Three weeks into the second session of the Synod of Bishops, several synod members have said it is too soon to tell what outcomes the synod members were moving towards.

The 2021–2024 process for the synod on synodality ‘is preparing us to be women and men capable of listening to others who think differently, who see things in a different way,’ Canadian Cardinal Gérald C Lacroix of Québec told reporters on 17 October.

‘If we continue as the people of God, as a Church, to work in this direction, I think we will give the world a witness that it is possible to listen to each other and to make good judgements, to make good choices,’ the Cardinal said at the synod’s daily briefing for journalists.

But asked about the synod’s thinking on specific topics—ranging from whether parish pastoral councils should be mandatory rather than simply encouraged or whether bishops’ conferences should have greater authority in making decisions about liturgical translations—he and the other synod participants said the process has not finished yet.

It is necessary to learn to give thanks for old things that have already fulfilled their function, and to welcome the new that the Holy Spirit is indicating at every moment in this world.

Members of the synod spent the sessions from 15 to 18 October discussing the ‘places’ where synodality is and can be experienced in the Church. Cardinal Lacroix told the reporters that some of the issues being discussed, including the power of bishops’ conferences, have created tension in the synod hall, ‘and this is good’ because it is a sign of life, and a sign of the variety of cultures and experiences represented by the synod members.

‘We can’t just debate and decide; we have to reflect,’ the Cardinal said.

Bishop Pedro Cipolini of Santo André, Brazil, told reporters, ‘Sometimes ideas need time to mature. The Church’s challenge isn’t to respond to all questions but to be faithful and respond to the Holy Spirit.’

The Bishop said he saw three areas where synod members agree there must be change or conversion: a pastoral conversion that recognises it is no longer enough to evangelise within the walls of the parish, but the Church must reach out, including digitally; ‘structural conversion’ in the way parishes, dioceses, bishops’ conferences or even the Roman Curia are organised, which ‘is more challenging’; and conversion to a ‘synodal spirituality’ that is focused on Jesus and on concretely witnessing to him in daily life.

‘It is necessary to learn to give thanks for old things that have already fulfilled their function, and to welcome the new that the Holy Spirit is indicating at every moment in this world,’ the Bishop said.

Synodality and papal primacy

Encouraging greater ‘synodal’ practices in the Catholic Church should help the Church find a greater balance between the power of the Pope and the power of local bishops in their dioceses, said those participating in a synod forum exploring the relationship between the exercise of papal primacy and synodality on 16 October. The panel members at the forum included Australian synod member Archbishop Timothy Costelloe of Perth, President of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, and three theologians.

The global process of listening and discernment that have characterised the current synod ‘can be of service to the Pope in his role and also of assistance to the bishops themselves,’ said Archbishop Costelloe.

A pyramidal structuring of the Church ... is just not in harmony with the vision of Pope Francis or with the theology of Vatican II.

However, the ‘circular’ process of the synod—with all members, including the bishops and the Pope, listening to each other, discerning in prayer, sharing their concerns, listening more—‘can easily become a linear process’ where the faithful are consulted, the bishops ‘discern the presence, or otherwise, of harmony between what the faithful have said and what the Church teaches’ and then they submit their conclusions and proposals to the Pope for approval, he said.

‘The problem with this understanding is not that it’s completely wrong,’ but that it separates Church members into three distinct groups—the faithful, which does not include the bishops or priests, ‘the bishops who act as judges of what the people have said, and the Pope, who simply receives at the end the final outcomes in which, in fact, he’s had really very little part to play,’ Archbishop Costelloe said.

‘Such an approach, if rigidly followed, perpetuates a pyramidal structuring of the Church,’ he said, ‘and such a structuring of the Church is just not in harmony with the vision of Pope Francis or with the theology of Vatican II.’

Panel members noted that the balance between the authority and jurisdiction of the Pope as the Bishop of Rome and the authority of local bishops—a balance that would allow for greater diversity within the universal Church—also would benefit efforts to restore Christian unity since for many other Christian churches, the way popes currently exercise their primacy is an obstacle to unity.

In the third millennium, we hope to be able to speak of both synodality and primacy, respecting local expressions of the faith ... but also recognising the ministry of the Pope.

An adjustment in the balance would recognise that the bishops are successors of the apostles and vicars of Christ, not vicars of the Pope, said Father José San Jose Prisco, Dean of the Faculty of Canon Law at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain, and a theological expert at the synod.

