John Warhurst is Chair of Concerned Catholics Canberra Goulburn and a Plenary Council Member
No 18
Friday 8 July 2022
LOOK FOR WHAT YOU CAN LIVE WITH
Today was effectively the final day of the Second Assembly of the Plenary Council, although there is a one-hour session followed by a public Closing Mass tomorrow morning. Then it’s all off home. The bishops are going on retreat in Mittagong. Some PC members will be back at work on Monday, while the lucky ones will have a few days off.
The diversity of the Plenary Council members remained my abiding impression. I have always said that Catholics in Australia are as diverse as the whole Australian community. In political terms we range from One Nation to the Greens and everything in between. That’s the scale of the synodal task in building consensus. In tonight’s Plenary Tracker I made the point that even if you kicked all of the bishops, clerics and religious out of the room, the polarization within the lay Catholic community would still be immense. That is the challenge of walking together in respectful synodal relationships.
The approach of the Assembly to Covid protection measures, like wearing masks, is a good example. Despite repeated entreaties from the top table, mask wearing would not have got above 75%. There were notable examples of church leaders among those who were defiantly resistant and demonstrated no leadership. It is just a small example to show that the differences among us relate not just to church matters.
I have realistic hopes for the outcomes of the Plenary Council following the Second Assembly. It is a difficult pill for anyone to swallow that the next decade is one of Implementation. Those who want to transform the Church must buckle down to holding the church leadership accountable during the next decade. I was a guest on Plenary Tracker tonight. Another of tonight’s guests, Dr Tracey McEwan, Vice-President of Women and the Australian Church quite reasonably posed the fate of Woman and Man, the church’s consultation and research report (1999) as a salutary warning of inaction. More than two decades later, the Plenary Council has called on the Church to “implement more fully the undertakings made by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC)”. That miserable record should make the ACBC shame-faced and wipe the smile off our faces.
The review and implementation, with interim reports in 2023 and 2025 and a final report in 2027, five years after this Second Assembly, will now be coordinated by a new national synodal body (Motion 9), which was under considerable threat before it was finally reborn in a new model as not a structure but an approach. This occurred in the discussion yesterday of Part 7 on Governance. That is a warning sign of much work to be done.
Effectively, the new model of the national Church sketched out by the Plenary Council (see the diagram attached to the Motions and Amendments document, has the heavy lifting done by a triumvirate of the ACBC, Catholic Religious Australia and the Association of Ministerial Public Juridic Persons. The first test will be to get true synodality within those three bodies as the past record has been that the ACBC treats CRA with disrespect. Already one Archbishop suggested today that the implementation should be left to the ACBC and its Bishops’ Commissions rather than the new body just agreed too. Not a good sign.
Among the themes wrapped up today was Part 4 on Women and the Church. The revised document, an amazing effort by a four-person writing group, which had to deal overnight with input from 29 of the 30 tables as it attempted to build consensus around the wreckage of its failure on Wednesday. It was largely successful in doing this and the new document was the underpinning of a fresh document which successfully passed through both consultative and deliberative votes to an enormous sigh of relief from the whole Assembly. One of its author’s Sister Melissa Dwyer, was also on Plenary Tracker tonight. Its reception will be the first test for the Assembly in the Catholic community and the public media. The further ‘brand’ damage has already been enormous; but give this new document a chance.
This morning I spoke about the Plenary Council on ABC South East in my own Archdiocese of Canberra-Goulburn. As it was NAIDOC Week, all guests were asked to name an appropriate song. My choice was “From Little Things Big Things Grow” by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly. At the moment the outcomes of the Plenary Council are a small thing; my hope is that it can grow.
As I previously thought, much of the anguish and tension came in sorting the perfect from the good. That has its difficulties. As the chair, Bishop Shane Mackinlay, said to Members this morning, with some understandable exasperation in his voice as he was pulled this way and that by competing visions and special pleading: look for ‘What you can live with”. Many in the Catholic community, however, are looking for what they can fall in love with. That is the challenge.
It would be remiss of me at this time not to thank all readers for your encouragement and the 270 Second Assembly members for allowing me to be with them. It has been my pleasure.
