This letter will go out to about 30 people including those serving on the Canadian and U.S. continental synod committees. It is addressed specifically to those who have potential influence in the nomination or approval process for who will be invited to participate in the General Assembly. While it involves representation for the North American continent, if others from other parts of the world support this letter, we invite you to sign it as well. Thank you for your support.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We are writing to you as a person in the Church who has some influence on the selection process for who is nominated and approved to participate in the General Assembly in Rome. Grateful for your ongoing commitment to synodality, we come to you representing some members of the USCCB’s designated “Region XVI” along with our Canadian colleagues who share our concern. We are profoundly committed Catholics, mostly lay, who represent a range of Catholic organizations doing the service and advocacy work of the Church. Region XVI included leaders of Catholic labor unions, heads of Catholic colleges and universities, college students, religious congregations, and associations of Catholics long dedicated to Church reform. This is the field hospital Church, the Church with boots on the ground. We speak, echo, and amplify the voices of those far from the center of decision-making. We bear the whispered voices now hoping to be heard, the whispers of the Lord (I Kings 19:12).
While grateful to the USCCB for inviting us to participate in the North American Continental Synod, we come to you disheartened when at the end of our “Region XVI” synodal gathering, with more than a hundred of us present, we were informed that our Spirit-guided reflections would not be included in the North American Continental Synod Document due to no one in this group having been invited by a bishop and there being no counterpart to our group in Canada. We come to you representing individuals in both Canada and the U.S. who long for our Church to hear the cries of those on the periphery—a group whose whispers, entrusted to us, echo in our hearts. We come to you with a synodal spirit seeking reassurance that the shared responsibility of ALL the baptized will be present in Rome this October and beyond.
We are proposing to offer our service as you make visible the Church’s commitment to synodality. In paragraph #50 of the North American Continental Synod Document, the bishops acknowledge deficiencies, saying they are “recalculating how can we do the synodal process better.” We offer two concrete proposals for assuring that the voices of the marginalized, the hurting, those frustrated by and yet still committed to Christ’s Church have an ongoing presence as synodality is practiced:
First, to have a representative for Catholics who support reform in the Church who would not otherwise be included as an appointed delegate to the General Assembly of the Synod on Synodality in Rome this October, thus demonstrating concretely the Church’s commitment to “go to the margins” for delegates who represent those outside the “inner circle” of ecclesial influence. (We would be honored to submit a list of potential names along with contact information.)
Secondly, beyond the General Assembly in Rome in 2023, we seek reassurance that the voices of Catholics who seek reform in our Church will continue to be heard and play an ongoing role as North America joins with the other continents in embracing synodal listening and practices.
We remain committed to unleashing the Spirit of synodality, to cooperating and collaborating, to praying and proposing, to listening and learning. We are on the synodal journey with you. We trust you will receive our contributions from the peripheries spoken boldly with love for Christ and the Church, and will kindly respond to us.
If you would like to add your signature to this letter, please fill out the form below.
