Synod documents provide guidance for process

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SALT LAKE CITY — Two years from now, in October 2023, the worldwide Synod of Bishops will meet in council in the XVI Ordinary General Assembly. With input from the entire Church, the bishops will develop a plan for the Church to journey forward together and with fellow Christians.

As the worldwide Church embarks on this historic process, the dioceses are being guided by two very detailed documents to help them in listening and discernment, said Father John Evans, coordinator of the effort for the Diocese of Salt Lake City. These documents are a Preparatory Document that examines what synodality is, and the Vademecum (or handbook), which provides guidance for people who are leading the consultation process in the diocesan phase.

The documents were developed by the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops. The Preparatory Document opens with a call for the Church to journey together. “Our ‘journeying together’ is, in fact, what most effectively enacts and manifests the nature of the Church as the pilgrim and missionary People of God,” it says. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the objectives of this process are to include everyone in the Church – those on the margins as well as the greater Christian community – as they examine the Church and its history, even its painful chapters, to find ways where all can proclaim the Gospel, build a more beautiful and habitable world and be witnesses of God’s love.

“This journey, which follows in the wake of the Church’s ‘renewal’ proposed by the Second Vatican Council, is both a gift and a task: by journeying together and reflecting together on the journey that has been made, the Church will be able to learn through her experience which processes can help her to live communion, to achieve participation, to open herself to mission,” the Preparatory Document says. “It is precisely in the furrows dug by the sufferings of every kind endured by the human family and by the People of God that new languages of faith and new paths are flourishing: capable not only of interpreting events from a theological point of view but also of finding in trials the reasons for refounding the path of Christian and ecclesial life,” the Preparatory Document says.

In the second section, titled “A Constitutively Synodal Church,” the document gives a historical overview of how the Church already has journeyed together; this is called synodality. Synodality is “the specific modus vivendi et operandi of the Church, the People of God, which reveals and gives substance to her being as communion when all her members journey together, gather in assembly and take an active part in her evangelizing mission,” the document states, quoting the International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church. Every synodal process in which the bishops are called to discern what the Spirit is saying to the Church and to listen to the People of God is a form of that “journeying together” that makes the Church grow, the document says.

The third section of the document, “Listening to the Scriptures,” asks synod participants to study the scriptural representation of the “community scene that constantly accompanies the journey of evangelization” and consider the “experience of the Spirit in which Peter and the early community recognize the risk of placing unjustified limits on faith sharing.” Participants are also invited to meditate on the person of Jesus, his apostles, the crowd and the “fourth actor” – that which seeks to destroy the kingdom of God from within. “In order to escape the deceptions of the ‘fourth actor,’ continuous conversion is necessary,” the Preparatory Document says.

The document’s fourth section, “Synodality in Action: Pathways for Consulting the People of God,” introduces the fundamental questions the Church is being asked to answer through this whole process: “How is this ‘journeying together’ happening today in your particular Church? What steps does the Spirit invite us to take in order to grow in our “journeying together”? The section then provides 10 themes to explore.

These include listening, speaking out, and dialogue within the Church and society and with the other Christian denominations. Ideas on how to contribute to the consultation are included.

The full text is available at https://www.synod.va/en/news/preparatory-document.html

The second text, a Vademecum (or handbook), offers tools, itineraries and suggestions for those leading the consultation process in the diocesan phase, which began this month and will continue through April. It outlines the aim of the synod, and explains the synod process and its different phases. Then it gives the themes, how the experience will play out and what is envisaged on the local level, who can participate, how to avoid pitfalls and the role of the bishop, priests and deacons in the process.

The Vademecum concludes with a word of gratitude: “Guided by the Holy Spirit, we make up the living stones through whom God builds up the Church that he desires for the third millennium (1 Peter 2:5). May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of the Apostles and Mother of the Church, intercede for us as we journey together on the path that God sets before us.”

The full text is available at https://www.synod.va/en/news/vademecum-for-the-synod-on-synodality.html