Synod on Synodality
ADDITIONAL DATE: Sunday, June 26 at 3:00 p.m. Registration Required
We’ll discuss these three questions:
- How could the decision-making process and governance within the Catholic Church be improved? How could this be implemented at the local parish level?
- Do you feel supported and accompanied by the Church? If so, please share some examples. If you do not, why not? [Please note that this is not about the parish, but rather about the wider Church]
- Have you ever thought of leaving the Church? If so, why? And why have you stayed?
We hope you will consider and pray about these questions and then bring your thoughts to our meeting. After this meeting, your input will be incorporated (anonymously) into the report that we send to the diocese. We will also be incorporating some of the perspectives and data that came out of our Racial Equity Survey last year.
About the Synod on Synodality:
All parishioners of Saint Cecilia—those in Boston, as well as those from a distance—are invited to participate in something historic: a Synod on Synodality. “Synod” is a word used for a Church gathering, usually of bishops. It comes from two Greek words that literally mean “on the way together.” A “synod,” then, is the Church journeying together, dialoguing together, and discerning together. In a nutshell, we have been invited to share our thoughts on how Church leadership can do a better job of listening to all of its members and invite them into the Church’s decision-making process. This is a discussion about how voices are heard and how they can be better heard.
This is the first Church Synod in history in which the whole Church—both ordained and non-ordained members—have been invited to participate in a particular way of shaping Church life together by discerning and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit. This process is called “synodality.”
There are gatherings that will take place around the world, including the one that will take place at Saint Cecilia, to expand the notion of synodality so that it includes the entire Body of Christ and not just Church hierarchy. The fruit of what we do will become part of a diocesan synthesis—a document that will help inform the discussions the bishops and other delegates will have when they gather in Rome in October of 2023.
In the words of the Church documentation for the Synod, “The purpose of the Synod, and therefore of this consultation, is to plant dreams, draw forth prophecies and visions, allow hope to be nourished, inspire trust, bind up wounds, weave together relationships, awaken a dawn of hope, learn from one another, and created a bright resourcefulness that will enlighten minds, warm hearts, and give strength to our hands.“
