Beyond Administration. Detangling Synodality and its Liturgies as Law, Power, and Prayer

Van Rompaey, Jens
(2026) The Law of the Liturgies and the Liturgies of the Law: Finding Common Ground between Law and Religion in Ritual Speech and Performative Action — Location: Magdalen College, Oxford (14.September.2026)

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The Ceremonial of Bishops asserts that “the governance of the Church is never to be looked upon as a mere administrative act” (n°1169). This statement, together with the Ceremonial’s overall liturgical framing of synods and councils, invites a rethinking of ecclesial governance as a performative and ritualized act rather than a bureaucratic procedure. This paper therefore argues that synodal assemblies, far from being simple deliberative meetings, also function as rituals that integrate law, liturgy, (divine) power, and identity/identities. The study situates synodality, and particularly the liturgical celebrations surrounding synods and councils, such as opening and closing rites, as performative actions that confer legitimacy, embody unity, and invoke the Holy Spirit, while simultaneously shaping the normative horizon of ecclesial decision-making. These ritual dimensions complicate and are complicated by dynamics of power, dissent, and representation, raising pressing questions about inclusivity, diversity, and cultural plurality within synodal processes. Building on Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s political and cultural philosophical insights, with a specific focus on his conviction that the incarnation necessarily generates plurality, the paper considers (i) how liturgical elements can become part of the ‘problem’ when, e.g., invoking the Holy Spirit as protagonist lends a divine aura to contested decisions or decision-making procedures. Then, it looks at (ii) how liturgy can also be part of the ‘solution’ by offering a trinitarian and incarnational vision of unity-in-diversity inspired by Taylor; to (iii) offer a tentative disentanglement of the underlying pneumatological and Christological issues that still hang as a sword of Damocles over contemporary questions considering synodality, particularly regarding its understanding of law and the intersection with liturgy.
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Van Rompaey, J. (2026, September 14). Beyond Administration. Detangling Synodality and its Liturgies as Law, Power, and Prayer. The Law of the Liturgies and the Liturgies of the Law: Finding Common Ground between Law and Religion in Ritual Speech and Performative Action, Magdalen College, Oxford. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/280037