A Survey of the People of East Tennessee for the Papal Synod 2021-2023

The survey portion of the synodal process in the Diocese of Knoxville has been completed. Your parish may have in-person listening sessions underway. Please check with your parish office if you are interested in participating.


All of us are here because we have responded to an invitation — an invitation from Pope Francis, the Vatican and Bishop Stika to participate in the Church as it moves into its third millennium. As we journey together in this “Synod Process” please consider taking the following survey honestly and openly.

Who Can Participate?
You must be least 14 years of age and at least in the 9th grade to participate in this survey. Otherwise, all are invited to participate including those that are not Catholic.

How will this work?
Please complete the brief internet-based survey (requiring approximately 20-25 minutes of your time). This survey will ask you to respond to questions regarding topics around your experiences with your local church, faith/religion and other circumstances. At the end of the survey, you will have an opportunity to write additional comments related to specific questions in the survey. Additionally, you will have the opportunity to share additional comments about the following:

• What Church teaching do you find most difficult? Please tell us why.

• Pope Francis has called for a “listening Church.”. What do you want to tell us/say to us as we listen?

• If you consider yourself a former Catholic, please tell us why/what happened?

Voluntary Participation
Your participation in this survey is voluntary. You are free to stop answering questions at any time or to decline to answer any question you do not wish to answer for any reason. The survey format allows you to skip around and with some questions; you can provide more than one response to the question. If you stop the survey before the end without hitting the submit button, your previous answers will be automatically discarded. After you submit the survey, we cannot remove your responses because we will not know which answers came from you.

Benefits
By participating in this survey, you will be contributing to a growing base of knowledge which can provide clarity and alignment of the church’s mission on a host of topics that effect the parishes, schools, social services, individuals, family and community. In addition to taking this survey, we invite any Catholics who are not attending Mass regularly to “Come home, be heard. We are better together!”

View the survey in your language of choice by selecting it from the dropdown located at the upper right corner of this page. For more information on this synod process, please refer to our diocesan website.


The survey portion of the synodal process in the Diocese of Knoxville has been completed. Your parish may have in-person listening sessions underway. Please check with your parish office if you are interested in participating.