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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Plenary Post - Australian Catholic Bishops

 

Welcome to PlenaryPost One of the questions that we're seeing a lot these days relates to how the Plenary Council and the international "Synod on Synodality" align, or how they might differ. In reading some of the foundational documents for the Synod on Synodality, the Australian Plenary Council experience is cited often as something of a model for how the Synod invites the People of God into a shared journey of dialogue, of discernment and of prayer. Archbishop Mark Coleridge recently spoke about the two processes in this way: "So for us the process of the Plenary Council will interweave with the process of the global Synod, an interweaving of the local and the universal, each enriching the other. That’s how the Catholic Church works." Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB, the president of the Plenary Council, said this when the fruits of the first Council assembly were published late last year: "The complementary nature of the Plenary Council and this Synod of Bishops process is quite clear, and I encourage people to be as engaged with the Synod as they have been in the Plenary Council." Read on for more information and updates, and news of related Church events. And please continue to pray for the Plenary Council.

FacilitatorFocus: A new year, the same spirit of prayer and journeying together by Lana Turvey-Collins

Dear Friends,    In this first edition of PlenaryPost for the New Year, Marion, Peter, Olivia and I would like to take the opportunity to wish you all the best for the year ahead. We hope that the first few weeks of the year have been peaceful and, most of all, healthy. Many continue to struggle with the reality of COVID, new variants and changing rules. This state of constant uncertainty can be very draining, and we are cognisant of the very human, emotional and mental impact that this pandemic is having. Amidst all of this, over the last few months the members of the Drafting Committee, a number of the periti (expert advisors) and some others have been working in writing groups to continue the discernment of the Plenary Council. If you recall, the mandate the Members are challenged with on behalf of all the faithful’s discernment thus far is this: As children of God, disciples of Jesus Christ, and guided by the Holy Spirit, the Members of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia are called to develop concrete proposals to create a more missionary, Christ-centred Church in Australia at this time. The writing groups have taken the initial fruits of the first Assembly and, on behalf of the Members, are preparing something written for all of them to take into discernment in a particular way in March and April. The input from the Members’ discernment will be taken onboard by the writing groups for final drafting during April and May. The four years and hundreds of thousands of contributions from the People of God across Australia have helped to give voice to the workings of the Holy Spirit answering the 16 specific questions on the Agenda and are helping to guide the Members and all others writing, praying and discerning together. Everyone is working towards the final stages of discernment – which will take the form of proposals and propositions to be considered and decided upon at the second and final General Assembly, to be held in Sydney in July 2022.   In June, everyone will be invited to accompany your local members of the Plenary Council in conversation and prayer as they prepare for the final stages of their pilgrimage, travelling to Sydney physically, but carrying with them the hopes, questions, prayers and faith of all of the People of God, from thousands of communities, groups and organisations across Australia. Over the coming months, we invite you to continue to practise synodality – to talk together, to pray together, to seek the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit and to live the mission of Jesus in the way the Gospel shows us. We look forward to these final months of working together with you all. Please know you’re always in our prayers, we ask you to please keep us in yours.  Thanks and peace,  Lana, Marion, Peter and Olivia Plenary Council 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… Why are we having a Plenary Council?  There are many reasons for having a Plenary Council for the Catholic Church in Australia: Pope Francis has invited the local Church to dialogue; the contemporary society of Australia has changed significantly; and the Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse has been a significant and influential event that requires deep consideration and response. When the Australian Catholic Bishops announced the decision to hold a Plenary Council, Archbishop of Brisbane Mark Coleridge said that “the Church is not the presence in our society it once was. We need to take a measure of that and make decisions accordingly. The culture in which we have to proclaim the Gospel is very different to what it was even 20 or 30 years ago.” The journey is taking place over several years in order to give the Catholic community in Australia time to listen, dialogue and discern with one another and, guided by the Holy Spirit, about the future, the role and relevance of the Catholic Church in Australia.

