Published July 13, 2024
Last week the Vatican issued the Instrumentum laboris, the working document that will guide the Synod on Synodality’s October session this Fall. Two of our regular and most perceptive watchers of the “synodal process,” Fr. Gerald Murray and Stephen White, have written quite probing commentaries on a document hard to get a grip on. We present both of them today. – Robert Royal
Revolution Masquerading as Deeper Fidelity
Fr. Gerald E. Murray
The Instrumentum laboris [IL] for the October 2024 Synodal Assembly has now been published. The topic for consideration by the synod delegates is “How to be a Synodal Church in Mission.” The answer given in the IL is simple and stark: we must change the way the Church is governed. Bishops and priests must cede authority to the laity, especially women. New power-sharing arrangements must be implemented to uphold (finally!) the faithful’s baptismal equality.
To reassure those who might be alarmed by this prospect, the IL at the outset states that “[s]ynodality in no way entails the devaluation of the particular authority and specific task that Christ entrusts to the pastors.” (¶ 8) If only that were true.
In fact, the devaluation of the pastors’ authority is introduced and vigorously defended:
The question “How to be a synodal Church in mission?” prompts us to reflect concretely on the relationships, structures and processes that can foster a renewed vision of ordained ministry, moving from a pyramidal way of exercising authority to a synodal way. Within the framework of promoting baptismal charisms and ministries, a reallocation of tasks whose performance does not require the sacrament of Orders can be initiated. A more detailed distribution of responsibilities will favour decision-making and taking processes marked by a more clearly synodal style. (¶ 36.)
Decision making is part of the ordinary governance of the Church’s pastors. It is an inherent aspect of the priestly ministry of those who exercise a share in the power of Christ, Priest, Prophet, and King. Yet the IL claims that the new synodal approach requires that this authority be circumscribed:
It is difficult to imagine a more effective way to promote a synodal Church than the participation of all in decision-making and taking processes. This participation takes place based on a differentiated responsibility that respects each community member and values their respective skills and gifts in view of a shared decision. (¶ 67)
“Shared decisions” means that bishops and priests no longer have the right to decide on their own. This diminishment of their authority is justified as an act of “obedience to the Holy Spirit”:
An orientation that emerges in the consultative process as the outcome of proper discernment, especially if carried out by the participatory bodies of the local Church, cannot be ignored. The aim of synodal ecclesial discernment is not to make the bishops obey the voice of the people, subordinating the former to the latter, nor to offer the bishops an expedient to make decisions that have already been taken seem more acceptable, but rather to lead to a shared decision in obedience to the Holy Spirit. (¶ 70, italic emphasis added)
The IL even states that the success and credibility of the Synod depends on power sharing:
It is up to the local Churches to increasingly implement all the possibilities of giving life to authentically synodal decision-making processes that suit the context’s specificities. This is a task of great importance and urgency since the successful implementation of the Synod largely depends on it. Without tangible changes, the vision of a synodal Church will not be credible. This will alienate those members of the People of God who have drawn strength and hope from the synodal journey. This applies most especially to the effective participation of women in drafting and decision-making and taking processes, as called for in many of the contributions received from the Episcopal Conferences. (¶ 71, emphasis added)
The IL also endorses the logic of the German Synodal Way’s plan for a dilution of the authority of the bishops. The IL calls for the creation of some type of authoritative committee made up of lay faithful and others, here called an ecclesial assembly, as a distinct counterpart to the bishops’ Councils:
The desire that local synodal dialogue should continue and not come to an end and the need for effective inculturation of the faith in specific regions drives us towards a new appreciation of the institution of particular Councils, be they provincial or plenary, whose periodic celebration has been an obligation for a large part of the Church’s history. Based on the experience of walking the synodal path, one can think of forms that bring together an assembly of bishops and an ecclesial assembly composed of members of the faithful (priests, deacons, consecrated men and women, laymen and laywomen), delegated by the pastoral Councils of the Dioceses or Eparchies involved, or designated in some other way to reflect the variety of the Church in the region. (¶ 99, emphasis added)
The plan is clear: The authority that God gave to the Apostles and their successors to teach, govern, and sanctify the flock of Christ is an obstacle to the creation of the new Synodal Church. The shepherds need to be hamstrung and constricted by a new requirement to gain the agreement of lay people, religious and priests to make “a shared decision in obedience to the Holy Spirit.” Absent this, the Synod is a failure.
The IL also calls for lay people to preach at Mass and for the creation of an “instituted ministry of listening.” In a transparently realpolitik analysis, the IL treats setbacks such as the African Bishops’ rejection of Fiducia supplicans as a political problem requiring more time to deal with, as not everyone moves at the same pace: “Adopting a synodal style enables us to overcome the idea that all Churches must necessarily move at the same pace on every issue. On the contrary, differences in pace can be valued as an expression of legitimate diversity and an opportunity for the exchange of gifts and for mutual enrichment.” (¶ 95)
Finally, in a document about the mission of the Church, the words sin, hell, redemption, and repentance do not appear. The IL is all about transferring power from the hierarchy to the laity in the name of baptismal equality. This completely erroneous conception of the supposed role of the baptized in the governance of the Church renders the upcoming Synodal Assembly an exercise in pondering not how to promote the mission the Church to bring Christ to the world, but rather how to wrest sacred power from the shepherds of the Church.
