The Synod on Synodality (2021-2024) placed co-responsibility at the centre of Catholic life and mission. Grounded in the baptismal theology of Lumen Gentium and given different emphases and restrictions over the subsequent decades (including Christifidelis Laici(1988), Ecclesiae de Mysterio (1997), Evangelii Gaudium (2013), and The Pastoral Conversion of the Parish Community (2020)) the term co-responsibility continues to be contested, both in canonical discussions, but also on the ground in parish life. The Final Document of the Rome Synod Assembly (2024) references co-responsibility as necessary both for a healthy presbyterate (§74) and for the implementation of a synodal renewal (§77). Recognising the problematic nature of the term seems a useful starting place in exploring its challenges and opportunities. This paper will take a Lived Catholicism approach to explore how underlying ecclesial narratives, practices and structures can distort the mutual understanding of clergy and laity. It draws on two UK colloquia of clergy, theologians, and practitioners from which new questions emerged: why co-responsibility is often experienced as more of a burden than a joy; recognising mutually re-enforcing asymmetries of power; the social and structural nature of deference; the extent to which terms such as co-responsibility scaffold broken systems; and recognising that structural reform without relational conversion produces disfunction rather than synodality. In beginning to unpick these knots, the paper aims to offer new channels of conversation for the synodal Church.