The hodegetria icon of Mary, Our Lady of the Way, anchors Josephine Lombardi’s Marian theology of synodality in this volume. Drawing on an account of the church as consisting of Marian and Petrine dimensions, Lombardi develops a theology of the Marian principle aimed at the wider implementation of synodality within the church and the recognition of women’s equal baptismal dignity. Beginning with a concise introduction to synodality that may be useful to those still unfamiliar with the concept, Lombardi then turns to Marian images of the church to ground her argument that Mary points the way to lived synodality—listening, understanding, and walking with others.

The bulk of the book takes each of these elements of synodality—listening, understanding, and accompanying—in turn, connecting them to one or more scriptural passages about Mary. In this way, the book, though written prior to the XVI General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, anticipates the call in the 2023 Synthesis Report and the 2024 Final Report to include more teaching and preaching based on women’s experiences and their role in salvation history. The most compelling of these scriptural examples is Lombardi’s interpretation of the visitation, emphasizing Mary and Elizabeth’s mutual support as an image for synodal accompaniment in which one does not simply seek to aid the other but is open to reciprocal relationship (118–22).

Another scriptural passage from Acts 1, which describes the presence of Mary and “certain women” in the upper room with the apostles prior to Pentecost, is but one of numerous sources Lombardi provides as evidence of Mary’s leadership, including Maximus the Confessor’s The Life of the Virgin and images of and hymns to Mary as “Virgin Priest” (41–52). Lombardi makes careful distinctions between priestly and diaconal ordinations, which might lead one to anticipate an argument on behalf of women’s ordination to the diaconate, a topic raised at the Synod on Synodality and previous synods. Instead, the author proposes women might lead “in persona Mariae” through the creation of a rite for “evangelists,” who could be recognized as lay preachers, and through special certificate programs for women’s ministry (83–89). The idea of the “evangelist” raises practical questions: Would this be a paid position supported by the church or simply a way to recognize the unpaid spiritual leadership many women already perform? These questions are germane to the synodal process, as the Synthesis Report noted that in the church women are “too often treated as cheap labour.”Footnote ¹ Lombardi’s experience in seminary settings suggests she has practical insights on this question even if they are not fully worked out here, and indeed, this book seems best suited to a seminary setting or other graduate theological training for lay ministry.

While arguing for a fuller recognition of women’s leadership in the church, the text relies upon a complementarian theological anthropology and ecclesiology that many feminist scholars have critiqued as inadequate to women’s equal dignity. It is strange, then, that aside from a brief note that the Petrine and Marian ecclesiology is sometimes criticized for stereotyping women as nurturers and men as leaders (30), Lombardi does not engage with feminist thought on either this gendered ecclesiology or Mariology. Indeed, many of the resources the text marshals to support women’s leadership have also been used by feminist scholars to argue in support of women’s ordination. Lombardi’s text, however, proceeds with an acceptance of this as a “closed” question, apparently even with regard to the diaconate, and the roles for women’s leadership she proposes operate comfortably within the current complementarian theology of the church. Lombardi notes that expanding leadership roles beyond the ordained priesthood supports the move away from a clericalized church with a passive laity (74). This is true, but having a less clerical ecclesial culture does not answer the objection raised by those who see women’s ordination as a question of women’s equal capability to image God. This Marian approach to synodality leaves such feminist critiques largely unaddressed.