Rome Newsroom, Jul 9, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
The guiding document for the final part of the Synod on Synodality, published Tuesday, focuses on how to implement certain of the synod’s aims, while laying aside some of the more controversial topics from last year’s gathering, like women’s admission to the diaconate.
“Without tangible changes, the vision of a synodal Church will not be credible,” the Instrumentum Laboris, or “working tool,” says.
The six sections of the roughly 30-page document will be the subject of prayer, conversation, and discernment by participants in the second session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, to be held throughout the month of October in Rome.
Instead of focusing on questions and “convergences,” as in last year’s Instrumentum Laboris, “it is now necessary that … a consensus can be reached,” said a FAQ page from synod organizers, also released July 9, answering a question about why the structure was different from last year’s Instrumentum Laboris.
The guiding document for the first session of the Synod on Synodality in 2023 covered such hot-button topics as women deacons, priestly celibacy, and LGBTQ outreach.
By contrast, this year’s text mostly avoids these subjects, while offering concrete proposals for instituting a listening and accompaniment ministry, greater lay involvement in parish economics and finances, and more powerful parish councils.
“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,” it states.
The working tool also refers to the 10 study groups formed late last year to tackle different themes deemed “matters of great relevance” by the Synod’s first session in October 2023. These groups will continue to meet through June 2025 but will provide an update on their progress at the second session in October.
The possibility of the admission of women to the diaconate will not be a topic during the upcoming assembly, the Instrumentum Laboris said.
The new document was presented at a July 9 press conference by Cardinals Mario Grech and Jean-Claude Hollerich, together with the special secretaries of the synodal assembly: Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa and Father Riccardo Battocchio.
“The Synod is already changing our way of being and living the Church regardless of the October assembly,” Hollerich said, pointing to testimonies shared in the most recent reports sent by bishops’ conferences.
The Oct. 2-27 gathering of the Synod on Synodality will mark the end of the discernment phase of the Church’s synodal process, which Pope Francis opened in 2021.
Participants in the fall meeting, including Catholic bishops, priests, religious, and laypeople from around the world, will use the Instrumentum Laboris as a guide for their “conversations in the Spirit,” the method of discussion introduced at the 2023 assembly. They will also prepare and vote on the Synod on Synodality’s advisory final document, which will then be given to the pope, who decides the Church’s next steps and if he wishes to adopt the text as a papal document or to write his own.
The third phase of the synod — after “the consultation of the people of God” and “the discernment of the pastors” — will be “implementation,” according to organizers.
Prominent topics
The 2024 Instrumentum Laboris also addresses the need for transparency to restore the Church’s credibility in the face of sexual abuse of adults and minors and financial scandals.
“If the synodal Church wants to be welcoming,” the document reads, “then accountability and transparency must be at the core of its action at all levels, not only at the level of authority.”
It recommends effective lay involvement in pastoral and economic planning, the publication of annual financial statements certified by external auditors, annual summaries of safeguarding initiatives, the promotion of women to positions of authority, and periodic performance evaluations on those exercising a ministry or holding a position in the Church.
“These are points of great importance and urgency for the credibility of the synodal process and its implementation,” the document says.
The greater participation of women in all levels of the Church, a reform of the education of priests, and greater formation for all Catholics are also included in the text.
Bishops’ conferences, it says, noticed an untapped potential for women’s participation in many areas of Church life. “They also call for further exploration of ministerial and pastoral modalities that better express the charisms and gifts the Spirit pours out on women in response to the pastoral needs of our time,” the document states.
Formation in listening is identified as “an essential initial requirement” for Catholics, as well as how to engage in the practice of “conversation in the Spirit,” which was employed in the first session of the Synod on Synodality.
The document says the need for formation has been one of the most universal and strong themes throughout the synodal process. Interreligious dialogue also is identified as an important aspect of the synodal journey.
On the topic of the liturgy, the Instrumentum Laboris says there was “a call for adequately trained lay men and women to contribute to preaching the Word of God, including during the celebration of the Eucharist.”
“It is necessary that the pastoral proposals and liturgical practices preserve and make ever more evident the link between the journey of Christian initiation and the synodal and missionary life of the Church,” the document says. “The appropriate pastoral and liturgical arrangements must be developed in the plurality of situations and cultures in which the local Churches are immersed …”
How it was drafted
Dubbed the “Instrumentum Laboris 2,” the document released Tuesday has been in preparation since early June when approximately 20 experts in theology, ecclesiology, and canon law held a closed-door meeting to analyze around 200 synod reports from bishops’ conferences and religious communities responding to what the Instrumentum Laboris called “the guiding question” of the next stage of the Synod on Synodality: “How to be a synodal Church in mission?”
