Listening across the Américas: Base Ecclesial Communities and Relational Organizing as Listening Practices for a Synodal Church

Abstract

Catholicism can draw on existing practices of listening to build a more participative church. This paper analyzes listening practices in Catholic and Catholic-engaged interfaith settings, drawing on the author’s long-term ethnographic research: i) four years of weekly participation in meetings of comunidades eclesiales de base in Mexico and Central America; ii) two decades of participant-observation in multiracial faith-based community organizing work in low-income communities of the United States; iii) participant observation at the US expression of the World Meetings of Popular Movements initiative; and iv) participant-observation at the “Prophetic Communities” gathering of organizers, scholars, and church leaders, focused on synodality and community organizing (San Francisco, CA, in 2023). The essay frames its discussion of listening practices around contemporary ideas regarding acompañamiento, solidarity, encounter, and the role of civil society and “public religion” as cultural and institutional underpinnings of democracy. A restructured, more synodal church can enable “ethical democracy” in the future, in part through its practices of liturgy and encounter.