Thoughts on the Synod Instrumentum Laboris

An Open-Ended Process Gains Clarity

Last week, the Vatican released the Instrumentum Laboris (IL), or working document, on synodality that will guide the discussions at the first of two meetings of the Synod of Bishops this October. The IL is a synthesis of continental documents that were written earlier this year, which in turn were syntheses of documents produced at the diocesan and national levels.

Throughout the whole synodal process, the question has repeatedly been asked, “What is synodality?” Synodality is rooted in the doctrine that, as baptized Christians, we each are called to be disciples of Christ and to fulfill the roles of Priest, Prophet, and King (see Lumen Gentium 31). And following the teaching of the Apostle Paul, we each receive from the Holy Spirit different gifts, preparing us to play different roles in the Church; as Paul says, we are many parts in one body, the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12). Synodality, then, means that since we each have a role to play in the mission of the Church, we each should have a voice within the Church. To stretch Paul’s metaphor a bit, we are each different parts of the body, but there needs to be a nervous system through which each part can coordinate with the others and let the body know when there is a problem.

It is also no accident that from the beginning of the synodal process in 2021, the Vatican has linked the process to the doctrine of the sensus fidelium (“sense of the faithful”), the “supernatural discernment in matters of faith” (LG 12) possessed by each of the faithful in virtue of their prophetic office. The synodal process gives voice to the sensus fidelium, a process that exists in conjunction with the distinct teaching role of the hierarchy.

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While there has been some confusion over what synodality is, there has also been confusion over what the purpose of the synodal process is. I think there are two main senses of what the process is about. First, based especially on the experiences of the synodal sessions at the parish and diocesan levels, people got the idea that the synodal process is essentially a “listening session” in which the faithful can express their opinions about the life of the Church. These opinions would then be synthesized and passed upward to the Vatican, where they would in some way inform the bishops and other participants at the Synod. There is some truth to this, but taken by itself, it is misleading. Some have been rightly concerned about what the end goal of such a process would be. Is this a new, quasi-democratic way of exercising the Magisterium? Will the organizers of the synodal process pursue preordained outcomes while the voices of the “losers” in the conversation are ignored?

Second, the synodal process has been described as something like a “practice run” of synodality, an effort to give people the opportunity to sense what having a voice in the Church feels like, to develop the structures needed for conversations to take place, and to assess how synodality could be better made a permanent part of the life of the Church. Reading through the documents that have been produced along the way makes clear that this is a central part of the process’s purpose. But the idea of having a conversation for the sake of practicing conversation strikes me as like when someone, upon learning that I can speak a bit of Spanish, says, “Say something in Spanish!” I just stand there dumbfounded because that’s not the way language works. I can’t just say something, anything, apropos of nothing; there needs to be context. (Of course, the best response would be to say “algo”). In other words, surely there needs to be some substance to the synodal process; it can’t be a process for the sake of learning the process.

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The IL makes clear how the synodal process is fulfilling these two purposes in a somewhat unexpected manner. The document is not really a “working document” in the sense that was true of previous synods, where the document is amended and revised at the Synod, leading to a final document. Instead, this IL outlines a set of goals for the bishops and lay participants gathering at the Synod, outlines a procedure for them to follow, and provides them with a set of open-ended questions to guide their work.

The document itself focuses on the three themes that have been identified from the beginning of the synodal process as key to synodality—communion, mission, and participation—and asks the bishops to consider how synodality could be better embodied in those three aspects of the Church’s life. “Communion” here essentially refers to the life and worship of the Church considered ad intra, which serves as a sign to the world of our unity with God and with each other, while “mission” refers to the Church’s activity ad extra, the proclamation of the Gospel to the world and the participation of the laity in their distinct, temporal apostolate. The section on “participation” focuses especially on questions of authority and governance. The document also includes a section explaining “conversation in the Spirit,” a method of dialogue that has been used throughout the synodal process and that has proved to be a fruitful way of giving voice to the members of the Church.