No 17
Thursday 7 July 2022
TODAY FLOURISHED UNDER STRONG LEADERSHIP
The Second Assembly completed its fourth full day today. Members are increasingly practiced in the ways of the Assembly as we work our way through the agenda. These include the easy use of the technology, comfortably finding your way around the building, and understanding the rhythm of the day. Each table now knows each other well enough so that the day’s work becomes more rewarding as we joke around with each other. There is even a lovely ‘competitive edge’ emerging between the tables. Table 5, which includes several well-known church figures, leads the healthy self-promotion stakes in my part of the meeting room. Luckily for my table they are generous with their bountiful supply of chocolates and lollies.
Members are, however, also increasingly feeling weary from early mornings, long days, and late nights. The various ‘wins’ and ‘losses’ are also taking their emotional toll on those who hold aspirations close to their hearts. Discernment doesn’t ever remove the human element during our proceedings, and it would be faking it to suggest otherwise. Critical media coverage is well under way, putting many participants and their causes under the spotlight.
Last night I joined Western Australian Dominican Sister Mary Ryan and Dr Jodi Steele, a lay woman from Wollongong, on the official Plenary Podcast to discuss a wide range of contentious church issues with former SBS journalist, Michael Kenny. It was an important opportunity for us to reflect under pointed questioning on the bigger themes, while removed from the hurly burly of daily Assembly business. I learnt much from Dr Steele’s energy and great optimism about the likely future trajectory of church rights and processes for women since Wednesday’s events; and from my good friend Mary Ryan about the common sense and wisdom of so many senior religious women who have done the hard yards in the church and can’t be intimidated anymore by clericalism.
My own conclusion was that the success or otherwise of this Plenary Council will be judged against Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge’s early measuring stick that, recognising that the church is in crisis, returning to business as usual will not do. Any hint of that will not wash with the Australian Catholic community. The post-Plenary Council Church must be seen as more humble, transparent, and inclusive.
Long after some specific outcomes are forgotten, yesterday will be remembered as the occasion when a large group of women members and their supporters said enough is enough and stood in silent protest at the rejection by more than a third of the bishops of their hopes and aspirations for equal dignity and rights within their church. Whatever you want to call it -stand-off, protest, insurgency- this remarkable event produced immediate consequences for the operations of this Assembly, offered potential longer-term advancement for women in the church, and reverberated more widely.
Today’s conduct of the Assembly developed out of yesterday’s eruption in ways that benefitted just about everyone. It became more open and participative than it had previously been and flourished under sensible and strong leadership which made the Assembly focus more on outcomes. This increased the possibility of greater harmony on controversial issues between the collaborative and deliberative votes. The proof will still be in the pudding, however, as I commented in yesterday’s blog.
The consequences for the hopes for women embodied in Part 4 of the council document are still to be resolved. However, they seemed on track for resolution as of the close of business tonight. Members were each presented with the revised version of “Witnessing to the Equal Dignity of Women and Men” as the meeting closed at 5.30pm. I will take advice on the content from the many women members I rely upon. My own bottom line is that it cannot in any way be a dilution of the first version. Then it will be up to the consultative and deliberative voters to find their way to two-thirds majorities in their respective votes. There will be a prior test of the fault-lines within the Assembly during the consideration of the related issue of lay women and men preaching, which is contained in Motions 5.3 and 5.4, to be resolved earlier in the order of business tomorrow morning.
The Catholic world will take notice too because this is just another example of global tensions within the church. Christopher Lamb, editor of English church magazine The Tablet, reported in his article Tensions flare in Australian council over role of women in Catholic Church that the Plenary Council in Australia “is considered one of the leading examples of a move towards a synodal Church in the English speaking world.” Failure to progress here on such a central issue as the equality and rights of women, would have some international repercussions for synodality.
No 16
Wednesday 6 July 2022
PLENTY OF SPIN
There is only one story today. Let me tell it in simplified form and make some comments.
The 43 bishops cast their deliberative votes this morning on Parts 3 and 4 of the Motions and Amendments, which had yesterday received qualified majorities (two-thirds). Part 3 passed without any fuss, but Part 4 on women’s place in the church was rejected. The room was stunned. Uproar broke out. Hearts were broken. When the Assembly resumed after morning tea a large group of women and some men, including a couple of bishops, refused to take their seats, standing in symbolic protest at the entry to the meeting room. I was proud to be a part of this action.
