Rafael LUCIANI. Synodality: A New Way of Proceeding in the Church. New York: Paulist Press, 2022, pp. 188. $18.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8091-5611-5. Reviewed by Michael G. LAWLER, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178.

Talk of synodality is in the air in the Catholic Church, fueled by Pope Francis’ repeated reference to it and his insistence that “the path of synodality is the path that God expects of his Church in the third millennium.” The Pope’s words on the nature of synodality and its importance  to the Church of the third millennium are such a focal point of Luciani’s book that it might have been more revealingly entitled Pope Francis on Synodality. Synodality intends the involvement of the People of God, a model of Church to replace the reigning hierarchical model, in the fundamental decision-making process in the Church. The People of God model and the synodality that accompanies it offer a way out of the malaise occasioned by the clerical sexual abuse scandals wounding the Church.

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1, From Pastoral Conversion to Synodal Conversion, deals with the failure of the hierarchical model of Church which has proved more a means for protecting clerical sexual abusers than for propagating the gospel. The conclusion from that failure is that there must be renewal and reform in the Church through pastoral conversion, that emerges in a model of Church as People of God, a model that affirms a synodal way of proceeding in which the laity participate in discernment, decision-making, planning, and implementation. That synodal Church, Francis insists, is a Church that listens both to all believers and to the Spirit of God who is constantly speaking to the Church.

Part 2, Synodality and the People of God, compares the pyramidal model of Church in which Pope, bishops and clergy constitute the higher reaches of the pyramid with sacred authority to which the faithful, who provide the base of the pyramid, must submit to the People of God model in which Pope, bishops, clergy, and laity are all together faithful people equally empowered by their baptism as missionaries of the gospel. In this latter model, bishops are called to express not their views but the views of the whole People of God. The Second Vatican Council’s document on the Church first dealt with the People of God (Chapter 2) and only then with the Church’s hierarchy (Chapter 3), an arrangement intended to establish Pope, bishops, and laity as equal members of the People. The ordained ministry is not above the People of God but essentially part of it. The common priesthood of all the baptized is prior to and a prerequisite for the ministerial priesthood. In a worldwide Catholic Church, synodal discernment will require better methods of listening, communication, and consensus building.

Part 3, Synodality and the Local Churches, examines Francis’ insistence that the People of God must be listened to in their particular place and time to find ways of responding to the particular locality where Church life and mission evolve. That locality is the local Church which makes the universal Church tangible. Church is the People of God incarnated in every local Church and culture, and no synodal process truly exists unless all local Churches are involved in it. Luciani offers as an exemplar of a truly synodal local Church the post- Medellin Lain American Church. He concludes his excellent, theologically instructive book with Congar’s judgment: to make the synodal Church effective and authentic, we must revise and renew the forms that served well for transmission of the Gospel in other times but are now obstacles to that transmission.