A synodal Church is a way of being Church that integrates communion, participation and mission. This means that all the baptized journey together (syn plus odos) in the Holy Spirit and under the Word of God: (1) as we try to live more deliberately communion with God and with each other, (2) as we seek to encourage greater participation in this journey according to our respective roles and responsibilities, and (3) that we might more fully be engaged in the mission given to us by the risen Lord.

The synthesis report of the October 2023 session of the Synod of Bishops, “A Synodal Church in Mission,” speaks of the special attention to be given to the formation of priests within the context of the formation of all the baptized for service in a synodal Church.

Any such effort is best seen in the vision of the Church in the Second Vatican Council and in developments since that time. The word “vision” is deliberate, since what the council says, and the way it says it, points us toward the ideal of being more faithful to what we are in our deepest nature as Church, doing so more deliberately and more consciously.

We may see a biblical inspiration for this vision in two verses in the Letter to the Ephesians: “He [God the Father] has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with the favor that he set forth in him [Christ] as a plan [oikonomian] for the fullness of time, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth” (Eph 1:9-10).

Forming Virtues

One approach to our formation as priests for a synodal Church may be to look at the virtues — the habits, the dispositions of mind and heart that guide our actions and our way of relating to others.

Faith

The first virtue, hands down, is the virtue of faith. This, of course, is a supernatural virtue, a gift of God’s spirit in us. Faith in whom, in what? In Christ, his priestly people, and in ourselves as ordained.

Vatican II’s Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests (reflected now in the Preface of the Chrism Mass and in the Rite of Ordination of Priests) identifies these objects of faith. The decree, drawing upon John 10:36, looks first at the Lord Jesus, whom the Father has anointed with the Spirit and sent into the world and — in the very same sentence — made his whole mystical body to share in the same Spirit with which he is anointed.

Then, in Christ, all the faithful are made a holy and royal priesthood. As a result, every member has a part in the mission of the whole body.

Only then does the text say that, among his faithful, the same Lord has established ministers (ministros), bishops, sharers in Christ’s consecration and mission, who perform the priestly office publicly for others in the name of Christ. Their office, to a lesser degree, has been handed down to presbyters (priests) for the proper fulfillment of the apostolic mission.

The point of all this: Faith is believing in Christ’s being anointed and given a mission. Faith is believing that bishops and presbyters/priests are anointed and given a mission. Faith is also believing that all the baptized share in the anointing of the Spirit with which Christ and we priests are anointed for a role in Christ’s mission. If we do not believe with practical conviction that the royal priesthood of the baptized bears witness to Jesus in the spirit of prophecy, then synodality loses any claim to our interest or attention.

Faith is not simply the intellectual acceptance of Church teaching; it is a gift of God, which helps us to see and embrace Christ, to see and to embrace Christ and his Spirit in all our baptized sisters and brothers, and to see and embrace the presence of Christ and his Spirit in ourselves as priests. We may need to remind ourselves to be ever conscious of the three aspects of this belief — Christ, the priestly people, the ordained, in that order.

The implications of this faith are tremendous. We priests are to relate to the lay faithful in ways that respect them, sharing co-responsibility with them, and by serving them.

Humility

Aquinas speaks of humilitas veritas (“humility is truth”). We need to live out the deepest truth of things — in the case at hand, the truths about Christ, about the baptismal royal priesthood and about ourselves as collaborators and servers of God’s holy people. To live this way is to live the truth of who we are by the gift of the Spirit.

Humility also reflects an attitude of deference to others. In his Letter to the Philippians, Paul pleads that we do nothing out of vainglory but humbly regard others as more important than ourselves. Our model is Christ, who humbled himself, even if it meant the cross.

Justice

Justice is the “constant and firm will to give what is due to God and to neighbor” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1807). Giving God our due is expressed in the virtue of religion, as the dialogue at the beginning of every Eucharistic prayer reminds us: “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. … It is right and just.” Redeemed creatures that we are, it is a matter of justice to give thanks to God and to be persons of prayer.

Synodality is walking together in the Spirit. We need to be attuned to the Spirit in our own lives if we are going to be attuned to the Spirit speaking in the Word of God and speaking through others. We need to pray for the folks who will speak and for a readiness and willingness on our part to listen, to really hear what is being said. Synodality is nothing if it is not an engagement in the Spirit. We need the Spirit, and we need to be prayerful priests to pull it off.

The virtue of justice also calls us to give what is due to our neighbor. In this context, we priests need to respect that parishioners are our sisters and brothers in the Lord. We need to respect the sensus fidei of the whole People of God, the “instinct” as Pope Francis puts it, to discern the new ways that the Lord is revealing to the Church. We priests owe it to God and to our baptized sisters and brothers to recognize and to help them recognize the Spirit given to them. Doing so is their due, a matter of justice.

