Archbishop Wenski addresses national Convocation of Catholic leaders

By Tom Tracy - Florida Catholic

ORLANDO | Speaking to a standing-room-only gathering of more than 3,000 Catholic leaders --clergy, hierarchy as well as lay and men and women religious -- Archbishop Thomas Wenski opened the first full day of a historic summit by explaining the event’s roots and purpose.

Some eight years ago, on the heels of the global financial crisis, a previous decade of Church abuse scandals and alarming indications that the Catholic community in the U.S. was becoming frayed, the U.S. bishops started laying the groundwork for the summit now known as the Convocation of Catholic Leaders: The Joy of the Gospel in America. 

“There was also a perception that pro-life and social justice Catholics were talking past each other,” Archbishop Wenski told the gathering after a morning prayer July 2, the first full day of the event which concludes July 4 with a Fortnight for Freedom in support of religious liberty.

Noting with humor that he is the only Florida bishop currently serving in Florida who was also born in the state, Archbishop Wenski pointed out that the U.S. bishops had wanted to go deeper into an exploration of the issues and emotional motivations that were keeping many disaffected Catholics away from their faith communities.

“We discovered that every group studied felt some distance or angst or feelings of anguish in some way,” he said. Yet most inactive Catholics indicated that they could not imagine a complete break from their Catholic identity, he added.

“There was a strong sense of the need for a spiritual ‘field hospital,’ as Pope Francis has called it, a need for healing,” the archbishop said of the background studies preceding the Convocation. “The landscape has been shifting, so this Convocation is a way to understand that landscape a little better,” and therefore to be better disciples, Archbishop Wenski said.

The event is sponsored and hosted by the U.S. bishops and includes large and small-group conversations on a sweeping array of topics including the current political climate, intercultural awareness, social media, social violence and unrest, the state of Catholic education, vocations, parish life, family life and more. Some 40 delegates from Miami are taking part.

“With the spirit of evangelical discernment, look at opportunities and challenges of what we hear (this week),” the archbishop told participants. “It’s not all doom and gloom. We must present the Gospel with a sense of confidence and hope and a sense of joy.”

Stephen Colella, the archdiocese’s Cabinet Secretary of Parish Life, said Archbishop Wenski met with his delegation late Saturday night in order to foster a sense of renewed friendship and mission among the delegates and to explain further the objectives of the convocation.

“There is definitely a high energy and a high hope for coming together here,” Colella said. “People are saying ‘What more can I do? What more can I do for Catholic education, for pro-lifers? It’s like a family reunion. And now we want to know what the bishops have to say as well.”

Early Sunday morning  Rosemarie Banich, director of the archdiocesan Office of Youth and Young Adults -- who also played a leadership role in the archdiocesan synod -- met in a smaller group with the youths and Hispanic youth delegates to discuss how best to engage with the convocation.

Key presenters and facilitators at the convocation include Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, and many other lay and religious leaders from Catholic organizations and ministries.

At the major plenary address Sunday morning, Colombian-born academic Hosffman Ospino laid out the historical context of the convocation by asking: “What will historians 100 years from now understand about the current moment in U.S. church history?”

Ospino, associate professor of Hispanic ministry and religious education at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, noted that Asian and Hispanic immigrants as well as socio-geographic trends were rapidly changing the face of Catholicism in the U.S. Both the increase of Spanish-speaking Catholics and growing populations of Catholics in the West, South and Southeast are outpacing Church resources and efforts to address those shifts, he said.

“Immigrants are not the enemy nor a threat; they are the face of Christ and the living gospel,” Ospino said. He emphasized again that the future of U.S. Catholicism is being forged in regions not previously associated with the historic power centers of the Church in America. Miami, he said, stands as one of the examples of a newer center of Catholic life in the South.

But Church institutions and educational centers are largely still centered in Midwest and Northeast urban regions, created something of a mismatch of needs and resources.

“This is a time for visionary disciples and to declare ourselves in a permanent missionary status,” Ospino said to a standing ovation.