A diocesan synod in Norway has become the latest flashpoint in the ongoing debate over the meaning of “synodality” in the Church, with Germany’s Catholic news portal accusing Oslo’s bishop of imposing “bans on thinking.”
Bishop Fredrik Hansen of Oslo announced the diocesan synod in August.
He said the gathering would take place before 2030 and called on parishes to submit their statements by next spring.
Making the Catholic Church more “synodal” was the underlying aim of Pope Francis’s papacy, and Pope Leo XIV has endorsed it, but what synodality is – in theory and in practice – has remained elusive.
The word “synod” comes from the Greek syn-hodos – often translated by modern supporters as “a way of walking together.”
In the early Church, however, synods generally meant “council meetings” and usually involved bishops coming together to settle questions of doctrine and discipline.
Diocesan synods developed as instruments to address similar concerns on the local level, and were also essentially legislative affairs.
The push for a more synodal Church really gathered steam under Pope Francis, who made it a key focus of his pontificate but faced criticism for failing to define the term clearly.
At the beginning of the process, Francis said synodality is “a style, it is a walk together, and it is what the Lord expects from the Church of the third millennium.”
In 2018, the International Theological Commission said synodality was “the specific modus vivendi et operandi of the Church, the People of God, which reveals and gives substance to her being as communion when all her members journey together, gather in assembly and take an active part in her evangelizing mission.”
If all of this seems a bit “fuzzy,” Pope Francis acknowledged the problem in 2023.
“I am well aware that speaking of a ‘Synod on Synodality’ may seem something abstruse, self-referential, excessively technical, and of little interest to the general public,” he said before that year’s Synod of Bishops meeting.
Announcing his plan for a diocesan synod this summer, Hansen spoke about his intentions.
“In the history of the Church, the diocesan synod is the framework for this kind of thorough assessment and for drawing up pastoral plans and other documents, especially laws for a diocese,” the bishop told katolsk.no, the website of the Catholic Church in Norway, in August.
Hansen, in short, is adopting and endorsing the older understanding of “synod” in the Catholic Church.
He is also apparently steering his local Church away from an alternative understanding based on the “walking together” notion, exemplified by the “Synodal Way” proposed in Germany in 2019.
It is important to note that Francis himself was wary of the Germans’ Synodal Way, and expressed his concerns over it on more than one occasion.
In any case, the Norwegian Church leader’s plans appear not to sit well with Christoph Brüwer, the editor of the German Bishops’ Conference’s Katholisch.de, who criticized the Norwegian bishop for declaring “what must not be decided” at the Oslo diocesan synod.
“Instead of being afraid of possible decisions and already warning of the first consultation phase, Bishop Hansen could look forward to getting a really honest inventory of the Catholic Church in his diocese,” he wrote.
“Synodal bans on thinking are not expedient for this. Because if the synod is really a spiritual event and the Holy Spirit is at work, then a little more trust in God and one’s own people of God cannot hurt,” Brüwer said.
Hansen, however, brought some significant historical evidence to bear on his interpretation and in support of his plans, explicitly invoking “St. Charles Borromeo, the great reforming bishop of Milan,” who held synods “in line with the directives of the Council of Trent,” the bishop said.
As Archbishop of Milan from 1564 until 1584, St. Charles held eleven diocesan synods, bringing together the clergy of his archdiocese. (He also six provincial assemblies involving the leaders of all the dioceses of his province.)
“Our Diocesan Synod will be dedicated to the elaboration of a new and comprehensive pastoral plan, new statutes for the pastoral council, parish council, and parish financial councils,” Hansen told the Kath.net news service on Oct. 27.
Hansen also explained that the efforts would be “all within a view of fortifying evangelization and the broader pastoral life of our parishes.”
The bishop said the diocesan gathering would be a synod as “clearly defined by canon law, and an instrument of the bishop’s governance that time and time again has proven its value.”
The German meetings involving both clergy and lay people endorsed blessing same-sex couples, ordaining women, and lay involvement in the selection of bishops. The Vatican has said the “Synodal Way” misunderstood what it meant by “Synodality.”
In fact, his words echoed the “Instruction on Diocesan Synods” issued by the Congregation for Bishops and Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in 1997, nearly 30 years ago.
That document said the synod “not only manifests and actualizes ecclesial communion in a diocese, it also builds up and fosters that same unity, especially in its declarations and decrees.”
“Hence it is necessary that the synodal documents accurately reflect the universal Magisterium of the Church and apply common canonical discipline to the particular circumstances obtaining in the various dioceses,” the Instruction explains.
It emphasized the “local juridical patrimony as well as the guidelines for the pastoral government of the diocese” and focused mainly on the diocese’s actual local Church laws.
This highlights that for most of the Catholic Church’s history, “Synodality” involved meetings to discuss legislation, rather than the etymological definition of “walking together.”
One of the proposals participants in the Oslo synod will consider is whether to mandate a diocesan synod at least once a decade, changing the law in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which stated that they be held “when circumstances suggest it.”
It should be noted that the 1983 law replaced the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which had previously mandated a diocesan synod every 10 years. This law itself replaced the law made by the Council of Trent in 1563, which mandated a diocesan synod every year.
These laws have been more honored in the breach than in the observance for more than five centuries. One thing the Church has not been answering is, “Why?”
Synods involve dioceses spending a lot of money and time on a process that many claim is already being done by the pastoral councils set up after Vatican II.
Also, bishops can legislate without a synod – and have always done so – and the past has shown that efforts to keep them from doing so have always faded away.
The synod in Oslo is taking place around the same time as the October 2028 Vatican Ecclesial Assembly, as the final milestone of the three-year implementation phase of the Synod on Synodality.
Will these meetings resemble those conducted in Milan in the 16th century, or the ones held in Germany in the 21st century?
Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome
