CNA Staff, Oct 1, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).
At first glance, 22-year-old Julia Oseka seems like your average college student. But the junior at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia majoring in physics and theology, a native of Poland, is anything but ordinary. Oseka is one of 10 non-bishop voting members from the United States and Canada who will be at the Synod on Synodality taking place at the Vatican from Oct. 4–28.
In 2022, Oseka became a student leader for Synodality in Catholic Higher Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (SCHEAP), which is a coalition of Catholic universities, colleges, and Newman Centers in the Philadelphia area fostering student voices in the synod.
In April 2022, a large, intercollegiate listening session took place at La Salle University with representatives from all participating colleges and universities and Archbishop Nelson Perez of Philadelphia. Soon after this meeting, Perez and other SCHEAP members selected Oseka as one of three Philadelphia delegates to the synod’s North American Continental Assembly.
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In an interview with CNA, Oseka called her participation in the synod “very humbling.”
“I see it as really a sign that the Church is ready and is open to listen to people — and invite people — to be very active in those big decision-making and discernment processes in the Church,” she added.
The Synod on Synodality will mark the first time a synod includes voting delegates who are not bishops. Nearly a third of the 366 voting delegates were chosen by Pope Francis, including laypeople, priests, consecrated women, and deacons. Fifty-four voting members are women.
Oseka, who calls herself a feminist and has said she dreams of being a physics professor one day, is the only female physics scholar in St. Joseph’s University’s prestigious John P. McNulty Program, which awards scholarships to women in STEM. She told CNA she finds inspiration in her confirmation saint, Thérèse of Lisieux, whom Oseka thinks is “so relatable. She was so young when she passed away and led a heroic life. She’s a doctor of the Church and a great woman.”
Despite preparing for her monthlong trip and taking part in interviews for the media, Oseka has still managed to focus on her schoolwork and spiritual life. “I have been praying before. I am praying still. I’m doing my Ignatian examen daily and trying to pray different forms of prayer as well,” she shared.
Oseka won’t be the only young adult attending the synod from North America. Father Ivan Montelongo, 30, a priest of the Diocese of El Paso, Texas, who was ordained only three years ago, will also participate. So will Wyatt Olivas, an undergraduate at the University of Wyoming and a member of the Diocese of Cheyenne, where he served as a catechist and music minister.
Oseka has said she believes women and LGBTQIA+ people should have greater roles in the Church. She told CNA that during campus-level synodal meetings organized by SCHEAP, she and her peers were touched by the “joys and hardships” that others voiced. And this is when she realized that “there are people in the Church who are underserved.”
“They’re on the ‘peripheries’ as Pope Francis would call that — not a lot of attention or guidance is devoted to those people and young people are part of that group I believe, as many of my peers voiced that, and hope and wish for more spaces for them to be the now of the Church currently,” she explained.
Oseka said she hopes the synod “will facilitate openness to the Spirit.”
“During the discussions lately with other synod participants something that really struck me is that we have to be open to the mystery and immerse ourselves in the mystery that is fundamental for all synod participants,” Oseka continued. “So I really hope that all of us will open our hearts for the surprises of the Spirit and will be brave enough to embrace those surprises.”
“I’m looking forward to what it will bring but I’m sure it will be filled with grace and the Holy Spirit among us,” she said.
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What amazes me about these prophets of doom about the Synod on Synodality with their pessimistic voices, prebuttals, and mischaraterization of the synod is that mostly they go against their stake in the Church as of the 99% Catholics consisting of the non-ordained laity, women, and other minorities. By spreading fear and despair about the synod they inadvertently preserve and even promote the continued hierarchicalism and clericalism of the 1% ordained whose powers have been abused and misused for a long time to the detriment of the 99%. Alleluia for this 22 year old female student Synod delegate.
Let me condense you word salad for you: “I am not a Catholic. I am a modernist.”
Succinct and to the point!
This “‘female student’ Synodal delegate”?
Some have wondered about a parrot for the ideological party line. In any event, Archbishop Perez is a rare bird of the the residually-sacramental Church and certainly old school! He apparently didn’t get the Dallas 2002 memo!…
This is the age of feeling-excluded ecclesiology and microaggression!
Yo, archbishop (top photo), get your hand of the shoulder of this female advocate for the under-served “women and LGBTQIA+ people [who] should have greater roles in the [sociological] Church.”
I have often wondered why these people did not just leave and joined the Church they “feel” they belong to.
List all their gripes and they are being practiced in the Anglican/Episcopalian, Lutheran, etc. So why not just join them and quit whining. It is clear they do not want the Catholic faith.
It is like living in a house you dislike and there’s a house across the road that fits your likes to a T and will welcome you with open arms and yet what you want to do is to ransack your house, smash the windows, remove the toilet and take a hammer to the plaster board so that it will be like the house across the road.
Yes. That’s the equity they aim to achieve
Pope Francis the greater what?
The greater obfuscator?
The greater wrecker?
No wonder she was chosen. She parrots all the vacuous talking points of Francis and his cohorts.
Assuredly, Timothy. She knows exactly what the Holy Spirit is going to say before He says it.
Which will be especially useful in the event He decides to sit this one out.
Even worse, beloved ‘brineyman’.
Dear Julia Oseka clearly understands ‘the Spirit’ in the same careless & presumptuous way that the PF mafia speak, unwittingly misidentifying what philosophers refer to as ‘zeitgeist’ = the motivating energy of secular culture.
This ‘spirit of the world’, drastically contrasts with The Holy Spirit of God:
“What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.” 1 Corinthians 2:12
That is, The Holy Spirit helps us understand Christ’s New Testament teachings & revelations and their explication in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
As opposed to ‘the world spirit’, The Holy Spirit imparts true wisdom and loving obedience to us believers. The Holy Spirit enables us to receive and understand “the secret and hidden wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 2:7). Only God’s Spirit can reveal spiritual truth because only His Spirit knows “the deep things of God” (verse 10).
NB PF & acolytes – that’s NOT the deep things of this material world.
The spirit that Jorge & Julia lay claim to is well known to authentic Catholic thinkers. As for example: a demonic spirit or perhaps Satan in particular, who in Scripture is called: “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11); and “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Satan is: “the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” (Ephesians 2:2).
‘Those who are now disobedient’ is an indisputably appropriate descriptor for many of the favorites of Pope Francis.
So, they can definitely claim to be ‘spiritual’ . . !
Many of Pope Francis’ favorites have expressed a mindset that’s foreign to and opposed to the Spirit of God. They are cossetting our human sinful disposition in an anti-Apostolic spirit of rebellion, immorality, hubris, smart tricks, & even mockery.
They seem ignorant of the demonic spirit inherent of the world of human wisdom, that corrupts basic human understanding as expressed in secular philosophy and worldly wisdom.
Lack of faithfulness, humility, & self-control indicates that the PF factions’ spirit is not The Holy Spirit. May The Passion of Jesus Christ set them free.
Always under The Master, King Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
But also give her credit for being a young person of prayer. I only wonder if many of the very vocal critics are also people of prayer or only critics. Just saying🤗
Come on, dear James, for goodness’ sake!
There are billions of pagans, occultists, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, New Agers, freemasons, and whathaveyou who’re ‘young persons of prayer’.
This synod (same road) of our Catholic Church is for genuine, baptized, Holy Spirit-anointed Catholics – old, middle-aged, & young – not for any-odd-one who gets your non-Catholic, unitarian, ‘young person of prayer’ tick.
The ‘same road’ refers to such as desire to know, love, & follow King Jesus Christ.
Let’s pray that Julia & all the synodalists meet THAT criterion.
Today we celebrate St Francis of Assisi. The Holy Mass first reading is from Galatians 6:14-18; the Holy Gospel reading from Matthew 11:25-30. Both illuminate who should be at this synod & what their priorities must be.
Always in the grace & mercy of Christ; love & blessings from marty
I was wondering about that. She did mention practicing other forms.
Not Yoga I hope. Or is it Hindu Meditation. Or Centering Prayer.
She talks the same parroted rubbish that we’ve heard ever since this was first dreamt up. Yeah invite all Julia just not the trad Latin types and the alphabet soup mafia must give up their sinful ways first before becoming welcomed!
“Oseka has said she believes women and LGBTQIA+ people should have greater roles in the Church.” But they are not Catholic because they do not believe or live what the Church teaches.
I am not in any way supporting this synod idea or the idea that the Church should function as a voting democracy, but I do feel that we must deal with these people who identify with the Church and who openly practice lifestyles contrary to Church morality. We need to educate with compassion. Our many years of poor teaching is coming to roost and we are now paying the price. Perhaps their sins are more apparent than ours, but that does not mean that we are better than they are, or that we should be casting stones at them. We must learn to know them and try to find out why they are who they are. We must teach them the Gospel and help them to want to follow it. But most of all we must pray for them.
Dear James Connor: “But most of all we must pray for them.”
Catholics in general would thoroughly agree with you. We would also agree that there’s no point in self-righteous criticisms of people who’ve chosen to live their lives in breach of Christ’s commands, made clear by His Apostles in The New Testament & in the magisterial Catechism of the Catholic Church.
As with all sins, it’s not the wrong choice itself that is a soul-killer, it’s the defiance of God’s right to command our loving obedience that sends a soul to Hell.
Human beings can be amazingly creative & appealing; but we are never our own God.
You’re right, I think, in recognizing that effete & erroneous faith education has given us a generation immunized against The GLORY of God & ignorant of God’s LOVE in giving us commandments to steer us safely through this deceptive & deadly world.
Let’s keep watching & praying; with the love of Jesus & blessings from marty
” try to find out why they are who they are. We must teach them the Gospel and help them to want to follow it.”
I think that is easily answered. The church has been inutile in the transmission of the faith. The church has sold out to the spirit of the zeitgeist. That is why they think voices and opinions like her has a place in how the church moves forward.
In any case, for a church hurtling towards the ravine, the way forward is actually to step on the break and reverse gear instead of going leadfooted on the accelerator
Amen.
Assuming that peak stupid is early twenties, this is peak Synodaling.
She was chosen for this extended vacation so that Cardinal Müller (and Bishops like him) will have to listen for a month, twice, to spectacularly unqualified people before they outvote him.
“She believes women and LGBTQIA+ people should have greater roles in the Church”. Women aside, why should one’s sexual orientation warrant a greater role? Doesn’t seem thought out. Sounds like an unserious social experiment.
Boldly shameless. Simply astonishing. Mindless.