From Your Pastors
Pope Francis is asking us to participate in a Synod with the aim of creating a more participatory and co-responsible Church. The Synod begins at the local level this month with meetings throughout the world. The Diocese of Brooklyn is asking all parishes to engage in the process. The process will eventually culminate in October 2023 with a worldwide Synod in Rome.
The first phase of the process is to establish broad-based listening and consultative sessions that promote a synodal Church; a Church where all the members “journey together.”
This “journeying together” is the practice of ‘synodality’, which is a style of decision making “made through discernment, based on a consensus that flows from common obedience to the Spirit.” The Synod process is to help all in the Church learn how to listen to one another, at all levels of the Church, but in particular to listen to those often at the margins.
The aim of the Synod is less about the content and more about a process. To adopt the language of the Vatican “Preparatory Document”: The aim is not to fill out questionnaires and produce documents, but to envision a future where the entire Church journeys together. The intent is to promote a “synodal conversion”: “to find participatory ways of exercising responsibility in the proclamation of the Gospel and building a better world.”
The synodal process envisions a dialogue between all members of the church through the “grace of inclusion”. A special effort is asked to include everyone whose voice may not always be heard at the center of the Church: “young people and women”, “the poor”, “the voices of minorities, the discarded, and the excluded”… And to do so with an open heart and mind, without prejudice and stereotypes.
Quoting again from the “Preparatory Document” issued by the Synod of Bishops:
“.. faith always emerges as a valuing of people: their plea is heard, their difficulty is helped, their availability is appreciated, their dignity is confirmed by God’s gaze and restored to the community’s recognition.”
Over the coming weeks we hope to share some initiatives to establish some listening and consultation sessions. It will be our way to help shape the future of our shared mission and practice, so that we are a more synodal church; a Church journeying together, directed by the Spirit that was given to all at Baptism.
Fr. Mark Lane, c.o. and Fr. Michael Callaghan, c.o.
