Five Risks and Three Urgent Countermeasures. The Alarm of a Great Canonist on the Plan for a Synodal Church

Remember, both the dying Anglican Communion and the schism-riven Eastern Orthodox are 'synodal' churches. Is that what Francis wants?

From Settimo Cielo

By Sandro Magister

Right at the conclusion of the continental synods that are leading into the world synod on synodality scheduled in Rome for October of this year and then again next year, on February 24 bookstores in Italy will be offering an essay by a distinguished canonist who reveals, with a rare level of skill, both the ambitions and the limitations and risks of this capital project of Francis’s pontificate.

The essay, published by Marcianum Press, is entitled: “Metamorphosis of synodality. From Vatican II to Pope Francis.” And the author is Carlo Fantappiè , professor of canon law at the University of Roma Tre and at the Pontifical Gregorian University, member of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and also the author of important books on Church history, under the legal aspect.

In just over a hundred pages, agile but well documented, Fantappiè first of all retraces the birth and development of the idea of synodality, starting with Vatican Council II and the turbulent national synods of the 1970s in Holland, Germany, and other countries. He describes its subsequent elaboration by theologians and canonists of various countries and various schools, including the international theological commission with its “ad hoc” document of 2018. And lastly he evaluates its implementation in the “process” that Francis has set in motion.

That Francis has in mind “a new model of the Church” is beyond doubt, in Fantappiè’s judgment. “After the Gregorian model, the Tridentine model, the juridical-corporate one, that of the people of God, what is making its appearance is the synodal model of the Church.” Although it is hard to comprehend what this may be, subjected as it is to constant changes by the pope himself, “almost from month to month.”

“One seems to gather,” Fantappiè writes, “that Pope Francis intends to establish a preferential, permanent axis between synodality and the synod of bishops,” to the point, perhaps, of “realizing the transition from a ‘hierarchical Church’ to a permanently ‘synodal Church,’ and therefore of modifying its structure of government, which for a millennium has hinged on the pope, the Roman curia, and the college of cardinals.”

It is on the threshold of this imminent mutation of the very structure of the Church, set in motion by Francis, that Fantappiè concludes his essay. But it is also useful to review “the five major risks” that he identifies in the new synodality, in the form it takes today.

The first risk, he writes, is the extension of synodality as the “supreme regulatory criterion of the permanent government of the Church,” superior to both episcopal collegiality and the primatial authority of the pope.

This would be nothing more nor less than a return to the “conciliarist path” of Constance and Basel in the first half of the fifteenth century, a real and proper “overturning of the constitutional structure of the Church.” With which we would have “a Church as assembly” and therefore “ungovernable and weak, exposed to the influence of political, economic, and media power,” in which regard “the history of the reformed Churches and of the congregationalist Churches should teach us something.”

A second danger, Fantappiè writes, is “an idealistic and romantic vision of synodality” that does not take into serious consideration “the reality of dissent and conflict in the life of the Church,” and therefore refuses to prepare norms and practices suitable to govern them. When instead it would be “necessary not only to set principles and rules concerning the modality of the electoral representation of the various classes of the faithful and the procedures suitable for running the debates and voting, but to guarantee all participants the information necessary to assess problems and be able to make realistic decisions.”

A third risk is “a malleable, generic, and indeterminate vision of synodality.” For the very reason that without a precise conceptual configuration, “the term ‘synodality’ runs the risk of becoming, depending on the case, a slogan (an improper and abused term for indicating the renewal of the Church), a ‘refrain’ (a chorus resorted to at every occasion, almost by way of fashion) or a mantra (a miraculous invocation capable of healing all the evils present in the Church).”