TalkTheology

What does Pope Francis mean by synodality? In a nutshell, Pope Francis is leading us to rediscover a reality that has been at the heart of the Church’s life from the very beginning. Echoing both Scripture and ancient Christian writers, he speaks of synodality not as a recent innovation but rather as a constitutive part of the Church’s life. It goes to the heart of being “the Body of Christ” and “the People of God”. It’s at the core of the Church as a “communion” of believers, united to one another eucharistically, in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Synodality touches the essence of a diverse Church that is rooted in and manifests the unity of the distinct persons of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Synodality emerges from all these ways of looking at the Church, and it means that we participate in the faith, not as isolated individuals, nor as ideological factions, but rather as fellow believers united by “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). Synodality requires us to build a “culture of encounter” in the grace of the Holy Spirit. It means creating an atmosphere of hospitality and welcome wherein we learn how to live our faith together, in patience and charity. Synodality means a deep respect and openness to our fellow Catholics coupled with a willingness to listen, dialogue, and discern with fellow believers . . . including those with whom we disagree, theologically, philosophically, and politically. True to form, Pope Francis does not want synodality to remain just an idea, but rather he wants us to learn how to put it into practice and to make it habit. It’s as if he’s saying to us, “To learn how to swim, you’ve got to jump into the water!” -- From a homily Baltimore Archbishop William Lori gave about synodality and Pope Francis' vision of synodality. Click here to read the full version.

News&Notes

Pope highlights the importance of listening Throughout the Plenary Council journey, listening has been seen as critical to the work of considering how to discern what God is asking of us in Australia at this time. The listening was to take place in the context of Scripture and Tradition, but also in listening attentively to one another. In his message for World Communications Day 2022, entitled "Listening with the ear of the heart", Pope Francis says "we are losing the ability to listen to those in front of us, both in the normal course of everyday relationships and when debating the most important issues of civil life". Listening, he continues, is "the first indispensable ingredient of dialogue and good communication. Communication does not take place if listening has not taken place". In the context of the global Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis writes: "Let us pray that it will be a great opportunity to listen to one another. Communion, in fact, is not the result of strategies and programmes, but is built in mutual listening between brothers and sisters. "As in a choir, unity does not require uniformity, monotony, but the plurality and variety of voices, polyphony. At the same time, each voice in the choir sings while listening to the other voices and in relation to the harmony of the whole. This harmony is conceived by the composer, but its realization depends on the symphony of each and every voice." Click here to read the full message.

Fr Tim Norton SVD (left) and Bishop Daniel Meagher

New bishops -- and Plenary Council members All Australian bishops are members of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia, and the number of bishops ebbs and flows with appointments Pope Francis makes and resignations he accepts. Late last year, two new bishops were appointed: Bishop Daniel Meagher, now Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney; and Fr Tim Norton SVD, who will be ordained an Auxiliary Bishop of Brisbane next month. Both will be part of the ongoing preparation for the second assembly of the Plenary Council, scheduled for July 2022. Read more about Bishop Meagher here. Read more about Bishop-Elect Norton here.

What is it like being a Plenary Council member? The nine Members of the Plenary Council from the Parramatta Diocese have taken time to reflect on what the experience has been like for them, especially in their participation in the first assembly last October. Carol Teodori-Blahut says the Plenary Council has opened her eyes to the reality of the Church in Australia. “The Church for me had always been the local parishes in which I have served. The Plenary has opened my understanding of how complex the issues are and how many people have dedicated their lives to making the parishes continue to function,” she said. Fr Wim Hoekstra conceded the first assembly was tiring, in part due to the online format, “yet it was a spiritually enriching time as we shared the hopes, the dreams and the realities of where the Australian Church is at”. Wendy Goonan said the small group discussions, during which the agenda's 16 questions were explored, were enriching. “These sessions, with their sincerity and imagination, were constant reminders of the authenticity of the whole four-year endeavour”, she said. Click here to read more reflections from the Parramatta Diocese Members.

Catholics urged: strengthen support for First Peoples The peak body representing First Nations Catholics has invited fellow Catholics to make 2022 a year of action to “strengthen Australia’s foundations by supporting Australia’s First Peoples”. The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council issued a statement for Australia Day, reflecting on this year’s theme: Reflect. Respect. Celebrate. The statement unpacks those three verbs and encourages people to consider a response as individuals and as Catholics. NATSICC also recommends the addition of a fourth verb to the Australia Day theme: Do. “Words are easy and limitless, but actions require time, effort and commitment,” the statement says. “We ask that you make 2022 the year of ‘Do’.” NATSICC offers some practical suggestions for how parishes, schools, organisations and individuals can take up that challenge. They include attending Mass at an Aboriginal and Islander Catholic Ministry, displaying acknowledgement plaques prominently in public places and supporting the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Plenary Council Members have called for the Church in Australia to endorse the Uluru Statement; the Bishops Conference did so last November. Click here to access NATSICC's Australia Day statement.

February 6 a day to focus on the Word of God The Church in Australia celebrates Word of God Sunday on the first Sunday in February – February 6 in 2022. Pope Francis established the day, which is devoted to “the celebration, study and dissemination” of the Word of God, in 2019. Several resources have been developed to help commemorate the day and to offer suggestions on how to better engage with Sacred Scripture in various ways and settings. Click here to access the resources.