Discerning the Agenda of the Synod's Second Session
Pope Francis Creates Ten Study Groups
Over the past several weeks, the Vatican has provided some clarity on what this October’s second session of the Synod on Synodality will look like. In particular, we now know a bit more about what topics the Synod Assembly, will, and will not, discuss when it gathers in October.
On February 22, Pope Francis issued a letter to Cardinal Mario Grech, the Secretary General of the General Secretariat of the Synod (the Vatican body responsible for organizing gatherings of the Synod of Bishops) directing that ten themes discussed by the Synod Assembly at the first gathering this past October and in the synthesis document produced at the end of the gathering should be assigned to “study groups” for further reflection and taken off the agenda of the Synod Assembly. Somewhat oddly, this decision was not announced to the public until a March 14 press conference, when Cardinal Grech released two documents, one outlining the topics to be researched by the study groups and the other defining what will be the focus of the Synod Assembly itself. Although Pope Francis had already announced earlier in February that study groups would be formed, the number of groups and their focus was not made known until the March press conference.
Before looking in more detail at these study groups, let’s look at what we already know about the upcoming Synod. As part of that February announcement, Francis also specified that the second session of the Synodal Assembly would meet from October 2 to 27, with a two-day retreat for participants beforehand. The Vatican has also previously outlined the steps in the synodal process that should take place between now and October:
Back in December, the Synod Secretariat released a document titled “Toward October 2024” that urged local churches (i.e., dioceses and eparchies) to reflect on the question, “How can we be a synodal Church in mission” and the synthesis report, and then to send a report to the Secretariat. These reports will then inform the drafting of an Instrumentum Laboris, or working document, that will guide the October gathering.
“Toward October 2024” also encourages local churches to engage in a more informal process of reflecting on the various recommendations in the synthesis report, likewise sending these findings to the Vatican.
The Vatican has also announced that from April 28 to May 2, 300 parish priests from around the world will be invited to the Vatican to offer input into the synodal process. This move came in response to the lack of parish priests participating in the formal Synodal Assembly and the important role that priests must play in the unfolding of synodality, particularly in a parish setting. On March 20, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) announced the five priests from the United States who will be attending this gathering.
So, what themes will the ten study groups focus on? Pope Francis’s February 22 letter defines them in this way:
Some aspects of the relationship between the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Latin Church.
Listening to the Cry of the Poor.
The mission in the digital environment.
The revision of the Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis in a missionary synodal perspective.
Some theological and canonical matters regarding specific ministerial forms.
The revision, in a synodal missionary perspective, of the documents touching on the relationship between Bishops, consecrated life, and ecclesial associations.
Some aspects of the person and ministry of the Bishop (criteria for selecting candidates to Episcopacy, judicial function of the Bishops, nature and course of ad limina Apostolorum visits) from a missionary synodal perspective.
The role of Papal Representatives in a missionary synodal perspective.
Theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues.
The reception of the fruits of the ecumenical journey in ecclesial practices.
Some of these topics seem relatively narrow, such as #6 on the relationship between bishops and associations of consecrated life, or #8 on the role of papal representatives (i.e., papal nuncios, who have an important role in the appointment of new bishops and in fostering communication between the Vatican and national episcopal bodies like the USCCB). Others. although narrow in focus, have huge implications for the overall project of fostering synodality. For example, #4 focuses on a potential revision of the Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis, the guidelines for the formation of new priests; as I have previously noted, throughout the synodal process, ranging from the regional and continental documents to the more recent synthesis document, there has been a consistent call for better formation for priests, particularly in a leadership style that can promote co-responsibility among all the faithful.
Other themes assigned to study groups appear to be more wide-ranging and potentially contentious. The Secretariat document outlining the various topics of the study groups specifies, for example, that the question of the inclusion of women in the diaconate is encompassed by theme #5 on “specific ministerial forms.” The study group focusing on theme #2, on “listening to the cry of the poor,” is tasked with considering how the Church can listen to and accompany various groups who are marginalized or excluded in society or by the Church, presumably including not just the materially poor, but also racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, people with disabilities, and migrants. It’s not yet clear if this group will also consider the question of the Church’s inclusion of LGBTQ persons.
Pope Francis has also called on the study groups themselves to follow “an authentically synodal method.” For one, they will include collaboration between the relevant Vatican dicasteries, the Synod Secretariat, and “pastors and experts from all continents,” the latter yet to be appointed. I assume the study groups will likewise take a collaborative and dialogical approach to their work.
What should we make of Francis’s decision to assign these topics to study groups and to take them off the agenda of the Synodal Assembly? This question is given added importance by the fact that, rather than finishing their work in time to report their findings to the Synodal Assembly in October, the study groups are scheduled to continue their work well into 2025, although they are expected to give a provisional report on their work to the Synodal Assembly.
