UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Michael O’Loughlin | Mar. 11, 2014
Lay Catholics who were given the chance to respond to a Vatican questionnaire on family-related issues greeted the opportunity with relish, but it may be that laypeople in just over a third of the nearly 200 Catholic dioceses in the U.S. were given that opportunity.
NCR scoured websites and publications of U.S. dioceses looking for signs of how dioceses invited Catholics to respond to Pope Francis’s October 2013 request to distribute “immediately” and “as widely as possible” a questionnaire on issues such as contraception, same-sex marriage, and divorce. The results from dioceses around the world will become input for the Synod of Bishops on the family in Rome in October.
NCR found 78 dioceses with clear, easily accessible information about what the survey was and how Catholics could participate, either through online surveys, direct consultations (a bishop in Alaska hosted a town hall meeting) or parish input. Some bishops announced they would be consulting priest councils or other diocesan structures to gather responses to the questionnaire.
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