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Synod on Synodality: Here are the delegates representing the U.S. and Canada

Top From Left to Right - Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Bishop Robert Barron, Cardinal Blase Cupich Bottom From Left to Right - Father James Martin, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Cardinal Wilton Gregory / Top From Left to Right - Alan Koppschall/EWTN, Courtesy of DeChant-Hughes Public Relations, Daniel Ibáñez/CNA Bottom From Left to Right - Flickr by Shawn (CC BY-NC 2.0), lev radin / Shutterstock, Georgia Bulletin/Michael Alexander

Rome Newsroom, Jul 8, 2023 / 09:21 am (CNA).

Of the 364 bishops, priests, religious and lay people who will vote in the upcoming Synod on Synodality this October, at least 32 of them come from what the Vatican describes as “North America”— the United States and Canada.

In fact, among the 50 “at large” participants, those who were neither non-bishop participants in the continental stage nor bishops selected as representatives by their episcopal conference, but were specifically tapped by Pope Francis, seven of them are Americans or Canadian. Three of these papal nominees are U.S. cardinals created by the Pope — a group that failed to earn a representative among the five delegates picked by members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last fall.

The only North American “at large” papal pick who isn’t a bishop is Jesuit Father James Martin, a controversial cleric who’s made a name for himself by “building a bridge” to people with LGBTQ experiences but, according to many concerned Catholics, muddling Church teaching on sexuality in the process.

In all, the North American voting members of the Synod vary not only in their ecclesial outlook, but also age, sex, and station of life within the Church. Twenty are bishops, two are priests, seven are women, seven are non-religious laity, and two participants are still only in college.

But despite the significant range in life experience — not to mention vocations and offices within the life of the Church — what all these Americans and Canadians have in common is that they’ll each have a vote during Synodal proceedings aimed at advising Pope Francis on how the community he leads can become a more “listening Church.”

Here’s a breakdown of the voting members from North America.

Two sets of U.S. bishops

In total, 14 bishops from the United States will participate in the Synod. But within the group of prelates are two distinct sets that represent different emphases within the Church in America, and took very different paths to Synodal participation.

Five bishops were elected by their peers to represent the U.S. at last November’s USCCB meeting: USCCB president Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese of Military Services, USA; Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas; Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota; Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.

As their selection by their peers indicates, these bishops, their priorities, and their theological outlook are generally reflective of the wider American episcopacy. Strong voices for religious liberty, immigration reform, and the pro-life cause are among them, as are champions for evangelization and the U.S. Church’s ongoing Eucharistic Revival, as well as a general concern for doctrinal orthodoxy.

Another set of U.S. bishops were tapped in one way or another by Pope Francis, including all five American cardinals created by the current Holy Father. Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of San Diego, and Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., were specific papal nominees to the 2023 Synod, while Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark and Cardinal Kevin Farrell, formerly the bishop of Dallas, are automatically included due to their prior papal appointments as, respectively, an ordinary member of the Synod of Bishops and as the prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family, and Life.

These five American cardinals, as well as Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle, who was also nominated by the Pope, stand for a different set of priorities and pastoral style than the more representative USCCB picks. Cardinal McElroy, for instance, has spoken about the Synod on Synodality as an opportunity to push forward with attempting to ordain women to the diaconate, and to also shift pastoral practice for those persisting in sin away from “Eucharistic coherence.”

The Pope’s American intervention has been described both by critics and fans as a way of stacking the deck in favor of certain outcomes. But Pope Francis’s nominations from the German episcopacy, for instance, might challenge that narrative. One of his three nominees was Bishop Stefan Oster, one of only four German ordinaries to vote to block funding for the successor stage of the heterodoxical Synodal Way. Another was Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, a Benedict XVI-appointed prefect of the curial office now known as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the faith, and himself an open critic of the Synod on Synodality. So while it’s clear that Pope Francis has intervened to reshape the American episcopal influence at the Synod in a certain direction, he’s reshaped other delegations in the opposite direction, possibly indicating the goal of a balance of perspectives rather than a specific outcome.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, a Benedict XVI appointee but also a member of Pope Francis’s advisory body of cardinals, was also tapped by the Pope to take part in the synod. Archbishop Robert Prevost, the American-born recent appointment to head the Dicastery of Bishops, will take part given his curial position. And Archbishop William Skurla of the Archeparchy of Pittsburgh, the metropolitan of all Ruthenian Catholics in the U.S. and Canada, will also participate in the Synod.

In Canada, bishops conference picks include Archbishop Michael Miller of Vancouver, Bishop William McGrattan of Calgary, Bishop Raymond Poisson of Saint-Jérôme-Mont Laurier, and Auxiliary Bishop March Pelchat of Québec. Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the prefect emeritus of the Dicastery of Bishops, Cardinal Michael Czerny of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and Cardinal Gérald LaCroix of Quebec, an ordinary member of the Synod of Bishops, will also participate.