In this situation, the historically-minded might think back to Pope John XXIII’s creation of the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control in 1963 in order to take the issue of contraception off the agenda of the Second Vatican Council, which was then meeting in Rome. The Commission was later expanded by Pope Paul VI, and famously led to the drafting of a Majority Report in 1966 that recommended that the use of the birth control pill should be permitted for Catholics—a conclusion that was rejected by Paul in 1968 in the encyclical Humanae Vitae.
But in the case of the birth control commission, the purpose was to separate out the issue of birth control from the more pressing themes being discussed by the Council Fathers and experts. In the case of the Synod on Synodality, on the other hand, the topics being assigned to study groups are topics that arose from the synodal process and that had even been proposed by the Vatican itself, for example in last year’s Instrumentum Laboris, as important parts of the synodal conversation.
If the purpose of the study groups is not to separate off tangential topics from the main focus of the Synod, then perhaps their creation is more agenda-driven. For example, Catholic News Agency journalist Jonathan Liedl suggests that there are “suspicions that the study groups are being set up to achieve predetermined outcomes that the synod couldn’t deliver.” This read of the situation is in line with earlier predictions that last year’s Synod itself was just a formality meant to promote a particular agenda.
I think this interpretation fails to recognize the extent to which Pope Francis thinks that the process of synodality, of dialogue and “spiritual conversation,” is just as important as the outcome. As I noted back in January, Pope Francis deliberately refused to use the Amazon Synod of 2019 as an opportunity to promote married clergy because sufficient dialogue had not yet taken place, despite the fact that the majority of the Synod participants had recommended the practice. The idea that Francis would go through the cumbersome steps of creating study groups designed to reach predetermined conclusions, just to bypass the synodal process in which he has invested so much energy, seems implausible. After all, it’s not as if Francis hasn’t already had multiple opportunities to pursue a particular agenda on issues like the inclusion of women in the diaconate if that was his intention.
I think it’s important to admit that the process Francis has established does seem ad hoc and a bit unwieldy. I think this reflects a danger I noted months before the Synod began, when I warned that it might even be taking on too much:
There is a risk that the Synod could try to address everything, and in the end do so in a shallow way that might undermine the perceived value of synodality.
Francis’s decision both reflects this difficulty and is an attempt to mitigate it.
But I also think the document intended to explain what the Synod Assembly will focus on helps shed some light on what Francis is up to. Elaborating on the question already posed in December, “How to be a synodal Church on mission?”, this document proposes five areas of focus for the Synodal Assembly:
What is the role of the bishop, “the visible principle and foundation of unity” (Lumen Gentium, #23), in a synodal Church? How should the bishop relate to priests, associations of consecrated life, and other associations in a local church? How can participatory decision-making be fostered in a local church in a way consistent with the authoritative role of a bishop? How can bishops be held accountable?
How can regional groupings of the Church, particularly episcopal conferences, help foster synodality and collegiality in a missionary spirit?
How can papal primacy be exercised in a more synodal and collegial way? What should the relationship between the papacy and the episcopacy look like? What should the role of the Roman Curia be in a synodal Church?
What institutional and procedural forms should the synodal method take in the ongoing life of the Church? How can the synodal method be rooted in the Church’s liturgical life?
How should we understand the various contexts or “places” in which the Church engages in mission? How should we understand the Church’s relationship to those “places”?
While there is some overlap with the topics assigned to the ten study groups mentioned earlier, it seems clear that Francis’s goal is for the Synod to focus on some of the more fundamental questions of ecclesiology and their relationship to the notion of synodality. Another way to put it is that Francis is seeking a deepening of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council’s teachings on the Church, particularly those of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium.
If the function of the Synod itself is to focus on these basic structures, then the purpose of the study groups is to further explore how the Church can live out its mission in light of this developing self-understanding, with the aim that those explorations can inform more formal decision-making processes such as a later Synod or the work of the Vatican. Some of the study groups seem designed to provide guidance on what the limits of possible action might be—for example, what types of changes to the way certain offices function are permitted by canon law, what changes to canon law would be necessary to achieve certain goals, how does the Church’s doctrine shape how we include those on the margins of Church life, etc. Contrary to some, the study groups do not seem to be decision-making bodies, but purely advisory. They’re intended to be ongoing conversations.
Last October, no one really knew what the Synod would be like until it happened, and I think the same is true here. We don’t really know what the study groups will do and how their work will relate to the work of the Synod, even though we have some rough outlines provided by the Vatican. But I think Pope Francis’s intuition is that it is in these sorts of situations where we don’t know exactly how things will unfold that the Spirit loves to work.
Coming Soon…
In January, I wrote about how the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) was working on a document on the topic of human dignity, although its publication was reported at the time as being “not on the near horizon.” More recently, however, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the Prefect of the DDF, has said that the document will be released early this month! As I noted in January, I am hoping the document is at least in part a theological definition and defense of the concept of dignity, although at least based on Cardinal Fernández’s description, it sounds like it will instead focus on a range of contemporary social issues. But we will see! And you can be sure to find incisive commentary on the document here at Window Light!