The Non/Performativity of Synodality: Rhetoric, Practice, and the Politics of Ecclesial Participation in the 2021-2024 Synod on Synodality in the Roman Catholic Church

This article uses Sara Ahmed’s notion of nonperformativity to analyse the rhetoric and practice of 2021-2024 Synod on Synodality of the Roman Catholic Church. The Synod presented clericalism and synodality as two opposing paradigms and framed them in terms of a linear progress. The article interrogates the effects of this rhetoric in three vignettes based on central metaphors in syondal documents. It is primarily interested not in what synodality is in this framing, but what it does . Arguing that the synod does not do what it says, it proposes three intpretations: as “abuse”, viewing synodal nonperformativity as a way to subdue existing conflicts; as “pressure valve”, seeing it as a process to release enough tension from the “ecclesial system” to maintain its functioning; and a “transformative” reading, which views synodal nonperformativity as revealing for the “gap” between the words and deeds, that can open up possibilities of change by revealing persistent clerical power.