The document is then followed by a series of “worksheets,” sets of reflections and guided questions organized around the three themes mentioned above and meant to prepare the bishops and lay participants for the conversations at the Synod. Strangely enough, it is only here that we encounter what many would consider the “meat” of the document. The worksheets ask pointed questions about the inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the Church, the participation of women in the Church, and how parish and diocesan decision-making might be restructured to better reflect synodality, among other things. All of the questions, however, point back to the overarching question of how synodality can be better reflected in the Church’s communal life, mission to the world, and structures of authority.

The IL, then, makes for a strange read. For one, the main part of the document reads like it could have been written before the synodal process even began. The three areas of focus—communion, mission, and participation—were not themes that emerged over the course of the synodal process, but rather were proposed at its beginning. More importantly, the document does not draw any specific materials from the continental documents, or any other prior documents, the way that the national and continental documents, and the Vatican’s Working Document for the Continental Stage (“Enlarge the Space of Your Tent”), were peppered to good effect with quotations from prior documents or discussion sessions.

Second, the IL lacks the clarity of earlier documents like the Working Document for the Continental Stage. I suppose it is easy to criticize style, which can be a matter of taste, but when the IL claims, for example, that “Participation adds anthropological density to the concrete character of the procedural dimension” (56), I want to pull my hair out. Third, as I already noted, the substance of the document is expressed in the form of questions, which is new, but I think that is a good thing. The purpose of the consultation process was not to provide answers, but rather to get the sense of the faithful on the questions we face as a Church.

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The worksheets which list the reflection questions for the participants in the upcoming Synod will likely be the most interesting part of the IL for theologians. The questions cover a broad range of issues, too many to cover here. I will just focus on two general themes.

Several questions address how the Church can embody “radical inclusion,” a term used earlier in the Working Document for the Continental Stage. The IL does an excellent job of making clear that the question of inclusion is not simply a matter of what goes on within the Church, or something the Church should promote in the world around it. By its very nature, the Church is “embedded” in the world (25), and so the question of inclusion is one that touches on both the Church’s communal identity and its mission to the world in an integrated way. The document makes clear that marginalization is not just something that happens “out there” in the world, but in the Church, as well, and that the two are linked.

Not surprisingly, the document asks several questions about the participation of women in the ministry and leadership of the Church. Taking up a theme dear to Pope Francis, another question asks what the Church needs to do to make sure that the poor are included in the Church’s life and that their voice is heard in the Church’s governance. The document also asks what the Church can do to welcome LGBTQ persons, who in many cases feel excluded from the Church, although in a perhaps controversial move, the IL groups LGBTQ persons with others “who feel excluded from the Church because of their status or sexuality,” including the divorced and remarried and individuals in polygamous marriages (an issue identified specifically in the African continental document). The IL also asks questions about welcoming and inclusion regarding young people and people with disabilities, among other groups.

The focus is not just on the inclusion of specific groups, however, but also on how the Church can embody inclusion in its structure. For example, the IL raises the possibility of a specific ministry of “listening and accompaniment,” a vocation to which members of the Church might be called. In a section particularly relevant to the U.S. context, the document asks how the Church can develop a culture of “gift exchange” among different local churches and different cultural groups within the Church, particularly in regions where distinct local churches exist in closely integrated regions (e.g., the United States and Mexico) or where migration has led to great cultural diversity within a local church. The IL calls on the Church to develop ways of resolving tensions that arise from these cultural contacts and to foster an attitude that recognizes and shares the different gifts of local churches and cultures.

Another set of questions sure to be of interest to theologians are those dealing with authority and governance. For example, the IL recognizes that lay people hold a number of leadership positions throughout the Church, not just in parishes, but in lay movements and communities, and so the document points out that greater consideration needs to be given to the relationship between these forms of leadership and the hierarchical leadership of the Church. It also asks what it would look like if synodality was embodied at the parish and diocesan levels and what kinds of changes would be needed to bring this about.

The 2014 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops (Photo: Centro Televisivo Vaticano, Public Domain)

I was genuinely impressed with the depth of the questions raised and the foresight exhibited into the sorts of questions that need to be answered for greater synodality to become a reality. Here are three more of my favorites dealing with the issue of authority and governance that reflect this depth and foresight:

• How can we deal constructively with cases in which those in authority feel they cannot confirm the conclusions reached by a community discernment process, taking a decision in a different direction?

