Michael W. Higgins, Toronto

John Henry Newman got it right and he got nary a mention. In fact, he didn’t get a mention at all, and he should, for no one has explored the implications of the sense of the faithful more thoroughly than he.

The Synod on Synodality has just concluded with the submission of its Final Report and its full and unqualified acceptance by Pope Francis as the church’s teaching on synodality.

This three year process of discernment, consultation, assembly-gathering and final deliberation is now over and it has been an astonishing success, but not in the way many may think.

It was not an achievement with a tally sheet of noteworthy wins: women as ordained deacons approved; LGBTQ requests for full incorporation into the sacramental life and rituals of the church validated; decentralization of church governance radically promoted.

But then that was never really in the cards. The success lies in Francis’s embedding a process in ecclesiastical life that is constituted of a culture of encounter, a pattern of deep listening and a reverencing of the other. This results in the uprooting of a way of being church that has prevailed for centuries, the substitution of a top-down modus operandi et vivendi with a bottom-up percolation of missional energy and vision. It is the inverted pyramid model that Francis repeatedly invokes.

Of course, as Peter, the principle of unity in the church, Francis is conscious of the two tensions: the centripetal pull moving toward the centre and the centrifugal pull moving away from the axis. For at least two papacies—John Paul II and Benedict XVI—the centripetal was dominant; the challenge for Francis in favouring the centrifugal is to ensure that unity isn’t compromised.

The Final Report, when speaking of national episcopal conferences and continental assemblies, strikes the right balance: “a synodal style allows local churches to move at different paces. Different paces can be valued as an expression of legitimate diversity and as an opportunity for sharing gifts and mutual enrichment.”

This has been a red flag for the traditionalists—particularly as evidenced in the steady volley of firmly delivered argument by the traditionalist media represented in ample numbers in the press briefings and primarily American—so the appearance rather than erasure of a synodal governance model in the Final Report can be clocked up as a disappointment for them.

But on other fronts they must be rejoicing. As one seasoned Vatican reporter noted: “there will be champagne corks popping all over the city in conservative quarters celebrating the survival of the old church.” Indeed there will be such poppings, because the progressive lobbies they feared would apply pressure on an unsteady pontiff to act on the call for women in ordained ministries didn’t happen.

But it might be a good idea to re-cork.

Francis has not been defeated.

He has introduced prelates, laity, and religious to a spiritual way of being ecclesia that is designed to break through the boundaries of partisanship, to shatter the arrogance of the righteous, to make us all humble in the presence of the other.

Three years of preparation, reading and synodal pedagogy have inculcated a fresh perspective on personal relations and mutual understanding in a church context. Synodality is not a manifesto, a creed, a platform for reformist initiatives; it is a process of ecclesial engagement, a maturing of a church assembly supported by the pillars of deep listening, reverencing the other, deploying silence as tools of encounter.

Although the daily press briefings—the quotidian drone fest—could often tend toward the auto-referentiality that Francis deplores, the ad intra preoccupations that can seduce unwary bishops actually turned out to be great boons for analysts and writers accredited by the Holy See to cover the synod.

These moments provided the colouration, the context, the passion, the angst, and the hope. Bishops from Haiti, South Sudan, the Middle East, and other war and climate-ravaged countries, spoke of their anger and frustration; women religious recounted the tragic litany of abuse and clerical indifference; lay theologians provided historical context and new theological visioning.

But the challenges remain: how to implement Conversation in the Spirit methodology throughout the universal church; how to ensure the structural support for institutional change.

Nathalie Becquart, a sister of the Congregation of Xavières, is one of the two Under Secretaries of the General Secretariat of the Synod and indispensable to the effective running of the synod. She spoke to me of the implementation of synodality in the many African and Asian jurisdictions she has visited between the two sessions of the synod. The implementation, the momentum, the architecture of these multiple and diverse experiments in synodality are essentially lay-propelled and enacted.

And this brings us back to Newman.

In his 1859 work, On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, the future English cardinal made it clear that there were four specific historical moments when the laity “saved” the church. The enfleshment of synodality may well be the next iteration.

Given Francis’s inverted pyramid model, synodality is a gift the laity can run with, strengthening the common baptism of all believers, driving a new era of co-responsibility and accountability. The issue of women in ordained ministry has not died, nor is it dormant. The synod pledged in the Final Report to keep the question open for further discernment. The arguments for excluding women have never been compelling and now the synodali are guaranteeing its durability as a recurring topic. It won’t go away because it can’t go away. As a synodal church emerges out of a local dynamic propelled by a committed Catholic laity the encrustrations of clericalism will crumble.

Francis is not an innovator pope: no new doctrines, no sundering departures from past practices. But he is a disruptor pope: he has disrupted established patterns of past synods, modifying their structure and expanding their purpose; he has disrupted expectations of papal involvement; he has freed the synod to be constructively creative rather than supine and cautious.

In keeping with his plan to bring the teachings of the Second Vatican Council fully into the life of the church, the Final Report underlines the progress made thus far: “the synodal journey constitutes an authentic further act of reception of the Council, thus deepening its inspiration and reinvigorating its prophetic force for today’s world.”

The success then of the Synod on Synodality lies not in its summary document nor papal approbation. It lies in its pastoral strategy: “giving us the ‘spiritual taste’ of what it means to be the People of God.”

The laity empowered; Newman vindicated.