The Synod of Francis Has Learned Nothing From the Synods of the Eastern Churches. The Objections of a Greek Catholic Bishop

In almost identical words, first while conversing with the Jesuits of Portugal and then on the flight back from Mongolia, Pope Francis has said that “the Synod is not an invention of mine. It was Paul VI, at the end of the Council, who realized that the Western Church had lost synodality, while the Eastern one has got it.”

And on September 11, receiving Baselios Marthoma Mathews III, catholicos of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, he reiterated that “there is much we can learn from the age-old synodal experience of your Church.”

But is it really so? Judging by the failure, in 2016, of the convocation of a Council of all the Orthodox Churches, after sixty years of preparation, simply due to the lack of unanimity in the approval of one of the preliminary documents, the Eastern model of synodality would not seem at all to be the most fit to accelerate, in the West, that “process” of change in the Church so much to the liking of the pope and his set:

“If the West, in fact, understands synodality as a place or a moment in which all, lay and clergy, act together to arrive at some ecclesiastical, doctrinal, canonical, disciplinary decision, whatever it may be, it is clear that such synodality does not exist in the East.”

Calling attention to the colossal misconception, in these exact words, is a bishop who knows the East well.

His name is Manuel Nin. Catalan, 67 years old, a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Montserrat, a professor of theology and specialist on the Fathers of the Church, then rector of the Pontifical Greek College in Rome, he has been since 2016 the titular bishop of Carcabia and apostolic exarch for Catholics of the Byzantine rite in Greece, based in Athens.

He will take part, in October, in the next session of the Synod on synodality, and is among those whom the pope has personally added to the list of participants. But he makes no secret of thoroughly criticizing the “misunderstanding” on which Francis so insists:

“When it is stated that: ‘You in the East have always had synodality,’ synodality is simply confused with the episcopal college.”

Nin has condensed his objections in a commentary published in August on the website of his exarchate.

In the East, he writes, it is true that the title of “Synod” is given to the college of bishops governed by a patriarch, an archbishop, or a metropolitan when it meets to exercise authority over the respective Church (as for example that of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church held in Rome from September 3 to 13).

But this synodality has nothing to do with the model of “a modern parliamentary republic, where all can say anything and talk about everything. The life of the Christian Churches has never been a form of democracy in which all decide everything based on the rules of the majority.”

Of course, Pope Francis has also insisted repeatedly in saying that “the Synod is not a parliament,” much less “a television program in which everything is talked about.”

At the same time, however, he has extended participation in the Synod not only to those with episcopal authority, but to priests, religious, and lay people, men and women, in obedience to a predominantly horizontal interpretation of the Greek word “Synod,” understood as “walking together.”

Together with whom? With others, with everyone. Albeit with the caution that the role of protagonist be left to the Holy Spirit.

When instead – Nin writes, and this is his main objection – the true meaning of the word “Synod” is not “walking together with all,” but “walking all together with Christ.”

Nin quotes the father of monasticism: “Those footprints in the sand of the desert that Anthony believed to be his own, at a certain point he discovers, he and we with him, that they do not belong to him but to the One who walks beside Anthony and supports him in moments of weakness. To Him who is always at our side, to the risen and living Lord who is in our midst. The monastic vocation can help us understand a fundamental reality in Christian life.”

It is interesting to note how this objection of Nin’s accords with the one published in July on Settimo Cielo by the New York theologian Robert P. Imbelli, who also observed in the “Instrumentum laboris” of the upcoming Synod a role as immense as it is vague and muddled assigned to the Holy Spirit, and instead a very weak reference to Christ, to the cross, to the paschal mystery, that is, to the only reliable guide in order to be truly able to “converse in the Spirit.”

“I therefore propose looking at synodality,” Nin continues, “as the journey of all of us who have been baptized in Christ, listening to his Gospel, celebrating our faith, receiving his grace in the sacraments. A journey certainly to be undertaken together, guided and accompanied by the hands or even carried on the shoulders of our shepherds, but following in the footsteps of Him who is the way, the truth, and the life.”

Toward the conclusion of his commentary, Nin makes an unexpected reference to a protagonist of the Church from a few decades ago, with whom he allies himself:

“I recall the beautiful reflection of Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, archbishop of Bologna from 1984 to 2003, published in the years of the great Jubilee of 2000 with the title: ‘Identikit of the Guest of Honor.’ Already back then the great Italian cardinal warned against the danger of sidelining or even forgetting the One who was the only reason for the Jubilee, the main cause, the sole honoree, the One Celebrated.”

Yesterday the Jubilee, today the Synod. With the same forgetfulness?