So You Want to Implement Synodality...

The Vatican Begins the Implementation Phase of the Synodal Process

Earlier this month, the Vatican released a relatively short document with guidelines on how local dioceses and eparchies can implement the ideas and recommendations that emerged from the two global gatherings of the Synod of Synodality in 2023 and 2024. The document, titled Pathways for the Implementation Phase of the Synod (which I’ll call Pathways for short), was created by the General Secretariat of the Synod, the Vatican body responsible for organizing the Synod of Bishops and which has managed the global synodal process that began in 2021.

The publication of Pathways begins the third stage of the synodal process. The first stage consisted in the process of consultation with the faithful that began at the diocesan level and eventually culminated in the drafting of continental reports outlining how synodality is being lived out throughout the Church and identifying the obstacles to the deepening of synodality. The second phase, officially called the “celebratory” phase, consisted in the two synodal assemblies in Rome in 2023 and 2024, as well as the period of consultation and reflection in between them. The third stage, then, is focused on the implementation of the conclusions reached at those synodal assemblies, expressed in the Final Document written in the closing days of the second session.

The Second Vatican Council, and in particular its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, called on all the baptized to participate in the mission of the Church, each according to their own vocations. The focus of the Synod, particularly its second session, was on developing processes and structures that will empower all the faithful to participate in the Church’s discernment and decision-making as a reflection of their co-responsibility for the mission of the Church. This focus on process rather than results was quite characteristic of Pope Francis’s overall approach to pastoral life (for example, see here and here) but also represents a needed deepening of the implementation of the teachings of Vatican II.

Not surprisingly, then, the primary purpose of Pathways is to provide an outline of the process that local dioceses and eparchies might take in implementing the Final Document. Pathways does not tell dioceses how to implement the Synod’s conclusions, and it even predicts, “It is likely that different decisions will be reached in different places” (p. 19). The document, therefore, embodies the hope that, if local Churches follow a Spirit-led process that reflects the Church’s identity and mission, this will lead to a deepening of synodality in the Church and strengthen the Church’s capacity to carry out its mission to proclaim the Kingdom of God in the world.

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Crucially, as Luke Coppen notes in his summary of the document, Pathways makes clear that the local bishop has the primary responsibility for ensuring that the Synod’s Final Document is implemented in his diocese. Even so, it would be contradictory if a bishop did so in a heavy-handed or top-down way; as Pathways puts it, this process of implementation is “an appropriate opportunity to exercise authority in a synodal way” (p. 9). Pathways cites a key passage from the Final Document regarding episcopal leadership:

He who is ordained Bishop is not charged with prerogatives and tasks that he must perform alone. Rather, he receives the grace and the task of recognizing, discerning and bringing together in unity the gifts that the Spirit pours out on individuals and communities, working with Priests and Deacons in a way that reflects their common sacramental bond; they are co-responsible with him for ministerial service in the local Church. (#69)

Here we see one of the vulnerabilities in the process of deepening synodality in the Church that has been apparently from early on: it depends, in part, on bishops and priests who are willing to, in the words of Pathways, “exercise authority in a synodal way.” But if a bishop or local pastor is unwilling to implement the vision that emerged from the Synod in his diocese or parish, respectively, then to a significant extent the process is then stymied. Lay people can still strive to live out their mission in various ways, but the Church in that area won’t fully live up to the ideal of synodality. It will be essential to see how the broader Church responds if and when this implementation process is carried out unevenly.

Aside from the bishop, the other key agents in the implementation of the Final Document are the members of the Synodal Team in each diocese. During the initial local phase of the synodal process, each diocese and eparchy was called upon to create a Synodal Team made up of members of the faithful representative of the people in that area but also potentially including experts in various areas or pastoral leaders within the local church. This team was tasked with assisting the bishop by coordinating listening sessions throughout the diocese and helping to draft the diocese’s summary of its findings. Pathways states that these teams should be reconvened, or if necessary reestablished, to help in the process of developing strategies for implementing the Final Document.

The Synodal Team is not intended to operate as a committee that works out in isolation from the rest of the faithful how to implement the Final Document, however. The purpose of Synodal Teams is to develop a diocesan plan for consulting with the faithful about how to implement the Final Document, to educate people about the Final Document and synodality more generally, and to facilitate listening sessions and other aspects of the consultation process. Pathways adds that these listening sessions should not be limited to parishes, but can also take place at schools and universities, hospitals and prisons, what it calls “listening and accommodation centers” (I honestly don’t know what they mean by this), and even online (p. 9).

Pathways also notes that diocesan presbyteral councils, pastoral councils, and finance councils—what it calls the “participatory bodies” of the diocese—also have a role to play in the implementation process. For one, as the Final Document states, these bodies need to be made mandatory in each diocese, and the structure of these bodies where they do exist needs to be transformed: they should adopt a more dialogical working method, strive to have more inclusive membership, and operate with transparency and accountability toward the faithful (##103-8). Dioceses must work out what this will look like in practice. Pathways also states that these councils will also necessarily play a role in deciding upon the implementation of some of the ideas that emerge from the broader consultation process (p. 12).

(Photo: Mateus Campos Felipe, Unsplash)

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Although each local diocese or eparchy is responsible for implementing the Final Document in a way appropriate to its own context, Pathways also insists that local Churches should not carry out this implementation process in isolation from each other. It therefore recommends that national and regional episcopal conferences (e.g., the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops or the Episcopal Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean, respectively) also play a role in the implementation process.

