Synodality, Community, and the Margins

Abstract

Synodality is generally understood to represent a process of discernment - with the aid of the Holy Spirit - involving bishops, priests, religious, and lay Catholics, each according to the gifts and charisms of their vocation. As Gaudium et Spes reminds us it is for God’s people as a whole, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and especially for pastors and theologians, to listen to the various voices of our day, discerning them and interpreting them, and to evaluate them in the light of the divine word, so that the revealed truth can be increasingly appropriated, better understood, and more suitably expressed (GS, no. 44). So, how might we be able to practice these understandings of synodality in contemporary times? This essay offers a response to the question by reflecting on the idea of community and the margins as ways of practicing synodality. It argues that the practice of synodality is a collective effort that makes an option for those who live on the peripheries, both economic and existential.

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