The End of the Synod…
When Francis was elected pope in 2013, “synodality” was a technical term used mostly by ecclesiologists and Church historians. But a synodal Church was the hope of many who did not have the word for it. The conclusion of the second assembly in October did not necessarily satisfy those hopes. But the process and the Final Document suggest that Catholicism is moving in the direction of a more communional, participatory, and missionary Church—if slowly.
The assemblies of October 2023 and October 2024 had the difficult task of slowing down runaway local synodal experiences (Germany, for example) while at the same time spurring synodal momentum in churches where it was lacking (including some U.S. dioceses). The model Pope Francis had in mind was Latin American, infused with Jesuit practices. The process has been complex—conversations at the local, national, and continental levels, and then at the central level. It differed from previous synods and Vatican II, where the restitutio to the local churches of what was elaborated at the center took place
formally only at the end of the Synod’s assembly in Rome. But there was a sensible improvement from the first assembly to the second. The first took the form of a “conversation in the Spirit,” with little or no integration of theological expertise. But the intersession and the second session of October 2024 corrected this in important ways—providing evidence that theology still matters.Another difference from previous synods was the way information was imparted to the public. In the past, the speeches that participants delivered during the proceedings provided a view of what was developing. This time, the media had limited access to the proceedings, so as to allow participants to speak more freely while also encouraging them to focus on the spiritual dimension—while also limiting the likelihood of it being covered as a media event (this succeeded only in part). But there were daily press conferences with speakers chosen by the Synod’s leaders. The feed available to the public had a feel akin to a World Youth Day split: between the 350 attendees and their followers “sharing” their enthusiasm, and the rest of the Church that was not in Rome. The social dynamics of the “peri-council” at Vatican II and its predecessors—theological work in informal meetings and evening lectures—turned into the social-media Synod: selfies and photos of colleagues’ and friends’ reunions, dinners, and gelato. Synodality as communion and participation now must take into account the digitalization of religious and ecclesial identities—a reality that simply didn’t exist at synods of Francis’s predecessors.
The Church’s work on synodality since 2021, locally and in Rome, has been important. If the Synod on Synodality didn’t settle on a clear preference for a theory or theology of synodality, it did settle on a style: one based on Vatican II. Francis and the Synod’s central office laid out the synodal path as a process, not as an event. But there is an “evenementiel” aspect to the Final Document, which as a whole was approved almost unanimously—by bishops, clergy, and laypeople. The Final Document lays out the vision of a synodal Church in an official way for the first time, as a source of Church teaching and not just as a theological study. Synodality is magisterially rooted in Vatican II, but also accepts that the Council’s theology and ecclesiology need to be augmented in important ways.
Overall, the Synod on Synodality is a step forward. The institutional discourse on synodality has now acquired a stability that could also make it useful for other churches dealing with the issues Catholicism is dealing with in the third millennium. Its reception by Catholic churches around the world may differ by country, or even within countries—including the United States. Some of its proposals had already been approved at Vatican II but have not been uniformly adopted in the global Church (e.g., councils at the parish and diocesan levels). Some have already been implemented (e.g., on transparency and accountability) in parts of global Catholicism, but it is hard to imagine how long it will take for them to be implemented where the legal and financial structures and cultures are different from those of countries in the Anglo-American Church. Some of the proposals open unexpected possibilities that are nevertheless fully part of a synodal conversion of the Church, like the one on liturgy and synodality. Others, like the one on the procedure for the appointment of bishops, will face a wide variety of canonical and political hurdles (appointing bishops for China, Russia, or Vietnam is very different from appointing them for the United States or Germany).
On the other hand, the Synod and the Final Document show that the People of God “represented” in the two assemblies did not quietly accept Pope Francis’s attempt to remove certain issues from the agenda for discussion and discernment, especially on the diaconate for women. This had interesting consequences in terms of procedure. The rule on the secrecy of interventions in the Synod was broken with the decision to publish comments from Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on October 21; then, the audio recording of his October 24 meeting with members of the Synod was released online. Paragraph 60 of the Final Document received the highest number of “no” votes (ninety-seven, still less than one-third of the total), but it also puts in writing something very important: “There is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the Church: what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped. Additionally, the question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue.” The openness of Cardinal Walter Kasper to this, expressed in an October 31 interview with Communio, was surprising. Given Kasper’s critical position vis-à-vis the German Synod in the last few years, his recent statement says that the issue of the diaconate for women is not just an idée fixe of a few theologians or activists, but is central to the future of ministry in the Catholic Church.
