Priorities include Families of Parishes, schools, communication and priestly vocations
DETROIT ─ Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron laid out his four priorities for the Archdiocese of Detroit before he has to submit his resignation letter to Pope Francis when he turns 75 this October.
In the latest episode of his “Eyes on Jesus” podcast with hosts Mary Wilkerson and Michael Chamberland, Archbishop Vigneron identified Families of Parishes, Catholic schools, communications, and priestly vocations as four areas he wants to emphasize in his remaining time as archbishop of Detroit before he has to submit his canonically-required resignation letter all bishops must submit to Rome when they turn 75.
“The four focal points I could continue to identify from Synod 16, (are really) the most important thing(s), the first in my mind," Archbishop Vigneron said. "(And) not to lose the momentum in these years, the months that remain. And what are the four drivers to use the leadership jargon, what are the four drivers that help me keep focused on the graces of the Synod?”
Synod 16 was held on Nov. 18-20, 2016, at the Westin Book Cadillac in Detroit, a three-day archdiocesan-wide gathering of the faithful to discuss what it will take to make the Archdiocese of Detroit a missionary church, taking charge of the church’s mission to evangelize.
Synod 16 led to the publication of Unleash the Gospel, the archbishop’s pastoral letter penned on the Vigil of Pentecost in 2017, which outlined Archbishop Vigneron’s reflections on the Synod and his vision for the archdiocese moving forward.
Archbishop Vigneron said each of his four key priorities — Families of Parishes, Catholic schools, communications, and promoting priestly vocations — can be directly linked back to Synod 16.
Wilkerson and Chamberland asked Archbishop Vigneron to detail his reasoning for the four points of emphasis he hopes to see realized by his Curia staff in the time he has remaining in the archdiocese.
“I’d like each Family of Parishes to take up again the mind of the Synod, the pastoral letter Unleash the Gospel, and say what we need to do to make this work in Monroe or Port Huron or Warren or in the central city of Detroit,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “That is my goal: to have the Families be clear in their focus and engaged in it. Each Family will live the Synod, what the Holy Spirit told us in the Synod, with its own characters and charisms.”
Families of Parishes are either implementing their Missionary Strategic Plans or in the later stages of crafting such plans in order to make their parishes more missionary-focused, but Archbishop Vigneron cautioned that formulating a plan is not the same as fulfilling the church’s mission.
“There is a danger where, typically as Americans, we have the charism of getting things well organized,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “Sometimes, it can seem like organization is an end in and of itself, but we moved to Families of Parishes so we can be an effective agent for the work, bringing Christ to people and people to Christ.”
The conversation then switched to Catholic schools, where Archbishop Vigneron stressed the purpose of Catholic education is not only to be academically excellent but to provide a place that is accessible to all families where disciples are created.
“Catholic education is the responsibility of all the faithful of the archdiocese, not just the responsibility of parents who are in our Catholic schools, and it’s not just the responsibility of a parish that has a Catholic school. It is something we all do, just like how we all take care of the poor.”
Archbishop Vigneron said it is important for the faithful not to think of Catholic schools as an “add-on” to the church’s mission, but as an integral role in building disciples of Jesus Christ.
“It’s very important for us to not slip into thinking that our schools are an alternative, simply a private alternative to the public schools,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “We need to be bold enough to make the case we can do better than anybody else, and we can do a better job because have a better understanding of the human person.”
Archbishop Vigneron also stressed the need for robust communications – appropriately enough, on his own podcast – one of seven the Archdiocese of Detroit now sponsors along with the content it posts on various social media platforms.
The archbishop said individual Families of Parishes have a director of outreach that is charged with using the latest communication tools to broadcast the message of Jesus Christ to their communities.
“We need to be thinking how my colleagues in Communication can assist the parish leadership, the leadership in Families of Parishes, in being more effective in their communications,” Archbishop Vigneron explained. “One of the positions we look to each Family of Parishes is to establish is a director of outreach. In fact, all of the mission direct leadership should help in communication. So what can we do, what can the talented professionals who are my coworkers in Communication, what can we do to help our coworkers on the parish level be more effective in communication? This is what I have in mind going forward.”
Priestly vocations are still on the mind of Archbishop Vigneron as the archdiocese is still in its Year of Prayer for Priestly Vocations, and it is not something the archbishop wants the archdiocese to “let up on this pedal either.”
The archbishop told Wilkerson and Chamberland how valuable the role family members and the laity have in encouraging more men to discern the priesthood.
“More and more, we are having to ask men to think about the priesthood, to reach down and run with the courage that it takes to get into the priesthood,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “That is where the faithful come in, to encourage vocations as well. Besides their prayers, they can encourage vocations in their attitude toward the priesthood and see fellows who might fit the profile and might think about the priesthood.”
Archbishop Vigneron finished his reflections with a preview of a conference that will happen in the summer of 2023 that will mirror the Amazing Parish Conference in 2015, which was a prologue of Synod 16 as a chance for parishes and Families of Parishes to relaunch the missionary zeal that was the fruit of Synod 16.
Archbishop Vigneron hopes the gathering will help priests and lay people across the Archdiocese of Detroit to reset their focus towards evangelization in whatever time he has left in leading the archdiocese.
“We need these kinds of ways to reappropriate the Synod,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “Two important things have happened since the Synod: not the least, the COVID shutdown, and all the things that we went through because of COVID. And this move to Families of Parishes has taken a lot of our initiative as well. We need to look for occasions to come together to pray, look for mutual support, to relaunch unleash the Gospel.”
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