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Being a 'synodal Church' means meeting on common ground as equals by baptism and where everyone, including priests and bishops, must truly listen to everyone else
By Thomas O'Loughlin | United Kingdom
We as a Church – worldwide – are preparing for a "synod on synodality" in 2023.
Pope Francis is asking us to become "a synodal Church". And in various places Catholics are preparing for 'synods' of various kinds.
In less than a decade "synod" has shifted from being a technical word used by lawyers and Church bureaucrats to being a buzz word – and, apparently, it points to a magic formula that can solve the really deep problems that afflict us in the Church today.
But if everyone in the big room is shouting, "Let's have synodality!", over in the corner there is a small voice saying, "But I do not even know what that means!"
Even my computer finds it strange and every time I type "synodality" the automatic spell-check underlines it.
If you sense you do not know what synodality means, that is a good place to be because no one knows exactly what it means.
A couple of years ago the pope asked the International Theological Commission (ITC) to prepare a document on synodality and they had to admit that it was a new word.
The older meanings of the synod (a meeting of bishops) were of little use, and the ITC members tried to find parallels in history that might explain it.
The result is a very wordy document that contains many interesting bits and pieces. But when I finished reading it I was no wiser as to why synodality would be much use to us.
Does that mean that Pope Francis has lost the plot? I believe it's the exact opposite!
When one wants to be creative, to discover new solutions, and face into the future as a challenge, knowing that the Spirit is with us, then it is best notto start from a very fixed and defined point.
Rather, it is better to start with a dream-like, ill-defined image – a sketch or a general pointer. And then see -- through thought, discussion and prayer -- what the future might look like.
If the future is the challenge of the unknown, then the wrong place to start is with a very firm idea derived from the past.
What images does synodality conjure up for us?
So what we need to do now is not define synodality but ask ourselves what such an image brings into our mind.
The simplest meaning of synod is a meeting place. It was a gathering of the leaders of a Churches of a region where they discussed their problems and tried to find solutions.
In mythic Church history these were great assemblies that "solved" problems.
But in reality they were usually far more slip-shod affairs, and the solution proposed at one meeting for one problem created another. And so yet another meeting was needed to solve the problems created by the previous meeting.
However, if we think of a "meeting point" in an airport, we might have a basic image that we could work with.
What does a meeting point suppose among those who meet?
Most obviously we come to a meeting point from different places and directions. We may all be on a common pilgrimage of faith as the People of God, but we are starting from many places and have different needs, problems, and insights.
There is no one person who knows what the problems are or where we are now.
The sign outside a church in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England. If we are going to be synodal, then we have to meet people along the way. Welcome becomes a basic liturgical concept.
Coming from different places assumes that there are many of us and that we are meeting on common ground as equals. This is the very opposite of a single leader waving a banner and shouting to everyone: "Follow me! This way! Charge!"
A meeting place assumes dialogue and sharing of ideas and experience.
The meeting place is a level space that is common to all who arrive there.
It is not a case that everyone is expected to know the location of a particular and then go, as factory workers go to the foreman's office to be told what to do.
When people meet up there is an assumption that each wants to meet the other, to be in the presence of the others, and each will listen and share with the others.
Meeting places are, by their nature, non-hierarchical spaces.
This is going to be difficult for Catholics.
Unlike some of the Reformed Churches, we have never laid any stress on our equality in baptism. We have a tradition of some speaking and having the answers, the rest following, and listening.
In Latin we express this as the ecclesia docens (the teaching Church) and the ecclesia discens (the listening Church).
In common parlance it is expressed as "Father knows best" or that the duty of so-called ordinary Catholics is to "pray, pay and obey".
If we go in for a meeting place type of gathering and still harbor these ideas, it will be a waste of time. And, worse, many will feel betrayed by a false promise.
When I hear some people speak about the magisterium – the authority to speak and teach in the Church – I realize they believe this is really confined to the bishops and those agreeing with them.
That is fine, so long as they do not think of a synod involving anyone other than bishops (and most synods in the Church's history have been bishops-only affairs).
But if we are to talk about a synodal Church and invite others to the meeting point, then everyone has to listen to everyone else. Moreover, it is hard to have real mutual listening of any two people who have met.
It must not simply be a case that some go simply to hear what they bishops say, or that the bishops only listen to their sisters and brothers as part of a fact-finding exercise before they, the bishops, go off and decide matters. Real listening forms a new community of equals.
Likewise, each must speak. And that means engaging in a process of prayer, study and reflection.
It is not simply saying, "I would like this." We are not meeting as suppliers and consumers, but as sisters and brothers.
These synods, right now, are one-off events. But we have to learn new ways of relating to one another.
It is going to be difficult and it is going to be messy.
Many bishops and presbyters will see it as just time-wasting committees to be endured. Many laity will find it too demanding. A consumerist view of religion may be far from the image of discipleship, but it is a constant temptation.
Some priests have grown up in deeply patriarchal, pyramid-shaped societies and thus view authority and truth. This is at odds with the view of "their parishioners" who see things otherwise.
It will be hard!
But having this fuzzy aim – a meeting-place Church – is worth it. It is basic to our image of our relationship with the risen Christ.
"No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (Jn 15:15).
Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).
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