The Catholic Church is feeling its way towards a development in the way decisions are made, and the name for this process is synodality. The aim is to equip the Church with the means fully to engage all its parts – bishops, clergy, Religious and laity, women and men – in furthering the Church’s mission to evangelise the world.

Two established models, the General Synod of the Church of England and the International Synod of Bishops in Rome, do not provide exactly what the Church is looking for. The Anglican synod essentially replicates the control that used to be exercised by Parliament, which means decisions are made by voting. This can foster factionalism. The Rome model, about which there were high hopes after the Second Vatican Council, has been dominated not only by senior bishops but by the Curia, and input from laity and clergy has been insubstantial and ineffective. And the Pope can do whatever he likes with the outcome.