The rest of the day was lost from the planned agenda as the Plenary Council authorities scrambled to recover. The proposed agenda for the day (Parts 5 and 6) remained untouched and an already tight timetable thrown into disarray.
Over lunch the bishops met in private with the Steering Committee. The two bodies overlap as bishops and their delegates dominate the Steering Committee. Many Assembly members and periti, at the invitation of women members, met in the Library to conduct a facilitated discussion.
After lunch the Assembly heard reports from both lunchtime meetings. Archbishop Tim Costelloe, who had been absent today with ill health, addressed the meeting first. Then three women members of the ‘Library group’ gave a comprehensive report, while Bishop Shane Mackinlay reported on how the bishops planned to deal with the situation. After he did so I rose from the floor to ask why the bishops had rejected the motions. If the Assembly did not know this, then any further discussion was fruitless and a waste if time. I continued this discussion with the top table and later with Shane himself by text. No satisfactory answer, almost no answer at all, was forthcoming from anyone in authority.
Let me quote from the official media release at the end of the day “Members will reconsider two Plenary Council Motions”:
The Members of the Plenary Council have spent Wednesday afternoon working together to reconsider a pair of motions that were not passed earlier in the day...
Earlier in the day, the two motions from Part 4 each received a majority of deliberative votes, but fell just short of a qualified majority-two thirds of those present. They therefore did not pass….
Council members were invited to spend time in conversation at their tables, sharing their feelings and responses, and considering how they could move forward constructively…
A four-person writing group has been established to receive recommendations from Members for drafting of revised motions. The new motions are expected to be considered later in the week.
This release contained plenty of spin. What it did not include was any indication of the events of the day, which have now been made public in many newspaper articles, including in Catholic media, sometimes distorted. It also did not reveal that the bishops, individually or collectively, had given the broader assembly no idea of what aspects of Part 4 had caused the downfall of the section. No explanation was offered, and the bishops failed to ‘own’ or try to explain, other than by reference to process problems, what had happened.
Consequently, the afternoon deliberations by the Assembly were conducted in a vacuum, for which the bishops are responsible. Good work may emerge, and some tables, including my own, enthusiastically took up the challenge of rewriting Part 4. But due process has been abrogated and the result may be a dilution of Part 4 to satisfy some unknown bishops. That would be a travesty. We will only know when and if Part 4 emerges in ‘improved’ form at the end of the week.
There is a lot of goodwill among members who largely want a positive outcome, or at least some outcome, even any outcome, for women in the church. Some even see this disruption as a major turning point in the history of the church in Australia.
I hope these optimists are right, but the proof will be in the pudding. I am prepared to believe that many bishops were surprised and even shaken by today’s insurgency. If so, that is a good disruption to a highly orchestrated process; but who knows how it will affect the internal dynamics of the Australian bishops as a group. However they voted individually, and we have no idea and must respect their privacy, they must collectively take responsibility for their actions.
There are significant long-term consequences in today’s fiasco for the whole idea of synodality and co-responsibility in the church in Australia. We are after all still in the middle of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality consultation. It may be the disruptive event which condemns ‘business as usual’ to the scrap heap, or it may be just a blip which church authorities will paper over as Church life returns to ‘normal’.
No 15
Tuesday 5 July 2022
SOME DISAPPOINTED HOPES
Today was a hard day. Hard in the sense of keenly contested discussion about Parts 3 and 4 of the Motions and Amendments and hard in the other sense of being quite arduous, because the volume of material on the table for determination meant we were very busy.
The members were not the only ones under pressure. The Drafting Committee was too, because of the number of motions coming from the tables just before lunch for afternoon discussions. Consequently, we started fifteen minutes late in the afternoon because we were just not ready. The chairs were also under pressure because of the complexity of interrelated motions. But the members were serene and understanding and the liturgists wrapped us in their spiritual warmth.
Most of all it was hard in the sense of some disappointed hopes. The renewal movement had a mixed day in terms of outcomes despite some brave and articulate speeches to important motions. This led to understandable stress and some tears afterwards. Amidst it all one good response came from those who insisted that the official photographers record the angst as well as the joy. Nothing is to be gained from presenting the Second Assembly as a love fest. There is some harmony, sharing and listening, but there is also a lot of disputation, which should not be glossed over. We are, after all, talking about the future of the church in Australia. Some of the traditionalists probably thought that they had a hard day too when some of their hopes weren’t realised.
