Synod on synodality “selfies” and the media

Thursday, October 26th, 2023

When I was in Rome during the second week of the Synod on synodality, I had the opportunity to talk with some of the participants.

Every single one of them offered encouraging words of hope.

But if one wants to know what is happening at this synodal assembly, those words of hope are pretty much all we have for now, given that Pope Francis has chosen a policy that limits the media’s access to what is going on behind the closed-door meetings.

Paul VI instituted the Synod of Bishops in 1965 and the next year issue its first Ordo, the set of regulations and procedures.

It made clear his desire that the Synod assemblies would be a hortus conclusus, a protected moment shielded from the press and public scrutiny.

Only later did Synod assemblies gradually become more open to the press and the public.

Francis’ current policy therefore marks a strange return to the past – but not to the days of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Ironically, compared to “Synod 2023”, the various assemblies that were held during those two pontificates actually featured more openness in revealing the contents of the discussions that took place in the Synod Hall.

There could have been other methods

The new lack of openness is problematic, because it could hamper the Synod assembly from becoming the spark that ignites synodality in the global Church.

Journalism has been called “the first draft of history”, and without more openness and less secrecy it will be difficult, in years to come, to write a history of this synodal assembly.

Historiographical accounts of ecclesial events are different – but not separated – from the continuous making of the tradition in a community, including the Church.

Pope Francis has not been precise (to say the least) in outlining his expectations of the role journalists should play in the Church.

For example, there are some differences between the Church’s relationship with journalists, per se, and its relationship with Catholic journalists.

The Synod is not a conclave; there could have been other methods to preserve the freedom of synodal members (such as some version of the “Chatham House Rule”).

It’s not just Francis’ fear of what journalists, of whom he has always tried to make a very attentive and strategic use, could say that could perturb this retreat-like assembly of the Synod.

In fact, the assemblies held during previous pontificates were not just of a different kind.

They were also carefully controlled by the Roman Curia and, in some sense, already scripted to achieve a specific outcome.

And this Synod has been structured more as a retreat of a small ecclesial community than a meeting of delegates of the global Church.

More photos to look at than texts to read

This is also a different era in the history of the mass media and of the use and misuse of the media in the Church and by Catholics.

The “culture war” narratives have changed the role of the media with polarising effects in the ecclesial conversation.

But there is also a change in the technology that this Synod assembly is evidencing.

In the more than two weeks that it’s been in session, we have been given more photos to look at than written texts to read! There’s a real temptation to call this the “Synod of selfies”.

It is true that photos provide a narrative as well. But they can also be very misleading.

Our culture today is one of images in ways that the culture of twenty years ago was not. That was before smartphones and social media changed our daily relationship with reality, including ecclesial reality.

There’s now a whole new iconography – not paintings of dead saints, but self-made instant icons of living ecclesial leaders in our ubiquitous celebrity culture.

There is a whole psychology and spirituality of selfies (especially selfies taken by and with Catholic celebrities – the pope, cardinals, bishops, etc.) that the policies of the Synod and self-discipline of Synod members could and should take into account.

On the other hand, this policy and the world media’s relative silence about the Synod are strangely fitting in this moment when so many lamps are going out in our world.

It makes sense that news on the Synod is being overshadowed by other world events such as those in Israel and Gaza, without forgetting Ukraine and the situation in the Caucasus.

Moreover, the policy concerning the media and the Synod is also a failure to understand or appreciate that if synodality is to work the Church must engage the media’s quest for news-making narratives in ways that are different from the recent past – especially from the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

The pope’s big gamble

Synodality entails redefining the roles of the characters on the stage of the religious and spiritual drama that should be at the center of the Christian story.

In its coverage of the Catholic Church, the media will always place much attention on the ecclesiastical game, that is, on Church politics.

But this does not mean that the Church should provide the media with the usual script.

At the same time, it is also important to note that in the Synod assemblies that preceded Francis, there was greater separation between those who are members of the assembly and those who craft a media narrative on the Synod.

Among those whom the Jesuit pope has appointed as members of the current assembly, are individuals well known for their ability to influence narratives on the Church in both the Catholic and mainstream media.

They have been quite visible in these days.

There are also elderly and eminent theologians at this assembly – some of them octogenarians who have been real fathers of the theology of synodality since the 1970s.

But, since they don’t take selfies like those in the hall who are savvier with social media, we don’t see many (if any) photos of them participating the Synod. It’s almost as if they are not even there.

Francis’ new policy concerning the Synod and the media must also be seen in light of the relationship between the news and the truth. We are now at a new stage of the “post-truth” age.

It’s not they we are uninterested in truth, it’s that many now believe it is impossible and futile to know the truth, or to trust the media – and other institutions, the Church included – in their presentations of the truth.

Through his new Synod-media policy, the pope has taken a huge gamble on what type of reception synodality among the world’s Catholics during the long period between the current session of Synod assembly and its second session in October 2024.

It’s also big gamble for the papacy, which has come to rely more and more on mainstream media to tell its story – not the Church’s, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia) and a much published author and commentator. He is a visiting professor in Europe and Australia.
First published in La Croix. Republished with permission.