Resolutions signal change at provincial Synod

QUEBEC CITY – The Synod of the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada will no longer be required to meet every three years if a resolution that passed its first reading this June clears its second reading at the body’s next meeting.

According to the resolution, the Synod will meet only if called upon to do so by a certain number of bishops and delegates, Archbishop Ron Cutler, metropolitan, wrote in an article about the Synod, which met in Halifax June 8-10. Since the resolution concerns a change to the province’s constitution, it will have to be passed again before it can take effect, he wrote.

Another resolution passed by the Synod specifies that it will meet electronically unless at least one-third of the body’s elected members request an in-person meeting. In another change, the line dedicated to costs for ministry in the province’s three-year budget was removed, reducing the amount that dioceses must contribute to the province. This change, Archbishop Cutler wrote, “recognizes that ministry and mission is best undertaken at the local (diocesan and parish) or national level.”

Commented Dale Keats, a member from the Diocese of Quebec, “It seems as if we are in the process of eliminating what we know of as provincial Synod.”

The Ecclesiastical Province of Canada includes the dioceses of Central Newfoundland; Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador; Western Newfoundland; Fredericton; Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island; Montreal; and Quebec.
Quebec Diocesan Gazette