The concept of Synodality, especially as the next gathering of the Synod of Bishops fast approaches, can sometimes feel like it presages dramatic and unprecedented changes to the Church. Pope Francis has over recent years spoken of Synodality as a “constitutive element of the Church”, said with St John Chrysostom that the “Church and Synod are synonymous” and even that the “path of synodality” is what “God expects of the Church of the third millennium”.

There are however few questions so obscure, that the Church in its intellectually rich millennia-long tradition, has not already developed extensive precedents for us to draw from. And this is especially the case for concepts such as Synods, which even before the time of St John Chrysostom, could be talked about in startlingly strong terms by Church Fathers such as the third century Bishop St. Cyprian of Carthage:

“[W]hile nothing should be done in the local Church without the Bishop – nihil sine episcopo – it is equally true that nothing should be done without your council (the Presbyters & Deacons) – nihil sine consilio vestro – or without the consensus of the people – et sine consensu plebis”.

So how has the Church traditionally understood these seemingly absolute teachings in favour of a synodal Church governance? How do they allow the apparently more monarchical papal governance which has been known in more recent centuries – And yet still potentially legitimize a more consultative and consensual style of Church leadership in the immediate future? How do we avoid, as the International Theological Commission (ITC) put it in their 2018 Study of Synodality, wrongly understanding these axioms “in the sense of conciliarism on the ecclesiological level or of parliamentarianism on a political level”?

The answer can be found in the thought of the famous counter-reformation Cardinal and Doctor of the Church, St. Robert Bellarmine, whose seminal work on ecclesiology called De Romano Pontifice (On the Roman Pontiff) was one of the main sources of inspiration for the definitions of the First Vatican Council. In a chapter aptly titled “That the Government of the Church Should not be a Democracy”, St. Bellarmine directly addressed the teaching of St. Cyprian on synodality as follows:

“St. Cyprian was accustomed to treat almost all major business in the presence of the clergy and the people, and did nothing without their consent. Moreover, he did this of his own will, he was not compelled by any law, as is certain when he said: “When I had decided from the beginning of my episcopacy to do nothing from my private judgment without your counsel and without the consensus of the people, etc.” But Cyprian was not subject to the clergy or the people on that account: just as king Xerxes was not subject to those wise men, with whom he made all his counsels, as we read in the book of Esther, Chapter 1. Even if Cyprian had subjected himself to the clergy and the people, which is not in the least credible, he could not have immediately prescribed a law for the whole Church”.

In a later chapter St. Bellarmine adds:

“Cyprian, who so wrote to a cleric: “Such a matter, although I have determined that it considers the counsel and opinion of us all, I do not make bold to claim every matter to merely decide by myself.” I respond: Cyprian did not dare to render judgment, because he had obliged himself of his own will, when he received the episcopacy, that he was to do nothing without the counsel and consensus of his priests and people, as we taught above from the same book.

Next, they bring Ambrose, who so said: “Both the synagogue, and afterward the Church had elders, without whose council nothing was done.” I respond, no more from these words can ecclesiastical aristocracy be proved, than from the existence of a senate and royal counsel in a kingdom that there is no monarchy … On that account because the old bishops would do nothing without the counsel of priests with respect to what was of advantage and salutary, still, it was not necessary, nor can it be understood from that citation that at the time of Ambrose were this not to be done that the Church would have ceased to exist”.

In other words, while a Bishop or Pope governing in a consultative or synodal way may be praiseworthy, it is not a doctrinal requirement. It is rather ultimately an optional matter of personal preference, whose use waxes and wanes across history, depending on the circumstances and inclinations of each individual Pope. If Pope Francis wants to make decisions after consulting the entire People of God – Then that is an entirely valid choice he is entitled to make. But if he or his successors later prefer to govern without the assistance of Synods, as some of their predecessors have, that will equally be a perfectly legitimate decision.

This may seem somewhat strange – Is it really possible for a Church which is synonymous with Synod, for whom synodality is a constitutive element, to not celebrate any Synods or Councils? For that answer we have to return to St. Chrysostom, to find out what he intended in saying the Church and Synod are the same. And as it turns out, as explained by the ITC, his meaning was much broader than synodal meetings and votes:

“In ecclesiastical Greek it [Synod] expresses how the disciples of Jesus were called together as an assembly and in some cases it is a synonym for the ecclesial community. Saint John Chrysostom, for example, writes that the Church is a “name standing for ‘walking together’ … He explains that the Church is actually the assembly convoked to give God thanks and glory like a choir, a harmonic reality which holds everything together … since, by their reciprocal and ordered relations, those who compose it converge in … common mind”.

Which is to say, the Church is Synod not because it celebrates Synods, but because in the words of the ITC synodality “reveals and gives substance to her [the Church] being as communion when all her members journey together, gather in assembly and take an active part in her evangelising mission”.

Which perhaps makes the prototypical Synod, the event without which the Church could not be herself, nothing else but the Eucharist – What the ITC was so bold as to call “The source and summit of synodality”.