Hearing what you want to hear, without actually listening and Coffee and Donuts isn't assessing the view of the Parish. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 50th edition, the Synod Edition.

Steve Millies 

The theme I see in a lot of clerical #Catholic comment on the #synod is—'Who are all these laypeople and why do they think they get a voice in *my* church?'

Oh, bull.  I haven't been hearing that at all.

Quite the contrary, in facdt.

Apparently, I'd note, I’m not the only one either:

Fr. Joseph Krupp@Joeinblack

So weird. I follow almost 800 priests, and not one of them has said anything remotely like that.

Mostly, we worry about how to deal with the increasingly large piles of demands on us.

We worry because everyone is an expert on our job, but most are only willing to help if they…

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In six decades now of attending Mass, I can't think of a single instance in which I've personally heard a priest openly criticize a Bishop or the Pope, although I'm sure they didn't always agree with them.  They simply obeyed and did their duties.  This would include not only the Pope Francis era, but the real "spirit of Vatican II" disruption of the 70s.  

All of the criticism of Bishops and Popes I've heard have come from the laity, and it tended as a rule to object to reforms.  Even the mantillas I am now seeing for the first time in sizable numbers being worn by young women are a form of protest in a way.  The point is that a lot of "the voice of the laity is being ignored" doesn't come from the class under age 40, really, whose, but from the Western middle-aged and old.

Mr. Millies is, I'd note, a Professor of Public theology who was born in 1972.  That makes him nine years younger than me, or 51 years of age.  He's not a Baby Boomer, the generation that's most frequently picked on here, but he's not a kid either.

The young church might not really be the voice that people 50 years old and up really want to hear, as it might look like a voice that actually is more from the lost past that the dying post Boomer present.

On assessing the voice of  the parish, moreover, every parish I've ever been to worked desperately to do that, usually unsuccessfully, in trying to get the rank and file of the parish to express their voice and to come to thins other than Mass.  As I've noted, this has been, in my experience, uniformly unsuccessful.

Which takes us to this.

Also on Twitter, one Canadian Catholic commentator, D.W. Lafferty replied to another person's credulity regarding assessing the views at the parish level in an interesting fashion. That post noted:

Apparently, "synodality" is just a euphemism for "a discussion group in the church basement." Huh. twitter.com/rightscholar/s…

Lafferty replied:

That's where it can start, for sure. It's the simplest thing in the world to have people in a parish get together to talk and listen. Might cost a few bucks for coffee and donuts. If we can't pull that off, what are we even doing?

And, similarly:

How much does it cost to have a discussion group in the church basement? Or to have a volunteer take notes and produce a synthesis? Cost is not the problem. Lack of interest and motivation on the part of many pastors is the problem.

And here we meet the academic in academia, rather than the regular person in the pews.

I've served on a parish council.  I didn't ask to run for the position, but received anonymous nominations three times.  I rejected the first two, as I’m not a joiner, and I'm busy.  Finally, the third time, I felt compelled and served for several years.

I've also been on a professional board. Same thing.  I didn't volunteer, I was asked to serve.

And I once served in a professional role that was, well professional, the same way. Asked to serve.

The point?

Well, I’m an introvert. I have opinions on everything, but only very rarely will I cause myself to attend something.  I will, but it's rare.  Most of the time I've had public roles in anything, I was volunteered, and at least some of the time, I declined.

When the Synod got up and rolling, I didn't attend the parish meetings, and looking at the various parish reports on the number of people who attended, attendance was generally low.  I regret that now, but I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt I would have been the odd man out at the meeting. . . if not necessarily in the pews.

A brief diversion.

My old parish had breakfasts after the early Sunday Mass every week.  They had excellent sweet rolls.  We would occasionally eat there, but more often than not I'd pick up a tray of sweet rolls and take them home.  Why?

Well, that says a lot about my personality.  It often surprises people who know me professionally if I mention that I'm introverted, but I am.  I feel massively uncomfortable sitting with people I don't know or barely know in a setting I'm not anticipating.  It's one thing to sit with a group of lawyers, or clients, etc.  Quite another to be sitting there after Mass.

Additionally, while I work most days in the white collar legal world, I'm very much a rural Irishman at heart.  Mentally, I've never acclimated to being able to not look out on a golf course and not think that it would look good with sheep on it.  People don't treat me that way as a rule, however.  On off hours, I'll sit and ponder how hard it would be to put a 4bt Cummins in a 1953 NAPCO truck, or that I wish I was hunting.  On Sundays, I don't ponder the Rule Against Perpetuates.

Like a lot of Wyomingites, I work six days out of seven, if not seven out of seven.

The point? 

I'm not likely to sit down in a basement to discuss anything with anyone, and having coffee and donuts available doesn't sweeten the deal whatsoever.  In my entire life, I've never gone to a basement to have coffee and donuts. I've never been to the Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast either.

And again, I'm not alone.  I know lots of people just like me.  They're loyal Catholics in the pews, to be sure.

And it just isn't Wyoming natives wondering how the state's politics have been disrupted by out-of-state imports who are mad at the world.  You aren't going to get the Mexican father who comes every week dressed in his Chihuahua formal clothes along with his wife and three kids to go to a meeting dominated by a bunch of super friendly handshaking Anglos.  Nor are you going to get the 23-year-old mantilla wearing girl.  Nor are young to get the Rad Trad that vaguely suspects that everyone else is in some sort of Novus Ordo conspiracy.  No, you aren't.

But you really need to.  Indeed, in an average parish, there's probably a lot more of those people, combined, than whom every will be drawn to the basement for "fellowship".

You'll have to conscript them.

You can do it, however.

It'd actually require a near demand from the pastor along the lines of "thank you for coming to the 8:00 Mass. .. the 10:00 has been cancelled this week as we are all meeting. . . I'm not dismissing the Mass until we all talk so if you leave now, your Sunday Obligation is not fulfilled.  Welcome to a Synod meeting."

And you would actually have to bring up the uncomfortable topics yourself, as people uncomfortably shifted in their seats?