• How can seminaries and houses of formation be reformed so that they form candidates for ordained Ministry who will develop a manner of exercising authority that is appropriate to a synodal Church?

• What obstacles (mental, theological, practical, organisational, financial, cultural) stand in the way of transforming the participatory bodies currently provided for in canon law into bodies of effective community discernment? What reforms are needed so that they can effectively, creatively and vibrantly support the mission?

One concern that lingered with me after reading the IL is that, even though these reflection questions are all meant to serve the overarching purpose of building synodality in the Church, it may be asking too much for the bishops and other participants at the Synod to say something meaningful about each of these issues. After all, each theme touched on in the questions could be (and some have been!) the focus of an entire Synod. 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.

At this point, however, that is only a possible concern. We will have to wait and see what the Synod participants do with these questions in October. But, contrary to the skeptics and naysayers, the synodal process is coming together and seems poised to make a meaningful difference in the life of the Church. The Body of Christ is starting to get feeling back in its nerve endings.

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Of Interest…

• Other theologians have written insightful commentaries on the Instrumentum Laboris since its release. Massimo Faggioli provides an excellent overview of the document, focusing on its experimental, open-ended nature. Meghan Clark focuses on the theme of “participation” in the IL (as noted, one of the three central themes of the document, and indeed the entire synodal process), linking this treatment to the role of participation in Catholic social teaching. Stefan Gigacz raises an interesting and important critique of the document: it rarely speaks of the distinctive lay vocation or apostolate, instead preferring to speak of the baptismal vocation (as Priest, Prophet, and King). A glaring example can be found in the title of one of the “worksheets”: “How can we properly value ordained Ministry in its relationship with baptismal Ministries in a missionary perspective?” I think Gigacz is right that this produces a skewed view of vocations and ministries in the Church; although synodality is based in the baptismal vocation of all Christians, a proper account has to clearly recognize the equal dignity of the distinctive lay vocation and consider its relationship with ordained ministry.

• In recent days, Bishop Richard Stika of Knoxville, Tennessee resigned early after a Vatican investigation (or “visitation”) late last year, and it was announced that another Vatican investigation had just recently been conducted into the leadership of Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas. Although the investigation of Bishop Stika was well warranted—Stika reportedly covered up clerical abuse, demonstrated a lack of transparency, and engaged in financial mismanagement—the investigation of Bishop Strickland is more theologically significant. Strickland has long been a critic of Pope Francis, and the investigation comes a month after Strickland posted a tweet declaring “It is time for me to say that I reject his program of undermining the Deposit of Faith.” Last September, Strickland likewise spearheaded a letter seeming to accuse Pope Francis of promoting heresy in his apostolic letter on the liturgy Desiderio Desideravi (I wrote a response to this letter at the time). Strickland’s actions raise the important question of whether a bishop can faithfully carry out their duties if they reject the “program” of the pope and believe he is “undermining the Deposit of Faith.” As Mike Lewis reports at Where Peter Is, the investigation supposedly revolves not just around Bishop Strickland’s statements regarding Pope Francis, however, but also his leadership of the diocese.

• In another case of diocesan leadership woes, in Germany, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, the Archbishop of Cologne is under investigation, not by the Vatican but by German law enforcement. Woelki is suspected of committing perjury during an investigation of clergy sexual abuse in his archdiocese, namely of lying about when he became aware of a specific case of abuse. This criminal investigation comes after a Vatican investigation into Woelki’s handling of sexual abuse cases, which led to no action against Woelki. Complicating matters, Woelki has previously claimed that accusations regarding his handling of sexual abuse were retaliation for his role as a critic of the German Synodal Path, the controversial gathering of Church leaders that, in its final meeting in March, called for the ordination of women, the blessing of same-sex unions, and an end to clerical celibacy (and which is distinct from the worldwide synodal process).

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Coming Soon…

• I apologize that this post is a day later than usual. Life intervened!

• I want to repeat a call I made last week: In the near future, I hope to do a different kind of post, one featuring advice from editors on how to improve the chances of your manuscript getting accepted to an academic journal. If you have experience as an editor or another staff role with a theological journal and would like to participate, please contact me at: matthew_shadle@outlook.com.