Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies

 A Jubilee dedicated to Synodal Teams and other participatory bodies in the Church is being held 24th - 26th October 2025. It is being held under the aegis of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops. I should, perhaps, declare a certain bias in my own sense of the process of Synodality to which this particular Jubilee refers - see An Aside on Synodality. An explanation of the working of the Synod of Bishops (in general, not just referring to the current Synod on Synodality) can be found here: The Synod. It is possible to recognise in the changes introduced by Pope Francis the pattern of preparatory, discussion and implementation phases that are a feature of the Synod on Synodality and which now would apply to every meeting of the Synod. 

One of the features of the Synodal process that may have been experienced in parishes, and will be the subject of one of the workshops at the Jubilee, is that of Conversations in the Spirit: see here and here. 

Watching the video clip, its three rounds reminded me of the "See, Judge, Act" of Cardinal Cardijn's Young Christian Workers (YCW). There is an account of one such Young Christian Workers meeting that has a specific family connection. During the section meeting one week my mother apparently could only think to mention that she had received a pay rise. This was during the "See" part of the meeting, when each member of the section mentioned some activity since the previous week's meeting. It became apparent that another girl in the group, who worked in a different factory, had not had a pay rise. This triggered a chain of events in which my mother introduced this girl to her trade union, and then to the establishment of the union in what had previously been a non- union factory. In due course, mother received a letter from the Secretary of the local branch of the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers (NUTGW) thanking her for the work she had undertaken to get the union established in that factory. 

We found that letter amongst mother's things after she died ... and there then followed a chain of research into the whole story, both from the point of view of that particular YCW section (I have some letters from mother's then YCW colleagues, including from the girl she first recruited to the NUTGW) and the situation of the cotton industry at the time. 

This particular "Conversation in the Spirit" took place in ....  1942.

I have only just realised that Pope St John XXIII explicitly referred to the "See, Judge, Act" methodology in his Encyclical Letter Mater et Magistra of 1961 (nn.236-237), and we might see that as a foreshadowing of the practice of Conversation in the Spirit:

There are three stages which should normally be followed in the reduction of social principles into practice. First, one reviews the concrete situation; secondly, one forms a judgment on it in the light of these same principles; thirdly, one decides what in the circumstances can and should be done to implement these principles. These are the three stages that are usually expressed in the three terms: look, judge, act.

It is important for our young people to grasp this method and to practice it. Knowledge acquired in this way does not remain merely abstract, but is seen as something that must be translated into action.