The Germans and the Future of Synodality in the Catholic Church

In a few days, the German Catholic bishops will decide whether to establish a permanent synodal body at the national level. This decision will affect not only Catholicism in Germany, but also the entire Catholic Church. The stakes are high. On the one hand, the outcome in Germany will impact synodality globally, as it represents the most significant legacy Pope Francis left to the Church. On the other hand, interrupting the stabilization of the German Synodal Path could hand over Pope Leo XIV’s papacy to the most intransigent fringes of Catholicism. These fringes are represented by the new political authoritarianism that wants to leave behind liberal democracy and its fundamental principles.

For Heaven’s Sake, What the Heck Synodality Is?

Synodality brings together the Churches as they are, with their histories and the stories of faith that ground them in the daily lives of our societies. It brings together established practices, unexpressed potential, and the limitations that characterize every Christian community truly anchored in the world loved by God.

Synodality unites people, communities, and Churches, engaging them in a process of learning and discernment to shape the Church that has to come – because, in order to remain faithful to the Gospel, the Church must be open to God’s future.

The Church must be sensitive to the Spirit’s guidance, which reveals the unexpected locations of the God of Jesus in the present day of human history. One could say that synodality is the slow and patient practice of Christian communities and every disciple of the Lord in acquiring this sensitivity to the Spirit’s workings and his constant reimagining of the Gospel in ways and places we could never have imagined. Synodality does not confirm us in what is already known or the realization of our personal aspirations.

Rather, it urges us to have the courage to be surprised by God’s desire—not for the Church first, but for the world and the humanity that inhabits it. The Church does not exist to kidnap God within the walls of its own life, but rather to confirm the world and every human being in God’s desire: the joyful and successful purpose of every human existence and the environments in which it unfolds.

Synodality is a Trinitarian and generative injunction: never without the other, as Michel de Certeau would say. Only the diversity of others, when listened to and recognized, can test the evangelical quality of our deepest faith convictions—helping us shape a shared sensitivity as we follow the Spirit’s lead in carrying God’s desire for the world and humanity through history.

Synodality honors differences in faith sensibilities; it directs us toward an open, common horizon—the future of God’s time. It is the effort of every believer to be faithful to the Gospel in the many stories and contexts in which it is appreciated as the good news of God’s desire.

How It All Began

Enough time has passed since the Church’s first steps into the unknown territory of synodality to gather some insights. Together with the Australian Church, the German Church was one of the first to take this path. Now, it finds itself at a delicate juncture regarding how to continue the exercises of learning synodality at national level. As we said, this brings together local Churches as their histories have shaped them over time.

Consequently, synodality is activated differently at the local level because it is also a reflection of each one Church’s history. This allows us to better understand the two different approaches the Australian and German Churches have taken on this journey, somewhat like the two disciples’ journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus after Jesus’s death.

The Australian Church has chosen a model that we could call the re-presentation of local Catholicism. This model constantly weaves together the thread between local communities, parishes, and various associations with the work of the general synodal assembly. This approach has certainly favored widespread adoption of the synodal style while raising questions about the formal effectiveness of the synodal process itself.

The German Catholic Church’s history is different; therefore, the synodal model it adopted differs, taking more the form of the established delegation of Catholicism across the Alps (with the two major players being the German Bishops’ Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics). This gives the Synodal Path assembly a high level of authority, leaving the impact of the process on Christian communities and local German Churches partly uncovered.

Despite these differences, the beginnings of synodality in Australia and Germany are deeply united by the fact that both Churches found this form of coming together to be the most appropriate response to their dramatic responsibilities regarding the violence and sexual abuse that took place within them in previous decades.

Synodality appeared to be God’s “commandment” to the two polar opposite Churches to address the violence of ecclesiastical power, which is a real structural sin of the Catholic Church and a serious crime in terms of civil justice.

The illusion of innocence has crumbled in the face of evidence showing that structural power violence, as well as sexual and spiritual abuse, are not isolated phenomena. These issues call into question the Catholic Church as a whole (and therefore every local Church).

In light of this dramatic evidence, the entire Church, along with every believer, should be grateful to the Australian and German Catholics for their honesty and faithfulness in taking responsibility for the history of their ecclesial communities. They should also be thanked for being the first in Western Catholicism to embark on the journey of synodality.

