The Synodal Church: a miracle solution from a contemporary perspective or not?

The difficulty and complexity of governing organisations or businesses and the challenge of upholding credibility can be found both in the secular world and in the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). What can the Church and the world learn from each other in this respect? Within the RCC, the concept of synodality, with its rich history and, at the same time, innovative élan, is explicitly being looked at nowadays. The image of the Church as the People of God walking together is popular here. This research applies to synodality the cultural-philosophical metaphor of Penelope's thread, as presented by Guido Vanheeswijck to study complex matters and as a way of refusing to only look for easy solutions. This raises the question of how synodality can be understood and what it can lead to without disappointment or a lack of fulfilment of expectations. The metaphor of Penelope's thread is the image of the patient and constant work of interpretation and construction, a work without end that takes into account the threads and traces of the past and repeatedly brings them together and loosens them in the present, with a perspective on the future. Attention is paid to the history and current situation of synodality, but this research also aims specifically at clarifying synodality in the self-understanding of the RCC and the service that the Church can render through it to the secular world.