Synod on Synodality, 2024

  “The synod is not over. It’s only just beginning.”   That’s what Alain Faubert, Bishop of Valleyfield, Quebec, said about the recent month-long assembly in Rome in October that concluded the three-year Synod on Synodality process.   The goal of that assembly, the second gathering to bring together clergy and lay people—the first was in 2023—was to “plant seeds,” said Faubert. “Now we have to do something with them to help them grow.”   Faubert will play an important role in seeing that happen. In late October he was elected to the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod to work with other Council members to promote the implementation of the synod’s recommendations. He will also help prepare for the next synodal assembly.   “I am very honored to have been elected,” he said of being chosen at the end of the last synodal assembly. “I want to contribute to the growth of an increasingly synodal Church.”   Faubert comes to the task fr...

  At the end of the Synod of Synodality in Rome, Pope Francis said it was now time for the synodal Church to makes sure all the words that were spoken were “accompanied by deeds.”   Calgary Bishop William McGrattan agrees. As president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the body that coordinates and promotes the Church’s teachings in Canada, he believes the experience was a way to get a jump-start in Canada about how to be a synodal church.   “Now we need to take the recommendations to the various levels of the Church in Canada — national, diocesan and parish,” said McGrattan, who was also a delegate from Canada at the synod assembly in Rome. “We need to work together to make them more concrete and specific.”   Read my wrap-up about the Synod and McGrattan’s commitment for Canada in my article at Canadian Affairs.  

I gathered way more information while in Rome at the Synod on Synodality than could be published in the Free Press. So I published some reflections on the week in my column last Saturday.   About things like how the need for the Roman Catholic Church to be more flexible around the issue of polygamy in Africa may open the door for a broader welcome for LGBTTQ+ people in Europe, the U.S. and Canada.   About the Canadian connection to Conversations in the Spirit—the new way Catholics around the world are being encouraged to be synodal with each other. (It’s called the “Canadian method.”)   About how the canonization of a new saint from Canada on the Sunday of the last week of the synod might have caused Canadian women advocating for greater leadership roles in the Church to shake their heads. ( Marie-Leonie Paradis of Quebec was known for her for her devotion to doing domestic chores for priests — things like cooking, cleaning and laundry.)   About the role play...