I'm sorry to report that this is not a phrase I hear very often. For four days on the York University campus, 450-odd Anglicans – 200 clergy, 200 laity, 50 bishops – debate long into the night. It's like an Open University summer school without the dress sense.

When the Synod meets in London, which it usually does in February, the shorter days, the scattered accommodation, the distraction of alternative pastimes nearby, make it all so much more businesslike.

In York, the long hours and the sense of relentlessness mean that Synod members experience at least one moment of doubt during the weekend: what is it all for?

For the more depressive types, one suspects that this doubt hangs like a dark cloud over the whole weekend, thinning slightly during
the generous meals, thickening inexorably when faced with a
motion to approve the appointment of the Archbishops' Council's auditors.

In my days of reporting the Synod, the pall hung thickest over the press tables, rising only on the occasions when one churches correspondent would suggest slipping off to one of the many nearby pubs that he seemed to know intimately. But what is the Synod for? There are a couple of answers, each of them broadly right. It's to run the Church of England. So, over the weekend, there will be debates about how much churches can charge for weddings and funerals, about clergy pensions, about reorganising appointments to senior posts, about legal fees, that
sort of thing.

The Church is pretty good at running itself without much help, though, so the Synod also has debates on matters of national importance, such as, this weekend, climate change and, er, well, that's it, really. This is because so much time between now and Tuesday will be spent debating women bishops.

Strangely enough, it is this sort of debate that justifies the Synod, though it doesn't seem so at the moment. All that people from
the outside see is how the Church of England is beating itself up
again in public over a matter that everyone else seems to have solved. As members try to outdo each other in victimhood – poor women who can't be bishops (it's really not such a great job), poor priests who might one day find they have a woman boss – it's another reason not to take the Church seriously.

But if the Synod didn't exist, it would have to be invented for just such an occasion as this. The Church hasn't had women bishops before. A large majority of churchgoers want women bishops. Other churches, such as the Roman Catholics, don't believe women can be priests, let alone bishops. A minority in the C of E wants to go on worshipping without them. It's a tricky situation.

Who should decide? The Archbishop, like a sort of Pope?

The bishops? They're supposed to be leaders, and they try to be representative, even though they are all men in their 50s and 60s.

The clergy? Except that they have to be careful not to queer their pitch for when another job comes up for grabs.

The laity? Somehow, down the ages, they're the ones who get left out of church decisions.

Somebody somewhere, some time ago, decided that the answer was a representative sample of all three groups. It could have been called a council, or a committee, but it remembered the famous meetings at Whitby and others, and opted for the title "Synod".

Somehow, it seems fair. It is true that democracy sits oddly with divine revelation – if God says that something is good, why the need to debate it? – but anything is better than autocracy: "God told me
that you should do this!" All power corrupts, and divine power corrupts hellishly.

So, if those 450 men and women are working out God's purpose, why does it all turn into such a bitter row? "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity," says the Psalmist.

The reason is, partly, that this is what democracy looks like the world over. And partly because Synod members can forget God's rules of engagement: loving their enemies, loving their neighbours as themselves, holding doors open.

But at least they talk, and a Church that airs its disagreements openly is surely better than one that deals with things secretly, and where dissent leads to ostracism or expulsion. And this is the gift of York: Synod members are forced to encounter each other and dwell on the issues facing the Church.


Paul Handley is editor of the Church Times.