SYNODS, NATIONAL

• According to the recent canon law, national councils are the deliberating assemblies at which all the bishops of a nation are convoked by the patriarch or primate (Cf. Bened. XIV, 'De Synodo', I, i), but, in order to include the ancient national synods, it would be more correct to say a legitimate assemblage of the episcopate of a nation, the decisions of which are valid for an entire national Church