Archbishop Hebda: Catholics’ participation in Synod small groups at parishes is ‘crucial’

In order to profit from the work completed at the Archdiocesan Synod’s Prayer and Listening Events in 2019 and 2020, Archbishop Bernard Hebda said it’s “crucial” that Catholics participate in the Parish Consultation with Small Groups this fall.

“We’ve asked every parish — 100% — to make sure that they’re doing this because I need to hear from all of our parishes,” he said. “Every parish has a different perspective based on their experience, and every parishioner has a different experience of their parish. I want to be able to hear from them and to get not only their ideas about our focus areas, but also their solutions that they would propose to the questions that we have before us.”

The Parish Consultation with Small Groups is the next step in the three-year Synod process underway in the archdiocese, with the goal of creating a pastoral plan to address the particular needs of the local Church.

Archbishop Hebda is encouraging every parishioner and interested Catholic in the archdiocese to meet in the parish-based small groups to talk about three focus areas that will shape the archdiocese’s near future: forming parishes in service of evangelization, forming missionary disciples who know Jesus’ love and respond to his call, and forming youth and young adults in and for a Church that is always young.

The archbishop identified the priorities through 30 Prayer and Listening Events that elicited more than 35,000 comments from across the archdiocese in 2019 and 2020.

On an episode of “Practicing Catholic” set to air at 9 p.m. Aug. 20 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM, the archbishop said the third topic is probably the one he heard most frequently about at those Prayer and Listening Events.

“After we collated that information, after we had the time to really pray and discern about what would be focus areas for us, it’s an opportunity through the parish consultation (small groups) to go deeper,” he said.

Being able to focus directly on all of the topics is important, he said, as is hearing suggestions from the faithful about how to address related issues.

Archbishop Hebda made his comments in a Practicing Catholic interview with Maria Wiering, editor-in-chief of The Catholic Spirit.

Participants can offer their input, hear from others and share their experience in written form, which will be sent to the archbishop and a team working with him. Archbishop Hebda said he and the team will evaluate the ideas and identify common themes.

“So, in my mind, this is absolutely crucial to the success of our Synod,” he said.

He encouraged Catholics who do not know the dates of their parish’s small group meetings to check the parish bulletin or website, or call their parish office.

To learn more about the upcoming parish small groups, the timing of the Synod and what follows — and to hear the full interview — listen to this episode of the “Practicing Catholic” radio show. It also airs on Relevant Radio at 1 p.m. Aug. 21 and 2 p.m. Aug. 22.

Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes interviews with Allison Spies from the archdiocese’s Archives and Records Management, who describes some favorite items and what makes for a good archival donation, and Father Joseph Bambenek, who discusses the power of prayer and what it has meant for the Synod.