Father Dario Vitali, coordinator of theological experts assisting the synod and Professor of Dogmatic Theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, told forum attendees that in very broad terms the first millennium of Christianity was marked by ‘synodality’ and local autonomy as the faith spread throughout the world with almost centrifugal force. For Catholics, the second millennium was marked by a greater emphasis on the universal jurisdiction of the Pope in a centripetal push to ensure unity.

‘In the third millennium, we hope to be able to speak of both synodality and primacy,’ he said, respecting local expressions of the faith and local priorities, but also recognising the ministry of the Pope as one that serves and preserves the unity of the universal Church.

Questions about the exercise of papal primacy are not new or unique to the synod. In his 1995 encyclical, Ut unum sint, (That They May Be One), St John Paul II called for an ecumenical exploration of ways the Pope could exercise his ministry as a service to the unity of all Christians.

Catherine Clifford, a theologian and member of the synod from Canada, told the forum that ‘recent developments in the practice of synodality in the global Catholic Church reflect a shift in Catholic ecclesiology and practice away from an almost exclusive emphasis on the personal or primatial dimension of the Bishop of Rome’s office and towards a restoration of greater balance with the collegial and communal dimensions in the exercise of that office.’

If the Synod of Bishops becomes ‘a more effective instrument for listening to the life of the local churches,’ she said, it can be a tool that helps ‘the bishop of Rome to serve the communion of faith and proclaim it in more effective ways, discerning and taking decisions that express the faith, the sense of faith of the whole Church.’

Synod delegates also examined the relationship between the local and universal Church during a public theological and pastoral forum in Rome on 16 October.

Prof Myriam Wijlens, a theological expert at the synod and canon law professor at the University of Erfurt in Germany who was recently in Australia, said that since the beginning of the synodal process in 2021, ‘the people of God have voiced with a remarkable consistency that diocesan and parish pastoral councils should be made obligatory.’

But beyond making such structures mandatory, ‘they desire that canonical norms make them into true vehicles of being a synodal church,’ she said at the forum.

Currently, the Code of Canon Law states, ‘If the diocesan bishop judges it opportune after he has heard the presbyteral council, a pastoral council is to be established in each parish’ with the council presided over by the pastor.

To respond to the desire voiced by the people of God, Wijlens said that the majority of members on such councils should not be appointed by the diocesan bishop or parish priest but ‘be elected or appointed in a different way’.

Additionally, she said ‘provisions can be made to respond to the request that there must be a majority of laypersons, with an adequate presence of women, young people and people living in conditions of poverty or experiencing other forms of marginalisation.’

Prof Wiljens noted that just as a diocesan presbyteral council has a right to be consulted before the bishop can act in specific cases, such as altering a parish or building a new church, ‘a provision could be made that on certain or the same topic, the diocesan pastoral council must be heard as well.’

She added that such provisions ‘do not contradict current law and could already be considered in the statutes that bishops can issue within their local Church today.’

Fr Antonio Autiero, another synod expert and Emeritus Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Münster in Germany, discussed the possibility of making the lived experience of the faithful more central in the Church’s decision-making and application of doctrine.

‘The link between faith and morality cannot be conceived in a linear and deductive way,’ he said. ‘We have done that for too long without considering the fact that human practices and the invocation of the moral good correspond to the culture with which people identify.’

The mysterious being of the Church of Christ is truly present in each and every one of its local churches.

Cardinal Robert F Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, said that ‘local churches are not mere parts or administrative units of a whole, nor is the universal Church the sum of all of those parts, as if it were a federation or a grouping together of local communities.’

Instead, ‘the mysterious being of the Church of Christ is truly present in each and every one of its local churches, thus achieving its fundamental unity in the richness of a legitimate local diversity.’

The cardinal observed that in various parts of the world, ‘synodal experiences are becoming more like political assemblies rather than true synodal encounters.’ Referring to the current synod on synodality, he emphasised the importance of invoking the Holy Spirit in discussions about the Church’s future and ‘seeking the Spirit who lives among us, but to whom we must remain attentive’.

Banner image: Synod participants attend a public theological and pastoral forum about the primacy of the pope in a synodal church in Rome on 16 October.

All photos: CNS photo/Lola Gomez.