Cardinal Grech, Secretary General for the Synod of (Roman) Catholic Bishops, notes in his foreword that Archbishop Fisher does not seek, in this book, to set out the whole of the vision for the Church articulated at Vatican II, but concentrates on communion and collegiality among bishops, an aspiration described by the Cardinal as one of the great fruits of Vatican II. The focus of Archbishop Fisher's book, which consists of talks delivered at a 2022 assembly of the American Catholic Bishops, is the role of the bishops in the broader life and mission of the church, and its plea is for unity in the face of forces for division – theological, cultural and relational. After setting out the theological basis for unity in the Trinity, drawing in particular on the ‘high-priestly prayer’ of Jesus (John 17.11–24), Archbishop Fisher, who describes himself as a moral theologian (p. 4), divides his work into two parts. Part one is concerned with the sources of episcopal communio, whilst part two draws more personally, and practically, on how his own experience of collegiality plays out in the exercise of fraternity and ministry, or perhaps what Bonhoeffer might have called ‘life together’. These chapters are essentially an application of the theoretical content of the material in part one, delivered in three areas – personal and corporate spirituality, relationships (termed as ‘friendship’), and the task of evangelism.
Archbishop Fisher begins by examining the experience of Christ and the apostolic generation. The material here is largely drawn from the New Testament, and will be immediately familiar to most people of Christian faith, as will the conclusion drawn, that the communio among the apostles is founded upon their common relationship with Christ. Notwithstanding this, it is noted of course that unity did not necessarily follow the resurrection, for as in modern expressions of church, there were tensions and divisions in the early church too, such as that which necessitated the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). Following an examination of communio in the biblical period, attention is then turned to tradition, and in particular the patristic and medieval eras, wherein the centrality of the episcopate in respect to the unity of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church is clearly outlined. We are brought into the modern era by an extended reflection on the recovery of the language of communion and collegiality, rooted in the concept of the church as sacrament, espoused at Vatican II, and as taken up more recently by the present Pope. This discussion culminates in a concise examination of what synodality is (essentially ecclesial unity among the college of bishops) and what it is not (‘a parliament’ or an ‘opinion poll’) (p. 49). It is at this point that the concept of synodality given expression here by Archbishop Fisher, especially in regard to the church assembly, diverges from most expressions of the same in Anglican polity. The position taken is gathered up primarily in citations from various teachings and proclamations of Pope Francis, and amounts to an assertion that the synod is not to be thought of as a convention or a senate, or an instrument for achieving consensus, but as an ecclesial expression of the church's nature and its mission. Of some significance here is the further insistence of Pope Francis, observed by Archbishop Fisher as being perhaps unique to him, that synodality is a ‘form of prayer’ … that is, ‘a process of discernment … that unfolds in adoration, in prayer, and in dialogue with the word of God’ (p. 51).
It is noble and ideal to think of synodality, and in particular the form it takes in the context of a church assembly or synod, in predominantly spiritual terms, and as a process of ecclesial discernment, rather than a parliamentary-like bureaucracy. This, together with the further assertion that the synod is essentially configured as an episcopal body, in which the bishops, ‘having listened to the laity and clergy … discern on behalf the whole church’ (p. 52) will, however, be at odds with the lived experience of synodality, and of synodical government in particular, for many Anglicans reading this book. Most expressions of synod in the Anglican communion (certainly the ones I have been familiar with) are deliberative and legislative bodies, in which prayer, reflection on scripture, and worship do occur, but in reality, often as a preface to extended parliamentary-like speeches and debates on the issues of the day, together with even more parliamentary-like processes for making legislation, rules, and ordinances, however described. Furthermore, vesting the will and voice of the laity and clergy in the ability and capacity of the episcopate to ‘listen to them’ is fundamentally different from the more collaborative form and nature of synodical government that has emerged in most modern expressions of Anglicanism.
This leads to what may be the most helpful, and I think useful, aspect of this work by Archbishop Fisher for Anglicans (like me), which is the teaching throughout that synodality is not to be confined to the synod, at least among the episcopate who are the focus of this book. This crystallizes in the extended example of Saints Basil and Gregory (pp. 111–115) wherein it is concluded that the quality of the relationship between them as friends and not just colleagues, enabled their relationship as bishops and fellow disciples to survive serious disagreements about matters ecclesial, theological and moral. The suggestion following on from this by way of application is that, if the episcopate can develop a true and deep sense of communion with each other as fellow disciples of Christ, would that synodality and collegiality, and the resulting unity generated by it, not allow for more genuine discernment and acceptance of outcomes on matters concerning which the church as a whole may be in serious and sharp disagreement? Some might answer immediately, ‘no’! It is, nonetheless, a hope, and an ideal, worthy of holding on to, and one which is reflective of the corporate struggle of the college of bishops, and of the broader synodality of the people of God, in my own context, as I am sure it is elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. It is interesting to also note that the plea of Archbishop Fisher articulated throughout this book is not altogether dissimilar to the pleas for unity and collegiality associated with the convening of the most recent Lambeth conference in 2022, which, again in a manner not altogether dissimilar to the notion of synodality among Roman Catholic bishops, produced not resolutions but ‘calls’.
Archbishop Fisher writes in conclusion, ‘if our fraternity can be fraught and our communion imperfect’ one answer may to return to the ‘sources of our faith’ which are our respective vocation and collegiality (p. 121). This returns us to the place where we began, with the plea of Jesus, in the great high-priestly prayer, that they may be one. This is the burden of this work, which is an extended plea for that unity pleaded for by Christ himself, to be a relational and spiritual reality in the context of the episcopate, that the resulting synodality (understood as ‘togetherness’) may find expression in the context of corporate ecclesial decision-making.