The day began with the first package of deliberative votes by the bishops (Parts 0, 1 and 2), the results of which were officially released later in the day. The bishops overturned the consultative vote on 0.1 and confirmed all the later votes on 1 and 2. I was engaged in scrutineering, which, for anyone who has undertaken this role at political elections, concentrates the mind. The six sets of 45 paper ballots were double checked, and in one case triple checked, by multiple scrutineers, just to make sure no mistakes were made. We took our jobs very seriously.
Unfortunately, I was so distracted that I missed what I was later told were beautifully crafted and quite passionate talks by two of the periti. Columban missionary priest, Patrick McInerney, an inter-faith specialist, spoke on “Called by Christ-Sent Forth as Missionary Disciples”, while Good Samaritan Sister, Clare Condon, talked on “Witnessing to the Equal Dignity of Women and Men”; as an enlightening prelude to the afternoon business.
On both Parts 1 and 2 the Second Assembly was divided between alternative visions of the future of the church in a way that meant that two-thirds majorities in consultative votes were hard to come by in order to give several motions and amendments what is called a qualified majority. Fortunately, several attempts to excise reference to “those who identify as LGBTIQA+” from a motion about “thinking and praying for those who have experienced marginalisation within the Church” failed.
I was also faced with dealing with some motions that I thought were far from perfect, but included elements that I believed needed to be recognised. This happened with the general introduction to Part 3 which included statements about life and death issues and sexuality which I concluded were both inappropriate and unwise for the church. For example, I told my small group that this applied to a statement which linked “contraception, abortion, reproductive technologies and euthanasia” in one package. We know that the practice of most Australian Catholics warmly embraces forms of contraception, and reproductive technologies such as IVF. The Plenary Council should not be in the business of calling their beliefs and actions into doubt.
The story of the motions about women and men in the Church cannot be told in full here. But in time it certainly will be because it is one aspect of the work of the Second Assembly in which wider Australian society will take a big interest. Despite the best efforts of those whose vision of the future Church I share, only scraps of what women who desire equality in the Church survived.
The problem of finding qualified (two-thirds) majorities meant that progress was hard going. Reference to the Woman and Man Report (1999) and the Social Justice statement of the same name (2001) was successfully introduced and the guarded initial reference to the female diaconate survived. But getting the Plenary Council to support the admission of women to the diaconate and/or to hear the “frustration and disappointment expressed by many members about women’s exclusion from ordination” fell short of two-thirds support despite achieving healthy majorities.
Not surprisingly the mood remained sombre and painful and will stay that way for many members on these issues. I am now writing at the end of the day after an official dinner with a Christian Unity and Interfaith Dialogue theme. Our official guests gave gracious and entertaining speeches as did those other faith leaders who graced us with their greetings and support by video.
No 14
Monday 4 July 2022
THERE’S ENCOURAGING MEAT ON THE BONES
When the bishops cast their first deliberative votes on Tuesday morning, they will have one conundrum and two meaty sets of motions to consider. But before getting to that could I report on the colour and light of the day itself at St Mary’s Cathedral College Hall.
By 8.00am just about everyone had squeezed into the large meeting room for an 8.30am start. We were told to wear warm and comfortable clothes and that gave the assembly a relaxed feel. I wore my mask, but 90% did not. Let’s hope that is not an error with drastic consequences.
Picture 30 tables big enough to fit eight or nine members each. Looming over us is the very large screen with about 30 or more members, by my count, joining online for various reasons, including Covid infection. Some of these are in hotels in Sydney, while others are on their home ground.
Around the edges are the main dais for the chairpersons, the “top” table with the Secretary of the Plenary Council, David Ranson; the technical IT table led by Maggie Tiongson; the scrutineers table, including the Voting Officer, Virginia Bourke; the large Secretariat table; and a Help desk. There are more big screens scattered around and colourful banners. Liturgical experts, who have done a great job, hover to be called upon. The periti are in another room altogether. At one end, on a raised platform are the distinguished observers, including Cardinals Bo (Burma) and Dew and other Christian leaders.
