Synod

Synod (pronounced sin-uhd)

(1) An assembly of ecclesiastics or other church delegates (particularly of a diocese), convoked pursuant to the law of the church, for the discussion and decision of ecclesiastical affairs (in various denominations such gatherings sometimes described as ecclesiastical councils or).

(2) An assembly or council having civil authority; a legislative body and used (sometimes loosely) of any council of any institution (in this context also used disparagingly of secular institutions thought becoming too rigid in thought or process.

(3) An (often geographical) administrative division or district in the structures of some churches, either the entire denomination or a mid-level division such as a “middle judicatory” or “district”); use of the word “synod” differs between and sometimes within denominations.

(4) In astronomy, a conjunction of two or more of the heavenly bodies.

1350–1400: From the Middle English synod (ecclesiastical council), from the Late Latin synodus, From the Ancient Greek σύνοδος (súnodos or sýnodos) (assembly, meeting; a coming together, a conjunction of planets), the construct being the English syn-(from the Ancient Greek σύν (sún) (with, in company with, together with) + ὁδός ((h)odós) (traveling, journeying; a manner or system (of doing, speaking, etc.); a way, road, path (the word of uncertain origin).  The term סַנְהֶדְרִין‎ (sunédrion) exists in the Hebrew Talmudic literature and was used in a similar way and the early twelfth century Middle English form was sinoth.  Synod was used in the Presbyterian Church between 1953-1922 in the traditional sense of “an assembly of ministers and other elders” when the term was changed to “General Council”, an act of modernization apparently provoked by the word “synod” beings so associated with the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England.  In the schismatic world of the Medieval Church, just as there were from time to time, “antipopes” (from the Medieval Latin antipāpa), there were also antisynods, convened as meetings of his supporters.  Synod and synodicon are nouns, synodic is an adjective, synodal is a noun & adjective, the noun plural is synods.

The adjective synodal (of or relating to a synod) was a mid-fifteenth century creation from the Late Latin synodalis.  As a noun, a synodal was (1) a constitution made in a provincial or diocesan synod which was subject to review by a central body or (2) a tribute in money formerly paid to the bishop or archdeacon (at the time of his Easter visitation), by every parish priest (now made to the ecclesiastical commissioners and in later versions of canon law referred to as a "procuration").  The adjective synodic dates from the 1630s and was from the Latin synodicus, from the Ancient Greek συνοδικός (sunodikós) (of or related to an assembly or meeting); the form used in the late sixteenth century was synodical.  When used of the conjunction of two or more of the heavenly bodies (the moon and the planets) described by the astronomers of Antiquity, the phenomenon may be called a “synodical revolution” and the time in which it occurs a “synodical month”. Despite sounding suspiciously modern, a synodicon is not associated with on-line video gaming.  The noun synodicon was from the Latin, from the Ancient Greek συνοδικόν (sunodikón) and was a substantivisation of συνοδικός (sunodikós) (synodical).  Institutionalized in modern Italianate Ecclesiastical Latin, it describes a document from a church synod or synods, especially the official records of proceedings.  A subsynod (sometimes as sub-synod) is either (1) an assembly of officials which meets prior to a synod proper to make administrative arrangements, formalize an agenda etc or (2) a kind of sub-committee of a synod which is created for some purpose such as allowing a technical matter to be discussed by experts before being referred to the full assembly of the synod for deliberation.

The noun synodality (the plural synodalities) is used in Christianity to refer (sometimes perhaps optimistically) to the “quality or style of a synod; the fraternal collaboration and discernment as typified in a synod”.  The origin of the word synod (the Ancient Greek συν (together) + ὁδός (journey) hints at the hopefully fraternal collaboration and discernment that such gatherings of ecclesiastical worthies are intended to be, the expression of this the essence of synodality.  The notion of synodality is a part of the mystique of the Roman Catholic Church because it’s said to denote the essence of the church’s mission, something explained by the Holy See's International Theological Commission (ITC) which states that synodality encapsulates “the specific modus vivendi et operandi (way of living & method of operation) of the Church, the People of God, which reveals and gives substance to her being as communion when all her members journey together, gather in assembly and take an active part in her evangelizing mission”.

The ITC is an organization of the Roman Curia which advises the magisterium of the church, most notably the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF, the old Holy Office which many still refer to by its original name: The Inquisition).  The IDF was a creation of the re-structuring in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II; 1962-1965) and formerly was established in 1969 as a kind of internal think tank which might present a kinder face to the world than the rather austere Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the CDF (as the DDF was then known)).  That was an approach not unknown (for good & bad) in secular politics and while over the years there have been those who claimed the relationship between the ITC and the CDF was the sort of “creative tension” needed to ensure debates over matters of ethics and procedure stayed dynamic, others have seen the tension but little creativity.  For students of structuralism, it’s of interest the prefect of the DDF is ex officio the president of the ITC, an arrangement carried over in June 2022 when Pope Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013), as a part of a range of reforms to the curia, announced the name change from CDF to DDF.

