Update on the Plenary Council Catholic

 

Welcome to PlenaryPost If counting down to milestones is your thing, we today find ourselves 38 days away from the Mass to open the second assembly of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia, with the Council's formal program to begin the following day on July 4. More than 300 people -- members, advisers, observers and support personnel -- will be in Sydney to see the celebration stage of the Plenary Council reach its conclusion. As happened during the first assembly, there will be portions of each day's proceedings live-streamed, typically in the opening session, which starts at 8.30am AEST. All Masses during the assembly will be live-streamed. A full live-streaming schedule will be shared in the next edition of PlenaryPost. The closing Mass of the Plenary Council, to be celebrated at 10.30am on Saturday, July 9 at St Mary's Cathedral, is also open to the public. The Walking in the Spirit prayer pilgrimage resources, launched on Easter Sunday, have been well received and are being used in various contexts across the country. We invite you to continue to accompany the Members and the wider Catholic community in prayer as we build up to the second general assembly. Read on for more updates on the Plenary Council and the life of the Church in Australia. As we move towards the second assembly, the Plenary Council website continues to be a useful place to stay up-to-date with what's happening and how we are walking together.

FacilitatorFocus: Send out your Spirit and renew the face of the earth by Marion Gambin rsj

Dear Friends,  As I write this Facilitator Focus for this 47th edition of PlenaryPost, I’m very mindful that we are now just over five weeks from when the Members and support personnel will gather in Sydney for the second assembly of the Plenary Council! Since the end of the first assembly, in October last year, the journey of prayer and discernment has continued, during the past eight months, as of course it will during the second assembly from July 3-9. During the month of June, the Members will be meeting each Tuesday evening, online, to make their final preparations for the assembly. You are all encouraged to accompany the Members with prayer through making use of the prayer resources - Walking in the Spirit - provided by the Liturgy Working Group and available on the Plenary Council website.  The first of these meetings will be an opportunity for the Members to engage in conversation using the Motions Framework Document. This is the document which will be used for discernment and decision-making during the second assembly and will be available to you via the Plenary Council website from next week. It is the document that has emerged from the process that you, the Catholic community, were invited into, involving listening, discernment and dialogue over the past four years, following the commencement of the Plenary Council in 2018. The Drafting Committee has worked tirelessly in the past months to incorporate the discerned responses from the Members of the Plenary Council to the "Fruits" document, which was the outcome of the first assembly. The Members will now have an opportunity to reflect on the Motions Framework Document, during the first two weeks of June, and provide any recommendations for amendments to the Drafting Committee. Listening, discernment and dialogue continue to be the essential ingredients to bring us to a place of being a more "Christ-centred, missionary Church in Australia". On June 6, we celebrate the wonderful feast of Pentecost. The response following the first reading of the liturgy for that day calls on God to send out the Spirit and renew the face of the earth. Let us all continue to pray for one another that the Spirit will renew and transform us, individually and as a faith community of missionary disciples. In the words of our Plenary Council prayer…"Lead your Church into a hope-filled future, that we may live the joy of the Gospel". Blessings of peace, Marion -- for the Facilitation Team

CuriosityCorner

We will address a new question in each e-newsletter. To catch up on previous editions, you can check out the Plenary Council FAQ page. If you have a question, email it to us and we will include it in future editions of PlenaryPost. The question for this edition is… Who will attend the Plenary Council assemblies?  There will be three main groups of people attending the Council’s assemblies: Members; Advisers; and Observers. Members of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia are those who have been called to participate in the assemblies. Some of the members are people who “must” be called to a plenary council, as outlined in Church law; others are people who “may” be called, who were chosen through a range of processes across the country. The members have, at times, been referred to as “delegates” to the Council. The language of “member” better reflects the canonical status of those called to a Council, as well as the sense that all members are there to represent the People of God in Australia, not just their local Church community. Members are the only people who can vote at the Council assemblies. It is expected there will be 277 members participating in the second assembly. Advisers to the Council are people with particular expertise across a range of matters, such as theology, Scripture, governance, formation, ecclesiology (study of the Church), who can be called upon by members, individually or collectively, to provide advice on particular matters to assist with their discernment and decision-making. Advisers are sometimes called “experts” or “periti”, a Latin term used to describe the experts at the Second Vatican Council and other major Church events. Observers are people who, as the name suggests, observe the proceedings of the Council assemblies because of their particular relationship with the Catholic Church in Australia. Following the tradition of other Church gatherings, the observers are likely to include Catholic leaders from other parts of the world, especially New Zealand, the Pacific and Asia; leaders of other Christian denominations; and leaders of other faith traditions. The observers might attend some or all of the assemblies. The Members, Advisers and Observers will be supported by staff and volunteers helping with the facilitation of discernment, technology requirements, events management and liturgical needs. Media and communications staff will help document the national and local aspects of the Council assemblies.

