By Andrea Tornielli
The document adopted today by the Synod is a stage on a journey that began with the Second Vatican Council, which continues and which needs to be lived out concretely at every level in the Churches. It is a recognition that synodality is the way to live and bear witness to communion. The Church is not a company or a party; the Bishops are not the ‘prefects’ of Rome, the lay faithful are not the mere executors of clerical decisions and directives. The Church is a people, the People of God, walking together: the reason for its existence does not consist in the management of structures, bureaucracies, or powers. Nor does it aim at conquering and defending its own space in the world. Its only reason for existing is to make the encounter with Christ possible today, in every place where the women and men of our time live, work, rejoice, suffer.
There is, therefore, a way of living relationships and bonds that is absolutely particular and evangelical. A way centred on service, just as Jesus taught. There is a concrete way of making decisions, of planning, of acting, which is in itself a witness, especially in a time like ours, characterised by divisions, hatred, violence, prevarication.
To live synodality, then, is to take a step towards the full implementation of the Council. It means taking seriously the originality – in the sense of being rooted in the origin – of being Church: a community in which there is room for everyone and in which everyone is valued, a community of forgiven sinners who experience God’s love and want to communicate it to everyone.
The Synod on Synodality, with its various perspectives, asks a great deal of everyone. It asks for a change of mentality. It asks us not to consider synodality as a bureaucratic task to be implemented paternalistically with a few minor cosmetic reforms. It calls for a rediscovery of the desire to walk together as a modality that is desired rather than simply endured, with all the consequences that this entails. It asks us to cast off the moorings and to be daring, in the certainty that it is the Lord who guides His Church through the gift of the Holy Spirit. It calls for a rethinking of the ministry of authority, including that of the Successor of Peter. It calls for a role of greater responsibility for the laity, and especially for women.
It is an image of a Church whose members are rooted – in a place, in a history, in a community, in a context – and at the same time pilgrims, that is, on the move, searching, missionary. Ecclesial structures, in this new perspective, no longer represent the place to which the lay faithful must converge, but a support for the service that the People of God undertakes in the world. The horizon of the text, which Pope Francis to deliver to the whole Church immediately, is mission, according to the outline established by the exhortation Evangelii gaudium, to ensure that “Church going forth” does not remain an intuition or end up being reduced to a mere slogan but is fully realised with the contribution of all.
