Synodal Puns

I have volunteered to be part of the world-wide Synodal process at my local parish. We had a webinar from our archdiocese (Seattle Archdiocese) I’m excited to go through this process. The Pope wants to turn our church to a listening church by hearing from EVERY parish in the world. It’s the first time in history of this magnitude that an organization is taking up this process. The message we received in the training was that the Holy Spirit will be asked to be in charge of each listening session. As leaders and listeners, we will hear the answers to these two questions from as many various baptized people:

1. How is this “journeying together” to announce the Gospel happening today in our local parish?

2. What steps does the Spirit invite us to take in order to grow in our journeying together in the future Church?

I’m excited how hundreds of people during the training were being trained to JUST LISTEN. No judgements. No arguing. No debating. Just listening and acknowledging. And then report what we will be hearing during these potentially tough conversations.

I hope you, too, have a chance to be listened to so that our Church may hear your voice.

Have you heard about this Synodal Process in your church yet? If so, what is happening in your diocese?

It would be cool if the mods could get this to be a pinned post but I was wondering if any of you have taken a look into your dioceses plans for the diocesan synods that are soon to begin. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with synods (obviously many through out Church history) but obviously we’ve seen how these can be sources of disunity and anti-Catholic teaching in Germany. I myself am going to try and find out how to participate as a laity in my diocese so that they can hear from the orthodox faithful and I strongly encourage you all to do the same. However, a lot of the dioceses so far haven’t seemed to put out information on how to participate. The voice of the engaged faithful is increasingly traditional so let’s tell our Bishops want the laity really wants.

https://www.antiochpatriarchate.org/en/page/statement-issued-by-the-holy-antiochian-synod/2495/

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The diocese of the Old-Catholics has existed in Germany since 1873. This Church is stemmed from Catholics who objected to the newly defined dogmas of the First Vatican Council on universal papal primacy of jurisdiction, papal infallibility, and the Immaculate Conception. Because they denounced these Council decisions as an unlawful innovation, the German opponents called themselves "Old-Catholics".

On the international level, the Old-catholic dioceses created the "Utrecht Union" in 1889. The bishops meet regularly in the international Old-catholic bishops conference (IBC). President of the bishops conference, without jurisdictional authority, is always the archbishop of Utrecht. The archbishop currently is Bernd Wallet.

Since the decision of the Synod in 1994, women have had equal legal status with men in the Old-Catholic Church in Germany. They have the same access to clerical office as men. The first two women priests were ordained in 1996. Their clergy are not obliged to celibacy and there is no rule concerning the sequence of marriage and ordination. There are also no regulations regarding contraception.

With regard to institutions in general, they are not supposed to use the word "Catholic" in their title unless they first have obtained permission from competent ecclesiastical authority. No matter how devout and theologically orthodox they may be, Catholics cannot just band together on their own initiative and establish any organization or other entity calling itself "Catholic" unless the local bishop gives his approval first.

Countless people have left the Catholic Church over the nearly 2000 years of existence, and in many cases their splinter-groups have disappeared completely over the course of time. These groups tend to die out when the priests who broke away with them pass away. With no clergy to carry on their schismatic worship, the laity who are left ultimately abandon the schism, and this way it simply fizzles out.

The Old Catholic clergy, however, has never been without clergy to carry on the faith, because the former Catholic bishop of Utrecht took part in the schism. And whether he maintains communion with Rome or not, a Catholic bishop always retains sacramental power not only to ordain new priests, but also to consecrate bishops. A renegade Catholic bishop can therefore ordain other bishops, who in turn can o