The Light of the Nations: 2024 Instrumentum Laboris Part One | Synod on Synodality

Matthew Neugebauer

Thursday, August 29, 2024

Four young people embracing and looking out on a valley

Pexels Photo.

In July, the Synod Secretariat released the much-anticipated Instrumentum Laboris (Working Document, IL) for the 2024 session of the General Assembly.

During the press conference introducing the IL, Special Secretary Fr. Giacomo Costa, SJ, responded bluntly to criticisms of the process so far, exemplified by George Weigel’s claim that “the world synodal process since 2021 has been a colossal exercise in self-referentiality.” To that, Fr. Costa asserted:

“After three years of journeying, to suggest that this journey is self-referential is bad faith. We respond together to Jesus’ call: in Him we are a people, in Him together we are a sacrament of union with God and with all humankind.”

Many of us have been involved in church meetings that have felt "self-referential," be it in a parochial council, for a lay apostolate, a campus ministry, or even the weekly parish staff meeting. The conversations at those meetings often revolve around what we're supposed to do, how we're supposed to organize ourselves, and what our plans and priorities are.

Of course, those are all necessary and important topics for discernment and discussion. But the criticism of self-referentiality, when it goes beyond humble planning or self-reflection, can apply when discernment and discussion about identity and priorities don't begin and end with God, who creates, animates, guides, and empowers -- makes holy -- everything good and true and beautiful that we do as his Church.

Notwithstanding the confrontational tone of Weigel’s and others’ critique and Fr. Costa’s response, the new document does explicitly offer what the 2023 IL merely implied: it begins with a call for the Synod and the Church to look up to God before it calls us to look within. The statement of its primary theme is infused with the foundational words of Lumen Gentium Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which Fr. Costa also quoted:

"’Christ is the light of the nations’ (Lumen Gentium #1), and this light shines on the face of the Church, which ‘is in Christ as a sacrament or instrumental sign of intimate union with God and of the unity of all humanity’ (ibid.)” (#4, emphasis added)

The 2024 IL then plays with this image of light:

“Like the moon, the Church shines with reflected light: it cannot, therefore, understand its mission self-referentially but receives the responsibility of being the sacrament of bonds, relationships, and communion in service to the unity of all humanity…. [The Church] does not proclaim itself ‘but Christ Jesus the Lord’ (2 Corinthians 4:5)” (ibid.)

Note how this call to look to God as the source of the Church’s light and life then subtly turns to the act of shining this light in the world today. Enter another great theme of the IL, the summons to be a missional, synodal identity. The new document, appropriately titled “How to be a Missionary Synodal Church,” tasks the Synod with discerning how 21st-century Catholicism can imagine itself as a Communion of particular churches – parishes, dioceses, national and regional groupings – that walk together in mission in a world that has greatly changed in the six decades since Lumen Gentium was promulgated:

“We bear this responsibility [to be the sacrament of bonds, relationships, and communion] in times now dominated by the crisis of participation, the absence of a sense that we have a common destiny, and a too-often individualistic conception of happiness and, therefore, of salvation. In living out this mission, the Church communicates God's plan to unite all humanity to Himself in salvation.” (ibid.)

A little later on, the IL offers an idea of how synodality could animate mission:

“Insofar as it offers the possibility of expressing the nature of the Church and insofar as it allows all the charisms, vocations, and ministries in the Church to be valued, [synodality] enables the community of those who ‘look to Jesus in faith’ (LG #9) to proclaim the Gospel in the most appropriate way to women and men of every place and time, and to be a ‘visible sacrament’ (ibid.) of the salvific unity willed by God.” (#9)

How can a missionary synodal Church best “look to Jesus in faith” and “be a ‘visible sacrament’ of salvific unity?” The quotes I picked out here suggest a number of things to unpack, which happen to line up with the three great themes of this Synod on Synodality since the beginning:

Communion: What does it mean for the Church to be “a visible sacrament” amidst our different charisms, contexts, and perspectives?

Mission: How can a synodal Church be oriented to mission? What can we make of this focus on mission, which is more prevalent in this year’s IL than last year’s?

Participation: How can a missionary synodal Church balance and relate the ministry and responsibility of authoritative oversight given to its hierarchy, with the importance of lay consultation, shared decision-making, and especially the increased involvement of women in these processes?

Over the next month or so, I’ll reflect on how the IL is prompting this October’s session to consider these very questions. Stay tuned for Part Two.