The diocese has proposed a listening tour, which church leaders are calling a synodality, because the diocese has a problem – and officials need parishioners to help solve it.
For the diocese, the problem starts with the numbers. The diocese has 76 parishes, nine missions and two chapels. Only 65 diocesan priests, and nine foreign priests, serve those parishes.
The diocese’s leaders, including Bishop William D. Byrne and Rev. Christopher Malatesta, want to restructure where and when Masses are given, a change that will demand flexibility from Catholics accustomed to attending Mass at a set time, in a particular pew.
The changes may mean that Saturday evening Masses are not offered at every church, so parishioners must travel to another church. And that means a mixing of people in the pews. That means new people presenting new ideas after Mass. That means people listening to each other.
First, though, Bishop Byrne and Rev. Malatesta, the vicar general of the diocese, must make good on their word to listen, to show up with open minds and display the flexibility to change plans if new ideas arise.
“I haven’t made decisions yet because I haven’t heard the people,” Bishop Byrne said last month. “This is an important part of what Pope Francis and Pope Leo, they call synodality. It’s to be a listening church.”
For more than 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has been making decisions from the top and parishioners at the bottom have been following the decrees. While a listening church sounds like a good idea, many will wait to see if true listening occurs.
The diocese has hired the Catholic Leadership Institute, a group that has worked with other dioceses looking to restructure.
The institute will run some of the listening sessions in October and November. Changes will be rolled out early next year. That’s when parishioners from Springfield to North Adams will know if their leaders were listening.
Listening does not mean heeding every bit of advice. It does mean suiting an idea to a people, not bending people’s religious lives to a plan. This all comes after many churches were closed in the diocese between 2004 and 2018.
“We have no doubt that many of those hurts are going to emerge in the conversation,” said Rev. Malatesta. “My hope is through all of this and the listening sessions that we have we could actually heal some of the things of the past.”
Without a doubt, parishioners will have much to say. Time will tell whether diocesan leaders are up for the task they set for themselves.