After the 10-day gathering, “an initial version” of the text was drafted based on those reports and sent to around 70 people — priests, religious, and laypeople — “from all over the world, of various ecclesial sensitivities and from different theological ‘schools,’” for consultation, according to the synod website.
The XVI Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod, together with consultants of the synod secretariat, finalized the document.
According to the working tool, soliciting new reports and feedback after the consultation phase ended is “consistent with the circularity characterizing the whole synodal process.”
“In preparation for the Second Session, and during its work, we continue to address this question: how can the identity of the synodal People of God in mission take concrete form in the relationships, paths and places where the everyday life of the Church takes place?” it says.
The document says “other questions that emerged during the journey are the subject of work that continues in other ways, at the level of the local Churches as well as in the ten Study Groups.”
Expectations for final session
According to the guiding document, the second session of the Synod on Synodality can “expect a further deepening of the shared understanding of synodality, a better focus on the practices of a synodal Church, and the proposal of some changes in canon law (there may be yet more significant and profound developments as the basic proposal is further assimilated and lived.)”
“Nonetheless,” it continues, “we cannot expect the answer to every question. In addition, other proposals will emerge along the way, on the path of conversion and reform that the Second Session will invite the whole Church to undertake.”
The Instrumentum Laboris says, “Synodality is not an end in itself … If the Second Session is to focus on certain aspects of synodal life, it does so with a view to greater effectiveness in mission.”
In its brief conclusion, the text states: “The questions that the Instrumentum Laboris asks are: how to be a synodal Church in mission; how to engage in deep listening and dialogue; how to be co-responsible in the light of the dynamism of our personal and communal baptismal vocation; how to transform structures and processes so that all may participate and share the charisms that the Spirit pours out on each for the common good; how to exercise power and authority as service. Each of these questions is a service to the Church and, through its action, to the possibility of healing the deepest wounds of our time.”
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“By contrast, this year’s text mostly avoids these subjects”, homosexuality and its potential infinite LGBT variations are left quietly undisturbed, venomous serpents lurking patiently undercover.
Peter Beaulieu keeps reminding us of gradualism, lest we gradually forget.
Or …. and ….. the matter of just bad Christian intercourse, Fr. And stupid intercourse too on top.
It occurs to me that the Republican Party dropped the pro-life plank and it the news that ensues shortly after -alongside- the Pope saying that “Catholics in public life cannot live a private faith”. I read the report and the outline says nothing about the wrong politics of self-interest, corruption & etc.
It comes across as a reiteration of the early pro-abortion battle-cry among the politicians “I am against abortion but I can’t force what I think on women” but formulated with ever more subtlety and facility given the new paradigm(s) initiated by the Dobbs decision.
In the first link, Darlene’s comment JULY 9, 2024 AT 8:21 AM is fair enough but is what she frames the only thing we are seeing?
Very disturbing. As if the Gospel may be confined or shaped like that.
Not what he says but what he does. And also what he says.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/07/08/republicans-remove-right-to-life-plank-from-party-platform/
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/07/07/pope-francis-in-politics-catholics-cannot-live-a-private-faith/
Gasp, in the limelight!
Not an “expert”! So, from the back bleachers, and “about mostly avoiding” the HOT-BUTTON topics now still on the table (?)…such as women deacons, priestly celibacy, and LGBTQ outreach…”qui tacet consentire videtur [he who is silent seems to consent].” Yes?
Especially women deacons: “a call for adequately trained lay men and women to contribute to preaching the Word of God, including during the celebration of the Eucharist…”–what is this but to already be a deaconess in function if not in name?
AND what, now, is permanent roll of permanent deacons as one level of bishop/priest/deacon Holy Orders? Gradually amputated and replaced in practice? And, how, really, to “avoid” der Synodal Weg posturing in front of the tribal LGBTQ religion, and even intent on rewriting all of sexual morality? A topic offloaded by the universal Church? About which, the capstone Fiducia Supplicans remains a divisive and festering WEDGE within the Church and society at large. “Avoided.” And still intact?
WAITING now to see the complete wording of the Instrumentum Laboris, and then prayerfully waiting for what the synodal “style” comes up with in terms of actual content. And, to hear what yet others see and have to say, even if they have not been selectively invited to the Synod on Synodality.
