Reflections on “a further reception of the Council” in light of the Synodal Process
This article is based on a conference given by theologian Rafael Luciani at the Annual Meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Women and Men Confederation (CLAR) for the preparation of the Third Phase of the Synod. Dr. Luciani is a Venezuelan layman, a member of the Theological Commission of the General Secretariat of the Synod, and an Expert for the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.
1. The People of God as a communitarian and historical subject
Throughout the first period of the Second Vatican Council, there was a growing awareness that the schema on the Church would have to occupy a central place. Bishop Huyghe, in his intervention of December 3, 1962, said that the world was asking the Church, “What do you have to say for yourself?”[1] One of the most decisive conciliar interventions to express awareness of the needed ecclesiological shift was that of Bishop De Smedt, for whom overcoming triumphalism, clericalism, and legalism was necessary. On this he points out that “the Church is presented in common life as if it were a chain of triumphs of the members of the militant Church (…). This style is little in conformity with reality, with the real situation of the people of God.”[2] For this reason, he warns: “we must be careful in speaking about the Church so as not to fall into a certain hierarchicalism, clericalism, obispolatry, or papolatry. What comes first is the People of God.”[3] “According to G. Philips, one of its most qualified interpreters, the notion People of God should not be understood as a likeness or comparison of the Church, because it designates its very essence: the Church is the people of God.”[4]
Cardinal Suenens explained the new architectural plan of the schema De Ecclesia by reordering the sequence of the chapters of the future constitution and placing one on the People of God (De Populo Dei) before the others dedicated to the hierarchy and the other ecclesial subjects (laity, religious life). The revised sequence of chapters expressed that the episcopate, the laity, and those in religious life are all equally part of the People of God, participating in the radical equality that springs from baptism. In the debates he emphasized that “pastors and faithful belong to one People” and that this concept must always be considered as a “totality” in which each member of the faithful brings a contribution to the others. After the Council, Cardinal Suenens stated, “If we were to be asked what we consider to be that seed of life deriving from the Council which is most fruitful in pastoral consequences, we would answer without any hesitation: it is the rediscovery of the People of God as a whole, as a totality; and then by way of consequence, the co-responsibility thus implied for every member of the church.”[5]
At the base of this ecclesiology is the emergence of a hermeneutic that starts from conceiving the Church as an organic whole. This is to say that this totality which is the People of God would lack meaning and would not exist without the necessary and reciprocal interaction of each member of the faithful in relation to the others for the function of the whole. This is because it is this same permanent interaction that links the faithful together in an organic way and co-constituting the People of God, including the episcopal college and the Bishop of Rome. This hermeneutic was a reconfiguration of the identities and relational modes of all the ecclesial subjects and repositioned them within the one People of God in relation to the differentiated co-responsible participation of all the faithful in the life and mission of the Church.
This awareness appeared and matured throughout the synodal process of 2021-2024. The Preparatory Document with which the Synod of Synodality began describes “the nature of the Church as People of God” (PD 1). The same appears throughout the various documents that are the fruit of the several phases of the Synod. The Instrumentum Laboris for the second session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops affirms that “belonging to the Church means being part of the one People of God” (IL 2024, Introduction). The Final Document of the Synod deepens this even further and, in defining the Church as the People of God, specifies that “the People of God is never the simple sum of the Baptized but the communitarian and historical subject of synodality and mission” (FD 17). Today we are witnessing the maturation of this conciliar ecclesiology, as we move towards a “further reception” of the phase inaugurated by Pope Francis in 2013.
2. The Church People of God in the context of “a further reception of the Council”
The post-conciliar reception of the category People of God cannot be understood without the interruption that occurred beginning in the 1980s during the second and third phases of the conciliar reception — John Paul II and Benedict XVI. In the so-called Ratzinger Report, published in 1985, Ratzinger considered that the concept of People of God could lead the Church to “moving backward instead of forward” by reducing it to “partisan, political and collectivist influences.”[6] The Extraordinary Synod of 1985 departed from this perspective and privileged the category communio hierarchica — chapter III of Lumen gentium — to interpret the conciliar ecclesiology. The 1992 letter Communionis notio also turned the hermeneutic of the local Churches developed in LG 23 and maintained that “the universal Church … is not the result of the communion of the Churches, but, in its essential mystery, it is a reality ontologically and temporally prior to every individual Church.”