I took the opportunity to introduce myself to New Zealand Cardinal John Dew, whose progressive style (“Call me John”) I have long admired. I am on Table 3 with a Ukrainian rite bishop, an Australian Latin Rite bishop, a Maronite Vicar, a religious sister, a male religious leader, and two other lay people, one a woman. That’s a snapshot of the Australian church, although distorted by the selection criteria to include only two women on a table of eight.
I am paired with Sister Mel Dwyer from Brisbane to act as a scrutineer. We covered Part 2 in Session 4 after afternoon tea. With online voting it just means ‘sighting’ the official count on the screen, but we do sign off so our signatures will go into the archives.
We learnt a lot during the day, including that there was apparent goodwill aplenty, a very tight schedule, mixed experiences with Spiritual Conversations, technical problems which can always be overcome, and lots more catching up to do. I thought that moving motions from the table groups would be next to impossible given the tight schedule, but I was proved wrong. Though initially there were no amendments in the official Motions and Amendments to either the general introduction or the first two Parts, some managed to emerge. One at least was a very important development in my view because it was concrete and had real bite.
The Introductory motion (0.1) drew two Interventions to explain the identity and plead the cause of both the Eastern Rite churches and the Ministerial Public Juridic Persons. The first intervention found some flaws in the text and may have inadvertently caused the surprise failure of the motion to gain a qualified majority. It was also a lesson for many members that the “Yes with Reservations” vote is actually a No for counting purposes. The consultative vote surprisingly failed by one vote to reach a two-thirds majority.
In the afternoon Part One on Reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and other Catholics the motions were passed with one small amendment. There was no real opposition. The highlight for me were the two note-worthy Interventions by Indigenous members which held the room in the palm of their hands. They were preceded by two effective episcopal Interventions. There was so much support that we finished the session early.
The motions in Part two on the church response to child sexual abuse drew two important amendments, including one on ongoing pastoral and spiritual support and accompaniment. Even more important in my view was a new clause (f) added to Motion 2.1 as follows:
Requests the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Catholic Religious Australia and the Association of Ministerial Public Juridic Persons, with assistance from appropriate experts, to study, acknowledge and address systemic factors which have facilitated abuse within the church.
This was the sort of tough, concrete proposal which goes some way to addressing the cultural factors deep behind church crimes and leadership failures. Notably, more than once the language of “a good start” was used in Interventions which sought to probe church failures.
Meanwhile, I am finishing this blog after a night out with a tableful of Assembly members. Deepening these relationships across the church will pay off in multiple ways in the church of the future. We return to our hotel bedraggled after battling what is unbelievably dire Sydney weather.
No 13
Sunday 3 July 2022
WORKING WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES
The first thing I must say today is that support for members has been phenomenal from within the renewal movement and the community more widely. That encouragement is very moving. My welcome pack even included a card with best wishes from Perth and a note which said: “I hope you have a sense of the prayerful support of many people across the nation as you embark on this important task.”. I certainly do.
Just four members were on the plane from Canberra to wintry Sydney, but there were some interesting insights. One, from an unexpected quarter, was that the whole process had been “too orchestrated”. From the airport to the hotel our hosts looked after us extremely well. 170 members are staying at the Boulevarde Hotel, an iconic Sydney venue, which makes it the major hub. The welcoming party there included an old friend, Sydney Archdiocesan Coordinator, Josephite Sister Jo Brady.
There was a real buzz in the Foyer as Zoom friends caught up for the first time. My first impressions were of the sheer size and diversity of the member group. Ethnic variety is one obvious part of that diversity, most obvious among the clergy. I was also taken by the national character of the gathering as members have flown in from near and far.
It was Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday and the first day of NAIDOC Week. Surely that is an omen. Our first substantial votes will be on motions about the place of Indigenous Australians within the church and wider Australian society under the heading: ”Reconciliation: Healing Wounds, Receiving Gifts”.
Official openings are important because they can set the tone for what is to follow. This opening carried mixed messages. The Opening Mass was concelebrated by all the bishops and many of the priests, with the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Charles Balvo, as the principal celebrant and Bishop Columba Macbeth-Green of Wilcannia Forbes, giving the homily. The Smoking Ceremony and the Welcome to Country set the scene most appropriately and ATSI Sunday was given appropriate emphasis. The Universal Prayers we offered included one unambiguous prayer, with political implications, “for all people in Australia, that we will embrace the Uluru Statement from the Heart, so that a First Nations Voice is enshrined in our Australian Constitution, strengthening a fair and truthful relationship between us all.”
