Becoming a Synodal Church: Issues and Challenges 

I would strongly recommend reading the synod documents if you want to understand it. Your comments reflect some very common misunderstandings of what the synod is supposed to be about. It's not intended to be a once for all democratic forum for changing church discipline and moral teaching. It is specifically about how the Church can become better at the task of listening, and develop structures to facilitate co-responsibility for all of the baptized. People have responded to the listening sessions in lots of ways, reflecting some of the concerns you listed, out of their experiences of being in the Church. A lot of it can be understood as the expressions of pain and frustration in the Church that are being vented in a rare opportunity to be heard in any sort of fashion at all. But they do not get central stage in the synod process and documents because they are secondary to its real purpose. That purpose is to begin a process of reforming the Church so that this kind of needed listening becomes the norm, and conversations can move to these other topics in healthier, more productive ways.

@@bccstmce Thank you for your extremely patronising reminder that I am only a silly little lay-person, and couldn't possibly have the brain-power to understand the Church's lofty motivations. I have actually read tne synodal documents, if you can possibly believe that I might be capable of such a thing, which is exactly why I reached the conclusions about them that I did. But from what you are saying, the real object of the Synodal exercise is not for the Church to actually listen to the faithful, but to "start to reform itself so that it can start to learn how to listen" - or something equally meaningless. So you are in fact reinforcing my belief - and that of many other Catholics - that the Church actually set out with the sole purpose of creating an illusion of some kind of consultative process, while not actually intending to embark on one at all in reality.

I'm sorry you felt that my response was intended to impugn your intelligence. It's clear that you yourself have some kind of injury that you feel isn't being listened to, and it seems that consequently you find it difficult to see anything related to this synod as being in good faith. My own contact with folks who are directly involved in the synod indicates otherwise, as well as the actual content of the synodal documents (not the projections I see people commonly putting on them). The reality is that reforming a global organization deeply steeped in generations of clericalism, towards the listening co-responsible Church that Pope Francis envisions requires more than a year of effort, (part of the reason it has been extended twice since it started). Many U.S. bishops have been icons of resistance to the potential for accountability, but the response globally has not been the same. Have you personally participated in any of the listening sessions? They've varied from location to location with some locations have been hyper-controlled to prevent any real conversation, but the vast majority of people who actually engaged with the process have reported very positive experiences. - Pope Francis definitely wants people to share their opinions, it's just that this particular synod isn't asking everyone's opinion on every random thing they want to complain about. That was never the goal. It has always been about how to do the thing of synodality.

@@bccstmce So, as they say in political circles, it's "talks about talks". Or more like "vaguely considering the possibility of having talks about vaguely considering the possibility of having talks". But you can re-write history however you like: we the people WERE told at the beginning of the Synodal scenario that the main point of the exercise was to listen to the opinions of the faithful. Parish priests banged on about it for a while, haranguing their congregations after every Mass to complete questionnaire after questionnaire about what they thought of all things Catholic. Then from some point a few months later, the Synod was never mentioned again. I don't have any specific injury, as you describe it: I am just fed up of the miraculous entity that is the Catholic Church and faith being owned lock, stock and barrel by deeply clericalist priests, as you rightly describe them, who deliberately keep churches locked tight shut for all but about two hours a week, with no other access to any kind of facilities, so that the great lay unwashed don't stink the place up. (At least, that's the British experience.) As well as a lifetime of being told "Make sure you come to church, so that are more Catholic bums (I believe that you call them 'butts') on seats than those Anglicans have in their Mickey Mouse place over there, but don't get carried away: leave the religious stuff to us priests, who know what we're talking about". And of showing up after the periodic calls for the laity to "get more involved", only to be told "Yeah.... we kinda didn't really mean it. Again." For example (okay - maybe this is a specific injury after all), I used to have a serious alcoholism problem, and I received zero help or support from the Church regarding it, even being formally told on several occasions: "The Church has no mandate or policy for helping with addiction". And I certainly could not in good conscience advise anyone seeking spiritual help for any maladies to contact the Catholic Church about it: the door wouldn't even be opened for them, let alone slammed in their face. Why oh why oh why are the Evangelicals so popular? Because they actually DO stuff.... Back to the Synod, I did indeed attend a "listening" session: only one was held in my fairly large town, which has seven Catholic parishes. Everyone just assumed that this was because the organisers didn't like what they were hearing, and no-one in authority ever contradicted this view. Despite the subsequent PR white-washing, the Synod WAS originally sold as an opportunity for the laity to "have their say", an opportunity that at least some of them embraced enthusiastically. But then the whole process just.... stopped. At least as far as the lay public could see. By any objective measure, the old description of Catholic religious practice as being a requirement to "Pay, Pray and Obey" has been replaced by "Definitely keep Paying, Pray if you think that it helps you, and at the end of the day, we no longer provide enough instruction for you to Obey it one way or the other".

Thanks for sharing about how things have gone in your particular area. I don't think that kind of engagement has been unusual. I suspect that you're right that the implementation of listening sessions was limited because the local hierarchy either didn't like what they were hearing, or didn't really want to participate in the first place. Some have just made a token effort to comply with the Vatican's instructions. In your earlier comment you mentioned the surveys that were used. The instructions for the listening sessions permitted, but categorically discouraged surveys because Francis and the Secretariat wanted local church leadership to have direct human encounters with people like you, and you're a first hand witness to both the resistance, and the need for this bigger process of conversion. It's interesting that it seemed to you that there were the listening sessions, and then the synod just stopped. It hasn't stopped. I think the organizers in many places have done a poor job of communicating to people what is going. The culture that produced this problem is part of what the synod is trying to address. Since the initial phase, there have been two phases of consolidating the input from those sessions, first at the levels of bishops conferences, then in continent based groups. Dioceses have differed in how well they've communicated this to their members, but it seems to me it's been pretty weak all around. If you are interested, you should be able to find the documents from those syntheses on your diocesan website. Part of what came of these previous phases was the decision to include a large number of laity, not just as consultors, but with votes in the October session. According to the early designs, the synod process isn't over until the October decisions have been brought back to the local churches for further discussion and discernment. What exactly this will look like has not been determined yet, but it seems these processes should take place between the two sessions in Rome and I would be surprised if it doesn't involve reengaging the local people. I can understand and respect your frustrations and pessimism. For me personally, I find a certain amount of hope in the vision of a synodal church, and want to encourage people to keep an open mind and seek opportunities to get involved, recognizing that solving big problems requires a lot of patience.