It was with the pontificate of Francis that the concept of People of God would be rehabilitated and regain relevance, recovering the centrality that Chapter II of Lumen Gentium [People of God] occupies in the definition of what it is to be and to do Church as a communitarian and historical subject, which has allowed the current synodal process to develop and mature this conciliar ecclesiology. This is recognized in the Final Document of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops: “Gathered from every tribe, language, people and nation and living in different contexts and cultures, the synodal process gave us ‘the spiritual taste’ (EG 268) of what it means to be the People of God. The People of God is never the simple sum of the Baptised but the communitarian and historical subject of synodality and mission still on pilgrimage through time and already in communion with the Church in heaven” (FD 17. Also cf. 88).
In the light of synodality, the new conciliar phase that began in 2013 has reached a new qualitative moment that not only recovers this conciliar path and deepens it, but also matures it and takes it a step further. The Synthesis Report of the first session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops of October 2023 speaks of “a further reception of the Council” (Synthesis Report, Introduction). We can affirm that the synodal process has facilitated the maturation of the conciliar hermeneutics in order to understand in an organic way the identity, the relationships and the places occupied by the ecclesial subjects in the integral framework of the totality of the christifideles.[7] The Final Document, starting from the common baptismal identity, understands the reconfiguration of the different ecclesial subjects starting from a “relational conversion” (FD 50) “in the intertwining of our vocations, charisms and ministries” (FD 154). For this reason, “the commitment to promote participation based on differentiated co-responsibility” (FD 89) is placed in this ecclesiological frame of reference. The Final Document develops this logic on the basis of what is common to all the faithful: “the various ecclesial vocations are many, yet they express the one Baptismal call to holiness and mission” (FD 57).
The Final Document offers a significant novelty regarding two aspects of Lumen gentium: the sequence of the chapters and the order in which the ecclesial subjects appear. In Lumen gentium, the sequence of the chapters on ecclesial subjects is: chapter II (People of God), chapter III (hierarchy), chapter IV (laity) and chapter VI (religious). In addition, within Chapter V, which deals with the “universal vocation to holiness in the Church,” we find: all the faithful (LG 40-41), bishops (LG 41), priests (LG 41), deacons (LG 41), married couples (LG 41), those oppressed by poverty and injustice (LG 41), the laity in general (LG 41) and consecrated life (LG 42). In both sequences, the hierarchy is placed after the totality of the faithful but remains in first place in the order of the ecclesial subjects that follow.
In contrast, the Final Document makes a significant shift, beginning with the baptismal dignity of “all” and moving toward specific social, and not only ecclesial, subjects in the following order: “women” (FD 60), “children” (FD 61), “young people” (FD 62), “persons with disabilities” (FD 63), “married persons” (FD 64), “consecrated life” (FD 65), “lay women and men” (FD 66); and then the hierarchy appears, in this sequence: “episcopate, presbyterate and diaconate” (FD 68). This reordering of the sequence of ecclesial subjects allows us to glimpse, albeit in a nascent and emerging way, that “synodality offers us the most appropriate framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry itself” (Francis, Ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops, October 17, 2015), rearticulating the relationship between “all, some and one.”