The most controversial choice?

Many of the Pope’s American cardinal nominees were expected; he’s done something similar in recent Synods in 2018 and 2015, after these figures likewise failed to earn a nomination from their peers.

This makes Jesuit Father James Martin Pope Francis’s most controversial North American nominee — though also not a completely surprising pick.

Father Martin is famous for his advocacy to make the Catholic Church more welcoming to people with LGBTQ experiences. The popular media figure wrote Building a Bridge in 2017, was the subject of a Martin Scorsese-produced documentary last year, and recently launched Outreach, a website that publishes articles critical of the Church’s teaching and pastoral approach related to same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria.

Father Martin has repeatedly claimed he holds orthodox beliefs. Critics contend, however, that the Jesuit cleric’s approach isn’t simply welcoming, because it downplays or even undermines the Church’s teaching on sexuality. Whatever his actual intentions, according to these critics, the effect of Father Martin’s advocacy has been to sow confusion in the life of the Church, and to also usher people back into the Church under a false pretense — that it will change its unchangeable teaching on the nature of sexual acts and sacramental marriage.

Those calling for changes to the Church’s approach to LGBTQ issues have long viewed synods as an opportunity to exert pressure, even resorting to political-style lobbying in the lead up to the 2018 Synod on Young People. With Father Martin among those inside the Synod room and voting this time around, it seems like such tactics will be less necessary.

Youth and women, but representative?

A guiding principle in expanding Synod voting to non-bishops was to include more women and young people. In fact, half of the non-bishop participants — who amount to 21% of all voting members — were intended to be women, and half were intended to be young adults.

This comes through in the North American non-bishop delegation, which includes 10 people who were picked by the Pope from a larger list of participants in the continental phase of the Synod.

Three of the ten, all from the U.S., appear to be young adults. Father Ivan Montelongo is a priest of the Diocese of El Paso, who was ordained only three years ago. The young priest, who was the point person for the synodal process in his diocese, is active on Twitter, where he frequently likes and retweets from figures like Chris Lamb and Austen Ivereigh, and publications like the National Catholic Reporter and America magazine.

Julia Osęka, a Polish national, is an undergraduate student at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where she participated in synodal proceedings as a part of the local archdiocese. A physics major with a theology and religious studies minor, Osęka has described herself as an “active feminist in the Church” who aspires to be a physics teacher one day.

And Wyatt Olivas is an undergraduate at the University of Wyoming, and a member of the Diocese of Cheyenne, where he’s served as a catechist and music minister.

In addition to Osęka, North American women participating in the synod include Cynthia Bailey Manns, an Africa-American who serves as the director of adult education at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community in Minneapolis, a parish that has run into problems before due to its illicit liturgies and controversial “pre-Mass” lay sermons from the pulpit, including one instance in which a same-sex couple talked about their partnership and having a child through IVF and surrogacy.

Catherine Clifford, a theologian at St. Paul University in Ottawa, will also be a voting member. Clifford recently co-edited the Oxford Handbook on Vatican II with Massimo Faggioli, and focuses on ecclesiology, Christian unity, and synodality. She previously said that in order for issues of doctrine and discipline like “expanding the roles for women” and having married priests,  “the style of the Church’s governance has to change.”

Other women include Sister Chantal Desmarais, a habited Canadian religious who does karate and plays hockey; Sister Leticia Salazar, the chancellor for the Diocese of San Bernadino in California; and Linda Staudt, a retired Catholic schools administrator in Canada. Canadian Sister Elizabeth Davis will be participating in the Synod not as a non-bishop selectee, but as the head of the Sisters of Mercy of Newfoundland.

The expansion to non-bishops voting members has certainly generated significant buzz, but it remains unclear if the process will necessarily be more representative of the People of God by including Catholic academics, diocesan workers, and staff members of atypical progressive parishes. One of the other two North American male non-bishop participants, Richard Coll, the director of the USCCB’s department for justice, peace, and human development, seems to fit a similar pattern. The other, Sami Aoun, a Maronite professor of political science in Canada, can perhaps be described as more representative of the typical person in the pews.

Questions remain about the make-up of the Synod body, and what it is truly representative of. Arguments have already been leveled that the process is a clear reflection of God’s will manifesting itself in His people, despite low levels of participation by ordinary Catholics, while others contend it appears tilted toward a predetermined final product that seems ideologically imbalanced. But at the end of the day, whatever synod participants vote for or against, Pope Francis will have the ultimate say.


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11 Comments

  1. In the title, the more accurate term is clearly not “representing,” but probably “representative of”—as in possibly a cross-section and nothing more parliamentary.

