Dialoguing With the Most Incoherent Document Ever Sent Out From Rome

I've argued for years that Vatican II introduced a permanent revolution in the Church designed to slowly but inevitably change Church Teaching. I fear that the Synod on Synodality is an acceleration of that process.

From Catholic World Report

By Carl E. Olson

The Working Document for the Continental Stage (DCS) of the 2023 Synod on Synodality claims to be rooted in the ecclesiology of Vatican II. The evidence says otherwise.

Shortly before his death two weeks ago, Cardinal George Pell wrote an essay lambasting what he described as “one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome.”

Noted researcher and professor of sociology Mark Regnerus recently shredded the methodology used in creating the document in question, saying it “reads like a wish list of frustrated reformists who have shifted the preferential option away from the poor and toward ‘the young’ and the culturally alienated…”

And in a November 2022 piece analyzing the same document, Fr. Raymond de Souza pointed out numerous concerns with both its content and its creators, highlighting “laziness,” the “conflating” of reports by supposed “experts,” and the “idiosyncratic use of Scripture.”

The Synodal context (and process) for a Synod on Synodality

The document is the Working Document for the Continental Stage (DCS) of the 2023 Synod on Synodality. The 45-page, 15,000+ word text, published October 28 of last year, is ostensibly a synthesis and/or summary of discussions with Catholics (laity, clergy, religious) who took part in first stage—named “listening and discernment”—of the Synod on Synodality, which will stretch into 2024. The DCS is the focal point of the second and current “continental” stage, which runs until the end of March 2023. In June 2023, the Synod’s “Instrumentum laboris” will be released; it is official working document (‘instrument’) for the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will meet for nearly all of October 2023 (Oct 4-29), and then meet again in October 2024.

The DCS, in short, provides the content for the next two years of “synodal process.” It is difficult to overestimate the importance of “process” in the entire synodal, well, process. For example, the shorter 2021 Preparatory Document, which essentially established the guidelines for the DCS, explains:

The ability to imagine a different future for the Church and her institutions, in keeping with the mission she has received, depends largely on the decision to initiate processes of listening, dialogue, and community discernment, in which each and every person can participate and contribute.

And the DCS states:

The vision of a Church capable of radical inclusion, shared belonging, and deep hospitality according to the teachings of Jesus is at the heart of the synodal process…

Together, the two documents refer to process(es) over 60 times, with the DCS using it 44 times. It’s hardly surprising, then, that when papal biographer Austen Ivereigh wrote a rather giddy piece—“I helped write the first global synod document. Here’s what we heard from Catholics around the world.”—for America magazine, published concurrently with the DCS release, that the word “process(es)” appears sixteen times. The significance of the term, according to Ivereigh, one of 26 “experts” who worked for two weeks in creating the DCS, is the following:

Some will be surprised that the document does not go more deeply into the issues that the synod raised but leaves them hanging, noting the disagreements where they exist and inviting them to be wrestled with. Most of the document is given over not to the issues but to “process.” Process, after all, is the point of a synod on synodality, and it is where the document breaks important new ground by harvesting and giving expression to the desire in the reports for a synodal way of proceeding. Hence the dream in the report from religious superiors of “a global and synodal church that lives unity in diversity” and that adds, “God is preparing something new, and we must collaborate.”

Process, after all, is the point of a synod on synodality.

What, exactly, does that mean? And what does it have to do with evangelization, witness, holiness, the role of the laity, the sacramental work of clergy, the relationship of all Catholics to divine revelation and authentic ecclesial authority?

Competing understandings of the Church?

Some valuable headway into that and related questions can be found in an essay written in late 2021—that is, a year before the release of DCS—by Dr. Nicholas J. Healy, Jr.

The essay, titled “Communion, Sacramental Authority, and the Limits of Synodality”, is part of a Communio issue (Winter 2021) focused on synodality. One of Healy’s central concerns is the contrast between the “ecclesiology of communion,” so strongly and consistently presented in the documents of the Second Vatican Council (and emphasized again in the 1985 Synod of Bishops, under St. John Paul II) and the recent shift and strong emphasis on a “synodal ecclesiology,” which dominated the second half of the Final Report for the Synod of Bishops on youth, released in October 2018. (That Report drew upon the March 2018 International Theological Commission text “Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church”, which in turn was apparently inspired to some degree by earlier remarks made by Pope Francis about the need for a “Synodal Church”.)

