Plenary Council 2020 - Update - Deferred until 2022 - Due to COVID-19

 

Welcome to PlenaryPost The postponement of the Plenary Council assemblies by 12 months has been both a blessing and a challenge. One of the blessings has been the additional time to consider how we can be a Christ-centred Church in Australia with a clearer understanding of how COVID-19 is changing the country and the Church. Archbishop Timothy Costelloe has taken the opportunity to invite people to better understand the practice of discernment. He's done that through a new paper, titled "A Journey of Discernment", which he introduces in a video below. The People of God in Australia have also been invited to read a new report on Church governance and management, which fulfils one of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse. The Plenary Council will likely consider some of the dozens of recommendations, while others are more suited to diocesan or parish implementation. NEW TIMELINE DOCUMENT

With all the date changes that have taken place with the rescheduling of the assemblies, a new timeline has been developed to help people understand the next couple of years of the Council journey. Click here to access the 2020-2022 timeline. Read more about these matters, and other recent or upcoming events, in this month's Plenary Post. FacilitatorFocus: Joining the Facilitation Team and the Plenary Council journey by Marion Gambin RSJ It is just on two months since I joined the Plenary Council Facilitation Team. I’ve spent considerable time reading your responses to the listening, dialogue and discernment process, reflecting on the six Thematic Discernment Papers released on Pentecost Sunday and responding to the emails you have continued to send to the Plenary Council. It's been such a privilege to "sit with" all that is dear to the heart of Australian Catholics and all that you long for from this renewal journey of our faith community.  I’ve also appreciated the welcome I have received from Peter Gates and Olivia Lee and enjoyed working with them in updating the milestones journey poster. We grappled with the task of rearranging meetings, now that we have the two assembly dates in place for October 2021 and July 2022, at the same time very mindful of the impact COVID-19 continues to have on our daily lives. No doubt you will appreciate it is rather difficult to forecast when we might once again have any meetings face to face, so while we continue to cope with this coronavirus environment, we shall be meeting via Zoom. Perhaps this will continue to be a part of our "new normal" of engaging with each other. During the past two months the Team has also worked together to prepare a guide for your use as a resource in reflecting on the six Thematic Discernment Papers. I really encourage you to see how you might use this guide in your local Church community and then, if you choose, send in your responses to the Facilitation Team. I also encourage you to take the time to read the paper and watch the video by Archbishop Timothy Costelloe on the Journey of Discernment introduced below. As Archbishop Costelloe says, “the discernment process is the heart of the Plenary Council journey". This month we celebrated the feast day of Mary MacKillop, patron of the Plenary Council. Mary was no stranger to coping with the challenges of life’s circumstances. Even during times of enormous suffering, she trusted in the loving providence of God. I have no doubt she would be encouraging us to do the same. Blessings of peace, Marion Gambin rsj TalkTheology The virtues of synodality by Reverend Associate Professor Ormond Rush From Fr Rush's paper entitled "Plenary Council Participation and Reception: Synodality and Discerning the Sensus Fidelium" Our Plenary Council will be effective only if we embrace what I call "a spirituality of synodality". Institutional structures such as plenary councils require particular spiritual dispositions on the part of all, if a synodal Church is to be realised. Vatican II spoke of "a collegial spirit (affectus collegialis)" among the college of bishops (Lumen Gentium 23). In the end, synodality will only be fully realised when a genuine “synodal spirit” pervades all levels of the Catholic Church, from the single baptised Catholic to the pope. In his greeting to the bishops at the start of the 2014 synod [on the family], Pope Francis spoke of a "general and basic condition" for genuine synodality: the freedom to speak honestly. "It is necessary to say with parrhesia (boldness) all that one feels." However, this must be accompanied, he said, by another condition: listening with humility and with an open heart to what others say with honesty, what he calls "the gift of listening." "Synodality is exercised with these two approaches." We could call them "synodal virtues". Click here to read Fr Rush's full paper. News&Notes A Journey of Discernment In light of the postponement of the Plenary Council assemblies by 12 months, Plenary Council president Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB is encouraging people across Australia to reflect more deeply on the practice of discernment. In his paper, entitled "A Journey of Discernment", Archbishop Costelloe begins by examining the genesis of the Plenary Council, retraces the journey so far and offers insights into the period leading up to the assemblies in 2021 and 2022, as well as the implementation phase beyond. In the paper, which was published today on the Plenary Council website, Archbishop Costelloe explains the "three fundamental fidelities which need to always be in play, much like a juggler needs to keep three balls in the air and not allow one of them to fall to the ground". "Those three fidelities are: fidelity to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, made known to us in the Scriptures, and pre-eminently in the four canonical gospels, as those Scriptures are lived and believed in within the community of faith; fidelity to the ongoing presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Church over the last 2,000 years in fulfilment of the promise of Jesus that the Holy Spirit would lead the disciples into the fullness of the truth (cf John 16:13); and fidelity to the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church, and the world, today, speaking to us in the signs of the times (the concrete circumstances of our individual and communal experience) as they are interpreted in the light of the gospel (Gaudium et Spes 4)." Click here to download the paper. Archbishop Costelloe introduces the paper in the video below. Click here to previous post