Suggestions for prayer and preparatory reflection
1) The synodal dynamic of listening to the Spirit through listening to one another is the most practical and compelling way to translate episcopal collegiality into action in a fully synodal Church. Building on the experience of the synodal process:
a) how can we make listening to the People of God the ordinary and habitual way of conducting decision-making processes in the Church at all levels of its life?
Intentionality from leadership where I’d say that even bishops struggle to do this with their brother priests. The Marriage Encounter movement strives to train people and cultivate listening to the spouse. When listening isn’t a ready skill, ME offers a way in: asking each person to respond in writing to a basic question. The response is shared, and the companion reads and absorbs the input of the other. Clergy are academically trained, at least minimally so. A similar method might assist them in attending to and responding in productive ways to the input of others.
b) How can we implement listening to the People of God in the local Churches? In particular, how can participatory bodies be enhanced so that they are effective places of listening and ecclesial discernment?
Learning and practicing the process of consensus. Not the AI of course.
c) How can we re-think decision-making processes at the level of the Episcopal bodies of the Eastern Catholic Churches and Episcopal Conferences based on listening to the People of God in the local Churches?
d) How can engagement at the continental level be integrated into Canon Law?
Two questions to which I’ve had less exposure.
2) Since consulting the local Churches is an effective way to listen to the People of God, the Pastors’ discernment takes on the character of a collegial act that can authoritatively confirm what the Spirit has spoken to the Church through the People of God’s sense of faith:
a) What degree of doctrinal authority can be attributed to the discernment of Episcopal Conferences? How do the Eastern Catholic Churches regulate their episcopal bodies?
b) What degree of doctrinal authority can be attributed to the discernment of a Continental Assembly? Or of the bodies that bring together Episcopal Conferences on a continental or otherwise international scale?
c) Which role does the Bishop of Rome fulfil in regards of these processes involving groupings of Churches? In which ways can he exercise it?
Doctrinal authority at any level, even that of parents in the domestic church, can be solidified through discernment. Discernment is not exclusively an academic thing, or a research-and-think-about-it-effort. It involves prayer and reflection. The former intercessory for the people involved, and the latter as part of a serious and cultivated mystical life.
Catholic Sensibility 