By Isabella Piro
Synodality is not “a mere decision-making process”, but “a fundamental feature of the Church’s identity, says Cardinal Michael Czerny, Undersecretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, in an article published 31 December, in “La Civiltà Cattolica”. The Cardinal writes that synodality is the way in which “the Church disposes all its members to co-responsibility, enhances their charisms and ministries, and intensifies the bonds of fraternal love”. In this sense, it finds its premises in
Lumen gentium: in this dogmatic Constitution of the Second Vatican Council, “the importance of the laity in the life of the Church is included”, since they are called to participate in its government “according to their tasks, roles and ways”. But that’s not all: while collegiality refers, specifically, “to the exercise of the ministry of the bishops”, synodality, Cardinal Czerny emphasizes, i