The Pneumatology of the Synodal Church

Abstract

The Pneumatology of the Synodal Church Peter Casarella I. The Voice From The Empty Chair THE GIFT AND AGENCY of the Holy Spirit are necessary for and central to a Church that aims to embark on a synodal path. The Holy Spirit guides the entire people of God, and the ecclesial discernment that allows the people to follow in the footsteps of Christ is also a product of the work of the Spirit. This recognition of a profoundly pneumatological presence of God on the path to synodality marks Pope Francis’s thought: “Synodality is an ecclesial journey whose soul is the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit there is no synodality.”1 Even before becoming pope, he emphasized the metaphor of the Holy Spirit at work in a symphony and suggested that the harmonizing (but not homogenizing) of difference would be the mark of the Spirit in this new ecclesial mode of discernment. More recently, synod participants and even Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, have symbolized openness to the Spirit by maintaining an empty chair at synodal gatherings.2 The Spirit lends harmony to differences that are often discordant, if not in opposition to one another. The Spirit [End Page 271] connects these diverse viewpoints because the Spirit is connection itself. The Trinitarian revelation of the Spirit is thus equally relevant: “Without the Holy Spirit who is the bond of both, one cannot understand the connecting unity between the Father and the Son.”3 The Holy Father makes the same point about the reliance of the synod itself on the unifying work of the Spirit: May this Synod be a true season of the Spirit! For we need the Spirit, the ever-new breath of God, who sets us free from every form of self-absorption, revives what is moribund, loosens shackles and spreads joy. The Holy Spirit guides us where God wants us to be, not to where our own ideas and personal tastes would lead us. Father Congar once said: “There is no need to create another Church, but to create a different Church” (True and False Reform in the Church). For a “different Church”, a Church open to the newness that God wants to suggest, let us with greater fervour and frequency invoke the Holy Spirit and humbly listen to him, journeying together as he, the source of communion and mission, desires: with docility and courage.4 Listening to the Spirit is what prompts members of the Church, including the bishop of Rome, to chart out a new synodal path. The report on synodality of the International Theological Commission refers to this prompting as “the parrhesia (‘boldness’) of the Spirit.”5 But the work of the Spirit in a synodal Church does not end with the initial impulse to embark on a new path. The Spirit is invoked and needed also in the process of discernment itself and in the culminating stage of the enactment of the fruits of discernment. In short, the Spirit participates in the beginning, middle, and end of the synodal process (and even, pivotally, in [End Page 272] the reiteration of the process). This essay examines the development of this thought in the pontificate of Francis. At the center of this development is an ongoing question concerning the “when” and “how” of the Spirit. Is synodality altogether new? If synodality is not new, why do we need it now? How will we know the difference between genuinely synodal and false reform, particularly given the strife for the global Church that has attended the German Synodal Way? Francis has much to say about the “when” and the “how,” even though most reporting of his call for a synodal Church has not focused on this fact. The kairós of this Spirit is likewise frequently invoked but not always grasped, especially since kairós is a qualitative and not merely a quantitative category.6 The Spirit of a synodal Church unfolds as a breath of God’s Spirit and as a guide for the Church, and the timing and mode of the unfolding must first be laid out on its own terms. In...