Rupture, continuity or moving forward from a “new” to a “further” phase in the maturation of the reception of the Council?
Francis assumed Vatican II as a Council of reform. On November 9, 2013, at Santa Marta, he spoke of an Ecclesia semper reformanda, in continuity with John XXIII (aggiornamento) and Paul VI (renovatio Ecclesiae). A few days later, he expressed this way of reading the Council in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (n. 26), his programmatic text. Today, the Synod on Synodality represents the most genuine and current expression of this road map to be followed. The Preparatory Document of the Synod on Synodality articulates it and maintains that “in order to walk together, it is necessary that we allow ourselves to be educated by the Spirit in a truly synodal mentality, entering with audacity and freedom of heart into a process of conversion without which the «perennial reformation, of the Church herself, as a human and earthly institution, is always in need» (UR 6; EG 26), will not be possible.” After a process of listening and discernment of all the faithful of the People of God, the Document for the Continental Stage clearly reflects this by affirming that “walking together as the People of God requires that we recognize the need for a continuous conversion, both individual and communal. On the institutional and pastoral level, this conversion translates into an equally permanent reform of the Church, its structures and its style, following in the footsteps of the impulse to continual aggiornamento, a precious legacy left to us by the Second Vatican Council” (DCS 101).
The novelty and freshness of Francis’ pontificate lies in the fact that he is a son of the Council and was not one of its Fathers or Experts (peritus). This means that his style and vision respond to a reception of Vatican II, the fruit of a continental journey already begun and tested. It is not a matter of Latin-Americanizing the Church, but of opening the way to a truly global Church, in which the existence of multiple and diverse forms of reception of the Council is recognized, according to the contexts, cultures and particular histories of the peoples. In this sense, compared to previous receptions, his first Urbi et Orbi blessing, on March 13, 2013, does not produce a rupture, but marks a new beginning that recreates this journey of more than 60 years, with an emblematic phrase that involves a whole figure of Church: “we begin this journey: Bishop and people.” These words are translated into an inaugural gesture in St. Peter’s Square: “before the bishop blesses the people, I ask you to pray that the Lord will bless me.” Paradoxically, his pontificate begins by asking for the blessing of the People of God and concludes by giving it to that same People, gathered once again in St. Peter’s Square. Although it can be read as a metaphor, this circularity expresses a way of being Church whose point of departure and arrival is the People of God (Episcopalis communio), in whose bosom “the pastors and the other faithful are bound together by reciprocal necessity” (LG 32) and are defined by “walking together.”
The challenge of the ecclesiological form of this reception is understood mainly from what emerges from articulating the Conclusive Document of the V General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate gathered in Aparecida (2007), the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013), the Commemorative Discourse on the 50th Anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops (2015), the Apostolic Constitution Episcopalis Communio (2018) and the Final Document of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (2024). The latter is the fruit of the synodal journey (2021-2028), which has been assumed by the Pope as an integral part of his ordinary magisterium. All these documents cannot be read in isolation. From their totality emerges and takes shape a figure of the Church as the People of God, which, as a historical and communitarian subject, is constitutively synodal.
This legacy has represented a qualitative leap in the reception of the Second Vatican Council, especially since the centrality given to Chapter II of Lumen Gentium, which conceives the Church as an organic totality of the faithful, and not of some (bishops) and one (primate) in isolation. The reception and impulse of this conciliar line, embodied in a certain figure of the Church, will be one of the key criteria for evaluating any future pontificate, since what is at stake is not the rupture or mere continuity with respect to the legacy left by the Second Vatican Council, but its advancement, maturation and implementation. In this framework, Francis inaugurates a new stage in his reception, called to follow a path of maturation within the framework of a global and intercultural Church.
A reception that marks only a style or a forma ecclesiae synodalis yet to be consolidated?
What is described as an “ulterior” phase in the conciliar reception implies the opening of a path of maturation of a figure of Church, developed throughout the process of the Synod on Synodality. This path leaves us with essential criteria and content for the discernment of the institutional model needed by the Church in the third millennium (50th anniversary of the Synod of Bishops, 2015). The thrust of this will be one of the criteria for evaluating any future pontificate, but the starting point for understanding what this implies can be none other than the voice of the People of God, collected and synthesized after an arduous process with multiple instances and phases, in the Final Document of the Synod on Synodality. In this sense, the institutionalization of the figure of the Church articulated in that document is at stake: “synodality is the journey of Christians together with Christ and towards the Kingdom of God, in union with all humanity; mission-oriented, it implies meeting in assembly at the different levels of ecclesial life, reciprocal listening, dialogue, community discernment, reaching consensus as an expression of the presence of Christ in the Spirit, and decision making in a differentiated co-responsibility. In this line we understand better what it means that synodality is a constitutive dimension of the Church” (FD 28).