What is missing, Fantappiè writes, is “a dividing line so as to distinguish and differentiate what is ‘synodal’ from what is not.” With the result that “the new synodality plays itself out in meetings, assemblies, or conventions at the various levels of ecclesial organization,” very similar, in terms of organization and modalities, “to the national synods held in the early seventies in various countries of Europe, the outcome of which was substantially a failure.” Those synods were “a sort of transposition into the life of the Church of the assembly movement that asserted itself, after 1968, in some areas of democratic societies in the West and was based on the principle that the ‘base’ should participate directly in the decision-making process.”

The fact is, Fantappiè observes, that the current gatherings have nothing to do with the “particular councils” celebrated uninterruptedly in the Church beginning in the second century, among whose tasks, from the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 onward, is “the application and adaptation of the common norms of the general councils to the realities of the particular Churches.” These particular councils are still prescribed by canon law, although not at any set intervals of time, but their abandonment is “a serious loss for the life of the Church,” far from compensated for by the mishmash of meetings and forums in fashion today.

And now we come to the fourth risk, which Fantappiè identifies “in the prevalence of the sociological rather than theological-canonical model of the synodal process.” Already the document of the international theological commission on synodality “uses typically sociological terminology (‘structures’ and ‘ecclesial processes’) rather than juridical-canonistic (‘institutions’ and ‘procedures’),” but this tendency appears even more pronounced “if we go to read the ‘Vademecum for the synod on synodality’ prepared by the general secretariat of the synod of bishops,” or the appeal for a “collaborative leadership, no longer vertical and clerical, but horizontal and cooperative,” formulated by the undersecretary of the synod of bishops, Sister Nathalie Becquart.

“In the light of these references,” Fantappiè observes, “one could suppose that, more or less covertly, behind the synodal process there is an attempt to reinterpret the ecclesiastical office of the bishops, of the parish priests, of other associates in terms of a function of pastoral facilitation rather than as sacred ministries for which specific institutional tasks are reserved.”

A fifth and final misunderstanding to avoid, Fantappiè writes, is precisely “the identification of the concept of synodality with the pastoral dimension.” When the program of the new synodality is indicated “in the triad of communion, participation, mission,” it is entrusted with tasks so out of proportion that “their realization cannot help but appear utopian.”

To the enumeration of these five risks of the purported “medicine” of synodality, to which many attribute the ability “to remedy all the evils of the Church,” Fantappiè also adds three suggestions of “precautions for use.”

The first is to establish for synodality “precise boundaries around the domain of its operation,” also opening new spaces for the “participation of all the faithful in the ‘munus regendi,’ the government of the Church in the three functions traditionally distinguished as legislative, executive, and judicial,” considering that “not all powers of government need to be conjoined with sacred orders; on the contrary, some of them should instead be connected, by way of the requisites of specific competence and Christian witness, with the royal priesthood of all the faithful,” particularly in the judicial sector.

The second precaution is to “shy away from the confusion between synodality and democratization.” And the third? It is the most indispensable: “to prevent the new synodality from modifying the structures of the divine constitution of the Church.” Fantappiè explains:

“Even if it is brought forward by ecclesial minorities, that danger must not be underestimated which arises from a desacralized vision of the Church, which proposes, more or less deliberately, its homologation into a democratic community fully inserted in the context of the modern forms of representative government. For this reason, the proponents of this version of synodality tend to contest the hierarchical-clerical structure, to reduce the role of the doctrine of the faith and of divine law, to neglect the centrality of the Eucharist, and to conceive of ecclesial organization according to the congregational model (a Church of Churches).”

In short, Fantappiè writes, addressing his readers and in particular the theologians and canonists:

“The hopes of a new horizon brought into view by the ‘synodal way’ in the life of the Church must not be burned up in the short term, nor distorted in their intentions, nor sugarcoated in their implementation. That program is instead waiting to be put to the test in its doctrinal premises, and to be pondered in its complex articulation, so as to be strengthened in terms of theological coherence, canonical soundness, and pastoral efficacy. To lay bare its weak points, to propose the necessary additions, is a task of constructive criticism and not of destructive criticism, in full harmony – one would say – with the ‘synodal spirit’ of the Church.”