The next step in the Synod process has been reformatted in response to the newest variant wave of COVID-19, Archbishop Bernard Hebda announced in a Jan. 7 letter to clergy. The next consultation event is now the Parish Synod Leadership Team consultation and will take place at parishes Feb. 26.

Archbishop Hebda originally planned to bring together parish representatives in deanery-organized meetings to discuss the Synod focus areas and further hone ideas surfaced during the Parish Consultation process in the fall.

Under the revised approach, those parish representatives will gather in person at their parish as a team Feb. 26 (or alternatively, March 5) to discuss and pray about those same ideas guided by a video prepared by the archdiocese. Feedback shared that day will inform the Archdiocesan Synod Assembly in June.

Therese Coons

Therese Coons

Deaneries are geographic groupings of parishes within a diocese’s boundaries. Much of the content planned for the deanery-level consultation meetings will remain the same, but other parts of the day will be different under the adapted structure, said Therese Coons, the Synod’s director. Now that parish teams are meeting together, she said, the consultation will include the team brainstorming about how its parish might hypothetically implement a few of the ideas, selected by their pastor, that emerged from the Parish Consultation with Small Groups.

Between mid-September and mid-November, 95% of parishes in the archdiocese participated in the Synod’s Parish Consultation with Small Groups, six sessions of small group meetings to reflect and give feedback on the Synod’s three focus areas: 1. Forming parishes that are in the service of evangelization, 2. Forming missionary disciples who know Jesus’ love and respond to his call, and 3. Forming youth and young adults in and for a Church that is always young. For the purposes of the Parish Consultation, those topic areas were further refined into 12 different discussion subtopics, with two subtopics addressed at each session.

In 11 of those subtopics, participants selected, from a list, their top three “ideas for consideration” indicating something that has worked for them in their own faith journeys, and three “ideas for consideration” they thought the archdiocese should prioritize. They were also invited to write a short “My Best Idea” response related to the subtopic.

A small group of volunteers and Archdiocesan Catholic Center staff recently analyzed nearly 69,000 Parish Consultation feedback forms submitted from the sessions, including the short “My Best Idea” statements. Nearly 47,000 of those feedback forms — an average of 68% — included a response to the “My Best Idea” prompt. Participants provided responses in both English and Spanish.

A parishioner of St. Anne in Hamel, Coons said that the data were treated with integrity, with every response coded to a category, and then summarized by category in the final report provided to Archbishop Hebda.

“All of us on the review committee were keenly aware that we are stewards of the feedback, and our responsibility was to prepare reports that accurately and completely captured and reflected the feedback to give to Archbishop Hebda for his discernment,” she said via email. “Through the coding process of the (My Best Ideas), we tried to make this massive amount of feedback as digestible and objective as possible.”

Coons emphasized that each “My Best Idea” was shared with Archbishop Hebda.

“When I read one response which said something like ‘I know you won’t read this,’ I had to smile, as the comment was most certainly read and considered by me and others on the review committee, as well as included in the full report provided to Archbishop Hebda,” she said.

Coons said that as she reviewed the feedback forms, she was impressed by the sheer number of participants and the thoughtfulness of the “My Best Idea” responses.

She noted that her own small group experience “was such a joy.”

“I met people I would not have otherwise met and the table discussions were meaningful,” she said.

Archbishop Hebda launched the Archdiocesan Synod process in 2019 with 30 Prayer and Listening Events that drew more than 8,000 participants and 35,000 comments on the local Catholic Church. In August 2020, he announced the Synod’s three focus areas, which he had discerned from that initial feedback. A three-day Synod Assembly is planned for June 3-5 for participants to discuss and consider the questions posed for synodal deliberation and provide recommendations to Archbishop Hebda. He plans to discern those recommendations and release a pastoral letter in November, followed by a pastoral plan for the archdiocese.