The Dangers of a Synodal Church Exposed by a Canonist (1)

The author is professor of canon law at the University of Rome III and at the Gregorian University, member of the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences; he has written several works on the history of the Church, from the legal point of view. The Vaticanist Sandro Magister wrote on his website Settimo Cielo on February 17, 2023:

According to Professor Fantappiè, there is no doubt “that Francis has in mind ‘a new model of the Church.’ ‘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.”

The Italian academic sets out the “five major risks” that he identifies in this new synodality, as it is emerging 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.’”

A structure in “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.

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 fourth risk, which Fantappiè identifies is “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.” The second is to “shy away from the confusion between synodality and democratization.”

The third precaution, the most essential of all: “to prevent the new synodality from modifying the structures of the divine constitution of the Church.” Frantappié 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 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).” – We can now better understand the resentment of present-day Rome against so-called “clericalism” and its tenacious desire to promote a merciful non-dogmatic pastoral care.