This is a revolution masquerading as an effort to arrive at a deeper fidelity to the Gospel. It is not.
Frustrating and Vague
Stephen P. White
Does anyone know what “synodality” means?
We are almost three years into the Synod on Synodality. The working document – the Instrumentum laboris, in ecclesial parlance – for the third and final meeting of this synod, which will convene in Rome this autumn, was published last week in Rome. The anticipation – or anxiety, depending on your perspective – which accompanied the run-up to last year’s meeting of the Synod has waned somewhat.
One reason for this is that many of the more controversial topics that had made appearances in past synodal documents and discussions are absent from the Instrumentum Laboris for the coming session. Other sticky issues have been addressed piecemeal outside of the Synod framework.
Whatever else one might say about the publication of Fiducia supplicans last December, that document and the massive pushback and clarifications from Rome that followed appear to have taken much of the steam out of those issues as far as the synod is concerned. Ditto for the publication of Dignitas infinita earlier this spring.
A similar point could be made about liturgical matters, which have been handled in a somewhat less-than-synodal fashion in recent years, particularly through the enforcement of Traditionis custodes and its restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass.
Add all of this to the ongoing negotiations between Rome and the German Synodal Way (which Rome has gone to great lengths to distinguish – one might say cordon off) from Synod on Synodality, the explicit insistence of the current IL that female deacons are not up for discussion in October, and the fact that the IL doesn’t mention LGBT issues in any form or fashion, and it’s not hard to see why the capstone meeting to this three-year global synod isn’t creating as much buzz.
It’s an interesting question whether relieving the pressure on the synod by addressing more contentious issues outside of the synod was a deliberate strategy or a happy accident. (I suspect it has been a bit of both.) If it was a deliberate strategy to stabilize the synodal process, then the implication is that Pope Francis’ flagship initiative is not terribly effective at addressing contentious matters in a divided Church – which is one of the main things the synod on synodality was supposed to do.
But if the Synod has managed to avoid turning into the ecclesial gladiatorial arena some once feared it was destined to become, and setting aside persistent fears that the whole endeavor is a Trojan Horse for doctrinal change, the synod still has not managed to overcome what is perhaps its most basic and fundamental obstacle.
Even after three years, we still don’t have a straightforward answer to the question: What is synodality?
And that, to say the least, is a big problem.
We are told that synodality is a “constitutive dimension of the Church.” We are told that the meaning of synodality is discovered in practice: You have to practice synodality to know what it is. Part of the purpose of the synod on synodality is to discover better what synodality means. (Forgive the dated political allusion, but this reminds me of “We have to pass the bill to know what’s in it.”)
If all this sounds circular and self-referential, the synod has a non-answer answer for that, too: the circularity is one of synodality’s advantages. “The circularity of the synodal process,” the latest IL tells us, “recognises and enhances the Church’s rootedness in various contexts, serving the bonds that unite them.” That’s not exactly reassuring. Or clear.
Now, perhaps there is something here that I am missing. I have been arguing for years that there are ways to interpret synodality that not only make sense, describe a real, existing dynamic which can already be found in those parts of the Church that are thriving. I have organized and hosted synod listening sessions and participated in similar sessions in my diocese. For what it’s worth these were generally edifying and worthwhile, but they hardly indicated a need for a complete rethinking of Catholic ecclesiology. The point is, I’m not a synodal hater.
But even I can see that synodality remains clear as mud to most people. We have been reassured over and over about what synodality is not. We have been offered metaphors stacked inside metaphors like some theological Russian doll. But answers to even straightforward questions remain unanswered. Many such questions remain, apparently, unasked.
So here are a few such questions – questions to which I would love to know the answers:
- What does synodality change, modify, clarify, correct or add to the Nicene formulation that the Church is “one holy, catholic, and apostolic”?
- Are we to understand that synodality–this essential “style,” which we’re told is an expression of the Church’s nature – has been hitherto absent from the Church? If so, how is it essential to the Church?
- If, rather, synodality has always been present in the Church – and if it pertains to the very nature of the Church, then it must be so – why then is there so much difficulty in defining or even describing it in consistent terms?
- And if synodality is present in the Church today, if it has always been present in the Church, if it is essential to the mission of the Church, then how is it that so few of the People of God have the slightest notion of what the word is supposed to mean?
Synodality exists primarily in the realm of abstraction, and self-referential abstraction at that. Until such questions as these receive some answer, it will remain so. This, despite all the insistence from Rome, including from the Holy Father, that one of the many objects of the synod is to move away from abstraction into a more concrete experience and witness of Christian discipleship. Think of how often Pope Francis sounds the refrain: “realities are greater than ideas.” Synodality largely remains an abstract idea – and a frustratingly vague one at that.
Stephen P. White is a fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. White’s work focuses on the application of Catholic social teaching to a broad spectrum of contemporary political and cultural issues. He is the author of Red, White, Blue, and Catholic (Liguori Publications, 2016).