These churches have inspired us to engage in exercises in synodality, and we should approach them with the understanding that we are all apprentices in this matter. The Australian synodal journey has formally concluded at the national level, while the German one has decided to establish a permanent synodal body within the country’s Catholicism. As with all moments of transition, especially those aimed at establishing a practice, the current situation of the German Catholic Church is fraught with potential and critical issues. To better understand this Church’s current situation, it may be helpful to review some of the steps that have led to this point in its synodal history.

German Synodal Chronology

2018: During the autumn plenary assembly of the Bishops’ Conference, the MHG Study on sexual abuse within the German Church is presented. This study exposes the systemic structure that made the abuse possible, as well as the cover-up that made the victims invisible to the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

2019: The German bishops met for the first time since the study’s publication. During the spring plenary session, they decided to launch the Synodal Path of the local church. They focus on the internal structures of the Church itself and identify four main areas: power and the division of powers in the Church; questions of sexual morality; the form of life of the ordained ministry; women and the ministries of the Church.

For each area, a working group is established to draft a basic text, which will serve as the foundation for the Synodal Assembly’s subsequent work. The assembly convened for the first time in December 2019, with an initial two-year term.

In June of that year, Pope Francis sent a letter to German Catholics, asking for openness to the action of the Spirit, courage to discern, and the joyful freedom that comes from knowing we are led by the Gospel that anticipates us and circulates beyond our abilities. He also asked for a believer’s sensitivity to act as a community of disciples and the art of harmoniously balancing the “we” of the ecclesial body with the “I” of the confession of faith.

2020: The pandemic slowed down the work and the possibility of direct exchanges and meetings. One of the four plenary synod assemblies planned had to be held online. This prompted the Presidency of the German Synodal Path to extend the process until spring 2023 in December 2021. Meanwhile, preparatory work also began for the Synod of the Catholic Church, led by Pope Francis, on the theme of synodality (2021–2023).

2022–2023: As the German Synodal Path approaches its final stages and increasingly intersects with the events of the Synod of the Universal Church, it becomes a subject of conflict in various ways, both in Germany and worldwide. The conservative wing of Western Catholicism, in particular, targets it with criticism that is sometimes heated and inelegant, such as some interventions by Polish bishops and letters inspired by anti-Francis American Catholicism that have involved some bishops from Africa and Asia.

These attacks on the German Church’s synodal path are part of a broader strategy to weaken the synodal shift desired by Francis for the entire Catholic Church. This situation invests the exercise of synodality in German Catholicism with a responsibility that extends beyond domestic issues to the Catholic Church as a whole.

Currently, as decisions are being made on how to stabilize synodality in Germany, Catholic institutions, associations, communities, parishes, and bishops must think and act beyond themselves so that synodality can continue to be a possibility for the Church of the future.

With the fifth session of the German Synodal Assembly in March 2023, the final versions of documents relating to the Synodal Path’s thematic areas are approved, and the decision is made to establish a permanent synodal body at the national level.

As this is a new development, a working group, the Synodaler Ausschuss, is established to draw up basic guidelines for a permanent synodality framework for the German Church at the national level. Even before this stage, some departments of the Roman Curia had expressed doubts and concerns about the possible outcomes of the German Synodal Path. These concerns were conveyed directly to the bishops at an interdepartmental meeting during their ad limina visit in November 2022. Those present included the Secretary of State (Cardinal Parolin), the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (Cardinal Ladaria), and the Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops (Cardinal Oullet).

Beyond the inelegant tone used by some Holy See representatives and the reservations expressed—some of which were the result of using media hostile to synodality in the Catholic Church as a source rather than the German Synodal Path documents—this meeting represented the beginning of an open and direct confrontation between the Vatican Curia and the German Church, involving not only bishops, but also members of the Synodal Path.

2023-2025: The 27 diocesan bishops are ex officio members of the Synodal Committee (four of whom have chosen not to participate because they believe this working group does not comply with the dictates of the Code of Canon Law and Catholic doctrine: the Bishop of Cologne, Cardinal Woelki; the Bishop of Regensburg, Monsignor Vorderholzer; the Bishop of Eichstätt, Monsignor Hanke (now emeritus); and the Bishop of Passau, Monsignor Oster). There are also 27 members of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) and 20 delegates of the Synodal Assembly.

