Image by Jolanta Dyr via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
By Gerhard Cardinal Müller, First Things, Oct.
Gerhard Cardinal Müller is former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The Synod of Bishops is currently congregating in Rome for a four-week meeting of the Synod on Synodality. A second session will follow in October 2024. The theme of “synodality” is a notion abstracted from the Greek word for a gathering or assembly. Thus the deliberations of Synod-2023 are not about the content of the faith, but about the structures of church life—and the ecclesial attitude or mindset behind those structures.
Many observers think that Pope Francis wants to correct what might be called the hierarchical, or “primacy” element, of church leadership by appealing to the synodal element of leadership allegedly preserved in the East. Since Vatican I, so-called “Rome-critical” theologians have described the Church’s emphasis on primacy as excessive. It would be good, here, to be guided by Pope Francis’s predecessor Leo the Great. His pontificate shows that, theologically and pastorally, the principles of primacy and synodality do not oppose each other, but rather mutually condition and support each other. …