Another dimension of giving what is due our neighbor is understanding justice as righteousness. Paul sees the righteousness of God brought to us in Christ and of our becoming the righteousness of God in him (cf. 2 Corinthians). The term “righteousness” may better be translated as “rectification,” God’s setting things right, “the power of God to make right what has been wrong,” as Fleming Rutledge says in “The Crucifixion” (Eerdmans, $33.99). By our baptism we become one with and in Christ to promote right relationships to God, to one another and to the world, our common home.

Hospitality

Hospitality helps us welcome those to whom we might not instinctively reach out, much like Jesus was hospitable to folks and, in doing so, pushed the boundaries of what was expected by some of his religious contemporaries. These may include not only those who articulate the meaning of doctrine more or less accurately, but also those who bring to the synodal discernment heartfelt devotion to the Lord, to his mother or to the saints. Don’t be surprised if those who do not know theology the way we do surprise us in helping us see aspects of the meaning and demands of faith.

Patience

We will need patience in relating to and dealing with those among the faithful just mentioned. Patience helps us listen, not simply to hear the words being spoken, but to be attentive to what may be the hurt that the words only hint at. We’ll need to be patient with those who need to vent a bit before they say what is really on their mind or in their heart, or with those who need time to get to the point they want to make.

Hospitality and patience may require the more introverted among us pushing ourselves a bit if we are to welcome others in the name of the Lord and listen to them when, instinctively, we’d rather be doing our own work.

The extroverts among us may need to rein ourselves in a bit, so that we can really listen before we speak, that we can give time to others who go at a slower pace in getting to the point.

Discernment

Discernment may perhaps be seen as a virtue insofar as we need to work at it. But, more appropriately, it is an art, one which has a very important place in the developing synodal Church. The USCCB synthesis statement of the synodal discussions describes discernment as “a practice of the Church carried on in a spirit of prayer, meditation and ongoing dialogue,” attending “to the voice of the Lord in the Church’s liturgy, in the Church’s teaching tradition, and in the voice of the lived experience of the People of God.”

We are familiar with vocational discernment, and the day-by-day decisions that hinder or support it. The art of discernment helps us make decisions that put us on God’s side in the great work of serving God’s kingdom.

Communal synodal discernment seeks to be guided by God’s Spirit speaking to us in his Word and in one another, so that together we might be ever more faithful to the mission the Lord gives us.

Communal discernment is an art and not an infused virtue. We need to remember, too, that participating in communal discernment is a new experience for all of us, even for those who may have been ordained many years ago. We all need patience and humility.

Prudence

And, finally, prudence, or using practical reason to discern the right and the good, is necessary because, as Archbishop Christophe Pierre reminds us, not every opinion is equal, nor is the synodal path a purely democratic process. Priests are part of the hierarchy of the Church — part of the divinely ordered structure of the Church — not in the sense of being superior to everyone else (clericalism), but in the sense of being a steward of the mysteries of God, called to serve others in the name of the Lord and to be worthy of the trust given us. We may not abandon that role. To exercise that role prudently, we must listen respectfully. As Archbishop Pierre points out, with time the Spirit can lead individuals and the whole Church to see things differently, to discover the way that leads to Truth.

Together, we are all learning how to be a synodal Church. May the Spirit guide us as we do this, so as to be ever more faithfully the Church Christ wants us to be.

FATHER FREDERICK J. CWIEKOWSKI, PSS, is a priest of the Archdiocese of Hartford and a member of the Society of St. Sulpice. Retired now, he is the author of “The Beginnings of the Church” (Paulist Press, 1987) and “The Church: Theology in History” (Liturgical Press, 2018).

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The Urging of the Spirit

Father Frederick Cwiekowski notes, “Synodality is nothing if it is not an engagement in the Spirit.” In opening remarks of the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on Oct. 4, 2023, Pope Francis spoke of the promptings of the Holy Spirit as it relates to the synod. The pope said: “The synod is not a gathering among friends to resolve some current problems or to give opinions; it is something else. Let us not forget, brothers and sisters, that we are not the protagonist of the synod: it is the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit is in our midst to guide us, it will be a good synod. If there are other ways of going about things, based on human, personal or ideological interests, it will not be a synod, but more of a parliamentary meeting, which is another thing. A synod is a journey that the Holy Spirit makes. You have been given a few patristic texts that can assist us in the opening of the synod. They are taken from St. Basil, who wrote that fine treatise on the Holy Spirit. Why? Because it is necessary to understand this reality, which is not something easy.”

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