So, the Vatican released its latest synod-implementation document on Monday, and it reminded me of something Pope Francis said a few years ago about how the Church is not a large multinational company headed by managers who carefully study how best to sell their product.

“The Church,” Francis said in remarks to journalists, on November 13, 2021, “does not build itself on the basis of its own project, it does not draw from itself the strength to move forward and it does not live by marketing strategies.”

Readers of the document released Monday by the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops may be forgiven the impression the Secretariat never got the memo.

Titled “Pathways for the Implementation Phase of the Synod 2025-2028” and running to 24 typeset pages with full-color graphics, pull quotes, and other bells and whistles, the document bills itself as “a framework for consideration” offered to local Churches, “invit[ing] them to share their initiatives, contributing to the broader ecclesial discernment.”

Before all that, or beside it, folks following from home may be forgiven for thinking: “Wait, didn’t the three-year process end last year, when the last Synod of Bishops meeting on Synodality ended?”

That three-year process began in 2021 with diocesan meetings that ended in 2022. A continental process began that year, ending in 2023. In 2023, a three-week long meeting took place at the Vatican in October, with another weeks-long meeting in 2024, which was supposed to have capped the whole enterprise. It was announced earlier this year, however, that further phases would occur through 2028.

So, the General Secretariat has brought out its “Pathways” document ahead of this new three-year process, announced while Pope Francis was in the hospital receiving treatment for what would prove to be his last illness.

The new document released on Monday says, “[T]he implementation phase is an opportunity to preserve that exchange of gifts which fosters the communion of local Churches within the one Church, manifesting its Catholicity while respecting legitimate diversity.”

“The creativity that inspires new ways of practicing synodality and enhances the fruitfulness of mission springs from these differences,” the document oges on to say. “For this reason,” it continues, “the fruits of the experiences gained in different contexts need to be shared, nourishing dialogue between the Churches.”

“In the implementation phase,” the document further explains, “a new process of dialogue therefore begins in each Church and between the Churches, based on the FD.” (The Final Document of the Synod of Bishops 2024 meeting is referred to as the “FD” throughout the new “Pathways” document from the General Secretariat.)

Pope Francis was right, by the way. The Church is not a multinational company. The General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, however, appears to love some of the worst parts of multinational office life.

First of all, the use of unnecessary verbiage to describe things. The first paragraph from which I just quoted continues at length in the same vein, without ever getting round to actually saying anything.

In fairness, Vatican-speak is notoriously logorrheic. Curial-ese, as insiders call it, is universally acknowledged as noisome even and especially by those who write in it. No, the worst aspect of synodality under the General Secretariat is the proliferation of office meetings, now and for some time being foisted upon participating ecclesiastical jurisdictions throughout the world. Here is what’s in store:

• From now until December 2026 will be the implementation of activities in local Churches and their groupings;
• In the first semester of 2027 will be the evaluation Assemblies in Dioceses and Eparchies;
• In the second semester 2027 we get the evaluation Assemblies in national and international Episcopal Conferences, Eastern hierarchical structures and in other groupings of Churches;
• Then on the first four months of 2028 there is the continental evaluation Assemblies;

It will all end – if it ever ends – in October 2028 with an Ecclesial Assembly in the Vatican.

By comparison, consider that the Fathers of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 – 1700 years ago this very year – took less than three months to declare the Divinity of Jesus Christ and set the date for Easter. We have had four years on Synodality. We still can’t get a simple, straightforward statement of what Synodality is – a working definition, if you will – from its principal organizers.

The Vatican’s own official news outfit asked the Undersecretary of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, Sister Nathalie Becquart, to define Synodality.

In her answer, Becquart first referred people to the Final Document of the Synod, then quoted Australian theologian Ormond Rush – a Synod participant—who said, “Synodality is the Second Vatican Council in a nutshell,” and then quoted the threefold buzzword that serves as a tagline to the Synod logo – I’m not making this up – “Communion, participation, mission,” and this was not a doorstep interview, but a sit-down specifically to highlight the “Pathways” document.

“We can say synodality is the way to understand the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council in this stage of the reception of the Council,” Becquart said.

“So,” she continued, “it’s nothing else but just continuing the reception of the Second Vatican Council. Because the council is not yet implemented everywhere, in a way. So that’s the way to understand it.”

“The other way—which is also an easy way—referring to our logo,” Becquart said, “is highlighting the three key words: Communion, participation, mission.”

“And,” Becquart continued, “we can say synodality is a way to help the Church to become more missionary and more participatory. So synodality is the way God is calling the Church to be today to better exercise our mission.”

One supposes it is not impossible that we should at last receive a real answer to the question in the series of meetings taking place until 2028.

Which brings us to the next multinational corporation-like problem facing the Church on synodality: “Death by meetings.”

A new survey in the U.S. shows that 76 percent of members of organizations say they feel “drained” on days with several meetings, with 78 percent saying meetings keep them from actually accomplishing their assigned work.

Anecdotal evidence amply attests how much tension meetings also cause in businesses – and Churches – as workers feel there is an “expected outcome” even when there is none stated and especially when one is explicitly denied. Meetings also tend to be dominated by those few people who actually love those things and embrace the opportunity to finally speak about their feelings on any matter, agenda be damned.

Most people don’t like meetings, even the necessary ones, and some folks go to lengths to avoid them. Creating (or pleading) a scheduling conflict, finding a need to get some work done urgently, even burning a sick day, are all time-honored and battle-tested tactics of meeting-avoidance.

Becquart, however, told Vatican Media it will be difficult to avoid this coming round of meetings.

“It’s very important if we want a synodal Church to implement synodality in Catholic schools, in Catholic universities, in youth ministry, in charities like Caritas. And they are already very involved in the Synod and the implementation, religious communities that also have really taken up this call for synodality,” she said.

You have been warned.

Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome