Dr Nishant A.Irudayadason
Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune.

The preparatory document for the next Synod of 2023 on Synodality (and Collegiality) in the Church was made public by the Vatican on Tuesday, 07 September 2021. Its stakes are considerable because it carries the seeds of a double Copernican revolution for the Church. Against a clerical conception of the institution, today indicted through a multitude of scandals, it intends to reaffirm that it is to the whole people of God – invited to “walk together” (meaning of the word synod) – that the mission of evangelization has always been entrusted. In the Catholic Church strongly marked by centralization, it intends to open, gradually, to a legitimate diversity in communion. The aim of the synod on synodality is to show a way for the Church to bridge the ever-widening gap between her modes of exercising authority and the aspirations of many of her faithful who are heirs of democratic modernity.
The Synod on Synodality will be preceded in autumn 2022 by an “intermediate” phase at the level of each continent. This is a major innovation that clearly reveals the horizon towards which Pope Francis wants to lead the Church: a future towards which the Episcopal Conferences at the level of the local Churches and the Episcopates of continents marked by different economic, social, political and cultural realities, could make pastoral choices of their own, except respect for the same doctrine common to all. This is, as we know, the ambition of Pope Francis, as he has consistently expressed it since his election. This corresponds to his conviction that a healthy and legitimate diversity in communion is the only alternative to a standardizing centralism that has now been defeated.
The preparatory document tells us that the Church is inherently synodal and it gives reference to St John Chrysostom who believed that Church and synodality are synonymous. The document affirms that the path of synodality is precisely what God expects from the Church of the third millennium, an idea taken from the speech of Pope Francis at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the synodal institution. The text recalls that all the baptized participate in the priestly, prophetic and royal function of Christ. It reiterates that the synodal process is first and foremost an experience of a spiritual nature in which antagonisms can only be overcome by listening to God and by giving ourselves to the service of the good of the ecclesial community.
The document affirms that a synodal process must be open to a broad consultation that presupposes a reciprocal listening to each other. A listening that goes beyond the borders of our communities and that must take into account, in addition to the voice of other Christian confessions, that of the poorest and excluded from our societies with whom we are also called to “walk together”. The shared responsibility underlying the synodal process concerns not only the proclamation of the Gospel but also the commitment to build a more beautiful world. It ends with an invitation, taken from the speech of Pope Francis, on October 3, 2018, at the opening of the Synod on Youth to recall that the purpose of the Synod, and therefore of this consultation, is not to produce documents, but to “to plant dreams, draw forth prophecies and visions, allow hope to flourish, inspire trust, bind up wounds, weave together relationships, awaken a dawn of hope, learn from one another, and create a bright resourcefulness that will enlighten minds, warm hearts, give strength to our hands”.
To implement synodality, to deploy synodal pastoral care, the Church today needs pastors trained in synodality who exercise a new style of leadership which can be characterized as collaborative leadership and which is no longer vertical and clerical but more horizontal and cooperative. It calls for a leadership of service that translates into a new relationship with power and a new way of exercising authority that is conceived as a service of freedom. Among the many challenges we may face, the first challenge of this synodal process is to allow the expression and consideration of all opinions, even those that will express a form of distrust in a hierarchical principle perceived as a source of clerical abuse.