<figure>

<source type="image/webp" />

<button class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image" tabindex="0" type="button"><svg class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw" fill="none" height="20" stroke="currentColor" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="2" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></button><button class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image" tabindex="0" type="button"><svg class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2" fill="none" height="20" stroke="currentColor" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="2" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button>

<figcaption class="image-caption">Credit: Archdiocese of Los Angeles</figcaption></figure>

There are many meanings of “synodality” bandied about in various parts of the Church today: synodality is a “style,” a “process,” a “shape” or “way” of “being Church” etc.

Whatever else the word might mean, there is broad agreement that the word denotes something with a close connection to the Second Vatican Council. More specifically, it is widely agreed that “synodality” is meant to refer to the embodiment of the Council’s particular ecclesiology — though the word was widely in use anywhere until the last decade and appeared nowhere in any of the Council documents.

This point was made in a 2018 document from the International Theological Commission. The ITC is made up of a number of theologians who assist the Holy See generally, and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in particular, in examining important doctrinal questions.

The ITC’s report on “Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church” directly connects synodality to the Council and particularly to the ecclesiology laid out in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium:

In conformity with the teaching of Lumen Gentium, Pope Francis remarks in particular that synodality “offers us the most appropriate framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry itself” and that, based on the doctrine of the sensus fidei fidelium, all members of the Church are agents of evangelisation. Consequently making a synodal Church a reality is an indispensable precondition for a new missionary energy that will involve the entire People of God.

The ITC report goes on to state: “The dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium offers the essential principles for a correct understanding of synodality in the perspective of the ecclesiology of communion.”

I’ve been making the case for some years that “Lumen Gentium in action” is as concise a definition of synodality as one is likely to find anywhere.

Of course, to understand what that means still requires an understanding of the ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium–an insistence upon the unalterably hierarchical nature of the Church, the importance of the lay vocation and the People of God, and a simultaneous insistence on the universal call to holiness and the mission of all the baptized — but at the very least it fixes the definition of “synodality” to a known quantity. And to an ecumenical council, no less.

This explains to a certain degree why criticisms of synodality–and of the Synod on Synodality, in particular–have often been portrayed as veiled attacks on, or a rejection of, the Second Vatican Council itself. If synodality is a manifestation of the ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium, then isn’t criticism of synodality, at least indirectly, criticism of the Council?

In a word, no.

Read more