Synodality is the name this pope has given the process he hopes (and has made some rules about it) will shape the way pastors, bishops, and popes do their business. And it’s bound to get to the “ordinary Catholic.”

If you wonder where he got this idea, it might be useful to recall that he knew a lot about how the Jesuits started in the first place.  The usual explanation says we were founded by Ignatius of Loyola.  That’s a fact the way the Chinese won World War Two is a fact, omitting most of what happened.

Actually, the Jesuits were started by a group of men who trusted one another deeply and were wiling to know and be known by the others. They grew together in prayer and sharing—time, food, funds, ideas, and prayer—during seven years at the University of Paris (roughly 1528 to 1535). They had the common  desire and plan to go to the Holy Land to convert the Moslems (and get martyred), stayed together for a year and more, and then went to Rome because they had decided to offer themselves to the pope.

But as individuals, or as a group? They discerned that the way they discerned everything else—the way that grounds synodality.  The group grew from seven to ten, then a dozen but they kept their established way of proceeding. They would decide on what to decide next, for instance: stay together as a group or not, Rome or wherever, what ministries,  promise obedience,  have a superior. They would scatter and pray and ponder all day about it (while begging food for the poor or washing the sick in the hospitals), and then would meet in the evening for a long hour.

One by one, each would say what he had thought good while the others listened and shaped a common approach. They would share for a while and perhaps reach a decision—crucial ones were group, pray and work, obedience, a superior, the pope’s men, but Company of Jesus—then they would set the next topic and repeat the process. While they were doing this, they took turns being leader.

So even today, superiors in the Jesuits are men who are appointed because they are prudent and, note, because they listen. And they are given a number of others with whom they are to meet regularly and to whom they are to listen.

So this pope, who had been a superior in one way or another most of his Jesuit life, naturally gathered a dozen cardinals to be his council, his advisors—and what he did was set a topic, or ask them to do that, and then when they met—we know this from explicit reports—he would  listen.

Of course, we need command structures; someone has to sign contracts. And none of this is likely to last long unless “the ordinary Catholic” absorbs the currents of spirituality and prayer flowing through the Church and lets the Holy Spirit open ears and hearts to her breathing.