At the beginning of May, I shared with you that I was poring over the input that had been gathered at the 2019-2020 Pre-Synod Prayer and Listening Events and through the Disciple Maker Index survey. Not surprisingly, your feedback was superb and really insightful. Thank you! I was happy to learn that so many of you share my assessment that there are many indicators of vibrancy in our archdiocese, but we could be strengthened and enriched by a Synod process that would intensively address a limited number of targeted areas.
Archbishop Bernard Hebda
Having reviewed your comments, I am now pleased to announce that the 2022 Archdiocesan Synod will focus on three areas: 1) Forming parishes that are in the service of evangelization; 2) Forming missionary disciples who know Jesus’s love and respond to his call; and 3) Forming youth and young adults in and for a Church that is always young. For those of you who participated in the Synod prayer and listening events, the three focus areas chosen should not be surprising: We heard those three broad themes as priorities time and again. There was an awareness that we would be a stronger Church if we would focus our time and attention on these three areas in the next five years, giving us a foundation for addressing more vigorously some of the other areas of concern surfaced at the prayer and listening events.
While the terminology might be contemporary, the underlying issues are challenges that the Church has faced from the day of the Ascension: How are we to go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them what Christ had taught, and remembering that Christ would be with us always? Archbishop John Ireland, who led our archdiocese from 1884 until his death in 1918, understood the fundamental importance of the great commission given by Christ to the Apostles in Matthew 28, and had the first few words inscribed in Latin above the entrance of our Cathedral to remind us always of that mission. Coming more than a century after the completion of the Cathedral, the Archdiocesan Synod is our contemporary response to that mission and challenge.
I wonder, however, if Archbishop Ireland could have imagined just how great the challenge would be in 2020. He died just before the 1918 flu pandemic began to take its toll. While it fell to him to lead a largely uneducated and immigrant Church in an era when Catholics were sometimes seen as un-American and faced significant prejudices, his experience of the Church had been primarily one of great growth, as reflected in his ability to build contemporaneously the Cathedral and Basilica, two of the most magnificent Churches in our country. Today’s circumstances (an archdiocese emerging from bankruptcy and scandal, showing a decline in Mass attendance and financial support, now exacerbated by COVID-19, as well as significant reduction in the numbers of baptisms and weddings) would have been outside his wildest imagining. He would likewise be shocked, I suspect, to see the steady rise in the percentage of Americans, particularly young Americans, who indicate that they have no religious affiliation. He would surely share in our tears as we witness the ongoing effects of racism, or recognize the ways in which violence, addiction and abuse have impacted so many of our families and communities.
There is no question that we live in an age in which the need for personal conversion and institutional renewal is great. It is in moments such as these that the Church has the opportunity to return to her roots and allow the power of Christ to shine through our weakness. Because of the potential for renewal, I feel blessed to be in this archdiocese precisely at this time.
In addressing the challenges before us, I realize that I have human resources available to me that Archbishop Ireland could never have imagined. Thanks to his ground-breaking vision for our archdiocese, and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that confirmed his instincts, we have extraordinarily creative lay leadership in this local Church. There’s a remarkable foundation of collaboration between clergy and laity that gives me great hope.
Think of the now national impact that the Jeremiah Program has had on young moms and their children, or the hope provided to families in search of affordable housing in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa because of CommonBond Communities. Take a moment to imagine the number of teenagers around our country who have had their faith renewed because of NET Ministries, or university students who have encountered Christ on college campuses because of Saint Paul’s Outreach. I’m the envy of my brother bishops when I speak about the Catechetical Institute or pull out photos of the new Dorothy Day Place or talk about the impact that the Aim Higher Foundation and Catholic Schools Center of Excellence (CSCOE) have had on stabilizing enrollment in our Catholic schools. We’re getting inquiries all the time from around the country about Extreme Faith Camp, the Seven Sisters Apostolate, the Chesterton Schools Network, Women in the New Evangelization (WINE), the Catholic Watchmen men’s apostolate, the Cana Family Institute and the Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota. That all of those initiatives arose in this archdiocese speaks volumes about the types of passionate Catholic problem solvers who have been nurtured in this local Church.
When I reflect on the phenomenal response that we received when we asked the priests and faithful of the archdiocese to come together for the Prayer and Listening Events, I know that those creative problem-solvers are still out there, and I become excited to think about what might emerge from the next steps of the Synod process. The focus areas might seem somewhat predictable, but I am anticipating bold proposals for concrete action. My hope is that through the Synod process we will together be able to discern new and creative responses to a few issues that have challenged, and continue to challenge, this local Church. Even in an era marked by COVID-19 and limited financial resources, the potential is boundless when we all put our heads and hearts together and allow the Holy Spirit to lead.
While the first phase of our Synod process was focused on casting the net broadly to see what was on the minds and hearts of the faithful and thereby determine the topics for our Synod, the next phase needs to be more focused and go deeper. In particular, the 2021 deanery and parish consultations will focus on how we can take action to address those topics. At the deanery level next January and February, we will be brainstorming, trying to surface concrete options for action that are particularly tailored to our archdiocese as we enter the third decade of this century. At the more extensive parish gatherings, scheduled for September and October of 2021, we will go deeper, evaluating and prioritizing those options in a way that will facilitate decision-making at the actual Synod Assembly at Pentecost in 2022.
While it is hard to imagine, we are going to need even greater involvement moving forward. I hope that those of you who experienced the beauty and power of coming together to ask for the guidance of the Holy Spirit and then respectfully sharing ideas will engage others to participate in the Synod process. It’s going to be most fruitful if we are able to have broad participation when we finally get together for our parish consultation with small groups in the Fall of 2021.
I remain committed to making good use of your time and ideas. The parish consultations will concretely determine what will be presented to the Synod delegates when we formally come together on Pentecost weekend in 2022. It will be that experience, based on your insights and discussion, that will inspire and give form to the post-Synodal pastoral letter that I will be issuing later that year on the Solemnity of Christ the King, and ultimately determine our concrete pastoral priorities in the three focus areas.
The pandemic may have required us to change our timeline, but I am already recognizing some blessings that will come from the change of schedule and from what we have learned about on-line engagement in the last few months. I am grateful that we will now have the time to lay some more groundwork for our Synod by offering targeted opportunities for virtual participation and enrichment. The multi-week opportunities (see sidebar) are reflective of the feedback that we received at the prayer and listening events concerning your desire to grow in prayer, your recognition of a need for greater healing in the archdiocese, your thirst for a better understanding of Church teaching in a few targeted areas and your desire to have the Synod strengthen even the bonds you share at home. While they will be offered serially over the next six months so that someone could theoretically participate in all of them, they are being designed so that they would be beneficial even for those desiring to participate in only a single offering.
We are also profiting from the extended timeline to take a look at our internal processes at the central offices of the archdiocese. With the help of a talented team of expert consultants who are assisting us at no cost, we are working to make sure that the archdiocese is going to be organizationally prepared to respond effectively to whatever priorities emerge from the Synod. I am delighted that we now have more time to sharpen our institutional effectiveness and determine how best we can use the human and limited financial resources at our disposal.
There are two areas, however, where the postponement of the Synod has made it a less favorable means for providing feedback. I had initially hoped that the Synod would help us to provide criteria for evaluating the ongoing vitality of individual parishes for strategic planning purposes. I had also anticipated a fruitful discussion of how our parishes are expected to financially support the archdiocese, particularly in relationship to the funding of Catholic schools and ministries that cross parish boundaries (e.g., Latino ministry). Given the financial pressures that have accompanied the coronavirus, it now seems prudent to accelerate those discussions. With that in mind, the Archdiocesan Finance Council and Corporate Board has already put together an ad hoc committee to study the funding questions. As for the parish vitality issue, I will be establishing a joint committee of the Presbyteral Council and Lay Advisory Board to work with our Archdiocesan Pastoral Planning group on this matter. As the work progresses in both of those areas, I will make sure that we have opportunities for broad discussion and comment.
All in all, however, the Synod remains a top priority for the archdiocese and I continue to anticipate great fruit from your generous participation. In the short-term, I hope that you will join me in participating in the virtual programming scheduled for this fall and winter, that you will say yes if your pastor asks you to represent your parish in the deanery consultation, that you will plan to participate in the parish consultations in fall 2021, that you will begin to educate yourselves in each of the three focus areas, and that you will continue to pray that the Synod will bear good fruit in this local Church. Come Holy Spirit, enkindle in our hearts the fire of your love.
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