The Synod on Synodality’s organizers referred to the Synod of Bishops as a “fruit” of Vatican II in a statement celebrating the 60th anniversary of the council’s inauguration.
The general secretary of the synod said on Monday that the synod was “certainly one of [the Council’s] most cherished legacies,” quoting Pope Francis.
The message said that the synod’s goal was, and still is, to keep the Second Vatican Council’s spirit alive and serving the Church.
Even though the word “synodality”—which was very recently coined—is not explicitly used in the texts of the ecumenical assembly, it is a notion that permeates the whole council.
“Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church,” a treatise on the theological foundations of synodality in the Church, was published in March 2018 by the International Theological Commission of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.
According to the CDF publication, the names “synods” and “councils” have often been used to refer to official ecclesiastical gatherings throughout the history of the Church.
It claimed that the more recent conception of a synod as being separate from a council did not even date back to Vatican II and that the term “synodality” was coined to describe it.
According to the panel, it is unique to refer to the Church as “synodal” by nature and called for “careful theological explication.”
In a statement released on Monday, the Vatican said that the “present synodal process is likewise within the Council’s wake.”
The first stage of a two-year worldwide synodal process that will end in a gathering of the Synod of Bishops in Rome in 2023 was launched by the Catholic Church in October 2021.
The Synod of Bishops’ secretary general, Cardinal Mario Grech, is in charge of planning the gathering.
What kind of church is the Holy Spirit teaching us to have for today, according to the Maltese cardinal, is the issue that the Synod on Synodality was seeking to address.
Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks that the “synodal dimension is constitutive of the Church: it consists of a coming together of every people and culture in order that they become one in Christ and walk together, following him, who said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”,” were the final sentence of the message delivered on October 10.