Pope Francis has made synodality (at least his conception of it) as perhaps the core value he intends to be the legacy of his pontificate and the ITC in 2018 published a paper which made explicit Francis was not modest in his ambitions for that legacy, the ITC’s document stating it was “…precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the Church of the third millennium” and stressed synodality “…is an essential dimension of the Church”, in the sense that “what the Lord is asking of us is already in some sense present in the very word 'synod’”.  Although presumably the pope and the ITC were more concerned with theology than etymology, tracing a tread which ran from the gathering of Christ’s disciples to the sessions of Vatican II in the 1960s, word nerds would anyway have enjoyed the thoughts:

In ecclesiastical Greek it expresses how the disciples of Jesus were called together as an assembly and in some cases it is a synonym for the ecclesial community. Saint John Chrysostom, for example, writes that the Church is a “name standing for 'walking together’ (σύνοδος)". He explains that the Church is actually the assembly convoked to give God thanks and glory like a choir, a harmonic reality which holds everything together (σύστημα), since, by their reciprocal and ordered relations, those who compose it converge in αγάπη and όμονοία (common mind).

Since the first centuries, the word “synod” has been applied, with a specific meaning, to the ecclesial assemblies convoked on various levels (diocesan, provincial, regional, patriarchal or universal) to discern, by the light of the Word of God and listening to the Holy Spirit, the doctrinal, liturgical, canonical and pastoral questions that arise as time goes by.

The Greek σύνοδος is translated into Latin as synodus or concilium. Concilium, in its profane use, refers to an assembly convoked by some legitimate authority. Although the roots of “synod” and “council” are different, their meanings converge. In fact, “council” enriches the semantic content of “synod” by its reference to the Hebrew   קָהָל(qahal), the assembly convoked by the Lord, and its translation into Greek as έκκλησία, which, in the New Testament, refers to the eschatological convocation of the People of God in Christ Jesus.

In the Catholic Church the distinction between the use of the words “council” and “synod” is a recent one. In Vatican II they are synonymous, both referring to the council session. A precise distinction was introduced by the Codex Iuris Canonici of the Latin Church (1983), which distinguishes between a particular (plenary or provincial) Council and an ecumenical Council on the one hand, and a Synod of Bishops and a diocesan Synod on the other hand.

5. In the theological, canonical and pastoral literature of recent decades, a neologism has appeared, the noun “synodality”, a correlate of the adjective “synodal”, with both of these deriving from the word “synod”. Thus people speak of synodality as a “constitutive dimension” of the Church or tout court of the “synodal Church”. This linguistic novelty, which needs careful theological clarification, is a sign of something new that has been maturing in the ecclesial consciousness starting from the Magisterium of Vatican II, and from the lived experience of local Churches and the universal Church since the last Council until today.

So for Francis, the word synodality has assumed an importance beyond that with which it has so long been vested in the Catholic Church so the Vatican watchers took note when, under the pope’s imprimatur, it was in October 2021 announced a summit to be conducted over two years was to be known as the Synod on Synodality.  It would have sounded an innocuous thing had it not been for the ITC’s paper three years earlier and it had the inevitable immediate effect among the clergy, the laity and the theologians: sniffing change in the air, some were hopeful and some fearful.  However, the pope, although thought by many a disruptor is also a realist and understands change in his 2000 year old institution will unfold among the generations to come and his immediate ambition seems restricted to tweaking the way the church relates to the rest of the world rather than overturning dogma.  Thus, expectations of welcoming the LGBTQQIAAOP in the church or approving the ordination of women are absurd but there may be changes in the way bishops both interact with their flock and the priests who are closer to that flock.  Just because a change doesn’t happen in the corridors of the Vatican where the curia plot and scheme, doesn’t mean the power structures haven’t changed.  The flock doesn’t mix with the curia; they talk to their parish priest.

Interestingly, for something some fear will be the harbinger of something radical, the Synod on Synodality is structured in the traditional (Vatican II style) modules with un-threatening names like "communion", "mission" & "participation" but however vague may be the indication of the content, few doubt that at the next session the factions will be mapping onto those titles the concerns which have for decades troubled Rome and it’ll be mostly about sex: whether the thousand-year enforcement of clerical celibacy is the underlying cause of the rampant child-sex abuse among its members, the role of women in the power structures and attitudes towards same-sex relationships including marriage.  Those discussions will play out between the factions and there are few with any hope there'll be many minds changed but the tone of the synod will be important and Francis has the advantage of being the absolute monarch in a theocracy; it is Francis who gets to review the synodicon the theologians and the bishops will submit and he will write the final document of the Synod on Synodality.

Working for more synodality in the world: Lindsay Lohan supporting the NOH8 campaign which sought to end California's 2008 voter-approved gay marriage ban (Proposition 8). 

It means Francis has immense power to shape things and point them in the desired direction and his contribution to ecclesiology is likely to be very different to the intriguing exercises in abstraction which came from the pen of Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022).  Whether that means it becomes simultaneously possible for the church simultaneously to continue to condemn homosexuality as a sin yet approve priests giving a blessing to those in a same-sex marriage remains to be seen but in many places, it would merely be an acknowledgement of what’s already happening.  Still, those who enjoy the process of such things more than the outcome can be assured there'll be much weeping and gnashing of teeth during the modules and some rending of garments on the way out.