A new pontificate, characterized by the maturation and consolidation of this path, implies recognizing the authority of the People of God who spoke — recognized by the Council Fathers in Lumen Gentium 12 — asking that “bishops and people” walk together because “the theme of synodality is not the chapter of a treatise on ecclesiology, nor a fad, nor a slogan, nor a new term to be used and instrumentalized in our meetings. Synodality expresses the nature of the Church, its form, its style and its mission” (Francis to the Diocese of Rome, September 18, 2021). Consequently, it is not enough to discern the personal style of living and the ways in which the Bishop of Rome relates to the rest of the faithful in his daily life, but to give shape to a synodal figure of the Church that goes beyond the pontificate itself, since it recreates and redefines the articulation between “all” (all the people of God), “some” (bishops) and “one” (the primacy). This process was concretized in the second session of the Synodal Assembly of October 2024, by inserting the “one” and “some” within the “all.” This progress was expressed in the recognition of the deliberative character of all the members, acting as a whole, as a totality of the faithful, in whose interaction the Spirit is speaking to the Churches. However, this does not mean that a synodal Church has been fully generated. It is a pending task within the framework of a larger process that offers it today as a possible reality for ecclesial conversion. As Francis maintains in the encyclical Laudato si’: “in my exhortation Evangelii gaudium, I wrote to the members of the Church to mobilize a process of missionary reform that is still pending.” This will be the challenge for the new Bishop of Rome, whose exercise will be measured by his ability to give structural and institutional form to this articulation.
A pontificate of involution, or of new creation and consolidation of processes and structures that synodalize the whole Church?
If the reforms are understood in a linear way, many will say that the pontificate of Francis did not succeed in institutionalizing many things. However, if they are conceived in the light of processes of initiation, maturation, implementation and consolidation, then we find ourselves in an ecclesial moment that must think about the modes of implementation that will follow and, then, their consolidation within the framework of a Church that has already begun to be global and intercultural. No Council has been institutionalized in 12 years, much less a Synod. However, understanding the qualitative shift that the ecclesiology articulated in these 12 years represents will be key to the credibility of the Church, since it must be understood from the perspective of mission and, therefore, at the service of the People of God to whom it has listened and whose voices have been heard throughout the synodal process. A current reading of the new ecclesial changes to be undertaken cannot start from scratch, but must do so in continuity with the synodal process.
In a time of accelerated change, we have already experienced several successive epochal changes in less than 20 years, and not only transformations within the same epoch. The era we experienced before the pandemic is no longer the same as the one we are living in today, marked by a comprehensive reordering of the global order, and not only the ecclesial one. For this reason, the ecclesial culture in which we move cannot continue to be shaped according to the cultural and epochal forms that defined its origin and were valid at the time. Instead, it needs new forms and processes of recreation. At the ecclesial level, the new epoch places us before the challenge of achieving the synodalization of the whole Church, a challenge that cannot be reduced to a simple aggiornamento of the inherited ecclesial life and form. This will require a personal conversion open to the reconversion of existing institutional models, giving way to a new creation, because “no one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the skins burst, the wine is spilled, and the skins are lost; but new wine is put into new wineskins, and both are preserved” (Mt 9:17)
It is a matter, then, of achieving a significant advance in the process of conciliar maturation which, encouraged by Francis, today finds a new starting point in what has been gathered by the synodal process. It is in the current synodal process that the passage from a “new” to a “further” conciliar reception is taking shape, which must balance the conciliar memory with the synodal future of the whole Church, following in the footsteps of a living tradition, because “Tradition, which derives from the Apostles, progresses in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit” (Dei verbum 8) who is speaking today to the Churches in the context of a global and intercultural Church that has begun to emerge, by moving from the center to the peripheries, and which must now generate a circularity in which the periphery returns to the center in order to transform it, giving way to a diversity that does not break communion, but finds genuine expressions in the Churches and conceives them as theological places of revelation. In the light of what has been seen, we can affirm that, with a synodal way of being and proceeding, “the ways will be discovered for a deeper accommodation in the whole area of Christian life” (Ad gentes 22), consolidating the “Ecclesia tota as a communion of the Churches” (Synthesis Report of the first session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops).
Image: Vatican Media
RafaelLuciani. Venezuelan layman, Doctor of Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University. He received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Theology at the Dominican Institute of Aquinas in the United States. He is a Professor Ordinarius at the Jesuit`s Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, and has taught in several Universities in Latin America and North America. He currently teaches Ecclesiology, Latin American Theology, and the Second Vatican Council. He is an expert for CELAM (Latin American Episcopal Council) and a member of the theological advisory group to the presidency of CLAR (Latin American Confederation of Religious). He is co-coordinator of the intercontinental group of theologians and canonists Peter & Paul Seminar, serves as a member of the theological commission of the General Secretariat of the Synod for the synodal process (2021-2028) and was a Peritus at the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality.
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