    More to the point, the confusion of mixed synods–both ordained and laity–is that they conflate consultation with governance, responsiveness with responsibility, baptism with ordination, and likely the deposit of faith with the zeitgeist. In the more seasoned secular world, conflict resolution efforts involving both stakeholders and governance are more credible and successful when they still maintain necessary distinctions and clarity. So, yes to bridges, but not to homogeneity, and–with James Martin in mind–binary/complementary sexuality, but not anti-binary homosexuality/ gender theory.

    Institutional architecture: a chance to articulate creative decision-making “structures,” butt not for elementary finger-painting pointing toward the replacement of moral theology and “judgments” with merely parliamentary or even administrative “decisions”.

    By bracket creep, the evasive “who am I to judge” now becomes the politicized “who are you to decide”!

  2. The Pontiff Francis, and the six men pictured in the photo, seem to be sleep-walking together, detached from the reality of The Word Made Flesh.

    It seems that they “walk together” to the destination lamented by Jesus: “But if the salt loses its savor…it is good for nothing, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

  3. If the purpose of this synod is truly to have a more “listening” Church, they would do well to listen to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which explains the teaching of the Church without bowing to any group. One listens and then explains the teaching of the Church, which is not subject to change based on anyone’s listening. It is what it is, period. Do we want to explain to the Holy Trinity that our listening skills have led us to eschew their teaching?

  4. Listen to what comes out of this synod (sin nod) to the detriment of your very soul. If you have valued the Novus Ordo post V2, beware. If historical “norms” have taught us anything when revolutionaries get their say/way, the Mass will be the testing ground for implementing their new and improved manner of “listening” to the faithful. Seek now the higher ground and the way out of this inevitable disaster: find a Latin Mass community. Join. Don’t look back. Your soul and the souls of your loved ones are worth it. Blind allegiance to a Rome that seems more and more like the embodiment of what Our Lady of Lasalette warned us about, i.e. “Rome would lose the faith”, can no longer be justified. Pray for the Pope, yes. Follow the Pope like a mindless zombie as he departs from Catholic Truth? NO.

  5. Alleluia! Finally we have voting lay delegates. This truly is a long overdue implementation of the much lauded Vatican II retrieval of the much ancient church set-up of polity and governance. In that original context in serving Christ, the Church, and the world, the gifts and dignity of the majority lay people were duly recognized and celebrated. Though minuscule, this is a good start. We have to realize that the Church is made up of 99% laity and only 1% ordained.

    • The Church is not a democracy, it is a hierarchy with Jesus Christ at its head. And why all this celebration of the practices of the Ancient Church? Pope Francis has said in response to the TLM that the Church is like a bicycle; always moving forward. Certainly the same philosophy applies to those looking so fondly back to the Ancient Church.

      But if we are headed back to the Ancient Church, perhaps you’d also endorse women deacons? If so, then obviously those women deacons will not be allowed to teach the men in Church, only the other women in private ministry at home, just like in the Ancient Church. Also, just like in the Ancient Church, we’ll return to strict gender segregation during Mass with women placed in the back with the children? Oh, also chapel veils will be expected, just like in the Ancient Church. Cover up that hair, ladies, and please no dresses above ankles.

    • We also have to realize that flocks are made of 99% sheep and 1% shephards.

      Otherwise, why didn’t the Apostles just listen to the “lived experiences” of all those Gentiles! There were clearly so many more of them than Apostles, and each with their own experience of God.

  6. As a a lay person myself, I done think lay people belong in the midst of this. I am a woman and serve in a church ministry, in which I am extremely happy. I dont feel second class nor do I see the need for women priests. I am well educated ( Masters Degree) but have no deep knowledge of theology. I am quite certain the average layperson does not have it either. What on earth are they doing voting?? That the laity outnumbers the clergy begs the point. There are many sheep but only ONE shepherd. If this bunch votes for women priests, gay marriages, communion for non-catholics and other nutty stuff, its certain many of us will take our wallets and go where heresy is not practiced. In my opinion, nothing good will come of this synod, as nothing good has come out of the German synod. Creating an expectation on certain issues in many people will either force a change, or if the expectation is not met ( as in the birth control issues decades ago) there will be extreme angry pushback at the very least. None of this tension is good for the church, which would have been better off standing by traditional church teaching.

  7. WHat a great group of Secularists that will do their best to change the Catholic Church and its teachings and foundational principles. They will do so under the guise of the “Holy Spirit” and will ensure that the Laity at large will continue to splinter by having more leave for Tridentine (extra-ordinary) Mass and original teaching of the Faith while others will continue in a new secular-religious faith with its underpinnings in “social justice, DEI and what ever else those in charge can think of to dismantle Christs teachings and His Church built upon Peter the Apostle, the Rock. Dont dismay, the Church as Christ started it and Peter and the original Apostles developed it will be intact, albeit smaller but more fertile and fruitful. This Synod is going to be a turning point for most if not all Catholics, it will move the needle for many and unfortunately not in a good or positive or Holy way. IMO

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