Synodality and the Church’s antiquated governing structure

Monday, October 2nd, 2023

The big day has finally arrived. Pope Francis on Wednesday will open the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.

The October 4-29 gathering inside the Vatican is just the first of two sessions of what is commonly called the “Synod on Synodality”.

It will be followed up by another session in October of next year.

This initial meeting will include more than 400 participants and, for the first time in the Synod of Bishops’ fifty-eight-year history, more than 50 women and a number of other laypersons will be full voting members.

Hopes and fears

Reform-minded and socially progressive Catholics are staking a lot of hope on these two gatherings, which will culminate a three-year process the pope launched in October 2021.

The object has been to involve all the baptised – especially the lay faithful – in a series of conversations at the local, national and regional levels on the future of the Church.

This ambitious exercise, which the “Vatican II” types have eagerly embraced, has been strongly criticized and even denounced by more traditional-minded and socially conservative Catholics.

And anecdotal evidence would suggest that a large percentage of the clergy, even some in the episcopate and College of Cardinals, are also less than enthusiastic about its purpose and possible outcome – that is, the specter of changing things, especially Church teaching and discipline.

Both fans and foes of the Synod are campaigning and lobbying hard to pressure the assembly’s participants and Church officials to adopt their respective views.

A number of Catholic reform groups, almost entirely made up of laypeople, have even come to Rome.

They are there to

push for changes such as the ordination of women to the diaconate and priesthood,
Church blessings for same-sex couples,
greater lay participation in the exercise of ecclesial governance,
whole-scale reform of how candidates are selected and prepared for ministry, as well as how bishops are chosen…

Interestingly, neither the pope (who is the Synod’s president) nor his aides in the Synod’s general secretariat have forbidden people from raising these topics.

And this has given reform-minded Catholics a measure of hope that Church officials are actually open to considering the changes they are pushing for.

Sorry to say, but this is a false hope – at least at this juncture of the synodal process.

No one should expect any major changes in how the Church is currently dealing with the so-called hot-button issues.

This first session of the Synod assembly will certainly not resolve anything of the sort.

Synodality as the “backbone” of the Church’s structure

That does not mean nothing will change.

Not at all.

In fact, much has already changed since 2013 when the cardinals elected history’s first-ever pope who is a Jesuit and also the first to be born in the so-called “new world”.

Francis, who will soon be 87, has largely overhauled the Synod of Bishops.

And if he’s really serious about making synodality a constitutive part of Church’s life, ministry and administration – as he’s said he does –he must push on with the re-build.

And not only concerning the Synod but also the arcane monarchical governing structure of the Church.

Synodality cannot and will not work until major changes are made to address the anachronisms of that structure.

Cardinal Mario Grech, the Synod of Bishops’ general secretary, has said almost as much.

In an in-depth profile the National Catholic Reporter’s Chris White did on him, the 66-year-old Maltese cardinal suggested that no changes on particular Church issues could be made unless there were first changes to the ecclesial structure.

“A canon lawyer by training, he said the Vatican should put together a group of canonists, as well as theologians who are experts in the theology of canon law, to ‘reflect how synodality can be the backbone of the structure’ of the entire Church,” White wrote in his profile on Grech.

The Synod of Bishops or just “the Synod”?

And this is where things get interesting.

To move in the direction the cardinal suggests would require further changes to the structure, purpose and authority of the Synod of Bishops itself.

One should note that the pope and his synodal allies, including Grech, have downplayed the fact that we are dealing with the “Synod of Bishops” – and not just “the Synod”. Or are we?

The assembly that gets underway on October 4 is specifically called an assembly of the Synod of Bishops.

But in Praedicate Evangelium, the apostolic constitution Francis issued in March 2022 to reform the Roman Curia, the pope changed the name of the office Grech oversees from “the General Secretaritat of the Synod of Bishops” to simply “the General Secretariat of the Synod”.

The Vatican’s official yearbook, the Annuario Pontificio, had always put the secretariat under the heading “Sinodo dei Vescovi” (Synodus Episcoporum). But the most recent edition (2023) lists it under “Secreteria Generale del Sinodo” (Secrateria Generalis Synodi).

However, the Synod’s formal name remains the Synod of Bishops.

It is more than possible that, at some point between now and the 16th ordinary general assesmbly’s second session next October, the pope will formally change the name to simply “the Synod” and even make further changes to its competencies.

Do not think this is just a matter of semantics.

This first assembly sure looks like a move towards radically transforming an institution that Paul VI erected in 1965 to facilitate consultations between the Roman Pontiff and representatives of the worldwide episcopate into a body of discernment that includes representatives of all the Church’s baptized members, laity and clergy alike.

Only one man decides

This is the necessary first step towards making synodality the “backbone” of the Church’s governing structure, to use Cardinal Grech’s phrase.

And it’s a type of synodality that appears to be quite different from the Eastern Church model, which is still (with exceptions in but a few autocephalous Orthodox Churches) an almost strictly hierarchical and collegial body.

The model that Francis seems to be shaping looks more like a Churchwide assembly that is characteristic of Church of England’s Synod but with a major distinction.

The Synod of Bishops has never enjoyed deliberative authority, though Paul VI stipulated that the pope could grant it such.

Up until now that has never been done.

The Roman Pontiff – who enjoys “supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power” (CIC can. 331) – can use it or discard as he wishes.

That brings us to a difficult question, which is probably too much for the pope and most other Catholic Church leaders even to consider: can there be true synodality if, in the end, only one man has the right to decide?