Mr. Trump, Launch Synodality? Holy Father, Launch DOGE?

President Trump has at least one thing in common with the new pope who soon will lead the world’s Catholics. Particular managerial challenges have been building up for years—in America and in the Church—and now confront both men with a sense of urgency, if not emergency.

The president and the late Pope Francis have addressed key problems with two initiatives that became buzzwords: “DOGE” and “synodality,” respectively. Both terms are neologisms which have invited additional definitions, or at least different reactions, sometimes negative.

We have come to interpret DOGE and synodality as launchpads for a sequence of unusual actions, not as cornerstones for rock-solid policies and galvanizing inspirations.

Both initiatives were kicked off with much fanfare and presented as platforms to showcase transformations, partly because their creators saw a need for quick reforms of substance and style. Another factor: Our “attention economy” demands specific news hooks, an excess of social media posts, and catchy headlines.

But we’re now at the point where each phenomenon needs to be better defined as a structured, measured, ongoing approach. Is it being “made up as we go along”? Is it a chainsaw to disrupt familiar systems and principles of governance? Preferably, neither.

Formulating course corrections first requires a check of the ideas’ original trajectories.

Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, executive order creating the “Department of Government Efficiency” described it in a way quite different from the way it was reported and experienced—namely, as project cancellations and job cuts revealed with shock and awe. The White House text spoke more softly about modernizing technology and software to increase efficiency and productivity, as well as establishment of “DOGE teams” within every federal agency.

In a Feb. 13 Wall Street Journal article, reporters said there were many lingering questions about DOGE’s operations, even the number of its employees and whether DOGE teams reported to their respective agencies or to their scene-stealing leader, Elon Musk. The article affirmed mood shifts such that DOGE “has been tasked with executing Trump’s campaign pledge to slash government spending.”

Implementation of the executive order still requires clarity about the follow-through among administrators, Congress, and other stakeholders. Will this unofficial department remain a battleground for heroes and villains?

The DOGE website has no “About” section, saying only that “the people voted for major reform.” In its “Jobs” section, the site simply says DOGE is seeking “world-class talent to work long hours identifying/eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.”

With Musk withdrawing from daily government work, the budget-slashing endeavors are likely to morph, along with new leadership methods. Political conflicts over short-range and long-range priorities are likely to persist, but they need not carry the baggage of Tesla and X.

In 2021, Pope Francis announced what might have sounded like a semi-routine event—the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2023. But he said the preparations should begin right away, with every diocese holding listening sessions to collect diverse lay persons’ candid opinions about various Church issues (both beliefs and behaviors) which concern them.

This was to be a Synod on Synodality, a term which the Vatican’s International Commission in 2018 defined as “the action of the [Holy] Spirit in the communion of the Body of Christ and in the missionary journey of the People of God,” according to the Catholic News Agency.

Pope Francis ordered that new, inclusive insights connecting bishops with laypeople continue to be generated at the national and continental levels, yielding notes for the Vatican. This genuinely kind pastor, with a passion for welcoming strangers and the marginalized, extended the Synod period through October 2024; this would allow further meetings, some at roundtables, between “bishops and their collaborators,” as reported by a diocesan newspaper.

Last fall, that synod issued its final report—actually a set of recommendations for fleshing out “synodality as essential to the Church’s mission.” This vision included pursuits such as “greater lay participation, mandatory pastoral councils, and continued study on women in ministry and seminary formation,” as Catholic News Service reported.

To allow for painting this panorama, the Vatican announced in March that the synod will now enter a “next phase” for implementation of recommendations, stretching to 2028, when another assembly will be held. The Holy Father died on April 21, and this week cardinals from around the world were in conclave to elect a successor.

According to the Crux Catholic news service, cardinals already have been discussing a wide range of serious questions, including “the value of synodality” and an “immediate priority”—namely “the Vatican’s crippling deficit and its looming pension crisis.”