TalkTheology

A time for keep silence, a time to speak There is "a time to keep silence, and a time to speak". These words, as you well know, are not my own. They are taken from the book of Ecclesiastes 3:7. There is a time for silence and a time for words. The two go together: there is not one without the other. A time of silence without a time to speak, as well as a time to speak without a time for silence, lead to unpleasant consequences. Silence should lead to speech, and speech should lead to silence. Speech without silence easily becomes hollow words. Silence without speech can easily lead to a state of apathy and irresponsibility. Unfortunately, the Church is not an exception. Often, it has spoken where it should have remained silent. And, often, it remained silent where it should have spoken. I'm not referring here to the Church's engagement ad extra, with the external world, although what I am saying is also applicable to this realm. Often, the Church could have been more vociferous in its fight for justice, in its defence of the poor, but chose to keep its mouth shut. On the other hand, often the Church should have been more prudent, but chose to speak and speak too much. Sadly, this is all true. However, I wish to focus on the Church's engagement ad intra, with itself and the different realities that constitute it. I wish to focus on the culture of silence in the Church, on those internal problems about which the Church should have spoken but chose, because it was convenient, to remain silent. There are problems, issues, within the Church about which we choose to remain silent rather than speaking. The clearest example which comes to everyone's mind is the sexual abuse crisis that the Church went through and is still going through. Unfortunately, this is not the only instance of a problem in the Church about which we choose to remain silent. What about the general silence concerning the deep divisions within the Catholic church? Between conservatives and liberals? Between those who exclusively want the ordinary form and those who want the extraordinary form? What about the political divisions in the Church? What about the divisions between the local Churches in the global west and the local Churches in the global south? What about the continuous struggle to make the priesthood of the baptised work hand in hand with sacramental priesthood? What about the role of women in the Church? How can one explain we have Catholics who want to exclude certain categories from our pews? These are all issues in the Church about which we rarely have a frank and open discussion. These are issues which we all acknowledge to be present but about which we prefer to remain silent. Or, even worse, choose to raise these issues within smaller groups made up of people having a common opinion. Rather than having an open, frank discussion, we end up in a Church made up of cliques. Rather than dialogue, we have a culture of us against them. The Church should speak about these issues, but often chooses to remain silent. -- An excerpt from a homily Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, gave at a conference on Synodality at Oxford in March. Click here to read the full homily.

News&Notes

Archbishop Costelloe to lead Bishops Conference Plenary Council president Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB has been elected president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference at its biannual meeting. Archbishop Costelloe, who was appointed president of the Plenary Council in 2018, will take on the Conference role in mid-July -- after the Council's second assembly. “As we continue to contemplate how we live out the Gospel in this age, including through the Plenary Council, I look forward to working with my brother bishops and the People of God to carry forward Christ’s mission,” Archbishop Costelloe said. Archbishop Costelloe paid tribute to Archbishop Mark Coleridge, who had served as Bishops Conference president for four years. “Archbishop Coleridge has been a calm and considered leader locally and in the global Church and will be a trusted adviser for me in this new role,” he said. Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP was re-elected vice-president of the Bishops Conference. Click here to read more.

Motions framework due out next week The motions that will be considered by the Plenary Council's 277 Members will be published in early June, providing the framework for the work of the second general assembly. The motions emerge from four years of listening, dialogue, discernment, prayer and reflection, emanating from the question "What do you think God is asking of us in Australia at the time?", which was the Council's foundational question. In the Listening and Discernment phase, there was a focus on becoming a more "Christ-centred Church". Watch the Plenary Council website or make sure you are subscribed to CathNews to be notified when the motions are published next week.

