Synod revisited: The view from Region 16
A year ago, I wrote about the opening of the global Catholic Church’s “synod on synodality” — the call of Pope Francis that we be a #listeningchurch in order to discern the work of the Holy Spirit. The process is about at midpoint, when participants’ feedback has been synthesized by national bishops’ conferences.
According to the Vatican’s synod office, between 1% and 10% of the Catholics in any given country participated in the synod. In the U.S. it was 1%, which means that, generously, 700,000 Catholics attended an in-person or virtual synod gathering, or responded to an online survey.
The national report for the U.S. is well done and an interesting read. At https://www.usccb.org/synod you can find reports from each of the 15 geographic regions into which dioceses in the United States are organized, plus, a synthesis of “Region XVI” — a legal fiction representing 112 non-diocesan entities that also submitted reports. It included 20 congregations of Catholic sisters, and national organizations like the Catholic Health Association and New Ways Ministry, an advocacy and outreach organization for LGBTQ Catholics. Much to my delight, under the category of Peace and Justice within the fictitious Region XVI, a Springfield community organizing entity, the Faith Coalition for the Common Good, was slotted in alongside groups like the Catholic Climate Covenant, Pax Christi and the Ignatian Solidary Network.
Earlier column:Synod is funny word, transformative event
I don’t know how the process went for all these groups, but I have personal experience with how much passion, energy, and focus my Dominican sisters and our associates put in to making our listening sessions happen. Vicariously, I know that at least as much care was given to the process by FCCG.
It was really satisfying, then, to see echoed in the Region XVI report and in the national synthesis many of the concerns raised in our local listening sessions. Under the heading “Enduring Wounds,” the national report included these subheadings: sexual abuse, pandemic, liturgical divisions, LGBTQ, polarization and marginalization within the Church.
The Region XVI report also articulates a desire that Eucharist not be “weaponized” and that the hierarchy recognize “the centrality of women’s unparalleled contributions to the life of the Church.” Synod participants said this might include Church leadership, preaching, and ordination to diaconate or priesthood, noting ordination for women was not about solving the priest shortage, but “a matter of justice.”
Sister Nathalie Becquart, deputy director of the synod office, calls this global effort the largest consultative process in the history of humanity. Probably so! The Vatican online survey alone gathered 22 million responses.
More:Sister Beth Murphy, OP: A Mother’s Day litany
Now that reports from 98% of the world’s dioceses are completed, the next step requires the bishops, organized into seven continental groupings (ours is the U.S. and Canada) to create working documents that will be synthesized further into the final working document to be discussed when the bishops gather at the Vatican this time next year.
If you’d like to read more of the U.S. diocesan synod reports, including the one from the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, you can find them aggregated at pillarcatholic.com.
But don’t think this is the end of the process. Participants in the synod can rightly feel a sense of accomplishment, though the task is not in any way complete. What has begun, what Pope Francis wanted to do by creating a process that allows the people of God to walk together — literally what synod means — was that the Church learn a whole new way of being church by listening to one another.
The head of the synod office, Cardinal Mario Grech, offered this encouragement: “Precisely because no one in the Church has the exclusive right to the truth,” he said “the consultation of the People of God demands discernment.”
Let the discernment go on!
Sister Beth Murphy is the communications director for the Springfield Dominicans.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Synod revisited: The view from Region 16
