This is part one of a two-part conversation. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
In October 2024, I had the chance to join seven other students from the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University on a pilgrimage to Rome during the Second Session of the Synod on Synodality. Upon returning to the US, I have had the opportunity to continue the conversation on synodality with numerous people, but the person I most wanted to talk to about it is my dad.
My dad has taught theology at Saint Louis University for several decades and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the sensus fidelium (sense of the faithful), a theological concept central to synodality. I thought that we could have a conversation that introduced a wider audience to this and other key concepts of synodality. The following is a transcript of our conversation, recorded on December 24th.
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Dan Finucane SJ (Dan SJ): Joseph Komonchak, a famous theologian of the Church, once asked: “Who are the Church?” He was aiming at getting away from seeing Church as just the institution. He was trying to reshape how people think about themselves in relationship to the Church. So, for you, who are the Church?
Dr. Dan Finucane (Dr. Dan): The baptized. That’s the short answer. That’s the complete answer. But it’s also a good Vatican II answer. I think that answer takes up what Komonchak is working on too. The other parts of the Church that get into structure are important and have their role to play. But it’s foundational to say that everybody in the Church is part of the Church. What Vatican II, Pope Francis, and now the Synod are doing is to try to make that operational.
Everybody by their baptism has received the Holy Spirit and a responsibility for the mission of the Church. Everybody is involved in some way, whether in an official role or not. Think of it this way: Where do most people meet the Church? They meet the Church in a neighbor, or they meet it in somebody when they go to Mass. And they realize: “Oh, you’re here too!” So now we have a bond and we can talk about what really matters to us.
This is an insight that’s not always appreciated by people: we’re it. We’re the Church.
Dan SJ: Yes, it’s a way of seeing. It’s looking at the reality of the Church that’s already present rather than creating something new. It’s a reality that has always existed, not just since Vatican II.
Let’s look at the scholarly work that you’ve done. The sense of the faithful was an important doctrine at Vatican II. It came into focus during Pope Francis’s papacy. Three terms are used in particular: sensus fidei, sensus fidelium, and consensus fidelium. I don’t think a lot of people know about these concepts or wouldn’t necessarily recognize what they mean. What do these terms mean? Why should people know about them? And how do they fit into synodality and who we are as Church?
Dr. Dan: The sensus fidei (sense of the faith) is usually applied to individual persons, people whose baptism gives them a sense of what is true and of the Gospel. It motivates them and can be rooted in a sense of discernment. It’s about asking: given your baptism, what is the Holy Spirit doing in your life?
The sensus fidelium (sense of the faithful) is where you get a bunch of people together or in a certain sense, all of the people together. It encompasses the whole Church. It is about asking: what is our reaction to doctrinal expressions? Vatican II mentions this term in Lumen Gentium where the sense of the faithful as a whole is a source connected to infallibility and the magisterium (Lumen Gentium §12). People argue about how to define the different roles of the people and the magisterium. Basically, their roles are intertwined. The people respond to the teaching of the Church certainly, but they’re also responsible for it. The whole Church is responsible for the gospel.
So the sensus fidelium is where that responsibility happens as a group and where you come together. At the Synod, the interaction within the group is where the goodies are. That’s where it’s interesting and unavoidably messy. I am at the point, after reading Church history long enough and looking at what’s happened in the Synod, that if it wasn’t messy, I wouldn’t trust it. The whole trick is staying in the room to work on it.
And I would say it works well by staying in the room and breaking bread together. To be able to say: these are people I care about, even if I really disagree with them. Right now, in our culture, there’s a lot of disagreement going on. So I work as a teacher to say: can we have people in the same room who disagree but still talk to each other?
In the Church, that’s where the work of the Spirit is and it has a couple of qualities. One is that it’s messy; another is that it’s awkward at times. It involves all the stuff we say we believe, like repentance and moving forward and building on our understanding that we have now. The sensus fidelium is where this process plays out: you get argument and lived experience. You get people working stuff out.
And then when you move more and more towards understanding together, you get the consensus fidelium, where the Church comes to understand something that has percolated through this process, has interacted with culture and with people’s experience, and then comes out as an insight that’s important for the Church moving forward.
That’s the theological source of the Church. In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were two Marian doctrines promulgated by popes, the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption of Mary (1950). These teachings were percolating through the tradition since early times and were then expressed in a way that people could draw together and appreciate. And then there were documents to say: here’s what the doctrine is.
Yet in both of these cases, the Vatican asked the bishops: is this not the faith of the people? To which the bishops responded, yes.
It’s not about putting something to a vote or anything like that. It’s about honoring this process as a Church, so that the leaders who speak for the Church can present the teaching and the people can respond and say, “yeah, that’s us, that’s how we see it. That’s what we believe.”
Recommendations from Dr. Dan for further reading on sensus fidei, sensus fidelium, and consensus fidelium:
- International Theological Commission, “Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church” (2014)
- Ormond Rush, The Eyes of Faith: The Sense of the Faithful and the Church’s Reception of Revelation
- John Burkhardt, OFM Conv, The Sense of the Faith in History: Its Sources, Reception, and Theology
- Bradford Hinze, Learning from All the Faithful: A Contemporary Theology of the Sensus Fidei
Dan Finucane, SJ is currently studying theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University in Berkeley, CA.
Dr. Dan Finucane, PhD teaches historical and systematic theology in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, MO.
Part two will be published on Friday, February 7, 2025. Photo by Harli Marten.
