Synodality is the result of a theological error: Küng vs. Ratzinger 2.0

(Chur, Switzerland. kath.net) Hans Küng would have enjoyed the 2021-2024 Vatican Synod. Because he was the one who tried sixty years earlier to equate the concepts of Synod (or Council) and Church. That was supposed to make the Church a big Council that deliberated uninterruptedly.

What the most recent Vatican Synod calls for is the belated attempt to put Küng’s idea into practice. For “synodality” is now supposed to become the permanent state, the essential feature of the Church. From now on, the Church is to be not only the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, but also the “synodal” Church. For “synodality” allegedly implements what Vatican Council II taught about the Church as a mystery and the People of God (Concluding Document 2024, Introduction).

Moreover, according to the 2024 Concluding Document, new “synodal” panels should be created at all levels of the Church (89, 94, 100, 107). The distinction between decision-making and advisory functions should be loosened up (92). Already existing boards should be declared obligatory (104), and their significance and authority should be strengthened (108, 129). After all, sitting at round tables is, the 2023 Synod declared “symbolic of a synodal Church” (Relatio, 1.3).

Joseph Ratzinger was the one who, in the time before Vatican Council II, took a stance against Küng’s theory in his lecture “On the Theology of the Council.”¹ He put things in the right perspective and prophetically called attention to dangers that have now made their appearance at the 2021-2024 Synod.

Küng maintained that the Church as a whole is the Council called together by God, the “divinely convoked ecumenical council.” The Council as an ecclesial assembly is then the “humanly convoked ecumenical council” and thus the representation of the “divinely convoked ecumenical council.” From this assertion Küng inferred: A Council, understood in this way, must be representative of all the members of the Church. It cannot be an assembly made up exclusively of the successors of the apostles, the bishops. What Küng postulated then has now been put into practice: First, the whole People of God was consulted. And then representatives were appointed to act on behalf of this People: bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and lay people indiscriminately. In this way, these representatives were supposed to depict the entire Church as a “humanly convoked ecclesial assembly”. All of them had a “right to vote”. Consequently, this was representation in the political sense, and not the “sacrament” or mystery [of the Church].

On the contrary, Ratzinger showed that Küng was mistaken even etymologically. Küng did correctly note that the concept “Church” comes from the Greek verb “ek-kalein,” which means “to call out.” The Church is the “ekklesia,” the [feminine] “one who is called out.” But then Küng maintained that [the Latin] “concilium” was derived from “concalare”: to call together. The Church, as Council, would then be the “one who is called together.” Ratzinger proved, on the other hand, that the derivation from “concalare” is erroneous. Council and Church do not belong together etymologically. More importantly, though, Ratzinger was able to show that neither in the 22 pertinent passages of the Latin Bible nor in patristic writings is “concilium” ever the translation for the Greek “ekklesia.” “Concilium” in the ecclesiastical context is instead the equivalent of the Greek terms “synedrion” or later “synodos”.

Joseph Ratzinger then pointed out that historical findings also contradict Küng’s thesis. Phenomena of a synodal or conciliar sort first came about only around the year 160 in the fight against the heresy of Montanism. Their specific purpose in the case of a conflict was the discernment of spirits and to guard all Christendom from the threats of heresies. The scope of the Council, he argued, is therefore much narrower than that of the Church. The former has “the function of ordering and shaping” and serves the Church in this world “in the particular secular situations at any given time.”

Essentially, the Church is not a consultative assembly, but rather an assembly around the Word of God and around the Sacrament, which as an “anticipated participation in God’s wedding feast” points beyond this world and time. Every celebration of the Eucharist, every local Church is therefore ekklesia, Church. The Council, however, is not the Church and does not represent it; rather, it is merely a well-defined, temporally and thematically limited “organizational” service in the Church and for it. This is all the more true, then, of a Synod at the level of the universal or the local Church, because it is not even the assembly of all bishops.

Concerning the results of his investigations, Ratzinger remarked: “At first glance this may seem like an utterly useless academic quarrel.” But it is not, because the danger lurking in Küng’s wordplay is the following: As long as the Council is understood in terms of the Church, as a clerical service (with a time limit) to resolve a conflict in an individual case, there is no problem. For it is self-evident that the Council comes from the nature of the Church and is a part of it.

The situation changes, however, if the general public is eventually led to understand the relation between Church and Council the other way around. In other words: if the Church is understood in terms of the model of the Council. For then the following happens: “The Council as the concrete, known quantity becomes the key for one’s view of the Church, the entity which [in fact] lies deeper and should be the first object of inquiry.” Thus, the Church is dissolved into a “synedrion” or a “synode”. The Universal Church becomes a “consultative assembly,” an “organizational and political entity that we respond to not in the fundamental engagement of faith, but rather in the attitude of action.” So it is then a matter of politics, doing, and changing.

This is exactly what has made its appearance now with the Vatican “Synods” project since 2021. On the occasion of the Synod in October 2023, demands were made for the development of consultative bodies and panels, for the creation of new ministries [Ämter] and for “synodality” as a permanent state of affairs. Joseph Ratzinger prophetically foresaw the consequences of this sort of activism that is enamored with structures: “[From that perspective,] those who see the constants in [the Church] and want to hold them fast are just ‘hitting the brakes’. But then we must also realize that we have not engaged what the Church itself in every age has viewed as its most distinctive and most essential elements.”

In other words: The Church is denatured. From a mystery of faith, it degenerates into a malleable political entity.

The project of synodalism is, therefore, ultimately the expression of a theological error about the nature of the Church. The Church is no longer believed in terms of the Word of God and the sacraments, but rather is understood in a political, representative way. In the past, theological errors have always led to tensions in the Church. The current practice of representative democracy in synodal camouflage will likewise lead to conflicts between bishops, priests, and lay people, because the first two groups are no longer respected for what they are essentially, and the last-mentioned group is turned into opponents vying for spiritual authority, misunderstood as power. If that does not split the Church, it will at least paralyze it. And this is true not only at the global level, but also in dioceses and parishes.

Yet it may also be that God will come to the assistance of His Church through the sensus fidelium (the “mind of the faithful”) of the bishops, priests, and lay persons. The laity worldwide (surprise!) have given their opinion by their minimal participation, which has to be measured per thousand instead of in percentages. Their striking disinterest is an expression of the fact that they have other needs and worries. They are waiting for someone to communicate to them, for their concrete, everyday lives as Christians and citizens, a spirituality that does not busy them with ecclesiastical circles of chairs but rather gives them signposts showing how they can live out their Christian and ecclesial mission credibly and effectively in an obviously secularized world.

They hunger for the bread of faith, and they are looking for shepherds who will give them this bread and not the stones of failed Church politics. Because the Church gathers around the Word of God and the Eucharist, not around round tables.

(Note: The English translation by Michael J. Miller is published by CWR with the kind permission of kath.net.)

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