ON THE OTHER HAND, for the synodal style to help consolidate (however imperfectly) the Church as more of a missionary refuge in a toxic world—where the only other home is either Caesar, or identity politics, or consumerism and the unchallenged sexual revolution—and still within the gifted “hierarchical communion” of the Church…can this initiative possibly build consistently on both Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes? Always remembering that the Eucharistic Church (Dei Verbum) is a both a divine institution and a mystery, and not a human construct.
SUMMARY: Twenty years after the Council, the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops was convened to avoid “divergent interpretations” of the Council. In part, the bishops recommended a “new diffusion of the Documents themselves.” Might the inclusive Synod on Synodality not exclude attentive study of the Vatican II Documents (the “real” Council), the Catechism (a “fruit of the Council”), Veritatis Splendor on morality, and other landmarks dated prior to 2013?
The complete text for the Instrumentum laboris for October 2024 can be found at https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2024/07/09/240709d.html
Three points: one from the Instrumentum laboris, one from Vatican II, and one from a local parish…
FIRST, Section 100 reads: “Answering the question ‘How to be a synodal Church in mission?’ also requires revisiting the dynamic that unites synodality, collegiality, and primacy, so that it can innervate the relationships between the institutions through which it finds concrete expression.”
SECOND, the traditional “dynamic” of primacy—as part of the “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium—is that of being historically “sent” (apostello: to be sent). About non-ordained men and women delivering homilies at the Mass, if they are properly trained theologically—does the wording of #100 now propose/assume equivalency (synodality, collegiality, and primacy?) to the effect that theological training is equalized with the Deposit of Faith under the guardianship of the ordained/sent successors of the apostles?
This about dogma and theology, from the Council: “…theologians are invited to seek continually for more suitable ways of communicating doctrine to the men of their times. For the deposit of faith or revealed truths are one thing; the manner in which they are formulated without violence to their meaning [!] and significance is another” (Lumen Gentium, n. 62, citing John XXIII speech at the beginning of the Council).
THIRD, yours truly recalls a newly-minted deacon assigned to our wide-eyed parish in the late 1970s. In his homily, instead of unpacking the incarnate Christ in the Gospel, he rhapsodized far afield theologically (!)—in this case, on Chardin’s dynamic/poetic/evolutionary Omega Point. He was gone before his first week was out. Predictably, how might such only-theological credentials for lay homilists play out tomorrow? Who gets “equal time”? On the global scale, do the shock waves of the inventive Fiducia Supplicans already give us a clue?
QUESTION: Just wondering, too, how a listening “synod on synodality” might lift itself up by its bootstraps from what the Church now thankfully DOES into what the apostolic Church (to be sent) always IS?
Pope Francis has said of Cardinal Martini that he was a “prophetic figure”. What this seems to mean is that even though Martini made embrace of 1. abortion and 2. homosexualism, his ideas for 3. “transformation” and 4. “journey” Church will be distilled as prophetic. Or it could mean that all those 4 items, with perhaps others, will be deemed prophetic.
Dear Elias Galy, Yes…
Regarding the again-exhumed hot-button topics of women deacons, LGBTQ outreach, and priestly celibacy, at least some of the mongrel 2023 Synod’s omelette is being unscrambled.
FIRST, of women deacons, the topic is off the synodal table, but centered on the table at the DDF https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/07/09/synod-organizer-says-vatican-doctrine-office-is-studying-women-deacons/ Very problematic—see previous comments.
SECOND, of “outreach” to the LGBTQ lifestyle/religion, we’re already stuck with a double-speak “blessing” that’s not really a blessing, and of persons who are not blessed firstly as “persons”—but obliquely and firstly as “couples”? Globally divisive, and not papered over by Dignitatis Infinita.
THIRD, of the single-hearted vocation of priestly celibacy—on the table at Synod 2023 and now shifted to another table (Study Group 4 focused on amendments to Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis, 1970/1985). Erosion of the discipline to be enabled within a Church that is local, polyhedral, and continental?—and then further divided top-to-bottom as with Fiducia Supplicans!
GRADUALISM…On these unscrambled and still divisive hot-button topics, do we also detect a middle ground of interreligious leveling? Cardinal Hollerich, relator-general of Synod 2024:
“In Japan, I got to know a different way of thinking. The Japanese don’t think in terms of the European logic of opposites. We say: It is black, therefore it is not white. The Japanese say: It is white, but maybe it is also black. You can combine opposites in Japan without changing your point of view.” https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/who-is-cardinal-hollerich. Shintoism in a red hat?
