Synod on Synodality: The “Instrumentum Laboris” (1)

This document of about forty pages was prepared from the elements coming from the first two phases that have already taken place: the diocesan phase, which mobilized the dioceses of the whole world, and the continental phase, which brought together the episcopates of each continent around a first working document (“Enlarge the space of your tent”) which was literally calamitous.

Shortly before his death, Cardinal George Pell had spoken of it as “one of the most incoherent documents ever sent by Rome,” and as “an unhealthy nightmare,” to signify the anguish that a true Catholic would experience in the face of a such text.

While the new document is more coherent, it is no less dangerous. Through the method it proposes, its sources, and the subjects it presents to be discussed before the bishops - without forgetting the lay people present who will have voting rights.

The IL is based on the two previous phases: “The questions that the IL poses are an expression of the richness of the process from which they were drawn; … they bear witness to the faith experience of the People of God and thus reveal the reality of a transcendent experience” (no. 11). It is the result of the “experience of walking together” of the local churches (id.).

This notion of experience appears to be crucial, and we will understand why. As in the previous document, definitions are rare or even absent. But praxis is put forward: “a synodal Church is also marked by a particular way of proceeding” (no. 14).

Thus, as with Marxism or psychoanalysis, synodality must be practiced to grasp its nature. This “Synodal Church” (mentioned 110 times in the text) is not defined, it must be apprehended by experience: “A term as abstract or theoretical as synodality has thus begun to be embodied in a concrete experience” (no.18).

From this experience, the IL exposes the “characteristic signs of a synodal Church.” The words used are worth quoting: from this experience “an awareness emerges of certain characteristics or distinctive signs of a synodal Church. These are shared convictions on which to dwell and reflect together as we undertake a journey that will continue to clarify and refine them” (no. 19).

The characteristics of a synodal Church resulting from the “brainstorming” of the first phases

This praxis – comparable to brainstorming, a session where the participants throw out ideas which are then discussed – brought out with “great force” the “awareness that a synodal Church is founded on the recognition of the common dignity which flows from Baptism” which creates “a true co-responsibility,”  (no. 20).This point is essential for what follows.

“Rooted in this awareness is the desire for a Church that is also increasingly synodal in its institutions, structures, and procedures, so as to constitute a space in which common baptismal dignity and co-responsibility for mission are not only affirmed, but exercised, and practiced” (no. 21). The attentive reader immediately understands the significance of this statement.

Another character follows: “A synodal Church is a listening Church” (no. 22). “Listening given and received takes on a theological and ecclesial depth. … This style of listening is necessary to mark and transform all the relationships that the Christian community establishes among its members as well as with other faith communities and with society as a whole” (Ibid.).

After stating that “a synodal Church desires to be humble” and “knows that it must ask forgiveness,” the document continues: “A Synodal Church is a Church of encounter and dialogue.” Dialogue within the Church, but also with the members of other ecclesial communities – i.e., the Protestants – and those of other religions, as well as with the cultures of the world (n° 25).

This leads to the conclusion that “synodalism appears first of all as a dynamism that animates concrete local communities” (Ibid.). The text continues: “synodality proves to be a constitutive dimension of the Church since its origin, even if it is still in the process of being realized” (no. 26).

This concretization must be deep and total, which is why “a synodal Church is open, welcoming and embraces all” (n° 26). At the same time, it asks the Church to confront “honestly and fearlessly the call to a deeper understanding of the relationship between love and truth” (no. 27). It should be noted this is about inclusion.

A synodal Church is still characterized “by the ability to manage tensions without being crushed by them” (no. 28). This is further explained: “Trying to walk together also brings us into contact with the healthy restlessness of incompleteness,” (no. 29) of the awareness that certain questions cannot be resolved immediately.

The last characteristic mentioned is that of discernment “in the wealth of meanings that this term takes on within the different spiritual traditions” (no. 31). Thus, “as we listen attentively to each other’s lived experiences, we grow in mutual respect and begin to discern the movements of God’s Spirit in the lives of others and in our own” (Ibid.).

“In this way, we begin to pay more attention to ‘what the Spirit is saying to the Churches’ (Rev 2:7), in the commitment and the hope of becoming a Church increasingly capable of making prophetic decisions that are the fruit of the Spirit’s guidance” (Ibid.).

This enumeration of the characteristics of a “synodal Church,” without having defined it, shows first of all the profound infirmity of the concept. For the characteristics of a thing depend on its definition, and if the Church is not able to define itself, it is profoundly crippled.

Even if the mystery of the Church does not allow her to be understood in all her supernatural depth, the Spouse of Christ has not failed to define herself over the centuries and to give the characteristics that flowed from this definition. Thus, the Catechism of St. Pius X teaches that:

“The Catholic Church is the Union or Congregation of all the baptized who, still living on earth, profess the same Faith and the same Law of Jesus Christ, participate in the same Sacraments, and obey their lawful pastors, particularly the Roman Pontiff.”

And here, according to Tradition, the Fathers and the Councils, are the notes and properties of the Church which is One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Immutable, Infallible, Visible, Perpetual, Hierarchical and Roman.

The IL is content to put somewhat in order a praxis, an experience, a lived experience of the members of the Church – or yet of people who are not even members. As it will be possible to discover, this experience is traversed by all the worldly influences, in the Pauline sense of the term, and by the ideologies that circulate everywhere.

It is therefore what the subjects think – very often ignorant subjects as many diocesan syntheses have admitted – that is put forward, relayed, coordinated, to be theorized. This is exactly the process described and condemned by St. Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi.

Modernists saw dogmatic progress as the immanence of subjects which was then explained in dogmas by the Magisterium. That is what we are seeing here.