One problem, as Healy explains, is that “synodality” and related terms have been used in so many ways in recent years that it’s becoming difficult to see the forest for the synodalities. As Healy observes, “the recent history of the concept of synodality begins with a concern to implement the teaching of Lumen gentium on collegiality…” but now “the new idea is that the whole Church is constitutively and essentially synodal.”

So, for instance, the ITC document strongly emphasized throughout the vital place and role of the hierarchy in synodality, insisting “The synodal process must take place at the heart of a hierarchically structured community” (par 69). The DCS, in contrast, only mentions “hierarchy” three times, and in two of those instances there is an overtly negative cast, as when an example of “the persistence of structural obstacles” is identified as “hierarchical structures that foster autocratic tendencies…” The proper authority of the hierarchy, rooted in apostolic authority and (in Healy’s words) “the sacramental grace of apostolic office”, is hardly noted (if at all) in the DCS.

The impression given, in fact, is that the Church is continually evolving and horizontal society—the “people of God”, of course—animated by endless dialogue, continual complaining, and an eclectic variety of victimhoods. (Or, as Regnerus writes: “Empirically, the vagueness in the DCS is symptomatic of the use of participatory action research, a ‘method’ of sorts that is light on rigor and heavy on fostering social change.”)

The “various documents on synodality or the synodal process,” notes Healy, “are surprisingly silent on the specific vocation of the laity.” Further,

the synodal process, as described in the relevant documents, seems liable to a subtle “clericalization” of the laity, in the sense that their contribution to the life and mission of the Church is measured by the extent of their involvement with tasks that are specific to the hierarchical ministry of the Church.

This continues apace in the DCS. When “laity” are mentioned, it is almost always in the service of complaint: the laity are passive and distant from the clergy (#19), victims of clericalism #58), overburdened (#66), not allowed to do more in the parish (#68, 91), and being kept from opportunities to do more (#100). (This topic is of specific interest to me, as I’ve written about the role of the laity as articulated in both Vatican II documents and John Paul II’s 1988 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation “Christifideles Laici” and was the author of the Study Guide for Bishop Robert Barron’s excellent “Priest Prophet King” video series.)

Some synodally-inspired questions

Much more context could be given, but I want to present a series of questions about the DCS, drawn from my several readings of it.

First, let’s quickly note that the DCS refers to “the precious legacy of the Second Vatican Council to which we are called to look as we celebrate its 60th anniversary” (#101). Also keep in mind that the ICL document states, “Although synodality is not explicitly found as a term or as a concept in the teaching of Vatican II, it is fair to say that synodality is at the heart of the work of renewal the Council was encouraging” (#6).

Yet there is very little in the dozens of pages of the DCS that refers directly or even indirectly to the documents of the Council. One would think that Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church) and Gaudium et spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) might warrant mention. Not so. At all.

The overarching “icon” (to use Ivereigh’s term) for the Church is that of “tent”, drawing upon Isaiah 54:2. Why this curious choice, as the New Testament does not refer to the Church as a tent, nor does Vatican II? Ivereigh says the idea “arose” among the august group at the end of their first week, and “struck us as a perfect metaphor” for what the people of God were calling for…” How, I wonder, does that square with St. Jerome’s commentary on the verse: “Anyone who is in a tent does have a secure and everlasting dwelling but is always changing places and hurrying on to the next…”? Or is that precisely the point? (Fr. de Souza notes the irony of the fact that “the enlarged tent of Isaiah 54 is an image of Israel subduing the enemies on her borders; enlarging the tent is more an image of conquering, not walking together.”)

Actually, isn’t this use of an obscure Old Testament verse more than a bit like “The Prayer of Jabez” being touted as the Greatest Prayer in the Bible, when Jesus left the Apostles and the Church a prayer?

Furthermore, throughout the DCS the Church is described almost exclusively as “the people of God” (or as a “tent”). Why so? Is it because “the people of God”, while quite biblical and a rich description when used and understood correctly, the preferred term for those prefer to see the Church in political and horizontal terms, as Cardinal Ratzinger noted years ago?