SUMMARY: even an institutionally ambidextrous Church can’t long stand with double-vision and double-speak supposedly harmonized as a via media.
The next Pope, in addition to throwing Amoris Laetitia, Traditionis Custodes and Fratelli Tutti on the bonfire, should issue a decree stating there will be no more Synods, ever.
Some unstated assumptions and assertions would seem to be in play, I can briefly indicate what a few of them could be and show also as the queries or questions provoked, that I would have:
1. what can be extrapolated as a divine mandate from Acts and certain other places and people, that is now providentially unfolding and being pinpointed in steps, supersedes all particular Churches and is a witness in itself as it goes no matter how diffuse or confusing
2. it has a certain identity with the Holy See and/or “petrine principle” only lately revealed and it will ascribe more extensively later some pattern to the “marian principle” but in any event it applies to all lay individuals vocationally
3. it is “made visible” by Pope Francis and therefore is the living will of God and unique to Francis and certain unidentified actors earlier inspired but also others who will succeed including Popes
4. it will correct, improve and make successful in the 21st Century and beyond what hasn’t worked and hasn’t been Christian witness in the 20th Century -because now it is getting “fully adumbrated”
5. while it is getting fully adumbrated but is incomplete we have to blindly and implicitly trust the Pope on anything and everything he does along with certain other known icons like James Martin
6. it is free to admit Traditional dogmatic things randomly when that is appropriate and supportive plus it is open to inculcate new dogmatic things based on a coalescing magisterium by which everything in it eventually rectifies that does not become outmoded or get sidelined
7. (I am not sure but …..) it would appear that whenever certain words are used, they are delivered as definitive sign to take note that something really foundational is occurring, like “concrete” – and notwithstanding that nothing might actually happen or develop
8. some words can get misapplied or misinterpreted, like Pelagian, or clericalism, or gnostic; and we are supposed to be able to reconcile the mixed-up issues on our own accounts complying with the extrapolations or something meet
9. while the “synod” activity is really a type of conventual and inappropriate as a conventual on may levels, it “can’t be possible” to admit that, because then the “synod” would not be authentic
10. apparently, EVERYTHING now going on and ALL THE ADMINISTRATION of it ….. IS the Holy Spirit working in a divine and infallible process until such time as the “coalescing magisterium” determines that this or that is not a fit (see point 6.)
11. this is THE SINGULAR meaning and SINGULAR GUIDING EXPRESSION of VATICAN II and is “not really a substitution”.
Dear Beaulieu thank you for your links and extended discussion. Without that I would be hustling around not knowing just what to zone in on or where to look and having to rely on my own weak intuition and instincts. So that’s very helpful indeed and fast going AS PER YOUR USUAL.
I wanted to post my other item above, today, before replying to you here. So many scattered things you and others have been examining the last 2 to 3 years seem now to be coming together into recognizable and cogent form. I don’t mean to say straight off the bat that everyone must assent to everything; and actually the Church defers to a style of convincing as the normal course.
The cogency must tie to the 4 dicta in EG. I do not overlook that, I am merely keeping the material concise. What results are yielded by overlaying the 11 points here on the 4 dicta, would depend on who is working the application! and this has to be a crucial “vote” and “chair” for any conventual /”synod”.
Some detective work is useful. Let me explain. I have been deliberately left in the dark for a long time and it is not a conspiracy theory. It is now coming into the fore. We had a Eucharistic Congress in 1996 and about 3 years after that, the word synod suddenly was introduced and was immediately giving birth to a certain type of Archdiocesan “coming together formational assembling”.
Called, “Synod”. It later took on the same bearing we see at this time, the round tables and meetings, the formulating of propositions and new ideas, the arriving at resolutions. It came to a head in 2009 but was only partially completed and then the Archbishop got changed. It had a mix of things, including in the concluding document the requirements that the working team MUST had to now consist of original Synod attendees ONLY and the team had to reflect “gender and vocational diversity”.
It would seem, though not necessarily, that the same Archbishop did his best to keep the “Synod” on a straight and narrow. But not every part of it reconciles to that sense.
Where is Martini in all this? Sometime between 2008 and 2011, Martini books started appearing at my parents’ home. Of course I delved into them. Very quickly it became apparent to me what was coming at me. What was hidden then was, who was responsible for making Martini “manifest”.
Was it Martini himself? Some others? Was he involved? Am I not supposed to know?
I know as a fact that my mother for the first time put Fulton Sheen books in the home in the same period.
