Five Synod Delegates from the Margins

The last time I tumbled the bin of Synod delegates, I got two cardinals. This time, five “non-bishops,” as the USCCB characterizes them, popped out. These delegates from the United States convince me that Pope Francis had a hand in picking them. They all have characteristics that suggest they are on the margins in one way or another, yet all were delegates to the North American Continental Assembly and all seem well-prepared to present what might be perceived as a marginal perspective to the very center of Catholicism at the Synod.

Julia Oseka is an international student from Poland, studying physics and theology/religious studies at St. Joseph’s University, so I have a measure of local pride in her selection. Oseka emerged through the exceptional Synodality in Catholic Higher Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (SCHEAP). Students from fifteen Catholic universities and three Newman centers engaged in a synodal process and produced their own report with the most vital illustrations I have seen anywhere, even those from the Vatican office. Check out page 14, for example: illustrated by Becky McIntyre ’17.

In those meetings, Oseka spoke up for women and LGBTQIA+ people to have greater roles in the church. “Even saying something that has implicitly nothing wrong with it, you’re judged because it’s against the tradition,” Oseka said. “It’s like a bucket of really cold water being poured on you.” We know that feeling! She identifies as an “active feminist in the church” and is a liturgy peer minister for the campus chapel. Last November, Anna Kalafatis profiled Oseka in the campus newspaper.

I anticipate that Oseka will have no trouble with the still-overwhelming male presence in Rome. “Being a woman trying to pursue a degree in STEM is hard on its own. There’s prejudice against me, because, when people in the lab discover I study theology, they think that I am ignorant or conservative.” I am especially hopeful that she’s not that; she selected Hebrew Bible professor Dr. Julie Deluty when asked for a role model: “I adored her classes because they made me think more intensely than my physics classes freshman year.” Thinking seriously about religion is what the Synod needs. Kalafatis reports that Oseka “hopes more people could understand the mutual benefits that religion and science can offer to each other, and most importantly, she hopes that women continue to push for equal treatment in both fields.”

I am equally hopeful about Cynthia Bailey Manns, D.Min. She’s the director of adult faith formation at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community in Minneapolis, which already says a lot. How often was more adult education requested in the diocesan synod reports? How important is understanding parishes as communities? She characterizes hers as “a destination parish. There’s not much I don’t see here.” We all can identify these parishes in our local communities. “Some of the Masses are unique and boldly contemporary, with lay guests and parishioners offering short reflections before Mass,” according to Michael J. O’Loughlin in America. There’s also eucharistic adoration, traditional Masses, and Scripture study groups. Bailey Manns is involved with it all: “encounters with the L.G.B.T. community and blessings for pets…our elders as they age…our Black Catholics…people who have endured sexual abuse…separated and divorced and remarried people in the church.” Of course, innovation results in criticism; Bailey Manns answers: “For those who say we aren’t Catholic enough, yeah, we are—and the pope said so.” One advantage of the Synod.

Bailey Manns can be considered on the margins in two ways, at least. “I’m an African American woman in a space that is doing the kind of work that…Christ is calling us to do. To reach out, through the profound love of God, to our neighbor, without distinction.” She calls for patience with the Synod process, based on her own experience. “I’m a woman who was born during the height of segregation, and a lot of conversations happened that got me to where I am.”

Her second marginal position is in Discerning Deacons, which is seeming less and less marginal as articles keep peppering the Catholic press, like Maureen O’Connell’s this week in NCR. I don’t find much specifically about Bailey Manns in that role—except all her parish work strikes me as exceptionally diaconal. While she has served on the archdiocese’s lay advisory board and in synod leadership, her original job was to be the “spiritual director for the parish” and she will carry that calling into the Synod. “I’m such a believer in the power of the Holy Spirit, I’m excited about and curious about how the Holy Spirit is going to work through me and through others and how we work together.”

She will be working with the three Latino delegates whose profiles are presented by J.D. Long-Garcia in America https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/08/14/us-latinos-voting-synod-245842 this week. That identity may seem marginal to some who haven’t yet adjusted to the increasing numbers in church leadership as well as in the population. Yet the experience of immigration can be recent and remembered.

