Last fall, Bishop Rhoades announced that he would be convoking a diocesan synod in 2026. I’m sure that a lot of us were left wondering what a diocesan synod is. It’s been literally one hundred years since the Diocese of Fort Wayne – South Bend held a diocesan synod! So this is not something we do too often, even by Catholic Church standards.
The diocesan Synod is a gathering of one representative of each parish throughout the diocese, priests who are members of the priest council (I just missed it by one year!), and other representatives named by the Bishop. This rather large group will meet for two weekends this fall to pray together and make recommendations to Bishop Rhoades about how our Diocese can grow in five important areas.
The Synod will focus on: 1) Evangelization (how we share the truth and joy of the Gospel), 2) Catechesis (how we form disciples of all ages), 3) Spiritual and liturgical life (how we live in relationship with the Blessed Trinity), 4) Vocations (how we respond to God’s loving invitation), and 5) Outreach (how we serve the poor, suffering, and vulnerable).
If you watch or read Catholic news, you might have heard the word “Synod” used in a less than positive context recently. While our diocese has not had a Synod in one hundred years, the Synod of Bishops meets every three or four years with bishops and heads of religious orders from around the Catholic world gathering in Rome to advise the Pope on different matters. Bishop Rhoades has been a member of the most recent Synod of Bishops in 2024.
Unfortunately, some nefarious actors have tried to hijack these Synods to introduce changes to the Church’s doctrine and discipline, and news coverage of the Synod of Bishops has occasionally bordered on the sensationalist (a tendency to which, alas, the Catholic media is not immune just like the secular media). However, none of the dreaded (or, for others, greatly longed for) changes to the Church’s teachings (like the permanence and nature of marriage, priestly celibacy, etc.) associated with these Synods have come to pass. The Holy Spirit really does watch over and guide the Church!
After being our bishop for sixteen years, hopefully we all know that something like that would never be Bishop Rhoades’s intention. So, if you’ve been trained to flinch at the word “Synod” (as I’ll admit I have been), just know that this is going to be very different. We won’t be putting Catholic teaching up for a vote – whether it’s how many persons are in the Trinity, or what constitutes a Christian family.
If you want a secular analogy for what the diocesan Synod will accomplish, you could think of it as a strategic planning process for our diocese – looking at where we currently are and where God is calling us to grow. The big difference, though, is that the diocesan Synod will be lead not primarily by expert consultants, but by the Holy Spirit. In preparing for the Synod sessions this fall, Bishop Rhoades is calling our entire diocese to listen together to the Holy Spirit, and to share the fruits of that prayerful listening with our Shepherd, our Bishop.
When we set out to listen to the Holy Spirit, we need some guidance. So, the Bishop and his team preparing for the Synod have provided us with reflection booklets that we invite you to take home today. The booklets will guide us through praying about the five areas of the Church’s life that the Synod will cover. For each aspect (evangelization, catechesis, spiritual and liturgical life, vocations, and outreach), we have scripture passages, quotations from Church documents, questions to reflect on, and space to take notes.
You will have five weeks to spend time with the questions in your reflection booklet getting ready for our parish consultation sessions on Wednesday, February 14th. We will have one afternoon and one evening session so that as many people as possible can participate. At the consultation session, participants will be grouped together, and everyone will get time to share the fruits of their prayer, and what that time of prayer has showed them about our parish’s and diocese’s greatest strengths and greatest needs.
The priests of our diocese had our consultation last fall at our continuing education days. I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical going into it, afraid of grandstanding, complaining, or negativity. I was very pleasantly surprised. What I and the other priests took away was that we have way more in common than we realized.
That might be surprising, because people tend to think of priests as a homogenous group, but priests are people too, and the divisions that currently plague the Church are seen even more sharply in priests than anywhere else. Numerous studies have recently shown the big differences between priests across generations. And while priests of different generations might disagree about whether climate change or the Latin Mass ought to be big priorities, our time together showed that our areas of greatest concern were largely the same (the family, evangelization, the sacraments, and helping the people we serve to grow in holiness and discover their God-given callings).
This is where our friends the three wise men come in. You might have noticed that they are frequently depicted as being of three different races, representing the three known continents at the time of Christ (Europe, Asia, and Africa). They represent the whole world coming to adore the Lord. Less common in statuary nativity scenes, but present in the Church’s artistic tradition, is the practice of depicting them as three different ages: youth, maturity, and old age. They represent not just the geographical diversity of those called into Christ’s Church, but the presence of people of every age, and the call to those of all ages to adore the Lord.
We are used to hearing about the increasing problem of division in the world, and how that division is also entering the Church. We usually think of that division in ideological terms, but a lot of division in the Church, at least in the United States, is around age, with different generations having different priorities and different lenses for seeing aspects of the Church’s life. The experience of the priests, who feel that division of age particularly acutely, was that this process of listening to the Holy Spirit, and listening to each other, was the best thing we have experienced in making some progress at overcoming that division.
The Church is called to be like the wise men, coming together from all the countries of the world, and all different ages to seek for Christ together. Our Bishop’s invitation to listen to the Holy Spirit and thus to assist him in discerning God’s will for our diocese is an important opportunity not only for our voices to be heard by our shepherd, but to overcome division and live the Church’s mission of unity.
After spending time over these next five weeks praying with the prompts in your reflection booklet (which are available at all the entrances!), we will gather on Wednesday, February 11th to share the fruits of that prayerful reflection. Discussion moderators will make sure that everyone’s voice is heard, and notetakers will synthesize the discussions in a way that respects the inputs and anonymity of each participant. Our parish’s synthesis report will be contributed along with reports from all over the diocese, which the official Synod delegates (including at least one person from our parish!) will use to make their recommendations to Bishop Rhoades.
If you have any questions about this process, or any concerns, or would like to help with our parish consultation, our parish coordinator, Jackie Oberhausen, (will be present at Coffee and Donuts (Saturday: in the parish library) after Mass to answer any questions or provide more information). Again, please take home your reflection booklet today, and please consider dedicating 15 minutes of prayer (or more!) each week to the five themes of our Synod. I am confident that God wants to use the witness of this uniquely faithful parish for the good of our whole diocese!
The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson
Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope
Epiphany of the Lord, A.D. MMXXVI
Father Gregerson 