The Committee’s tasks include an in-depth study of the meaning of synodality for the Catholic Church through the reception of the synodal process at the global level, a review of the implementation of decisions made at the Synodal Assembly, integrating texts and guidelines that could not be deliberated due to time constraints into the journey of the German Church, and identifying a permanent synodal body for issues involving all dioceses in accordance with the current Code of Canon Law.

The Synodal Committee presented the results of its work at the last plenary session of the Synodal Assembly of the German Path, held in Stuttgart at the end of January 2026.

Interlude: A German in Rome and the End of Anti-Roman Sentiment

The strength of synodality is its uncodifiable nature—it is a practice that can only be learned and understood through exercise. However, it is a fragile force that cannot be imposed. If one wanted to control it by distilling a universal form in a laboratory, it would lose its effectiveness in the universality of the Catholic Church.

Imagining a centralized model of synodality decided by the Church’s magisterium and applied everywhere is to be outside of synodality. This is how we must view the practical experience of the two sessions of the Synod on Synodality of the Catholic Church—the great legacy that Francis entrusted to us for the world’s sake.

The long-term task of every believing community scattered throughout the world loved by God is to establish the links between this experience and the synodal form that each local Church generates from being called together by the Spirit (a convocation to which the bishop who guides it is also called).
This will be possible only if each local Church looks beyond its own boundaries and history and if the Roman Curia and the Pope follow the movements of the Spirit in the many sensibilities of faith.

However, we are all apprentices in this regard. It requires time and foresight, as well as room to make mistakes without considering them dramatic departures from Gospel orthodoxy. Those who participated in the two synodal assemblies of the universal Church experienced all this firsthand. In short, they discovered the indispensable nature of the faith of others, even when it does not align with their deepest convictions, and they were surprised by the Gospel’s inexhaustible ability to shape the lives of believers wherever it reaches, often without us noticing.

Exercises in synodality should generate not only faith but also a magisterium that is less arrogant and certain of its own rightness—looking instead for the justice desired by God at this moment in history.

The two meetings in Rome where faiths and Churches gathered brought participants into uncharted territories of Catholicism. They also offered the opportunity to discover others beyond stereotypes, mutual distances, and differences in vision for the future of the ecclesial community. This experience left its mark on many synod members from Germany.

They experienced the Church of Rome not as a center of global control and power but as a gathering of the Spirit and the diversity of Catholic belief. This dissolved old preconceptions that created distance, often simply because people had never met or listened to one another. It opened the door to emerging from the long shadow of the anti-Roman sentiment with which von Balthasar had branded German Catholicism (not without reason, albeit somewhat exaggeratedly).

When people meet synodally and listen to and speak with one another as companions on the journey, rather than as bitter enemies, they free themselves—in Germany and in the Vatican—from being objects of another’s narrative and become protagonists of a story written by four hands.

Back to January

What happened at the last plenary session of the Synodal Assembly of the German Church in Stuttgart a few weeks ago when the Synodal Committee presented its work and the statutes of the stable form of supra-diocesan synodality in Germany, along with its formal procedures?

The headlines in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung were merciless: “Synodaler Irrweg” (the English translation, “synodal derailment,” does not capture the perfidy of the pun); “Deep Frustration”; “Disappointment.” It certainly did not go well, jeopardizing the continuation of synodality in Germany with potential repercussions at the level of the universal Church.

The issue is not the content (these were essentially legal texts calibrated through repeated meetings between the Synodal Committee and Roman dicasteries), but the atmosphere. No one left happy. Everyone was disappointed, as if they had suddenly returned to the starting point, which they thought they had left behind.

So, what happened? One could interpret the last plenary session of the German Synodal Assembly as a psychodrama. There were emotional interventions and vehement language. Even the body language expressed a fundamental disorder. But does what happened really have anything to do with all this? Was it only about the fact that the Vatican continues to consider the priesthood an exclusively male ministry and shows itself to be tight-fisted on the question of a diaconate for women and men?