Wyatt Olivas is a student like Oseka. He’s at the public University of Wyoming and in the Catholic orbit as a music intern at St. Paul’s Newman Center there. He spent the summer as a missionary with the Catholic youth program Totus Tuus, working with a lot of children, encouraging them to be “besties with Christ.” The program seems more John Paul II than Francis, but his commitment to the evangelical impulse is evident. Olivas suggests that “once younger generations begin to take ownership of the church, things will change,” according to Long-Garcia, “And simply being present and interacting with Catholics from older generations can create an opening to more responsibility in the church. ‘Eventually someone is going to let you in.’” His experience through the synod process affirmed that view; he felt young people were listened to.

Someone commented to me that they expected all the women at the Synod to be sisters. While there would be nothing wrong with that, it’s not the case in this United States non-bishop delegation, but there is one sister, Leticia Salazar, of the Company of Mary. She’s also the chancellor of the Diocese of San Bernardino, certainly not a marginal role.

In 1980, at 17, Salazar moved to the United States from Mexico, and she compared the synod to V Encuentro, a multiyear initiative from the U.S. bishops that sought to better understand the Latin American community. She’s participated since she was a teenager, noting to Long-Garcia that they called on leaders to be “gente puente, ‘bridge people.’ There is a need for all of us to listen, from one culture to another. This is the next step the Holy Spirit is calling us to. The Holy Spirit is also working in other realities. The point is not to ask for permission to be a church. We are a church. But the Holy Spirit is always calling us to do more.”

Long-Garcia writes that Salazar is focused on listening to the “softest voices,” yet finds that

“Personal agendas contradict the spirit of the synod. Issues specific to groups within the church, like women’s leadership in the church and welcoming L.G.B.T. Catholics, will certainly be a part of conversations. But, she said, the synod is more about a paradigm shift…The reality of the universal church is to really feel we are more complete when we are together.” She felt the young people in the listening sessions challenged their seniors to be more authentic, asking them “how can we live more like Jesus?”

The final non-bishop delegate Long-Garcia interviews is Father Ivan Montelongo, director for vocations and the judicial vicar for the Diocese of El Paso, who’s all of 30. Half a life ago, he emigrated from Mexico to El Paso, and described living on the border: “We walk between two realities… People live on one side of the border and work on the other. It’s a constant crossing. This enriches both our human and Christian perspectives. Catholicism on the border is informed by both the church in the United States and in Mexico. It’s a mestizo theology.” Montelongo credits the Rev. Virgilio Elizondo with that concept.

Montelongo was also interviewed by Katie Collins-Scott in NCR. I wonder if NCR is profiling all the delegates in longer articles but at a slower pace. He told her in Spanish: “No soy ni de aquí ni de allá” (“I’m neither from here nor from there”), which captures the experiences of both first- and second-generation migrants “who are looked down upon by Latinos for not being Latino enough and by Americans for not being American enough.”

Montelongo’s vocation began in Chihuahua where he grew up. Ordained in El Paso by Bishop Mark Seitz only in 2020, I admire his reflections on his priesthood. He tells Collins-Scott “One way the synodal process has changed his own ministry is it has made him more cognizant of his need to ‘always be attentive to the people of God. In the ministerial priesthood, when you are the head of a community, it’s easy to do what you want or what you think is best. Many of us have good intentions, but we need to listen to the people, to always walk with them.’” He’s published an article in English and Spanish describing the Instrumentorum Laboris and asking the readers of the local newspaper to send him their comments. He wants to bring their joy and pain to the synod, “”But I don’t want to come with an agenda. I want to listen to the people, and I want to be open to the Spirit.” 

I might as well mention here the sixth non-bishop delegate from the United States, who is anything but marginal: Richard Coll, executive director of the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development at the USCCB in Washington. I do credit him and his department for creating a process that honestly encouraged and reported the conclusions of diocesan meetings in the United States – despite the official lack of enthusiasm among his employers.

By design, all these non-bishop delegates have already taken a leadership role in the synod process. They are well-positioned as voting participants to have an impact in a Vatican arena never before opened to the likes of them. They seem to be ready to listen to the Holy Spirit and to take advantage of the opportunity they have. The whole world is watching.