3. The Assembly as the subject of a process that rearticulates the “all, some and one”
In this “further reception of the Council,” a further step is taken in defining the Church as the People of God, by affirming that she is also constitutively synodal. This affirmation was voted on and approved by the members of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops: “with this document, the Assembly recognizes, and bears witness that synodality, a constitutive dimension of the Church, is already part of the experience of many of our communities. At the same time, it suggests pathways to follow, practices to implement and horizons to explore” (FD 12). Two novel elements endow this affirmation with authority. First, it is declared by the Assembly as the subject of the whole synodal process that articulates all, some and one. Second, the Pope, as a member of the Assembly, assumes the Final Document as part of his ordinary Magisterium. This is what he expressed in his attached Note:
“The Final Document participates in the ordinary Magisterium of the Successor of Peter (cf. EC 18 § 1; CCC 892) and as such I ask that it be accepted. It represents a way of exercising the authentic teaching of the Bishop of Rome which has some new features, but which in reality corresponds to what I had the opportunity to specify on October 17, 2015, when I affirmed that synodality is the appropriate interpretative framework for understanding hierarchical ministry.”[8]
The implications for the renewal and reform of the figure and the ecclesial way of proceeding are evident in the definition of the Church offered by the Assembly, when it affirms that “synodality is the specific modus vivendi et operandi of the Church, the People of God” (FD 31). In saying that the Church is constitutively synodal and placing this definition “in the context of the ecclesiology of the People of God” (FD 31), it is not limiting itself to a part of the Church or referring only to certain ecclesial subjects. The Assembly holds that,
“During the synodal journey, we have witnessed a fruitful convergence regarding the meaning of synodality that forms the basis of this Document. Synodality is the walking together of Christians with Christ and towards God’s Kingdom, in union with all humanity. Orientated towards mission, synodality involves gathering at all levels of the Church for mutual listening, dialogue, and communal discernment. It also involves reaching consensus as an expression of Christ rendering Himself present, He who is alive in the Spirit. Furthermore, it consists in reaching decisions according to differentiated co-responsibilities. Along these lines, we can understand better what it means to say that synodality is a constitutive dimension of the Church (ITC, 1). In simple and concise terms, synodality is a path of spiritual renewal and structural reform that enables the Church to be more participatory and missionary so that it can walk with every man and woman, radiating the light of Christ” (FD 28).
It is about a profound rethinking of the identities and relationships among all ecclesial subjects — all, some, one — as well as of the way of being and proceeding of all christifideles in their condition of People of God. This reconfiguration demands that synodality acquire a structural and organizational expression, as exemplified by the Institution of the Synod of Bishops (FD 136), reformed by Francis in the Apostolic Constitution Episcopalis Communio. All this will imply the need to overcome ecclesial models based on unidirectional, top-down communicative dynamics, which have traditionally reflected a monarchical exercise of authority. Instead, it is necessary to move towards a constitutively synodal model of Church, which fosters and institutionalizes “multidirectional, networked communication dynamics, capable — in dialogue — of creating spaces for an ecclesial history, in which we are both, protagonist and co-responsible, all starting from the baptism that makes us full citizens of the Church.”[9]
4. Synodality of the whole People of God in the light of the sensus fidei fidelium
The contribution of pneumatology, or of an ecclesiology in a pneumatological perspective, has been fundamental for the re-articulation of the relationship between “all, some and one” in the construction of a synodal Church. The Spirit constitutes the vital fiber that generates and animates the relationships and communicative dynamics of the synodal processes, by promoting the participation of all the faithful in the life and mission of the Church through the exercise of differentiated co-responsibility. Rearticulating, thus, the all (faithful), some (bishops), and one (Pope) in a greater ecclesial us.
Although today it is being recovered with greater emphasis, the development of this awareness is not new. It can be seen in the Council Fathers during the process of drafting Lumen Gentium 12, specifying that the sensus fidei is not the mere exercise of an operation of the intelligence of faith, but a communicative dynamic that is activated communally in the participation and interaction of all the ecclesial subjects among themselves. The Spirit is manifested when the totality of the faithful participate and interact, and not just a few or some. In fact, LG 12 maintains that the Spirit does not make any distinction in manifesting and, furthermore, that shows itself through many mediations, not just the ministerial and sacramental. This is how the Council Fathers expressed it: “it is not only through the sacraments and the ministries of the Church that the Holy Spirit sanctifies and leads the people of God and enriches it with virtues, but “allotting its gifts to everyone according as it wills. The Spirit distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank. By these gifts it makes them fit and ready to undertake the various tasks and offices which contribute toward the renewal and building up of the Church” (LG 12). This charismatic — and not only ministerial — dimension of the Church is received and deepened in the Final Document when it states that “the variety of charisms, which originates in the freedom of the Holy Spirit, aims at unifying the ecclesial body of Christ (cf. LG 32) and promoting mission in different places and cultures (cf. LG 12) (…). They are intended for the flourishing of the life of the Christian community and the development of society as a whole” (FD 57).
