Thank you, Matthew, for this good analysis. Balancing relationship and bureaucracy, the subjective and the objective, will be the very difficult if there are no changes to the institution. Right now there are no channels of communication between all those levels of bureaucracy you delineate. I email my archbishop and he chooses to respond or not. The parish priest declined to meet with me, saying he didn't think we had anything useful in common. The parish members are reluctant to "get into" anything that might be conflictual, and even if we did reach understanding on a question, we'd have no way to communicate it through parish networks or to the Archbishop. The USCCB is not open to communication. Praying is not going to help with this institutional problem. Here I am talking to a guy with a podcast!!! Can you help? Paula
Paula, thanks for your reply and sorry for the really long delay in responding! I think what the working document is envisioning is a structure that can at least try to address the problems you identified, for example, creating avenues where lay members of a diocese or bishop can have a say, or even meet with the pastor. I think the topics I covered in the sequel to this post also become relevant, about mechanisms for accountability, where people can have a voice in saying whether a church leader has lived up to expectations, etc. But I think part of what you are getting at is that the value of what the working document is proposing will depend on people's willingness to implement it and live it out, and as you pointed out, sometimes it can even be lay parishioners who resist implementing synodality, as in your case where they want to avoid conflict. What I hope for is that we can see at least a few places implement something like this, and then it can at least serve as a model that others can imitate, strive for, or adapt. We'll see!
Thanks, Matthew. I think the willingness to implement substantive changes--structural and doctrinal--would be there in a heartbeat if they were Gospel centered. The paralysis we are experiencing due to conflict avoidance I was talking about would not be there if the religion were coherently Gospel centered. We'd have commitment rather than conflict. I think that theologians have to do their work: ala Roger Haight, S.J. in Faith and Evolution: A Grace-Filled Naturalism. Do you think some study of what is happening in congregations remaining in the inclusive part of the United Methodist Church would show the path?
Thank you, Matthew, for this good analysis. Balancing relationship and bureaucracy, the subjective and the objective, will be the very difficult if there are no changes to the institution. Right now there are no channels of communication between all those levels of bureaucracy you delineate. I email my archbishop and he chooses to respond or not. The parish priest declined to meet with me, saying he didn't think we had anything useful in common. The parish members are reluctant to "get into" anything that might be conflictual, and even if we did reach understanding on a question, we'd have no way to communicate it through parish networks or to the Archbishop. The USCCB is not open to communication. Praying is not going to help with this institutional problem. Here I am talking to a guy with a podcast!!! Can you help? Paula
Paula, thanks for your reply and sorry for the really long delay in responding! I think what the working document is envisioning is a structure that can at least try to address the problems you identified, for example, creating avenues where lay members of a diocese or bishop can have a say, or even meet with the pastor. I think the topics I covered in the sequel to this post also become relevant, about mechanisms for accountability, where people can have a voice in saying whether a church leader has lived up to expectations, etc. But I think part of what you are getting at is that the value of what the working document is proposing will depend on people's willingness to implement it and live it out, and as you pointed out, sometimes it can even be lay parishioners who resist implementing synodality, as in your case where they want to avoid conflict. What I hope for is that we can see at least a few places implement something like this, and then it can at least serve as a model that others can imitate, strive for, or adapt. We'll see!
Thanks, Matthew. I think the willingness to implement substantive changes--structural and doctrinal--would be there in a heartbeat if they were Gospel centered. The paralysis we are experiencing due to conflict avoidance I was talking about would not be there if the religion were coherently Gospel centered. We'd have commitment rather than conflict. I think that theologians have to do their work: ala Roger Haight, S.J. in Faith and Evolution: A Grace-Filled Naturalism. Do you think some study of what is happening in congregations remaining in the inclusive part of the United Methodist Church would show the path?