Synodality refers to a new ecclesiological model in the Catholic Church, largely proposed by Pope Francis, in which the Catholic hierarchy enter into a collegial and collaborative dialogue with People of God along the Church’s journey. I always feel awkward as a Catholic theologian speaking about synodality in ecumenical circles. After all, many Protestant and Orthodox Christian communities have practiced forms of synodal governance, communal discernment, and shared ecclesial leadership for decades, if not centuries.
The idea that the faithful should have a voice in shaping the life of the Church is hardly revolutionary across the Christian landscape. Yet, for Catholics, the renewed emphasis on synodality represents a significant shift in ecclesial imagination. We are, in some respects, finally catching up to what many of our Christian siblings have long understood: that the Holy Spirit does not speak exclusively through bishops, priests, or institutional authorities. The Spirit also speaks through the people of God, particularly those whose experiences have been neglected, dismissed, or silenced. There is, if you will, a priesthood of all believers.
Pope Francis’s invitation to become a synodal Church, therefore, carries implications far beyond ecclesiastical processes. It is about recognizing that the Church cannot adequately discern the movement of the Holy Spirit without attending to the experiences of the faithful. And if we take that theological conviction seriously, the implications for LGBTQ+ inclusion become unavoidable.
For generations, LGBTQ+ Catholics have been marginalized in the Church. Our bodies, relationships, identities, and spiritual lives have been subjected to theological scrutiny while our own voices have often remained peripheral to the conversations shaping our lives. Synodality, in my view, challenges this arrangement. If LGBTQ+ Catholics are genuinely members of the body of Christ, then our experiences are key theological resources through which the Church might encounter divine revelation anew. Inclusion, therefore, cannot simply mean welcoming LGBTQ+ persons into existing ecclesial structures while leaving those structures fundamentally unchanged. Genuine synodality demands that our participation have the capacity to transform the Church itself.
I also push this argument further: Without queerness, there can be no genuine synodality.
Queerness offers something indispensable to the Church’s ongoing discernment: a distinctive capacity to recognize, embody, and challenge the norms through which belonging is regulated. Queerness is about destabilizing those systems of knowledge that keep our Church stagnant and about re-centering those parts of ourselves that are often pathologized (namely our bodies and desire) as grace filled. A queer Catholic project reclaims our embodiment and creatively proposes a new way of being in the Church.
Queering synodality means refusing to accept the cisnormative and heteronormative structures that still conceptualize LGBTQ+ persons as disordered. Instead, it means recognizing that the Holy Spirit may be especially active in the very places where institutional Christianity experiences discomfort, uncertainty, or disruption. Queerness reminds us that transformation rarely emerges from conformity and that the Church must attempt to encounter grace precisely through those who refuse to fit neatly within its established expectations.
This brings me to a final invitation, particularly for my LGBTQ+ Catholic siblings: Take up space. And take it up boldly. Do not wait for an invitation to participate in the life of a Church to which you already belong. Do not mistake institutional permission for God’s love. Our baptism has already made us beloved members of the body of Christ, and no ecclesiastical oppression can undo that reality.
Speak honestly, even when others refuse to listen. Love publicly, even when your love unsettles conventional expectations. Bring your partners, your families, your bodies, your joy, your anger, and your unapologetic queerness into Catholic spaces. Transgress the boundaries that have unjustly constrained your participation. Not because transgression is inherently virtuous, but because sometimes fidelity to the Gospel requires disobedience to the conventions that obscure it. And perhaps most importantly, do not wait for someone else to recognize your dignity. We are not merely marginalized persons seeking admission into the Church. We are the Church. Our presence, our resistance, and our flourishing are already contributing to its ongoing transformation.
It is in this spirit that the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion, together with our partners, is launching “Synodality and LGBTQIA2S+ Persons: Toward a Church of Belonging,” a five-session online series bringing together theologians, pastoral leaders, and LGBTQ+ Catholic voices to explore what genuine synodality demands of the Church. Beginning November 2, the series invites us to move beyond the rhetoric of listening toward the transformative possibilities of belonging.
The question before us is not simply whether the Church will make room for LGBTQ+ people. It is whether we dare to recognize how LGBTQ+ people are already helping the Church become more fully itself.
Dr. Ish Ruiz | Director of the CLGS Catholic Roundtable and Assistant Professor of Latinx and Queer Decolonial Theology