In particular, national and regional episcopal conferences should form their own Synodal Teams (again, Pathways recommends reactivating the teams that took part in the national and continental stages of the consultative phase of the synodal process) to facilitate and coordinate the implementation process taking place at the diocesan level. Pathways mentions four tasks in particular that are best suited for these episcopal conferences. First, they can encourage local dioceses to initiate the process and provide them with resources appropriate to the national or regional context. Second, they can foster coordination and the sharing of resources or ideas among diocesan Synodal Teams. Third, episcopal conferences can offer formation for Synodal Team members or others involved in the implementation process. Finally, Pathways suggests that episcopal conferences may be better equipped than dioceses to harness the wisdom of experts in theology and pastoral ministry to inform and assist with the implementation process (pp. 12-13).

Pathways also suggests that the General Secretariat of the Synod can play a coordinating role in the implementation phase. Ever since Pope Paul VI established the Synod of Bishops in 1965, the General Secretariat has served to plan and organize the periodic gatherings of the Synod which ordinarily take place every three or four years, and so its work ebbs and flows according to that schedule. The Synod’s Final Document suggested that the General Secretariat could evolve and take on the ongoing work of coordinating and sharing synodal practices developing throughout the global Church (#9).

Pathways fleshes out how the General Secretariat will carry out this function during the implementation phase. For one, it will gather feedback from local Churches and episcopal conferences as the process unfold and also attempt to answer questions that arise. Perhaps most interestingly, it proposes that the General Secretariat will help organize meetings of different Churches or other ecclesial bodies for mutual sharing and listening. For example, it mentions that the upcoming Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies taking place in Rome in October will be an opportunity for those most involved in the implementation process to get to know each other and share ideas. The General Secretariat will become more directly involved in 2028, when it will help organize “evaluation assemblies” at the continental level, where implementation plans will be shared and discussed, and the worldwide Ecclesial Assembly that will take place in Rome in October of that year. Pathways also makes clear that it is the General Secretariat’s responsibility to coordinate the various Study Groups formed during the synodal process and to ensure that their work informs the implementation process (pp. 13-15).

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When the consultative phase began at the local level in 2021, the General Secretariat made available a set of questions intended to guide discussions within local dioceses. Likewise, the Instrumentum Laboris issued prior to the first Synod session in 2023 included “worksheets” with concrete questions posed to the delegates participating in the Synod that eventually structured the discussions at the Synod Assembly. While Pathways for the Implementation Phase of the Synod outlines a process that dioceses can follow during the implementation phase, perhaps unfortunately it does not offer concrete questions that could be used to guide the work of bishops and Synodal Teams.

The reason for this lack of concrete, guiding questions is clear, however. The Final Document is “the point of reference for the implementation phase” (p. 17) and needs to be considered as a whole. As Pathways puts it:

The FD is a comprehensive document, animated by its own internal dynamism, which is the fruit of a long process of listening, discussion and discernment. It cannot therefore be considered a collection of guidelines on a variety of issues that can be taken out of the context in which they were envisioned. This would prevent grasping their meaning and therefore being correctly implemented. This is evident from its very structure. (p. 17)

For that reason, then, for members of Synodal Teams, “knowledge of the FD is certainly essential” (p. 11). Trainings on the Final Document should also be provided to others playing important roles in the implementation process (p. 17).

This dependence on the Final Document as the starting point for the implementation process seems to me like a potential weak point. For one, the document is over 60 pages in length, but more importantly it is written in theologically rich prose that reads more like a papal encyclical than a set of proposals in need of being fleshed out and implemented (although the seeds of such proposals are certainly present throughout the document). Synodal teams may be uncertain how to translate the Final Document into a set of ideas that can be developed and eventually implemented at the diocesan or parish level (I did, however, try to do something similar with the Synthesis Report that was produced at the end of the first Synod session in 2023).

On the whole, I imagine things will work out fine, although perhaps unevenly across dioceses and regions. Even so, it would have been helpful if the General Secretariat had provided a set of key questions, based on the Final Document, to be pondered during the implementation phase. Perhaps that is a task that could be taken up by national or regional episcopal conferences, consistent with the role given to them in the process.

That being said, and despite the document’s caveats about breaking the Final Document down into discrete guidelines, Pathways does summarize what it considers the five “key points” suffusing the document, and it likewise lists eleven areas where local dioceses will be expected to have taken concrete steps. The five key points are:

1. The synodal process is rooted in the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, particularly its vision of “the Church as Mystery and Church as People of God, called to holiness through a continual conversion that comes from listening to the Gospel” (citing Final Document, #5);

2. The deepening of synodality should be focused on “the mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God,” shared by all the baptized faithful;

3. The Church is relational and governed by “the logic of the exchange of gifts,” for example, the sharing of the distinct gifts of all the faithful and the communion among local Churches;

4. The Church has an essential “ecumenical impulse”;

5. The Church is called to be in dialogue with others, including other religious traditions, a calling that includes a commitment to fostering shared commitments to social justice and integral ecology.

And the eleven implementation areas include:

1. The promotion of synodal spirituality;

2. Access to leadership positions for men and women, lay and consecrated;

3. Developing new forms of service and ministry;

4. Fostering the practice of ecclesial discernment;

5. The development of more synodal forms of decision-making;

6. Creating or strengthening processes for accountability, transparency, and evaluation;

7. Making participatory bodies (presbyteral, pastoral, and finance councils) mandatory and reforming their operating methods;

8. Holding local and regional Ecclesial Assemblies;

9. Holding local diocesan synods or eparchal assemblies;

10. The renewal of parishes in light of synodality;

11. Revising the formation processes for the Sacraments of Initiation in light of synodality.

Hopefully these items, together with the Final Document itself, provide bishops and Synodal Teams with an adequate starting point for their efforts.

I had a few more thoughts on the Pathways document and some of the reactions to it, but I’ve already gone on long enough, so I’ll save those for later. If you have any thoughts on what the implementation of the Final Document should look like, especially taking into consideration the five key points and eleven areas for concrete steps listed above, let me know in the comments!