I believe an alternative interpretation could be offered to the media’s reading, which ultimately represents a proxy power struggle (laypeople instead of bishops and priests, women instead of men, etc.) conducted by competing lobbies. So, what happened?

The Synodal Committee, some of whose members participated in the two assemblies of the Synod of the Universal Church on Synodality in Rome, was taken by surprise. They expected anything but an assembly that unfolded as if synodality had never existed. There was an emotional and spiritual discrepancy between those who continued to practice the demanding exercise of synodality and those who had stood by the window for at least two years, watching and waiting for the results.

Perhaps this is the most appropriate interpretation, which could help the German Church get out of its current situation. However, it could also help all of us who are perhaps more cynical or who have not yet lost hope for a Church closer to God’s desire.

Synodality must be practiced, not observed from afar, waiting for it to align with personal expectations. The latter must immerse themselves in the synodal dynamic, participating as closely as possible. This allows them to understand and feel the outcomes as their own, even when they differ from personal expectations.

The impasse in Stuttgart has deep roots and reasons. This should serve as a warning to the German Church regarding how it shapes its permanent, supra-diocesan synodal body, the Synodal Conference, whose statutes are to be approved by a simple majority during the next plenary assembly of the German Bishops’ Conference, which begins February 23 in Würzburg. The vote will be preceded by the election of the new president of the Bishops’ Conference; the current president, Bishop Bätzing, announced some time ago that he would not seek reelection.

What can the German Church learn from the “disappointing” conclusion of the last Synodal Assembly in Stuttgart, as described by the FAZ?

Learning from Difficulties and Mistakes

First, in order to function, synodality cannot be based solely on the delegation of formally established entities, such as the Bishops’ Conference or the ZdK. Rather, it must become a space that brings together the everyday representations of German Catholicism.

Second, the connection between the supra-diocesan synodal body and the synodal processes underway in the dioceses must be strengthened. Ultimately, the Synodal Conference seems to be conceived as something that “stands above” in a substantially hierarchical sense. Much of the German Synodal Path, centered on delegation, has flown over the heads of local Christian communities without truly engaging with their various perspectives.

To become truly synodal, the supra-diocesan Synodal Conference must gradually change its mindset and modus operandi. It should not be an instance above the synodal processes in local German Churches. Rather, it should be the place where they converge and meet. This will allow the real representation of Catholicism that they embody to become the cornerstone of widespread and heartfelt participation at the national level. This will prohibit the comfortable position of the “spectator” who appreciates the synodal outcomes only if they meet his or her own expectations.

Finally, it is a matter of clarifying a fundamental ambiguity that accompanies the beginning of the synodal process in the whole Catholic Church, and not only in Germany. Synodality is not a negotiation for the redistribution of power, but rather an opportunity to exercise power together in a way that aligns with God’s desire for justice in human relations—especially among those who follow Jesus and experience his intimacy with God.

Many have exploited this ambiguity, even in a perverse and un-evangelical way. Others, however, seem unaware that they still aspire to a hierarchical Church where power is an instrument of violence, albeit gentle, rather than a transformative force that does justice to God’s desire for a community ever closer to the time when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4).

A look at the near future

In a few days, the German bishops will have to make important decisions regarding the Catholic Church in Germany, such as electing a new president of the Bishops’ Conference and approving or rejecting the statutes of the Synodal Conference by simple majority.

These choices would benefit from, and be supported by, effective synodality among the German bishops. However, at the moment, this still seems to be a dream for the future. The tensions and inclinations toward the use of ecclesiastical politics in decisions like these continue to drive not only the local German Church, but also the whole Catholic Church.

In the meantime, the Synodal Committee statutes have been published on the Synodal Path website. The aspiration of this stable synodal body is certainly admirable: “To strengthen synodality, in accordance with the Synod of Bishops—whose final document is part of the ordinary magisterium—and the General Secretariat of the Synod’s indications contained in the March 15, 2025 letter to the presidents of the episcopal conferences, the Synodal Conference is established in the Catholic Church in Germany. This conference brings together bishops and other faithful, according to their common baptismal dignity and specific vocations, to make decisions that correspond to the Church’s missionary task. The Synodal Conference takes into account the constitutional order of the Church and guarantees the rights of diocesan bishops and the Episcopal Conference, as well as diocesan procedures and commissions” (Art. 1).

