With the popular Synod on Synodality finishing soon, and the Synod on the Synod on Synodality already announced, Catholics everywhere are eagerly awaiting the details on next year’s Synod on the Synod on the Synod on Synodality.
The Vatican has so far released some tantalizing details that show the third annual synod will be even more synodal than the previous two. Not only does it feature an even more synodal logo; early schemata indicate the entire synodal process is being revamped as well.
Previous Synods on Synodality relied on various subsidiary synods on local, national, and continental levels. But next year’s Synod on the Synod on the Synod on Synodality will maximize the synodality of the previous two synods. Every individual will be expected to hold a self-synod, compiling the various inner voices in themselves.
These will then be taken to a synod of each individual household, which will compile these experiences when it meets in a neighborhood synod with other households. These voices and experiences will be taken to a parish synod, which will then come together into a vicariate-level synod between parishes and parish groupings. Each diocese’s vicariates will then compile such synodality and come together for a diocesan-wide synod in every diocese of the world.
These dioceses will then meet together in a synod with the other dioceses of their State, Province, or National Region. All of these individual voices will be compiled together with special attention on the margins and the unheard voices, before joining up in a national synod on the level of the bishop’s conference. The bishop’s conferences will then meet together on the continental level to compile the experiences of the previous synods together, before moving on to the hemispheric synods slated for 2039.
After these hemispheric synods, all the bishops, priests, and laity of the world will meet in Rome for the Ecumenical Synod on the Synod on Synodality in 2047, which will compile all the experiences and voices of the synodal process to draft a final working document.
This working document will at last go to a scholarly committee of theologians for revisions, before being sent to the Supreme Pontiff, who will skim it over before writing his own document that’s actually binding on the faithful.