Wait, what? In 2014, Francis had appointed a distinguished Australian, Cardinal George Pell, to lead the Vatican’s new Secretariat for the Economy. As reported in a Pillar news service timeline that reads like a “true-crime” saga or “deep-state” thriller, the pope directed Pell “to bring transparency and accountability to [Vatican administration, aka Curia] finances after … scandals unfolded during the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI.”

The Pillar noted that Pell in 2015 contracted with the global accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) to audit the entire Curia, “aiming to bring every Vatican department’s budget, assets, and investments onto a single balance sheet.”

In 2016, a surprising memo went out to the Curia announcing that plans for the PWC audit had been suspended. Separately, Australian police announced they were investigating Pell for alleged sexual abuse.

His leave of absence to defend himself left the Secretariat for the Economy rudderless. The long Australian legal process led to convictions and imprisonment, but the country’s Supreme Court unanimously found Pell innocent in 2020. He died in 2023. Meanwhile, Pope Francis took other steps that eased, but didn’t end, the financial crisis.

Returning to our present day, what are leaders of America and the Church to do about their ventures? Both of their populations are feeling polarized and insecure, skeptical of extremes but perceived as impatient. Everyone is playing hardball in all three branches of the federal government, plus political parties and the media.

Optimists around the world, secular and clerical, make statements imploring paths toward unity and hope amid an assortment of dilemmas resembling the game of Whac-a-Mole.

Might it help if President Trump adopts the best features of synodality and the next pontiff considers the best qualities of DOGE? Which traits, soft or hard in nature, should be embraced or avoided?

Such a concept-exchange would be the stuff of future academic dissertations by remarkably interdisciplinary graduate students.

These observations could start the analysis:

As we have seen in American politics, the skeptical masses generally want to believe they’re being told the truth, the whole truth. They accept long-term thinking in many policies, but plans must be clearly defined, results must be measurable, and updates must be comprehensive and comprehensible. A coherent through-line of principles, leading to a deadline for success, also would help.

Sometimes, leaders want to make permanent modifications to how an institution operates. This pursuit needs flexibility and firmness. It must be accompanied by modeling the new thinking they desire and consulting authentically with all stakeholders to win their trust. Society must start to shed its divisive confusion before, not after, our sense of urgency is eased.

Champions fighting waste and fraud, as well as patterns of marginalization and exclusion, must teach and learn about what can change, what can’t change, why, and how. In the absence of official transparency (beyond X posts), news media will dish out scoops and leaks, and social media will swamp progress with negativity, aggression, and doubt. They will fill the gap, or muddy it, if leaders leave a vacuum of clear priorities.

Goals can’t seem performative, manipulative, or skin-deep. The motivation must come from both the top and the grassroots, based on intriguing ideas and shared values, rather than appeals to pre-shaped ideologies or self-determined identities.

On the spiritual plane, calling upon the Holy Spirit to bless all well-intentioned collaborations, secular or religious, is an excellent first step. But remember that, according to the Bible, God speaks in the zephyr, the gentle wind, rather than a hullabaloo. Judeo-Christian culture calls us to replace chaos with balance, and not just in budgets.

Those who want to solve problems and ease polarization should ask for the seven gifts of the Spirit, such as wisdom, understanding, and fortitude (Isaiah 11:1-2). And we should evaluate outcomes in light of the Spirit’s nine fruits, such as love, peace, and patience (Galatians 5:22-23). The Spirit wants all of us to maintain our trajectory, principally toward heaven. We must trust in God’s navigation more than we trust in meetings or images. He is more likely to carry us if we leave our baggage behind.

As Trump and the new pope direct DOGE and synodality into their next phases, they need to hear all-purpose truths from wide audiences keyed to the common good. We In that number have two choices to shape our own spirits. The lesser, random-sounding option is to adopt one of Trump’s favorite phrases: “We’ll see what happens.” The better, bolder saying—attributed to an 1190 collection of French poetry and more akin to a Vatican frame of mind—can encourage us as participants in the action: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Image from Microsoft Bing AI designer.

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