This was the experience lived throughout the synodal process. In the first consultations, during the continental phase of the Synod, many people said that they had gained access to “the exquisitely theological treasure contained in the experience of listening to the voice of the Spirit enacted by the People of God, allowing its sensus fidei to emerge” (DCS 8). The Final Document of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops explicitly recognizes that “during each stage, the journey was characterized by the wisdom of the sense of faith (sensus fidei) of the People of God” (FD 3). Thus, the People of God, a communitarian and historical subject, has theological authority and, by means of the sensus fidei fidelium, becomes the source and mediation of revelation through the experience and connatural knowledge to each place, thus offering a continuous maturation in the understanding of revelation. Moreover, we can affirm that, by virtue of its authority, the People of God — all of us, including the hierarchy and the primacy — gathered in Assembly, collaborate in the “deepening of Christian doctrine, reform of ecclesiastical structures and promotion of pastoral activity throughout the world” (Episcopalis Communio 1).
In this new phase of the reception of the Council, experience has allowed the awareness to emerge more clearly that “the sensus fidelium postulates a new concept of Church: the Church is the whole people of God, pastors and faithful. The interest is not so much what or how one knows, but who knows. The who then becomes the whole ecclesial body, made sharers in the tria munera Christi.”[10] The who is the totality of the faithful who, through the sensus fidei, are co-constituted in the People of God as a communitarian and historical subject and, thus, become a mediation to know what the Spirit is saying to the Churches. This emerging figure of a constitutively synodal Church shows, throughout the synodal process, a maturation in hermeneutics, both in the sequence of the chapters of Lumen gentium and in the order in which the ecclesial subjects are presented.
Open conclusion
Are we witnessing the emergence of a new hermeneutic in post-conciliar ecclesiology? If so, what consequences could this have for imagining and building a constitutively synodal Church? What has been briefly presented so far allows us to affirm that the awareness of synodality as a constitutive dimension of the Church is emerging, in which “synodality is not simply the rediscovery of practices; rather, it is the rediscovery of a figure of Church that recognizes and confesses the action of the Spirit who creates concord.”[11] We are facing the emergence — even if there is not full awareness of its nature and of what it implies for future ecclesial developments — of a Church, People of God, which, as a communitarian and historical subject, is constitutively synodal.
Editor’s note: Quotations from official synodal documents have been translated from the Italian originals by the author. He is also working on a series of articles on similar themes in Italian in L’Osservatore Romano.
Notes:
[1] Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II, 32 tomi, Città del Vaticano 1970-99, I/IV, 195
[2] Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II, 32 tomi, Città del Vaticano 1970-99, I/IV, 142.
[3] Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II, 32 tomi, Città del Vaticano 1970-99, I/IV, 143.
[4] Eloy Bueno de la Fuente, “La búsqueda de la figura de la Iglesia como lógica interna de la eclesiología posconciliar,” Revista Española de Teología 57 (1997) 248.
[5] Card. Léon-Joseph Suenens, Coresponsibility in the Church, Herder and Herder, New York, 1968, 30.
[6] Joseph Ratzinger and Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 47.
[7] Cf. Rafael Luciani, “Reconfiguring the Identities and Relationships of the Ecclesial Subjects in a Church as People of God. Rediscovering the generative bond of all Christifideles,” Studia canonica 58/1 (2024) 103-129.
[8] Francis, Accompanying Note to the Final Document of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (25.11.2024) https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2024/11/25/0934/01866.html
[9] Rafael Luciani, Serena Noceti, En camino hacia una Iglesia constitutivamente sinodal, Edic. Claretian and Celam, Argentina-Colombia 2024, 25. Available also in Italian by Editrice Queriniana (2024).
[10] Luca Borgna, Sensus fidei. Rilevanza canonico-istituzionale del sacerdozio comune, Marcianum Press, Venezia 2022, 149.
[11] Giacomo Canobbio, Un nuovo volto della Chiesa? Teologia del Sinodo, Morcelliana, Brescia 2023, 172.
Image: “Crowds towards St Peter’s” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by courgettelawn
Rafael Luciani is a Venezuelan layman, a member of the Theological Commission of the General Secretariat of the Synod, and an Expert for the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.
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