I’ve used the final episode of my podcast series The Future Church to offer some further, big picture analysis of the Amazonian Synod.

Many people in North America were confused by the Amazonian Synod asking “What on earth is going on here? How is this Catholic? What’s happening to our church?”

In fact, the Amazonian Synod has been a pretty accurate example of the trends John Allen predicted in his 2009 book that my podcast series has analyzed. The fact is, the church is facing a huge crisis as the challenges of the 21st century confront her. These trends are laid out by Allen and discussed by me in the whole Future Church series. The nine episodes are available in abridged form for free at BreadBox media. For Donor Subscribers the full length versions are here.

This final episode is full length and available for all either at BreadBox tomorrow or here on the blog.

If you are discouraged, bewildered or angry about the Amazonian synod I encourage you to listen to this podcast and share it widely!

Although the church is facing great challenges at this time, I also believe the crisis is a great opportunity to see things clearly and take real, positive action to live and proclaim the fullness of the faith in the Catholic Church.

Do listen to this podcast and follow the blog posts I’ll be writing on this subject in the days to come.