VATICAN CITY — Hesitation and resistance to the Church’s synodal journey can be addressed with clearer explanations, better training and more hands-on experience of what synodality is, bishops representing North America said.
“A very clear takeaway is the need for more formation in synodality, including its meaning, its methods and its spirituality,” Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said.
“Synodality is often presented and perceived by many as a cumbersome and complicated process with language and terminology that is unfamiliar to most Catholics. Unless we can simplify how synodality is presented, it risks becoming the exclusive domain of specialists or ‘the initiated’ rather than a way of simply living our faith together,” he told Catholic News Service.
Archbishop Coakley was one of a number of leaders of the so-called “continental bodies” who met at the Vatican in late June as part of their work during the continental stage of the global Synod on Synodality, which was launched by local churches in 2021.
Representatives from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, the Middle East and North America, together with the coordinators of the continental synodal teams, met privately with Pope Leo XIV and members of the General Secretariat of the Synod June 23-25 at the Vatican. Part of the meeting involved reporting on major developments in implementing, across the different continents, the final document that was released in October 2024.
The team representing North America included: Archbishop Coakley; Auxiliary Bishop Juan Miguel Betancourt of Hartford, Connecticut, who is the USCCB’s bishop liaison for the synod; Bishop Pierre Goudreault of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière in Québec, Canada, who is president of Canada’s Conference of Catholic Bishops; and Julia McStravog, senior advisor to the U.S. synod leaders’ team and coordinator of the diocesan synod teams.
Responding to questions from CNS after their meeting, the three bishops shared the progress they have seen and the challenges that remain in implementing the Synod on Synodality’s final document in North America.
U.S. synod leaders meet monthly and share what they learn with all leaders and teams across the country, Bishop Betancourt wrote. These virtual gatherings “have strengthened relationships among the dioceses in the United States” and provided important “consultation, feedback, synthesis and the setting of priorities.”
Many places in the United States have successfully implemented synodality “in a more intentional way, using the method of conversations in the spirit” and promoting the participation of the laity, religious and clergy “to discern the good and the challenges occurring in the particular dioceses of their provinces,” he added.
“This process has been helpful in guiding pastoral planning, discernment in parish consolidation, assessment of Mass times and the priest’s workload, and more effective resource allocation,” the bishop told CNS.
Archbishop Coakley said the Church in the U.S. is “very accustomed to welcoming and fostering lay involvement, from both men and women, at every level of church life. We have well-established consultative bodies, such as parish and diocesan pastoral councils, presbyteral councils, finance councils, school advisory councils and so forth.”
“It seems to me that we need to continue to deepen our practice of discernment within those bodies and to develop and deepen an appropriate spirituality based on discernment and rooted in prayer,” the archbishop wrote.
The Church in the U.S. is also “blessed with remarkable cultural diversity,” Bishop Betancourt added.
Having “brothers and sisters from countless nations offers an opportunity to continue engaging in multicultural dialogue, broaden participation, practice co-responsibility, and, above all, strengthen missionary outreach,” he wrote.
However, Bishop Betancourt wrote, they have faced two big challenges: “the language around synodality, including the term itself, and second, resistance to participating in the process.”
“Increasing participation by the lay faithful across the global Church, especially among the marginalized or distant, is essential to making the Church’s work more synodal, because all baptized persons share co-responsibility for the Church’s mission, which is rooted in their common dignity,” he wrote. “This approach helps overcome clericalism, dismantle self-referential structures and ensure that the Church’s discernment reflects the diverse spiritual gifts of the entire People of God.”
“Synodality is not parting from Catholic tradition but a deeper return to it,” Bishop Betancourt wrote. “It’s about discerning God’s will, not about personal preferences or agendas, and that the ultimate goal of synodality is stronger evangelization, finding more effective ways to bring Jesus to the modern world and to bring distant or hurting souls back to his Sacred Heart.”
Bishop Goudreault told CNS the Church in Canada also finds it “difficult to engage those who are more hesitant to join the process.”
They are developing an online resource for Catholics, and they launched a network this spring to facilitate “learning, reception and conversion to synodality. This will take time and patience,” he wrote.
“The concrete ‘entry points’ presented on page 20 of the ‘Pathways’ document have been very helpful to us, as some communities still did not know where to begin,” he wrote. “We learn synodality by living it rather than by talking about it.”
In his own diocese, Bishop Goudreault set up a synodal team led by a woman and a priest as “a sign in favor of synodal leadership,” and they organized diocesan synodal assemblies to help him, “as bishop, to clarify pastoral guidelines on a specific issue.”
“Another initiative regarding the appointment of priests to parishes,” he wrote, was inviting priests to engage in communal discernment guided by conversation in the Holy Spirit.
“The first meeting focused on the needs of the diocese, the second on the charisms of the priests, and the third on identifying which priests would be best suited to serve in those communities,” he wrote. “At the end, the priests were open to receiving their appointments because they had taken part in a synodal process.”
Also, “after eight years of service as a bishop, I asked the diocesan team to evaluate me,” the Canadian bishop told CNS, because “synodality calls for accountability.”
“This evaluation process was a genuine opportunity for growth for me, allowing me to celebrate what is going well and to become aware of areas for improvement,” he added.
Archbishop Coakley said Pope Leo “clearly wants to build on the synodal vision outlined and presented by Pope Francis” in his own unique way.
Bishop Betancourt said, “I believe Pope Leo’s focus on synodality is about communion: that all members of the Church feel united with one another as God’s family.”
“In acknowledging and appreciating each one’s responsibility, according to their specific vocation, to build the Church in a missionary way, Pope Leo believes that formation at all levels is essential to address fears and resistance to synodality,” he added.
The pope has “repeatedly made clear that synodality is not about changing doctrine or undermining the hierarchical communion of the Church,” the bishop wrote. Rather, it “serves as a foundation for evangelization, a shared process of listening, discerning, and building relationships, making the Church in the modern world attractive as the beacon of truth and salvation in Christ.”
“It is up to the baptized and their pastor in each local church to be creative and take bold steps to put synodality into practice,” Bishop Goudreault wrote.
“It is a call to discern paths for mission today,” he wrote, inviting those who are hesitant “to trust and listen to the Holy Spirit so that, together with others, we may discern what He is calling us to do in proclaiming the Gospel in today’s world.”
The leaders of the continental bodies will continue to accompany the synodal process back home during this implementation phase in light of the publication of “Towards the Assemblies 2027-2028: Stages, Criteria and Tools for Preparation.”
That text outlines the next four stages: diocesan and eparchial evaluation assemblies will review the implementation of the final document in the first half of 2027; national and regional assemblies of the bishops’ conferences will interpret those evaluations during the second half of 2027; continental assemblies will produce “forward-looking” reports and guidance in the early part of 2028; and an ecclesial assembly of the whole Church will gather with the pope at the Vatican in October 2028.