The Synod on Synodality

No. Really. They're serious.

Jonathan McAdam Fisk

May 01, 2025

🎩🕵️‍♂️ Jonathan AI PI presents:

Synodality!

Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Circular Reasoning

(as told by the Mad Hatter reincarnated as Sherlock Holmes, on a diet of frank incense and papal press releases)

Act I – The Curious Case of the Ever-Expanding Circle

“It’s quite elementary,” said the Hatter-Holmes, sipping from a chalice marked ‘Full, Active, and Conscious Participation’.

“You begin with a question no one is asking—‘What is synodality?’—then immediately insist that it’s not a question at all, but a walking together. How jolly!”

He flipped his notes:

‘Synodality is not democracy, nor is it hierarchy, nor is it a council, nor a committee, nor a doctrine, nor a solution, nor a problem. It is a process of processes expressing the ecclesiality of ecclesia in dialogical mutuality with reciprocal discernment of the People of God on the way toward the already-but-not-yet eschaton.’

“I say, Watson—what on earth does that mean?”

Watson, a Jesuit canon lawyer, merely adjusted his biretta and mumbled something about the Spirit blowing where it listeth.

Act II – The Murder of Meaning in the Sacristy of Synodality

Following a trail of votive candles, the detective traced the first clues to the Curial Cabal, a dimly lit room where three bishops and a PR manager had been ‘walking together’ for 8 months, only to arrive where they started.

“Remarkable,” said Holmes-Hatter. “They’ve managed to reach unanimity on ambiguity, consensus on confusion, and clarity on one thing only: synodality is a thing to be done, not understood.”

Clue #1:

A parchment with the phrase “Inclusivity” underlined 47 times—but no mention of truth.

Clue #2:

An elaborate flowchart with 28 arrows all pointing back to “listening to the people,” which fed into “discerning the Spirit,” which then looped into “listening again.”

Clue #3:

A file labeled “Doctrine, To Be Updated Later – If We Must.”

Clue #4:

“Wouldn’t you rather be part of the Church that Jesus started, rather than one that began in 1517?” 🤔

Act III – The Diabolical Paradox of Papal Populism

Hatter-Holmes now burst into the synodal chamber with flourish:

“Ah, the classic perichoresis of prevarication! An ouroboros wrapped in vestments, dancing a waltz of dialogue while telling the band to change the tune mid-step!”

He pointed to the assembled cardinals, who looked confused, hopeful, and mildly bored.

“You are governing by evasion, gentlemen. You speak endlessly of listening without saying whom you obey. You advocate openness without guarding the gate. You reject clericalism while expanding your own vocabulary to cloak a new kind of tyranny—the tyranny of noise.”

“And meanwhile,” he whispered, “you forget the Shepherd, His voice, and His flock.”

Act IV – The Lost Boys of St. Peter

Hatter-Holmes lit a cigar made of Vatican II footnotes and paced like a man solving murder by daylight.

“Once, Moses struck the rock and water gushed. Now, Peter’s heirs strike up committees—and we get PDFs.”

A bishop blinked, “But it’s about listening…”

“Yes, yes. To everyone and everything—except the Founder, the Creed, and the Christ.”

He pointed to the air with the sort of flair only a madman or a prophet could muster:

“The red letters? They don’t just speak—they pulse. Out from the Gospels, weaving the New, fulfilling the Old, commanding the cosmos. Christ in ink becomes: Assemble-Heralds-Priests-Kings—not facilitators of fog.”

He held up a synodal dossier: