According to the chairman of the German bishops conference, Europe needs the Catholic Church to be synodal in order to survive.
Synodality has been the dominant theme in the Church in Germany for many years now and the nation’s Synodal Way has been followed on a global level by the Synod on Synodality. The radical advances made by the German episcopate, often in contravention of Catholic teaching, have been defended in the name of synodality.
While long-established and unchanging doctrine has been regularly questioned and under assault in recent years, the rationale for doing so has been “synodality”. From the earliest days the Synod on Synodality urged dioceses to promote “maximum inclusion and participation” and stressed that this must include “Catholics who rarely or never practice their faith…people who have left the practice of the faith, people of other faith traditions, people of no religious belief.”
