Commentary: Giving thanks for trials – and for providence

Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles at the USCCB’s fall meeting in Baltimore, Md., Nov. 11, 2019. / Christine Rousselle/CNA

Denver Newsroom, Oct 20, 2021 / 14:00 pm (CNA).

The upcoming gatherings of Catholics for a synodal process are important opportunities for outreach, support, and communication, according to Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference.

“The Holy Father has called for the local churches to hold inclusive consultations with the People of God as part of the synod,” Gomez said Oct. 20. “We face a challenge after over a year of being physically distanced within our communities because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This synod is an opportunity to meet the immense and important request of the Holy Father to engage in dialogue to better understand our call to holiness and feel the responsibility to participate in the life of the Church.”

A synod is a meeting of bishops that aims to discuss a topic of theological or pastoral significance, in order to prepare a document of advice or counsel to the pope.

“Outreach, communication, support, and encouragement are vital in order to be missionary disciples,” Gomez continued. “As is with the nature of the synod, I hope we will learn as we ‘journey together,’ and I pray that the process will enrich and guide the future path of both the local Church as well as the universal Church over the course of the next two years, and beyond.”

The Synod on Synodality, opened by Pope Francis earlier this month, is a two-year, worldwide undertaking during which Catholics will be encouraged to submit feedback to their dioceses.

Synodality is generally understood to represent a process of discernment, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, involving clerics, religious, and lay Catholics, each according to the gifts and charisms of their vocation.

Father Michael Fuller, interim general secretary for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is leading efforts to share synod-related information with U.S. bishops, the bishops’ conference said.

The U.S. bishops’ conference’s diocesan liaison is Richard Coll, executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development.

“I welcome the opportunity to be a resource to the diocesan representatives as they engage with their local faithful in this most important phase of the synod,” Coll said.

The bishops’ conference is providing tools and tips for local diocesan synod efforts, as well as sharing the preparatory documents prepared in Rome by the Synod of Bishops.

The U.S. bishops’ conference website will provide highlights from the local-level synod and aim to incorporate synodal experiences into its resources.

The opening phase of the global synod process is a diocesan phase expected to last until April 2022. The Vatican has asked all dioceses to participate, hold consultations, and collect feedback on specific questions laid out in synod documents.

In Sept. 18 remarks, Pope Francis said the synod is “not about gathering opinions, no … it is about listening to the Holy Spirit.” At an Oct. 10 Mass, the pope stressed the importance of using the synod to encounter God and one another. He said he hoped the acts of encountering, listening, and discerning would characterize the synodal path.

One objective of the synod on synodality, according to the preparatory document, is to examine “how responsibility and power are lived in the Church as well as the structures by which they are managed, bringing to light and trying to convert prejudices and distorted practices that are not rooted in the Gospel.”

The Vatican documents ask a “fundamental question” for dioceses and bishops to consider: “A synodal Church, in announcing the Gospel, ‘journeys together.’ How is this ‘journeying together’ happening today in your local Church? What steps does the Spirit invite us to take in order to grow in our ‘journeying together’?”

A second, continental-level phase of the synod will take place from September 2022 to March 2023. The third, universal phase will begin with the Sixteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, dedicated to the theme “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission,” at the Vatican in October 2023.

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Antonio Gravante/Shutterstock

Buffalo, N.Y., Jul 12, 2021 / 17:54 pm (CNA).
Bishop Edward Grosz, Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus of Buffalo, faces an allegation, which he denies, that he abused a then-child in 1990, the diocese announced Monday.Bishop… […]

St. Paul, Minn., Mar 6, 2019 / 06:00 am (CNA).- At a time when, to many Catholics, politics in America seem at odds with faith and morals, Catholics in Minnesota gathered last month to demonstrate their active role in the legislative process.

On Feb. 19, over 1,000 Catholics, hailing from every one of Minnesota’s 90 state senate districts, gathered in Saint Paul for a day-long event called “Catholics at the Capitol.” The event was organized by the Minnesota Catholic Conference (MCC), the public policy arm of the Catholic Church in Minnesota.
 
MCC Executive Director Jason Adkins described the day as “a fantastic experience of helping people overcome their misperceptions about politics, their fear of the process.”

Adkins expressed confidence that the day helped participants find “their voice as faithful citizens.”

Following the midterm elections of 2018, Minnesota is the only U.S. state with a divided state legislature: a Democratic majority controls the state House of Representatives, while a Republican majority holds sway in the state Senate. With a newly-elected Democratic governor, advocacy by the MCC has focused on the art of the possible.
 
While meeting with state legislators during the afternoon, Catholics at the Capitol participants were encouraged to voice support for two specific measures, using talking points and handouts provided by the MCC.

Adkins explained that these two initiatives — the regulation of surrogacy in the state to prevent commercial exploitation of women, and a package of bills aimed at providing support to mothers and their children from pregnancy to two years of age — were deliberately selected for the day, because they were thought to be non-controversial in the legislature.

“The main priority of the day was education. We certainly wanted to assist the legislative advocacy around those two issues, but we wanted to pick issues that we thought had a strong consensus behind them.” he said, so that participants could have a positive experience of interacting with their elected representatives.

“We also have recognized that the pro-life political cause has kind of reached a stalemate. If your state is not controlled totally by Republicans, then it’s hard to get any pro-life legislation passed.”

By focusing their efforts this legislative session on proposals like the “First 1000 Days” collection of bills in support of mothers and young children, Adkins said the MCC “wanted to try to break that Gordian knot and propose something that we think may not combat the supply of legal abortions, but it can try to fight the demand.”

CNA asked Adkins if the wave of scandals related to clerical sexual abuse (and reports of episcopal failures regarding the handling of such cases) have had an impact on the Minnesota bishops’ ability to speak effectively on social issues. He said they haven’t noticed any change in the responsiveness or receptiveness of legislators so far.

“But where it has an impact,” he continued, “and it’s undoubted that it does: it has an impact on the bishops’ ability to be effective teachers to their own flock. So that’s the real challenge that we’ve encountered.”

The bishops of Minnesota have not appeared shy about continuing to lead their people in public. During the event, they distributed “Minnesota: Our Common Home”, an “educational resource” published with the approval of the Catholic bishops of the state.

As the title indicates, the text is a localized digest of Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical “On Care for our Common Home,” Laudato Si’.

The local text is significantly more compact than the original, with a word count under 13,000 compared to the encyclical’s more than 40,000 words.

The Minnesota document is presented in three parts: A Crisis of Nature, Ecological Conversion, and Integral Ecology.

The third part builds upon a phrase borrowed from Pope Francis — “integral ecology” — to call for a “consistent ethic of life” — a concept that, despite the controversy it has often engendered among American Catholics, is a core concept within the MCC’s efforts.

“Our belief is that ‘integral ecology’ is a very powerful way of repackaging the natural law: the idea that we have a created nature, and we live among things with a nature, that we must respect their possibilities and limitations, and living in accordance with the way God has ordered them, whether that’s our bodies or the creation we see all around us in the earth,” Adkins told CNA.

Emphasis on ‘integral ecology’ provides a new framework for public advocacy in the state.

“Minnesota: Our Common Home” calls not only for stewardship of natural resources, but also for “an ecological view of the human person.”

The document also underscores “the underlying false belief that we can be God” at the root of social ills such as artificial contraception, the disconnection of gender from biology, and the growing prevalence of assisted suicide and euthanasia.
 
“The bishops don’t take positions on public policy because they want to play politics” Adkins said. “They do it to help identify for Catholics how our Catholic social teaching translates into concrete public policy that [citizens] can choose to take up and support in the public square.”

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