What If “Synodality” Means Nothing?

"The bad news is that, precisely because “synodality” is a meaningless term (and “meaningless” will be defined below, shortly), it can be used to signify—or worse, justify—anything."

From Crisis

By Fr Robert McTeigue, SJ

The weaponized ambiguity employed to invoke countless post-Vatican Council II abuses could be even more ferociously deployed in the "Church of Synodality."good news and there’s bad news. The problem is that the good news isn’t very good, and we don’t know (yet?) how bad the bad news can be. Yes, you guessed it: I’m talking about “synodality.”

The good news is that “synodality” might actually be meaningless. (That raises some questions about why, then, we are spending so much time, energy, and money on the topic; but let’s try to manage one conundrum at a time.) The bad news is that, precisely because “synodality” is a meaningless term (and “meaningless” will be defined below, shortly), it can be used to signify—or worse, justify—anything.
Anecdotally, we are already very familiar with such verbal sleight of hand. “The spirit of Vatican II” was used to justify (if not explain) just about everything. You know how it goes:

Why are we ripping out Communion rails? “The spirit of Vatican II!”

Why should nuns get rid of their habits? “The spirit of Vatican II!” Ad infinitum.

My concern is that before very long when we ask, “Why should we change this or that?” or “Why should we stopping doing this or that?” or “Why should we do what the Church has never done before?” the infinitely elastic (and apparently self-justifying) response will be, “Synodality!”

All this is by way of anecdote and surmise. Let’s apply some rigor to the matter. When thinking about the latest document on the implementation of synodality, I was surprised to find myself thinking about some analytic philosophy I had read years ago. I don’t ordinarily make use of that school of philosophy, but something seemed to fit. It was the word “blik.”

The term “blik” was introduced by philosopher R.M. Hare in the 1950s as part of a debate within analytic philosophy, particularly about the nature and meaning of religious language. The context was a response to logical positivists like A.J. Ayer, who argued that statements must be either empirically verifiable or logically necessary to be meaningful. Since religious statements (like “God exists”) are not, on this view, empirically verifiable or falsifiable, they were deemed literally meaningless—they might express emotion or attitude but not facts. (That the basic premise of logical positivism is neither empirically verifiable/falsifiable nor logically necessary need not detain us here—but, nevertheless, let us not forget it.)

Hare’s counterpoint was that religious beliefs are not like scientific hypotheses but are instead expressions of a blik—a basic, non-falsifiable way of seeing the world. A blik is a framework or worldview that determines how someone interprets experiences, even if it cannot be tested or disproven by empirical evidence.

For example: A paranoid person might believe all doctors are trying to kill him. No amount of counter-evidence (e.g., kind doctors) will convince him otherwise. His view is governed by a blik. Hare used this to argue that religious belief isn’t about making testable claims but about expressing a nonrational commitment to a way of interpreting the world. This, however, also reinforced the logical positivist critique: if a statement isn’t falsifiable, it may be emotionally or socially significant, but it isn’t meaningful in the same analytic sense.

In recent Catholic Church documents (especially the newly released “Pathways for the Implementation Phase of the Synod”) terms like “synod,” “synodal,” and “synodality” have become central. They are often used to describe a process of listening, dialogue, and shared responsibility among clergy and laity. However, these terms often lack clear operational definitions and are used in ways that appear deliberately open-ended or even ambiguous. (More about that later—I believe that’s where the ticking time bombs are.)

Applying the blik argument:

1. Grammatical Form vs. Meaningfulness:
   • Church documents use “synodality” as if it denotes a real, objective process or condition.
   • However, like blik, the word “synodality” resists empirical definition. It cannot be tested, falsified, or clearly demarcated in practice. Its use tends to prescribe an attitude rather than describe a verifiable state.
2. Faith as a Framework (Blik):
   • To many within the Church, “synodality” expresses a commitment to a particular vision of the Church—e.g., participatory, decentralized, and listening-based. This is analogous to Hare’s blik: it is a way of seeing the Church; it is not a claim about a measurable or falsifiable reality. (In other words, “synodality” is for bringing about the kind of church that some people want rather than living within the Church as Christ founded it.)
   • Critics may point out that such use becomes circular or vacuous—“We must be a synodal Church because the Church is synodal”—which mirrors the concern in analytic philosophy that non-falsifiable religious claims are syntactically valid but semantically empty.
3. Semantic Inflation or Obfuscation:
   • The proliferation of terms like “synodality” often leads to a rhetorical fog. Much like the critique of “blik” as meaningful only within a closed worldview, “synodality” can function as a code word that carries heavy emotional and theological weight but lacks actionable clarity. 
   • This opens the door to manipulation or deception: different factions within the Church can project their own meaning onto the term without any shared, verifiable referent.

The blik argument shows how the recent document on implementation of synodality, though grammatically correct, may be analytically meaningless if it cannot be tested or challenged. 

From this perspective, such terms may serve more to affirm belonging to a particular theological or ecclesial vision than to communicate specific, falsifiable claims—raising the same concerns about meaning that analytic philosophers brought to religious language more broadly.

Here’s where the argument from analytic philosophy reaches the limits of its usefulness for us. For such philosophers, dogmatic or doctrinal statements cannot be put to the test and do not have intrinsic meaning. For faithful Catholics, however, statements about dogma, doctrine, and faith can be verified or falsified. Either something is affirmed in Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition, or it isn’t. Either something has been confirmed or condemned by the magisterium, or it hasn’t. Either something is consistent with the perennial faith of the Church, or it is a novelty. 

And that’s where the apparently meaningless word “synodality” can be so very dangerous. If I’m reading the recent documents correctly, the synodal processes, synergies, dynamisms, and the listening can overshadow and even blot out what is objective in the Deposit of Faith. With the primacy of the infinitely plastic “synodality” in place, how could anything be confidently forbidden, required, or condemned? Anything and everything might be fed into the maw of “synodality”—and who can foresee the results? With the motto “In Omnia Synodalite,” can any teaching or practice ever be considered nonnegotiable? Can any part of Church life be considered “untouchable”? Can anyone ever say with confidence ever again, “The Church would never allow that!”?

If we believe that Catholic theology can and does mean something, how can we accommodate ourselves to a conceptual framework that might mean nothing and could mean anything?