Pope Francis has repeatedly insisted that “the Synod is not a parliament.” At the conclusion of the Synod on Synodality, however, the Catholic Church is left with a document bearing magisterial authority voted on by an ostensibly-representative two-thirds majority of voting delegates drawn from the episcopate, the presbyterate, the diaconate, and the laity. Francis’s efforts to transform the Synod of Bishops beg the question — if this is not a parliament, then what is?
This paper argues for reframing Catholic synodality as the product of a dialogue between Catholic ecclesiology — especially in light of the Second Vatican Council — and liberal democratic culture. It identifies an emerging “synodal parliamentarianism” not just at the Synod on Synodality, but even more obviously during the German Synodal Path (Der Synodale Weg), which in its own words sought the German Church’s “successful inculturation into a democratically-shaped free society under the rule of law.” (Der Synodale Weg Forum I, 2022) The paper argues that the products of this dialogue, rather than an unfortunate marring of the Church’s sacramental and episcopal structure, help tangibilize Vatican II’s theology of the laity and provide the Church with more appropriate tools to empower marginalized voices — particularly LGBTQ+ people — in Catholic settings.
Francis and others have criticized the Synodal Path for its supposed emphasis on structures, procedures, and excessively-”parliamentarian” forms of deliberation, but both in its structure and its contents, the Global Church’s synodal turn has happened in dialogue with German innovations — and therefore cannot be separated from parliamentarian and liberal-democratic expressions of Catholic ecclesiology. Traces of this dialogue far predate recent synodal developments, too — most notably at the Second Vatican Council. This paper argues that synodal parliamentarianism builds upon a dialogue between the political presuppositions of liberal democracies and Catholic ecclesial structures, most notably on display in Lumen gentium’s emphasis on the “rights and duties” (Lumen gentium 23) of the lay People of God, especially their right to access the Sacraments, and its imagination of a laity that is “permitted and sometimes even obliged to express [its] opinion on those things which concern the good of the Church.” (LG 37) In both cases, Lumen gentium uses the language and formulations of democratic culture — rights, responsibilities, and even a form of free speech — to describe the relationship between different constitutive elements of the “People of God.”
A similar dialogue can be found in the history of Catholic synodality. Although “synodality” is a neologism, Luciani and others have pointed out that the practice of meaningfully synodal decision-making in Catholic settings can be traced back to the first centuries of Christianity, and is exemplified by a maxim attributed to Cyprian of Carthage: “Do nothing without the advice of the presbyters and the consensus of the people.” In contemporary, post-conciliar Catholicism, Cyprian’s phraseology has a decidedly democratic ring to it: put structurally, does a synodal Church give the laity powers to withhold their consent?
Especially in the wake of the Synod on Synodality — which resulted in a magisterial document with doctrinal authority approved through democratic structures by an assembly with a meaningful number of lay people — these questions challenge an ahistorical magisterial monarchism. Instead, the Synod clarifies that the Catholic Church is better thought of, analogically, as an institution with a mixed constitution (Bianchi and Reuther, 1992) that rests its legislative power with at least three types of sources: it has (a) monarchical elements through the pope; (b) aristocratic elements through the ecumenical council; and increasingly, (c) democratic elements, through the reformed Synod and the doctrinal authority of the sensus fidelium.
By prying open synodality’s development of an increasingly democratic strand in post-conciliar ecclesiology, the paper opens several productive avenues for further ecclesiological imagination. Instead of analogizing the Church to a monarchy, what possibilities are opened by analogizing the Church to a mixed constitution — and not just any mixed constitution, but contra Pope Francis’s claims, one with growing parliamentarian elements? Within a Catholic theological framework, what further opportunities are there for dialogue — especially about rights frameworks, local governance, “checks and balances,” or even ecclesial “liberty”? What can a Synod learn from a parliament? What can a parliament learn from a Synod?
Anxieties over the use of such analogical language comparing political and ecclesiological structures are nothing new. In The Church: Paradox and Mystery, conciliar theologian Henri de Lubac reflects on the promise and perils of using political science tools to analyze ecclesiological institutions: analogies “are indispensable since the Church, being a visible society, is always involved in government. But [they] carry a double danger: on the one hand, we forget that they are precisely only that, analogies; and on the other hand, they encourage our natural tendency to hammer the thoughts of God into some shape that approaches our own ideas.” (de Lubac, 1969) Even de Lubac, however, recognizes their necessity — Catholic ecclesial institutions have developed legal codes, trial systems, aesthetic symbolages, and even voting methods alongside the concurrent rise of political institutions: monarchical, democratic, and in between.
By analyzing the recently concluded Synod on Synodality, I argue that this two-way learning process has tangible stakes for Lumen gentium’s “People of God,” and particularly for marginalized communities in the Church. The Synod’s most high-profile debacles concerning the place of these communities — particularly the Study Group Five controversy over women deacons and the unilateral removal of LGBTQ+ issues from synodal deliberations — took place when the Synod least resembled a parliament. I argue that in future Synods, and in the development of synodality as an orienting posture for the contemporary Church more generally, the universal Church would do well to learn from the “parliamentarianism” of the German Synodal Path’s democratic inculturation: clear and consistent deliberative methods, even when they come to resemble “parliaments,” are often necessary to secure the trust and cooperation that any “listening” process worthy of the name demands.
Pope Francis has repeatedly insisted that "the Synod is not a parliament." The Synod on Synodality, however, recently concluded with a magisterial document approved by a two-thirds voting majority of an ostensibly-representative voting body. If this is not a parliament, then what is?
Drawing on analyses of the global Synod and the German Synodal Path, this paper argues for a qualified form of "synodal parliamentarianism": synodality develops an ongoing dialogue in the Vatican II-era between Catholic ecclesiology and liberal-democratic society, increasingly operationalized by deliberative structures that resemble parliamentary democracies. This transformation has tangible impacts both for Lumen gentium's proto-democratic theology of the laity and the Church's treatment of marginalized people, particularly LGBTQ+ Catholics. In future Synods, and in the synodal project more generally, the Church stands to learn that clear, binding, and even "democratic" structures are necessary to "journey together" in a contemporary context.