The curious linguistic dynamics of the nascent synodal Church

The synodal Church 2.0 is under way. It is a process of ecclesial discovery that will be held in secret sessions. The secrecy has only served to whet the appetite of those interested in the ultimate goal.

At a press conference American Bishop Daniel Ernest Flores of Brownsville gave a few clues of what this goal might be.

For a start, he is fluent in new-speak, or the argot of ecclesial post modernity. He incorporates the word “diversity” when necessary and accompanies it with a sense of verbal and conceptual fluidity.

In response to journalists’ questions, he offered a concise summation of the task of synodality 2.0, as he saw it – indeed as he understood what Pope Francis had commissioned.

He explained: “The work of the synod as I have experienced it, as I have understood what the Holy Father is asking us to do, is to do the work of finding a cohesive voice that is not ‘my voice’, or ‘that voice’ or ‘this voice’, but the expression of the Church’s cohesive life in this particular moment – but it has many diverse parts …”

What is envisaged here is a triumph of the communal over the singular and personal. But, like so many discoveries, no one will know what they are looking for until they have found it. We do know, however, that it will constitute a summation of “what the churches hope for today”.

Bishop Flores moved from the spotlight of forensic analysis to the more nuanced hinterland of ambiguity.

“Hope” was not defined. Nor, in these post-modern waters, should it be. Anything as heavy handed as eschatological hope, salvific hope, evangelistic hope, hope as an aspect of trust in God, or even something as clumsy as hope for a better relationship between Church and society, might place too great a weight of controlling expectation on the process of discovery.

Choosing his words with care, the bishop continued: “The way we want forward is that this should be the voice we have not found yet, because this is the work of the synod, is to in some way to represent the local churches and to reach a point where something can be articulated and expressed that it is proposed to the Holy Father, as an expression of what the churches are living today, what they hope for.”

No doubt “in some way” may have been the key to the envisaged process, since obviously like the “hope” itself the “way to the hope” also remains elusive to the organisers of the synod.

It is not clear to the observers if this is a passive or an active elusiveness. The more   conspiratorial and suspicious commentators fear a passive elusiveness will provide the opportunity for a pre-formatted outcome to be imposed at the end.

More trusting voices see active elusiveness as a quality that will of itself give birth to radical unexpected authentic communal discovery that may enrich the Church in ways undreamt of in previous generations. A paradigm shift of the spirit, no less.

Bishop Flores took his listeners further down the path of anticipated discovery: “At least from the perspective from the inside of the Church, trying to find her voice, there is a ‘we’ involved, essentially. In the work of a synod, even more important than the many ‘I’s.

“We are searching for the ‘we’. It’s a work in progress. What one man says one day may not be what he says the next, because he has heard what the ‘we’s have said.”

The forensic ambition of the synodal way here was potentially startling. The “hope” that was in “process” was going to facilitate the pluriform incoherence of the multiple Is to become the “we” that the synod had been commissioned to discover.

Earlier generations had made do with the “I/Thou” transformation envisaged by Martin Buber, the philosopher of dialogue. But Buber’s formula lacked not only the unexpected but also the plural dimension of what synodality was in quest for.

Buber’s “thou” was second person singular. The novelty of the synodal quest, was that the “we” was going to be firmly first-person plural.

The synodal-vocalisation, the “finding of the voice” of the many Is to become ecclesial “we” is the overt ambition of those driving or accompanying the process.

There will be a perpetual hunger however for  fluid transition, as the voice of the “I” (what one man says one day) transitions from one voice to another in reaction to the encounter with the other  Is,  who for him may constitute a “we” which will catapult the first vocalised “I”  into a second (and perhaps even a contradictory) “I”.

Though they point at which the “I” of the second day become the longed-for new synodal “we”, was not specified or identified by the Bishop of Brownsville.

It is, as he pointed out with searing honesty, “a work in progress”.

Maltese cardinal Mario Grech (L), Pope Francis (C) and cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes attend the Second Session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Paul VI audience hall on October 2, 2024 in the Vatican. (Photo by ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP via Getty Images)

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