However, the “how” of implementing this stabilization of synodality in the German Church at national level is more problematic. This implementation appears to entail an almost complete institutionalization and juridification of synodality itself.

Which Legal System for Synodality?

Here, the question arises as to whether positive law combined with a purely institutional framework is an appropriate means of stabilizing synodality, which, in essence, is a practice through which the social body of the ecclesial community organizes and orders its coexistence.

Reducing law to almost exclusively positive law — emanating from an instance of power that stands above and outside the social body — is a legal phenomenon typical of modernity. However, it is not the only way to think about the legal system. Returning to the origins of law, Italian jurisprudence, first with Santi Romano at the beginning of the 20th century and then with Paolo Grossi in its second half, freed law from being an instrument of established power and restored it to its social nature. According to this line of thought, the legal system originates in the social body itself, which organizes and orders itself in its active and dynamic existence.

This meaning of the legal system is most suited to synodality as a practice of the ecclesial social body, not the meaning that makes it coincide exclusively with positive law emanating from sovereign power. According to the first meaning, space opens up for not positivizing synodality, even according to the law. This is because synodality is not an act of ecclesiastical power, but rather the social fact of the ecclesial community coming together at the call of the Spirit in its many locations around the world.

Synodality can only be stabilized as a social practice of the ecclesial body that is organized contextually at the local level if it is not constrained by positive law, as the statutes of the German Synodal Conference tend to do.

Synodality, when understood in this way, is not anti-legal simply because it escapes positive law. Rather, it designs its own legal system, allowing synodality to be what it must be: not an act of superior power but a social fact that orders itself by recognizing a shared rule of coexistence.

This is how synodality can remain in dialectical relation with the ecclesial institution as a social fact and a community that organizes itself according to synodal practice. The Catholic Church, as an institution of faith, urgently needs this otherness—that of the instituting force—not only for reasons of historical circumstance, but also, and above all, for reasons of fidelity to the Gospel and the fellowship community imagined by Jesus.

If the legal system proper to synodality is not positive law, as it has developed in Western modernity—that is, if it cannot be adequately framed in the total expression of modern law, the code—then it is clear that, to organize itself according to synodal practice, the Catholic Church needs more than a simple adaptation of the Code of Canon Law to synodality.

Synodality and Constitutionalism

Synodality must remain a practice to be effective, and its meaning must be the instituting force of the social body of the Catholic ecclesial community. Within the legal system, it will be necessary to identify the form of law arising from the practice of synodality that allows it to be effective. This form is likely the “constitutional” one developed in Europe in the second half of the 20th century.

German legal culture is familiar with this concept of constitutionalism. The Catholic Church in Germany could engage with it to develop a legal system that best suits synodality. In this way, the Synodal Conference could also become a great laboratory for reopening a legal-theological debate on the idea of the Lex fundamentalis ecclesiae for the benefit of the entire Catholic Church. This idea was set aside too quickly after Vatican II.

From a historical perspective, those were the most suitable years to undertake such a project, and abandoning it has opened the door to the current Code of Canon Law. This Code resolves the entire legal system of the Catholic Church as positive law, an act of sovereign power. Today, it is clear that this system cannot accommodate synodality as the instituting force of the Catholic Church.

Therefore, it is not a matter of amending a few articles of the Code or writing a new one, however desirable that may be. Rather, it is a matter of completely rethinking the Church’s legal system, recognizing that it is generated by the practice of synodality as a social fact of the ecclesial body of believers.

The paradox of the current statutes of the German Synodal Conference is that their conception of positive law is closer to the Roman Curia’s mentality than to that of the Weimar Republic. However, by embracing this aspect of the country’s legal history, as the synodal practice itself demands, the German Church could contribute to the future history of the universal Catholic Church.

This is probably the closest the phrase at the beginning of the Synodal Conference statutes comes to the Gospel of the Kingdom: “The Catholic Church in Germany gratefully embraces the impulses of the Plenary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, ‘For a Synodal Church: Communion – Participation – Mission (2021–2024), and, in its light, moves forward with renewed hope and new forms along the synodal path it began in 2019.”