There is little doubt, though, that the massed ranks of concelebrating bishops and priests sitting together in the chapel to the pointed exclusion of lay people did emphasise the segmentation within our church between the lay and the ordained. This may reflect our current reality, but it is still contrary to the spirit of synodality and oneness as a church which we should be aiming for.
Plenary Tracker 2 brought together three members, Catherine McAleer, Francis Sullivan and myself, and two observers, Eleanor Flynn and Richard Curtain, representing the Australasian Catholic Coalition for Church Reform and the Sense of the Faithful group respectively. We discussed our expectations for the Second Assembly. The overall tone was sombre rather than upbeat because of worries about the disappointing content and tone of the Motions and persistent doubts that this week will be the big step forward that we all have hoped for.
My own approach, despite all the criticisms of the process which I have made in the past, is to work within the framework before me this week to achieve the most productive outcomes; though I am very aware of not being corralled by what another senior member observed to me today was the ‘bureaucratic’ nature of the proceedings. Not sure exactly what that means for me until we get into it. Insurgency takes many forms; this Second Assembly will benefit from insurgency in some form or another.
The second part of the afternoon’s voting will test the church’s response to child sexual abuse. This means that the first day brings together two issues which are among the hardest for the church to get right. By the end of the day the tone may have been set for the whole week. Let’s hope it is a positive one.
No 12
Saturday 2 July 2022
FACING UP FACE-TO-FACE
Welcome to my Second Assembly blog series. I head off to Sydney tomorrow morning. I expect many of my fellow Plenary Council members from the Canberra-Goulburn Archdiocese will be on the same flight.
I anticipate that the Second Assembly will have quite a different character to the first one, because it will be face to face. Meeting up with online friends and colleagues in person will be exciting. No longer will we will be meeting virtually from our offices and homes but sitting together at 30 tables in small groups of eight or nine. The new dynamic will have many benefits in networking and collective wisdom, but some costs in concentrating on the job at hand. There won’t be much spare time.
The application of the Code of Conduct for members has been eased somewhat because the authorities have realised that it was too heavy-handed at the First Assembly. Chatham House rules will apply and blogs like mine will be able to report discussions, without attribution to individuals, more freely.
Preparations over the past month for members have been extensive through weekly Coffee Conversations on Tuesday evenings. Members have offered plenty of opinions about how things could be done better, such as requesting the opportunity to suggest new motions rather than merely amendments to those produced by the authorities. But we have not made any headway.
Last week in a Coffee Conversation Bishop Shane Mackinlay announced to some consternation that, first, the possibility of a Third Assembly had been ruled out, and secondly, that in the event of the bishops’ deliberative votes being at odds with the consultative votes no explanation would be given by the bishops to the assembly. When I took the latter issue up privately with Bishop Mackinlay he engaged immediately in an extensive conversation, though without any variation to the gist of his announcement. Let’s hope the consultative and deliberative votes don’t diverge.
Covid remains a worry and it is expected that some of us will be struck down during the week. Arrangements to deal with this eventuality are in place. Before we begin, and on several occasions during the week, each member must undergo a RAT test. Members who are laid low can continue to participate from their hotel rooms if they feel well enough.
I suggested some amendments to the Framework of Motions issued on 31 May 31s. In doing so I chose to concentrate on two sections, governance reform and women in the church. I also accepted an invitation to be one of nine scrutineers and have been trained for that role. All consultative voting will be done online, while the bishops’ deliberative votes will be cast each morning using paper ballots.
Finally, after a general invitation was issued, I put my name forward to move and speak to one of the governance motions. However, I was later told that all motions would be moved by the chair as not enough volunteers had come forward.
The final proposed amendments were released on June 29 in the Motions and Amendments document. Keep it on hand during the week so that you can follow what’s going on. It’s not too different from the earlier Framework of Motions as, apart from some textual changes, very few of the 616 amendments suggested were allowed to go forward.
The motions and amendments still pose difficult choices as Members try to navigate between the perfect and the good, a point I made in a recent article in Eureka Street and La Croix on June 23. The question I will ask myself about each motion is ‘Even if we should be able to do better, is this a good enough start to be acceptable’?