So, why is “people of God” used 26 times to refer to the Church, but “Mystical Body of Christ” or “Body of Christ” never used? Especially when that term is used more often in the Vatican II documents than “people of God”? And used throughout the New Testament? Why the huge disparity? And why is the Church never described as “the household of God”? Or the “temple of the Holy Spirit”? (See Lumen Gentium, 6, for some Church Names/Descriptives 101.)

Why is “experience” such a heavily repeated theme of the document, appearing over 60 times? And why do the terms “holiness” and “virtue” appear a combined total of zero times? The “journey” is referred to 37 times, but the words “heaven,” “glory,” and “beatific” appear exactly zero times. What is the journey to? For what purpose? Why is there virtually no sense of an eschatological dimension to synodality as the DCS presents it?

Is there a good reason that “listen” and “listening” appear over fifty times, while “repent”, and “repentance” never appear? Not even once? “Conversion” does appear over a dozen times, as in “a journey of conversion,” “missionary synodal conversion,” “the path of conversion toward a synodal Church,” “a broader and deeper conversion of attitudes and structures,” and so forth. What, exactly, is this conversion? To what? For what?

We read that “the message of the Gospel that the Church is charged to proclaim must also convert the structures of sin that hold humanity and creation captive.” The word “structure(s)” is used over thirty times. Are walls included in these structures? Are bridges? Both are structures, so clarification is appreciated.

Also, that is the only time “sin” appears. How do “structures” confess sin? How do structures “convert”? And since the word/idea of “confession” never appears, should we assume that while structures can “convert,” they are unable to confess?

Back to sin: the document also never refers to “evil” or “transgressions” or “iniquity” or anything similar. Why not?

And if sin is apparently such a small matter, to what should we attribute the multitude of ills, gripes, whines, complaints, and assorted grievances mentioned or alluded to throughout the document? For example, how to account for the calls to “change” Church teaching, for “cultural change,” “change of mindset”, and “climate change”? Oops, that last one appears twice, which is exactly two times more than “penance” and “mortification” and related words combined.

And then there is talk of “more meaningful dialogue” and “a more welcoming space” for those who “feel a tension between belonging to the Church and their own loving relationships, such as: remarried divorcees, single parents, people living in a polygamous marriage, LGBTQ people, etc.” Is there an expectation that the Church can and will change her teachings about sexuality, chastity, and marriage? Is there an assumption that the Church’s teachings on these matters is too hard? Impossible? Old-fashioned? Not engaged with enough “processes”?

Perhaps I’m making too much of numbers and words and not enough about processes and structures. But in a document of some 15,000 words that is about the Church, churchiness, the laity, evangelization, and living as a Catholic, it’s striking that the terms “process” (44) and “dialogue” (31) appear quite a few more times than does “worship” (0), “praise” (0), and “thanksgiving” (0).

Yes, liturgy is mentioned, as it “brings the community together”, there is a “deep link between synodality and liturgy” (somehow shown form in “the purpose of belonging”), and it noted that since women attend liturgy more than men, they should be allowed to do more at liturgy (par 61). Do any Catholics quoted in the DCS think liturgy might have something to with their eschatological end? Eternal communion with the Triune God? Now that I’ve mentioned it: there is no mention of God as Trinitarian or Triune, nor any reference to “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

To be fair, the document is not a theological treatise. It acknowledges that it “is not a document of the Church’s Magisterium, nor is it the report of a sociological survey; it does not offer the formulation of operational indications, goals and objectives, nor a full elaboration of a theological vision.” However, it then states that “it is theological in the sense that it is loaded with the exquisitely theological treasure contained in the experience of listening to the voice of the Spirit enacted by the People of God, allowing its sensus fidei to emerge” (#8).

That’s debatable, to put it kindly. I respectfully suggest that the late Cardinal Pell was wrong: this is not “one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome.” It is the most incoherent document to come out of Rome.

He was absolutely correct, however, in stating: “This working document needs radical changes. The bishops must realise that there is work to be done, in God’s name, sooner rather than later.”