Synodality as a style

We publish part of an article by Card. Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops. The intergal test can be found in Sequela Christi 2021/02

To say that synodality is, first and foremost, a question of style, means considering it as something that qualifies – or should qualify – the ordinariness of ecclesial life, and not only the extraordinary nature of individual events. Certainly a style naturally tends to be translated into structures, processes and even events, without which one could legitimately doubt the authenticity of the style. But style is something broader and transversal, more inclusive and, so to speak, totalizing: we could say that style is, simply and radically, a way of living.

To speak of a synodal style, then, means becoming aware that the ecclesial renewal of which there is so much talk – especially now that, by the will of the Holy Father, the synodal process destined to culminate in the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops has been launched – touches the depths of the Church's experience and is not limited to interventions amounting to no more than «ecclesiastical make-up». The acquisition of a style falls within the sphere of structural, not con-joined or parallel, interventions. It is, after all, an expression of the Church’s need for a profound reform in our way of «being» and «living» as Church in the face of a real change of era for Christianity and for the entire world (Cf. Francis, Discourse on the Occasion of the Meeting with the Participants in the Fifth National Convention of the Italian Church; Florence, 10 November 2015).