As vice president of the Catholic Association of Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers (CADEIO), I am asked to represent our organization each year at the annual meeting of the Episcopal Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers (EDEIO).
Both organizations are national networks of diocesan officers assigned by the bishops of both the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches to encourage the search for wider visible unity among Christians and collegial relationships with members of other religions. Other Christian denominations have similar organizations of their ecumenical and interreligious officers as well.
The annual EDEIO meeting is an opportunity for all to network with one another and invited liaisons, like me, from other Christian denominations. At the meeting Jan. 10-16, the president of EDEIO, the Rev. Lynne Bleich Weber from the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, N.J., and I will give a presentation on the Continental Synod Zoom Conversation that took place last year, of which we were both participants. I will also give an overview and update on the Catholic Church’s worldwide Synod on Synodality at the gathering.
Just as I was preparing my notes for the presentation, a request was issued by the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops that all dioceses across the United States hold additional listening sessions in the next few months. In a letter dated Jan. 2, 2024, Bishop Daniel E. Flores of the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas – the chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on doctrine and point person for all things synod related – requested that “each diocese hold 2-3 listening sessions regarding the guiding questions” supplied by the synod secretariat.
The two questions being posed for national discussions: “Where have I seen or experienced successes and distresses within the Church’s structure(s)/organizations/leadership/
life that encourage or hinder the mission?” and “How can structures and organizations of the Church help all the baptized to respond to the call to proclaim the Gospel and to live as a community of love and mercy in Christ?”
Bishop Flores added, “We are encouraged to continue ongoing engagement with the People of God in the dynamism of a synodal style.”
What struck me first was the ecumenical nature of the second question, which was not just directed toward Roman Catholics but to all the baptized!
These questions were comprised from four questions compiled by the synod office. They are: “How can we enhance the differentiated co-responsibility in the mission of all the members of the People of God?”; “What ways of relating, structures, processes of discernment and decision-making with regard to mission make it possible to recognize, shape and promote co-responsibility?”; “What ministries and participatory bodies can be renewed or introduced to better express this co-responsibility?” and “How can these relations be creatively articulated in order to find ‘a dynamic balance between the dimension of the Church as a whole and its local roots?’”
This new phase of the Synod on Synodality is a lead-up to the October 2024 meeting in Rome. It asks that dioceses in United States submit a three-to-five-page summary of these new listening sessions that will take place regionally, then nationally, in order to comprise a national report to be sent to the Vatican synod office by May 15, 2024. This new round of listening sessions is meant to reach a wider representation of the Catholic community in the United States and worldwide. The first round of listening sessions last year only represented around 1% of Catholics worldwide.
Julia McStravog, the U.S. bishops’ senior adviser on the synod process, said of the new round of listening sessions that dioceses throughout the country “will ultimately decide how to implement what we ask of them.” She added that each diocese sets up its own local synod structure. The outcome will be “dependent upon how the dioceses choose to go about it,” she added. Earlier, Ms. McStravog explained, “We really didn’t want the USCCB to be the center of attention; the people of God are the focus.”
U.S. bishops want to hear from the “voices that may not have been heard in earlier stages of the synod” or from “other groups that were underrepresented in your diocesan consultations.” Two of the identified groups being targeted for greater participation in the listening sessions are the poor and migrants. Interestingly, two other groups that were identified as underrepresented are both priests and deacons.
Father Joseph D. Wallace is diocesan director of Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs and pastor of Christ the Redeemer Parish, Atco.
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