“The Pope has decided how he wants us to proceed,” said Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops president Archbishop Paul-André Durocher. “We are deciding to follow the guidelines given to us.”

This is not the first time Rome has invited input from bishops’ conferences in advance of a synod and the normal practice has been to do so privately, he said. The only difference is next October’s Extraordinary Synod on “The pastoral challenges to the family in the context of evangelization” has “garnered a lot more media attention than past synods,” he said.

Durocher noted there are 140 bishops’ conferences all submitting summaries. The Holy See will take the material to build the synod’s lineamenta or working document, he said. The CCCB had sent the questionnaires out to the dioceses, inviting them to send in summary responses by the end of December, so the bishops could send a summary of all the findings by the end of January.

“In a very short time frame, we managed to get a good read of the pastoral situation regarding family life here in Canada,” he said.

Durocher said the family is a space for evangelization.

“Most Catholics will recognize within their own families they first heard people speak about the Gospel,” he said.

“Any human reality needs to be confronted by message of the Gospel. Are we living according to the teachings of Jesus and light of Gospel?”

Just as the Church “always needs to be evangelized and reformed by the power of the Gospel, so do our families,” he said. “Families are a place of evangelization and the family is an object of evangelization.”

Though Durocher did not discuss the volume of material the bishops received from across the country, CCCB general secretary Msgr. Patrick Power noted in a Feb. 5 statement “the extent of the consultations by the dioceses and their responses are clear evidence of the pastoral importance of this theme for this year’s” synod.

“The consultations indicate not only the importance of marriage and family life for both the Church and our society, but also the Church’s deep appreciation for the generous witness and commitment of married couples and families, especially in today’s world of rapid social change and significant economic challenges,” Power said.

“At the same time, the process has shown many Catholics are not deeply aware of the Church’s rich and positive teaching on marriage and family. This can result in a troubling gap between the Church’s doctrine and the thinking of a number of Catholics. There are also hopes the Church could be more effective in presenting its teaching, and might also review aspects of its discipline in certain areas.”