Food for the Journey -- Fr Frank Moloney SDB

Plenary Council advisers provide expert insights A key group involved in the work of the Plenary Council is the advisers. The advisers are people with particular knowledge and expertise across a range of matters, such as theology, Scripture, governance, formation and ecclesiology (study of the Church). The advisers can be called upon by members, individually or collectively, to provide advice on particular matters to assist with their discernment and decision-making. Advisers are sometimes called “experts” or “periti”, a Latin term used to describe the experts at the Second Vatican Council and other major Church events. Some advisers are providing reflections on their areas of expertise for Members of the Plenary Council and the wider Catholic community. The first of those videos, featuring renowned Scripture scholar Fr Frank Moloney SDB, has just been posted online. More videos will be added to the series, titled "Food for the Journey", in coming weeks. They can also be found on the Plenary Council website.

Turn to prayer in "troubled times", Archbishop urges Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge has used the feast day of Our Lady, Help of Christians to call for prayers for the Church in Australia, ahead of the historic second assembly of the Plenary Council in Sydney in July. Archbishop Coleridge said the Church found itself in “troubled times” and needed “new life”. “It’s not a bad moment to pray – for a new government coming to power, and the future fairly uncertain both nationally and internationally,” he said during a Mass for employees from Church agencies across Brisbane. Archbishop Coleridge said Mary “is not just the physical mother of Jesus, she is the woman who is the word of God”. “We turn to her (Mary) as Christians and say 'help us', because left to our own devices we look very, very unpromising,” he said.  “We find ourselves in the Church in this country troubled.” Click here to read more.

Evangelisation conference mixes online, face-to-face The Australian Bishops Commission for Evangelisation, Laity and Ministry will host a national online conference on evangelisation from October 20-22. The conference will promote understanding and explore practices of evangelisation in Australia through encounters with Christ, formation in discipleship and mission in the world. It seeks to encourage Catholics to carry forward the Church’s evangelising mission after the second assembly of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia. Commission chair Archbishop Christopher Prowse said he was excited about the opportunities the conference would provide to explore the understanding, language and diversity of evangelisation in Australia, while supporting local dialogue and action. “Evangelisation begins with an encounter with Jesus Christ, is nurtured through discipleship in our worshipping communities and calls us all to be missionary in the world,” he said. “This responsibility is not just for those in leadership, but for all. “This conference for evangelisation will highlight the interconnection of the missionary call of each baptised person and dynamic faith communities in fulfilling the Church’s mission to evangelise. Local communities are encouraged to host gatherings to be a part of the conference dialogue.” Online content will be streamed to provide stimulus and conversation-starters for local gatherings. The hybrid event will allow more people to participate than would have happened with an event held in-person only, the organisers explain. Click here to find out more about the conference.

Dioceses invited to take part in global families event  While the 10th World Meeting of Families will take place in Rome next month, dioceses around the world will join in the celebrations with the theme "Family Love: A Vocation and a Path to Holiness." A number of families will represent the Church in Australia at the gathering in Rome from June 22-26, including families from Eastern Rite Churches. At home, resources have been prepared by the Life, Marriage and Family Network to help local celebrations. “This event presents a special occasion of prayer and worship offered for the support, healing and fortification of families and pro-family values,” said Bishop Richard Umbers, the Bishop Delegate for Marriage and Family Life. Resources can be found at: http://www.family.catholic.org.au/ Click here to access a prayer for the World Meeting of Families.

Stay connected to the Council journey A great way to reconnect with or enter more deeply into the Plenary Council journey is to read some of the key documents from the past four years. They capture how far the People of God in Australia have travelled in that time. Documents you might wish to read again -- or read for the first time -- include: Listen to What the Spirit is Saying -- the final report from the initial Listening and Dialogue phase of the Council; Continuing the Journey -- the instrumentum laboris (working document) for the Council, published in mid-2021; First Assembly Proposals from Small Groups and Individuals -- often referred to as the "Fruits of the First Assembly", published in December 2021. You can find other key documents, including the six Thematic Discernment Papers, on the Plenary Council website. The motions framework for the second assembly will also be posted to that page.

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