Community Discernment as an Educational Process for Synodality

Abstract

Pope Francis calls for a “synodal church”. Synodality is not just a way of participating in decisions, but a way of being in community. Today we face different difficulties for the synodal practice, arising from the Christian tradition itself and from the way we live under a radically individualistic economic system and little used to social and community ties. However, such articulation leads to a catastrophic social and climate crisis and favors fascist alternatives. Faced with this, an educational process is needed for a new way of living together, in social friendship. Such learning, in the conception that derives from Pope Francis' documents, is based on the process of discernment that takes place in the community. It will only be possible to prepare a new world, with justice and peace, if at the same time we form different men and women. It is not a matter of a purely intellectual formation, in the transmission of truths, but in the modification of images of humanity and models of desire, today colonized by mercantile logic. Discernment as an educational process is constant, like a journey, and stems from the decision to incarnate oneself to reality, demanding a social place for all today's outcasts.