According to an African proverb, “a snake seen by only one person is usually very big, and very long.” I was not alone at the Synod on Synodality in 2023 and 2024; I was one of over 400 participants. There are differing accounts of the process and its meaning and implications for how we understand the community called church. As convener of the synod, Pope Francis was convinced that “it is precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the Church of the third millennium.” His conviction was not universally shared, judging by the contradictory accounts and contending visions of the promises and threats, opportunities and challenges that synodality presents to the church.
A recent book by a pseudonymous “Father Enoch,” The Trojan Horse in the Catholic Church, offered a far different vision. This author’s notion that the Synod on Synodality was a Trojan horse whose sinister purpose was to “invert the Bride of Christ’s hierarchy and moral order” (part of the book’s subtitle) received an emphatic endorsement in the book’s Foreword by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The cardinal opens his disquisition about the Synod on Synodality with the authoritative assertion of an eyewitness. He draws on his firsthand experience of what he observed at the synod to describe a blatant attempt to alter the very nature of the Synod of Bishops and undermine the bishops’ authority by relegating them to “participants on par with other lay attendees.” For Cardinal Müller, this ominous process threatens the fundamental meaning of the church and risks transforming it “into a secular, worldly institution” in the mode of the “Modernist heresy.”
Further, he writes, the idea of a “synodal church” constitutes a grave danger to the true meaning of the church. In his observation, the “synodal process” was manipulated by a cabal of puppeteers intent on reducing the church to a non-spiritual and soulless nongovernmental organization. He paints an ominous picture of the synod and its “evil agenda.”
For people who were not at the synod, Cardinal Müller’s account raises serious alarm. He is an honorable prelate, but what I witnessed during and after the synod differs significantly from his account.
A model for the church
As I experienced it, the Synod on Synodality was a moment of revelation of a new way of being church. The 363 voting members at the synod represented the universal church in its entirety, diversity and complexity. The synod’s composition reflected a stunning variety of people and ministries, with their joys and hopes, concerns and issues—bishops and clergy, lay women and men, religious women and men, young people, people with disabilities and delegates from other Christian communities and faith traditions. All of them engaged together in a process of listening, dialogue and discernment.
As a spiritual moment, the synod modeled how the church can become more attuned to and aligned with the voice of the Holy Spirit. No longer is the mission of the church the exclusive preserve of a select few; it is open to the gifts, talents and wisdom that the Spirit generously bestows on the entire community. The inspiration of the Holy Spirit was visible and palpable in the moments of shared prayer and reflection, discussion and conversation, encounter and engagement without obfuscating the divergences and disagreements. We stayed together at the table despite occasional tension and misunderstanding.
The synod that I witnessed, observed and participated in was akin to the vision that Pope Leo XIV (then-Cardinal Robert Prevost, himself a synod delegate) recently shared: synodality as “an attitude, an openness, a willingness to understand,” where “each and every member of the church has a voice and a role to play through prayer, reflection…through a process…of dialogue and respect of one another. To bring people together and to understand that relationship, that interaction, that creating opportunities of encounter, is an important dimension of how we live our life as Church.” Leo’s view is a credible account of the synodal process.
Fruits of the process
The synod is neither a panacea nor a perfect means for addressing all the matters of significance in the church. But since the conclusion of the two synod sessions, I have witnessed how the synodal process continues to bear significant fruits for the renewal and reform of the church. Here are some examples.
At the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, we have made a fundamental option to promote the knowledge, understanding and practice of synodality. This option takes various forms, including theological discussion, new courses in synodality, community conversation in the Spirit and parish outreach.
I have also been privileged to participate in several events on synodality in parishes and in religious communities. In every instance, I witnessed genuine interest, enthusiasm and energy about the prospects of synodality. While some raise questions about its purposes and apprehension about its direction, the focus is almost always on how we can be part of this way of being church. People ask, “What can we do in our parish to realize the renewal and reform of a synodal church?” Unlike Cardinal Müller, the participants are not crying wolf and seeing heresy, blasphemy and danger disguised as synodality. They get the message that synodality offers us a path and a means to address consequential issues and embrace our differences and tensions by listening to one another and to the Holy Spirit present in our midst and in the church. We do this with mutual respect, as brothers and sisters, the faithful people of God, not as enemies and adversaries. Synodality is the art of learning to disagree well.
I am also part of a group of lay and religious women and men who form the African Synodality Initiative. The group provides resources to facilitate and support the active participation of local churches in the synodal process. Over the last four years, with the generous support of a family foundation, A.S.I. has facilitated training and formation in the understanding, knowledge and practice of synodality for diocesan seminaries across Africa. So far, we have conducted workshops for seminarians and seminary formators in Ivory Coast, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia. At these events, we have witnessed suspicion give way to reception, and mindsets shift from ignorance of the synodal process to conversion and appreciation for its prospects and promises. There is genuine renewal and reform happening. This synodal process needs to be sustained, not undermined with alarmist accounts of the aim of synodality.
Hopeful and authentic
One of the gifts of synodality is the aspiration toward inclusion. In the mind of Cardinal Müller, the participation of the people of God created a condemnable “‘inverted pyramid’ of governance.” Besides, he claims, organizers allowed “only certain chosen speakers…to address the assembly at any length.” I addressed the assembly at a considerable length, but the time allotted to me was the same time allotted to every participant. I was not chosen ahead of time. I signaled my intention to speak and was put in queue to do so—the same, as I recall, as every delegate who addressed the synod.
On other occasions, I reported the outcomes of the discussion in my small group to the synod, which everyone was allowed to do, depending on the role they played as secretaries or rapporteurs. The business of the synod was conducted largely in small groups practicing “conversation in the Spirit,” where participants had equal time, voice and vote. The claim that this process of conversation was manipulated to ensure a desired outcome is inconsistent with reality.
I believe that as a church, we are yet to grasp the full meaning and measure of synodality as the journey that God is calling the people of God to undertake in the third millennium. The path may be long, winding and arduous, but it does not resemble the big, long snake that Müller fears will swallow “the Catholic understanding of the mission and nature of the Church.”
As Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., reminds us, “The synodal process is organic and ecological rather than competitive.” It requires time, patience and trust in the slow and deep work of the Holy Spirit. I find Pope Leo’s version of the synodal process hopeful and authentic:
Synodality is a way of describing how we can come together and be a community and seek communion as a church, so that it’s a church whose primary focus is not on an institutional hierarchy, but rather on a sense of we together, our church; each person with his or her own vocation, priests, or laity, or bishops, missionaries, families.
Far from being a Trojan horse, synodality is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the church.
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