I see Ricko in the link below, using the word “detective” as pejorative. But I remember like it was yesterday remarking back then how Martini was clearly attacking the Magisterium, charting his own track/laneway and cushioning his own “lee”; and that it could never be right. Catholics are not given, inter alia, to legalize sin. Now I find that the Pope portends to say it was not an attack but a prophecy.
Pejorative creates meaningful argument not quibbling? And refusal of new evangelization /attacking the Church creates prophecy and meekness? Ooops pardon me?
But maybe Ricko is stirring up. Wanting to know who sent the books is “detective with bad attitude”? Anti-grace? It reflects a quibbly attitude and an interior lovelessness? WE -we- are supposed to just bow to Ricko saying NOT to discover the truth of good God has in store for others and the love in the truth and God?
During the Eucharistic Congress the word “synod” was not present in the circles I was in anywhere. This was a later intervention/insertion from some source(s) still unknown to me and who are still putatively undiscovered. Why not be frank?
Could it be some Catholic universities in Europe, were dejected by the Sheen “product” and invested some decades in “prayer and study” ….. with Martini ….. to finally come up with “Synod”? With the help of Lodge gnomes in backrooms? Ah ha! And high-flying Rosicrucians. But not in time for our Eucharistic Congress 1996.
What about certain other detectives? Why divert the attention off of them when they are the subversive ones working to imperil and replace goodness and truth and truthfulness!
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/07/22/loftons-youtube-straw-man/
* * * *
Martini’s visage is not just strange it sometimes reaches to repelling.
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/permanent-synodal-church-martini-dream
https://publisher-ncreg.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/pb-ncregister/swp/hv9hms/media/20210521200540_d0d62f8db1d7d42f4c327440664c312ccdc137daec022bad2a4a5dbc1b94b9c3.webp
The crypto-blessed triad from whence cometh “time is greater than space”?
Pre-Modern
OUROBOROS: an emblematic serpent with its tail in its mouth, continually devouring itself and being reborn from itself.
Modern
MARSHALL MCLUHAN: “the medium IS the message.”
Post-modern
SYNOD ON ITSELF: the roundtable IS the content!
By the time of the Aparecida Document neither this “synod” thing nor synodalism had been recognized let alone encorporated /incorporated. It we seem, from where I stand, we still do not know when the push for this thing got to Archbishop Bergoglio /Pope Francis; so that this part of the timeline is a major gap.
Nonetheless, there seems to be an outworking going on and a specific vision of the Document’s paragraphs 368-369, not actually described in the Document. I note that those paragraphs do not indicate that some singular exclusive thing, results; and I note that it was generally not supposed that a singular exclusive was in view.
Whether as Archbishop or Pope, Pope Francis has been unable to hold back the false or wrong or artificial ecclesiology of “synodality”, let alone correct it.
As a follow up point, then, Aparecida was concluded 2007. My local “Synod” began before the turn of the century and was concluded 2009. Between 2011-2012 a certain priest told me he wanted to show me a document but he never identified which one. It would seem I am supposed to infer that it is all the Holy Spirit.
The cloak-and-dagger going on with the Martini books IS NOT the Holy Spirit.
https://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~katie/kt/misc/Apercida/Aparecida-document-for-printing.pdf
Is this a Martini social?
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/07/21/from-castles-to-cathedrals-pope-francis-schedule-for-luxembourg-and-belgium-trip/
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2024-07/pope-francis-programme-for-visit-to-belgium-and-luxembourg.html
It is possible that all the hoop-la about 1. this abuse and 2. that cover-up and 3. who’s making the latest patch-up, is diversionary and theatrics some of it deliberate and some acquiesced in usefully and some made out as development.
The things that shouldn’t occur, do -in abundance. The things that should come forth, do not -quite nearly ever.
The Holy Father could be labouring under a delusion that because he is the Pope he can continue in errors and amend at the end “similar to Peter”. There are serious differences though, for eg., Peter’s circumcision error was hidden in Peter’s silence and was not spread all over the world on airwaves. Also, someone else’s error does not set up a justifiable presumption made secure for use by the Pope on account of Papal Office. Peter’s amendment didn’t have to be publicly reconciled after his death.
‘ A student representative even directly challenged John Paul II in a public address: “We are also looking for a morality that liberates people and that removes relationships from the sphere of commandments and prohibitions,” she said. “The certainty with which our church posits certain ethical rules of conduct alienates it from the youth.” ‘
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-europe/2024/09/professor-accuses-catholic-university-in-belgium-of-covering-up-papal-visit