What Should a Synodal Church Look Like?
11/22/2024
Pope Francis is clearly of the opinion that synodality is the future of the church. But here’s the problem we need to address in the United States: while the rest of the world, especially Asia, Africa and Latin America, is working hard to implement synodality, even at the level of bishops’ conferences, here at home it seems to have little or no purchase. Estimates vary but it appears that no more than about 1% (yes, that would be “one” percent) of American Catholics have had any direct involvement with the synodal process, and very few at all followed up the 2023 Synod’s parting request that we all digest their preliminary findings in synodal gatherings. In my home diocese, I am assured, only one parish (mine, as a matter of fact) took seriously the request to gather in dialogue and debate.
Why are American Catholics, historically pro-papal, ignoring Francis’s insistence that we practice synodality? One explanation is the deplorable level of leadership on the topic from bishops and pastors, probably because it doesn’t suit their understanding of authority. A second is the well-documented passivity of major segments of the 47% of Catholics who attend mass at least once a month (the other 53% are Christmas and Easter Catholics, if that). And a third is the suspicion of the Francis papacy, once again led by an episcopate that is so hung up on the pro-life issue that it provided zero leadership in the pre-election period over the last few months on other serious issues, especially on immigration and climate change. Perhaps even they will finally have to respond to the expected amoral excesses of the incoming administration. But don’t count on it.
But the major drag on the possibility of converting our parishes into hotbeds of synodality is the American disease of excessive individualism, which is a cultural rather than an ideological phenomenon. Democrats are as likely to be guilty of this as Republicans, churchgoers as nones. Individualism belongs in the past, you know. The problems that beset our world today are so gigantic that only concerted communal discernment and action have a hope of solving any of them. What can you or I do as an individual to address gun control, arms sales, drug abuse or climate change?
This brings us to the question of what a synodal parish needs to look like, and the clues to this are to be found in the final document issued by the 2024 Synod on Synodality, a document so pleasing to Pope Francis that he declined to write the customary papal response. No need, the document says it all.
The first clue to answering this question is to look at the photographs of the gatherings of the Synod on Synodality in October 2023 and 2024. At any table you can see cardinals, bishops and young lay Catholics sitting together and given equal time to speak of how the Spirit is moving them. Maybe not everyone had equal power in the church, and certainly not everyone had equal knowledge of the tradition, but everyone’s contribution was treated with equal dignity. The phrase that summarizes this in the final document is “a differentiated co-responsibility of all for mission.” Pope Francis saw these assemblies not only as discussing synodality but also, and perhaps more importantly, modeling it for the global church.
We need to expect our bishops to practice and model synodality. Synodality is also expected of the clergy, which is a more challenging call for them. They are locked in a career structure with top-down accountability as the norm and obedience to that kind of authority is the path—perhaps the only path—to what is unfortunately called “advancement.” Synodality is also expected of the laity. In their case, it is not only a matter of being open to conversations among lay Christians, but also requires the courage to insist on remaking structures of the church in a more synodal way, so that, as the final document clearly states, we are all called to mission, and we are all accountable – even bishops. As section 99 of the final document so eloquently puts it, “While accountability to one’s superiors has been practiced over the centuries, the dimension of authority’s being accountable to the community is in need of restoration.” So, look out bishops: the people of God expect moral leadership that is timely, courageous and most definitely not “single issue.”
The last word is mission, which is where a synodal church can have a prophetic function in the wider world. God knows we need less polarization and more compassion. As Francis has said so well, the traditional image of Christ is one knocking on the door of our hearts, wanting to be welcomed in. No longer! Christ is already with us. Now he is knocking on the door of the church, begging to be let OUT! Synodality leads to mission, and the mission is simply to spread the love of God in the world, to carry Christ out into the world. And that’s a job for all of us.
Paul Lakeland is emeritus professor of Catholic Studies at Fairfield University.