The way Francis and Fernández chose to manage the issue showed that when something delicate is on the table, the Vatican’s instinct is still to hand it over exclusively (and opaquely) to the former Holy Office. It’s a reflex dating to the Counter-Reformation, one the 2022 reform of the Roman Curia apparently has not changed. It also demonstrated that, unlike Paul VI at Vatican II, Pope Francis is capable of removing certain issues from the agenda. Roma locuta, causa soluta does not work anymore, or at least not in the same way.
There were questions going into the second assembly about how the issue of LGBTQ Catholics would be handled. Though the Final Document does not explicitly address it, this time around there was much less tension than there was at the Synod on the Family and Marriage in 2014–2015, to say nothing of the pre-Francis era, when mere talk of it was taboo. The sex-abuse crisis has only a marginal role in the document. This reflects the very different ways in which the churches in Africa and Asia deal with it; the reluctance of leaders of non-Western churches confirms what scholars and experts have experienced and reported in the last few years.
On the divisive issues, the Synod leaves the door open, because it’s ultimately for Francis or his successor to decide. Francis will not be writing a post-synodal exhortation. This decision, a first in the history of the post-conciliar synods since Paul VI issued Evangelii nuntiandi in 1975, can be interpreted in different ways. Certainly, it departs from what he did in 2020, with the exhortation Querida Amazonia—which followed the Synod for the Amazon Region and ignored many of its recommendations. Francis also dismissed that synod as something more “parliamentary” than “synodal.” This time, he accepted the Final Document because it contains proposals that are less radical than the final document of the 2019 Amazon synod.
Though there is a clear intention to continue with the “synodal turn,” just what that means for the future of a synodal Catholic Church is less certain. As Christoph Theobald, SJ, one of the theologian experts, put it in his lecture at the Pontifical Gregorian University the week after the Synod: “We have left behind a model of the Church” and have entered a “phase with unpredictable contours,” given the synodal form advocated by Francis.
And what about the synod’s future as institution? Also hard to say. Will bishops continue to dominate, with only minimal non-episcopal additions? Or will there be real representation of clergy, religious, and laypeople? Francis has changed many important institutional features (membership, procedure) while maintaining its consultative nature. The Final Document says that “the Synod of Bishops” is “preserving its episcopal nature.” But it does not make a proposal, because ultimately it’s in Francis’s hands, like the issue of how synodality affects or does not affect the Roman Curia. This has happened often in conciliar history, with the Curia exempted by the councils’ decision and shielded from the bishops’ attempts to reform it.
What is the future of conciliarity and papal primacy in synodality? The papal office is affected by this in ways that Francis hasn’t talked about yet. But on October 27, he concluded the Synod on Synodality with a Mass. At the end, from his wheelchair, he led the faithful in the veneration of a relic of St. Peter’s chair—a wooden throne symbolizing papal primacy. This sent a message: a more collegial and synodal Church still has a pope who can use his primatial power.
The synodal turn could mean a new wave of local synods, as in the 1970s, or could lead to different ways of governing the Church beginning at the local level. The concept of synodality has been extended under Francis’s pontificate, from the development of “episcopal collegiality” of Vatican II being implemented in the institutional life of the Church, to a more spiritual and social idea of synodality. But given what we’ve seen since 2021, in some churches the synodal turn will simply not be made—unless Rome acts authoritatively. Much will depend on Francis. The theme and structure of the next synod, the date of which is not known, will tell what the pope makes of the Synod on Synodality.
The synodal path creates a bit of cognitive dissonance around the role of bishops and the clergy, especially in the Euro-Western world: we can’t live with them or without them. The Final Document says that the Synod remains “episcopal,” but since 2013, Francis has reduced the role of bishops significantly and ushered in a new centralization at the expense of the local bishops’ authority. The question is whether synodality is an attempt to build a different system of relationships between charisma and institution, people and hierarchy, or is instead just an attempt to emasculate an episcopal hierarchy—without which Catholicism simply cannot function, administratively and otherwise. The fact that the Church will continue to be made up of clergy and laity does not necessarily entail the continuation of clericalism. This is important for imagining ministry for evangelization in the third millennium, and for overcoming an ecclesiological dualism devised at the beginning of the second millennium that finds no justification in the Gospel.
Francis’s pontificate seems to show that papal primacy and synodality are proceeding on parallel paths—close, but still separate. Francis has given synodality an unprecedented boost, opening Catholicism to a theology that develops key themes of Vatican II. At the same time, papal primacy in this pontificate is supported by a unique theological and institutional structure unavailable to synodality. The key question is how to provide synodality a stable and visible dimension without simply creating other ecclesiastical institutions that would interest and involve only a few people. We are entering a very delicate phase: how to shape and reform old and new Church institutions in ways that also keep alive the hopes and energies of the spiritual, ecclesial movement toward synodality.
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