The synodal way is not a journey backwards, an exercise in nostalgia: the goal of the pilgrimage of faith is ahead rather than behind us

The image of “the pilgrim People of God” was intended to be a biblically rich vision to replace the vision of the Church as an “unequal hierarchical society” (societas inaequalis hierarchica). Yet few organisations have such hierarchically clear levels. The clue is in the name: the Church claims to be hierarchical (in the ­original sense of its having a divinely appointed government, and in the popular sense of ranks in a pyramid); other power pyramids are only “hierarchical” by analogy. The Second Vatican Council used the image of the Church as the People of God to emphasise that it is all the baptised, as one community, that witnesses, preaches, works, suffers and prays. Put another way, the basis of the Church would be centred around baptism, not ordination.

It would also be a pilgrim Church. It has not yet reached its goal, so cannot think of itself as a societas perfecta. In the older ­ecclesiology, the Church was the perfect beacon that not only other religious organisations but all other societies should ­imitate. Vatican II saw the community of the baptised as serving the larger human family, growing, learning and humbly aware of its incompleteness. After several centuries of triumphalism, taking the pilgrim image on board has been just too much for many of us. Many of the divisions within contemporary Catholicism can be seen in terms of a willingness, on the one hand, and a reluctance, on the other, to take this image of the Church as a “pilgrim people” to heart. This is the background to Pope Francis’ repeated calls for a “synodal Church”. His hope is that synodality will give flesh to Vatican II’s vision.