A listening session with a bishop

The Holy See's announcement of a new synodal process which includes intra-diocesan consultations reminded me that I once sat in on a listening session with a bishop.

 Pope Francis seems to be capturing the attention and the imagination of Catholics with his announcement of a new three-part preparatory phase for a 2023 synod on synodality in the church.  Massimo Faggioli considers that this development could become  "the most important ecclesial event in global Catholicism since Vatican II".  Jack provides a good summary and some commentary here at NewGathering.

The Holy See has announced that, before the bishops gather in Rome in 2023, each individual diocese must undertake a consultation phase, to begin this October, in which each diocesan bishop meets with the baptized in his diocese to get their input.  After those diocesan sessions, the dioceses' inputs are consolidated at a national level; and then the bishops are to meet as continental groups to further discuss the topic at hand.

Much more could be said about each of these phases.  For the purpose of this post, I'd like to focus on the initial, diocesan phase.

I'll confess that my initial reaction, upon hearing that Francis is calling for consultations in each diocese, was cynical: that bishops may be tempted to "stack the deck" by filtering out of the process any voices which don't reinforce their predetermined agendas and conclusions. 

But then I remembered something which softened my cynicism.  I have seen diocesan consultation at work, at least once.  It must have happened at least six years ago, because Cardinal George, who died in 2015, was the bishop who consulted the faithful of our diocese.

I don't recall the circumstances which led to George initiating that consultation.   I don't believe it was to prepare for a synod.  It may have been pursuant to something the national conference was doing, or it may have been George's initiative just for the Chicago Archdiocese.

The topic of that meeting wasn't synodality; it was the clerical sexual abuse of minors.

I was invited because our parish staff had been invited.  It seems this particular consultation was to be with parish staffs from our local suburban area.  My vague recollection was that George wished to meet with a variety of stakeholder groups.  

(If he met separately with deacons, I don't think I ever heard of it.  At any rate, I never was part of a diaconate consultation with George on the problems of clerical sexual abuse.)

My recollection was that this particular consultation was pulled together pretty hastily.  Someone from our parish office reached out to me that morning (it may even have been early afternoon) to ask if my wife and I would be interested in attending the event later that afternoon, at a parish a couple of suburbs over.  We decided to attend.  

As I recall, a few parish staffs, including ours, were fairly well-represented at the gathering. Other parishes had only one or two members there, while others had none at all.  The attendees ran the gamut of parish staff: clergy, music directors, religious ed directors, human concerns directors, various coordinators and parish secretaries.  

I describe this to make my first key observation: this was not a hand-picked group selected to arrive at a predetermined outcome.  The invitation, as best as I can recall, was extended to all parish staff in our suburban area, and those who were able to come, did.  

In point of fact, if George had wanted to put his thumb on the scale by way of selecting only friends and sycophants, parish staff members likely would not have been the stakeholder group he would have reached out to.  The parish staff members around here tend to be fairly progressive.  I don't remember many staff members I've known over the years losing much love for George during his tenure.  

The evening began rather conventionally: someone led us in prayer; someone from the host parish welcomed us; someone from the archdiocese explained what these listening sessions were about.  

And then, pretty quickly, the floor was yielded to us, the participants.  Whether there were some questions to stimulate thought and conversation, I don't clearly recall, but everyone had a chance to speak up.  A variety of opinions and points of view were offered.  As may be expected for this topic, many of the opinions were strongly held and emotionally expressed.  

During this part of the evening it came to light that at least a couple of the attendees had been, as minors, victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy.   They shared their stories of being abused.  One of them, as I recall, had not publicly shared her story of abuse until she spoke up during that session.  Their witness was riveting, and wrenching, and dismaying, and made me feel almost physically ill.

The juxtaposition of these victims' circumstances made an impression on me: despite being abused by clergy, not only were these survivors still affiliated with the church, but actually were serving the church as staff members - essentially as ministers.  I wasn't - still am not - completely sure how to understand it.  I am open to the possibility that it is a sign of grace.

I don't recall anyone at this session seeking to minimize the problem of abuse, or to defend the indefensible.  Some of the folks who spoke up were quite angry about clerical abuse: that it happened, that it had been covered up, that abusers had been reassigned to other parishes where they abused again.  They didn't stay silent - they said what was on their minds and in their hearts. 

George sat and listened attentively.  He didn't interrupt; he didn't grow defensive; he didn't argue with anyone; he didn't seek to discredit anyone's views or opinions.  My impression was that he was there to learn what was on people's minds.

That is my second key point: George didn't try to steer the people to an institution-friendly view.  To his credit, at the listening session he mostly listened, seemingly with an open mind.

I don't know if NewGathering readers knew Cardinal George.  I had interacted with him a very little bit over the course of his years in Chicago, and of course I knew whatever the mainstream media reported about him.  I was one of his clergy, one of many.  I am sure he could not have remembered my name on the rare occasions we met, which was a good thing for me - it meant I wasn't a troublemaker.  Although I didn't know him well, I'd like to think I had the measure of the man.  He was, in some ways, an old-school prelate: very much a hierarch.  In the normal course of running the diocese, he had strong and inflexible views, which he didn't hesitate to express.  He wasn't particularly collaborative in dealing with the deacons: he was the boss and we were the subordinates, and it was his way or the highway.  He didn't suffer fools gladly.  He would get impatient whenever his clergy didn't know things he thought we should know (which, in the case of deacons, was frequently!).

I offer this very brief character sketch to impress upon the reader how notable it was that, on this evening, George simply sat and listened, and didn't offer any corrections (among the priests of the archdiocese, it was a witticism to refer to him - only behind his back - as "Francis the Corrector").  Silently listening to subordinates, some of whom said provocative or controversial things, would not have come naturally to him.

At the end of the evening, George thanked everyone for their participation and contributions.  He said a few words reiterating the church's determination to root out sexual abuse, and that the church's first concern on this topic was the well-being of victims.  He asked a member of his staff who was with him that evening to buttonhole the two abuse survivors before they left, to offer opportunities for one-to-one additional sessions.

I don't know whether anything came of this particular session.  George himself did not have a spotless record when it came to abuse occurring under his watch; he failed, on at least a couple of notorious occasions, to uphold the standards he had led the charge to put into place in Dallas back in the early 2000s.  He also handled some other accusations by the book, so his record was a bit mixed.  We saw a side of him on that evening in which he seemed sincerely to care about the victims and to wish to tend to their well-being. 

I offer this anecdote in case it may serve as as a sign of hope for anyone inclined to be cynical, as I was at first, about the prospects of the diocesan consultations leading up to the 2023 synod of bishops.  On the evening I attended a listening session, I thought the bishop really was listening.