Abstract

What place does organizing have in the Church’s synodal journey? In his address for the opening of the Synod on Synodality in 2021, Pope Francis described synodality as “unity, communion, the fraternity born of the realization that all of us are embraced by the one love of God.” Yet the process of collective bargaining is often fraught with division, contention, and adverse interactions based on competing interests. The author argues that, in addition to following Catholic social teaching, organizing serves a crucial pragmatic and theological role in the synodal journey. First, the author explores contemporary theology on synodality and, second, applies it to the 2015 San Francisco archdiocesan teachers’ union dispute, in which the teachers entered the collective-bargaining process to try to repel the archbishop’s effort to strip them of their nondiscrimination rights and force employees to abide by strict sexual-morality codes. Finally, he reflects on organizing’s broader ecclesiological impact.