. What cannot be governed by decree is governed by process, because a decree would have to be grounded in law and signed.
Canon law exists, it is worth recalling, to protect. It protects the faithful against arbitrariness, the parish priest against the diocesan apparatus, the bishop against pressures, and the entire Church against the whim of passing majorities. Replacing law with “facilitation” is not a pastoral liberation: it leaves everyone exposed to whoever controls the process.
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