Our venue is Cathedral Hall and members are based in four hotels within 700 metres of the central location, in my case The Boulevarde Hotel. The Opening Mass on Sunday July 3 will at Mary Mackillop Chapel in North Sydney at 5.00pm, followed by dinner at Mary Mackillop Place. I will then race back to the hotel by 7.30 pm to be one of the guests on the first evening of Plenary Tracker 2, discussing what to expect at the Second Assembly. Make sure you register for this series.
The Assembly members should always remember that the twin origins of the Plenary Council lie in the crises of identity and performance that the church is facing and the awful revelations about the church from the Royal Commission into institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. We must face up to our failures and respond boldly and creatively. The dismal results of the 2021 Census for the church should be on our minds too. Our response must be couched not in vague generalities but in concrete reform proposals. That is the responsibility of Plenary Council members. I promise to try my best and pray that I am not found wanting.
No 11
Monday 20 December 2021
BY THEIR FRUITS
The Plenary Council has taken another step. The First Assembly Proposals from Small Groups and Individual Members, informally known as ‘The Fruits of the Assembly’, was published in early December. We are still waiting for the full Acts or Proceedings of the Council.
This publication means that the broader Catholic community has another small insight into the direction of the Council as it moves slowly towards the Second Assembly in the first week of July 2022. But there is a lot more to come.
I recommend that everyone with an interest in church affairs reads this document. It contains three types of proposals, treated equally by the document’s presentation, and organised around the 16 Agenda Questions.
The first type are the final reports from the 10 Small Groups and for Questions 2 and 4 from the full membership; the second are proposals extracted from the Individual Interventions made by Members during the Council; the third type are proposals moved and seconded privately by individual Members through a mechanism made available for motions. The latter two types are not distinguished from each other in the document.
The document has a raw, unfinished feel to it. The small group reports were compiled under great pressure of time. In terms of ‘finish’ they generally compare unfavourably, for instance, with the six earlier Writing and Discernment group reports.
Taken together the proposals represent the breadth and diversity of the Church in Australia. This applies especially to the individual proposals, which will come as a shock to many close observers. Those closely following the live streaming of the Council would have already gained some sense of the ideas of the small groups, but the individual proposals will be all new. Some will disappoint church reformers because they suggest a very traditional view of the church. Others will be encouraging.
Presenting the Small Group reports mixed in with the individual interventions and individual proposals diminishes the central collective work of the Assembly. The former should have been given priority in the presentation.
The First Assembly Proposals should be read alongside the Acts/Proceedings. The Small Group reports can then be tied to named individuals. I was a member of Group 9, which delivered reports on Agenda Questions 14 and 16. The individual proposals remain anonymous. They should have been identified to promote transparency. When the Acts are published some of them can be identified; but the private proposals will remain anonymous unless the PC authorities remedy the situation in a later version of this document.
Bishop Shane Mackinlay, Chair of the main committee, the Steering Committee, has spoken to Plenary Council Members in a Coffee Conversation about these First Assembly Proposals and explained the way forward. Comments are now welcome on the proposals, but they can only be made through the concurrent Synod on Synodality process rather than back to the Plenary Council authorities. That can be done until late February.
It would be much more in the spirit of synodality if the Plenary Council authorities called for direct responses; but despite advocacy from the Australian Catholic Coalition for Church Reform that is not the present plan.
In about late February the PC authorities (with Steering committee, Drafting committee and committee of experts working together) will publish the next step. This will be initial drafts of propositions for the Second Assembly. As Archbishop Tim Costelloe, President of the Plenary Council, explained in his introductory message to this document:
‘As initial drafts of propositions become available, they will be shared with Members, Advisors and other Church and Agency leaders for ongoing discernment and feedback. In this way the writing process will be informed and guided by the ongoing prayer, conversation and discernment of the Members and the wider people of God in Australia.’
This is still vague, but it appears that the People of God will not have direct input. The final version of the propositions for July will be published in June, after the bishops have a further look at them in May.
The People of God should pay close attention to the stages in this process. Even if excluded from direct participation church reformers now know (or can find out) the names of the Bishops, the members of the drafting committees, the committee of experts and the whole Plenary Council membership. They should make their opinions loud and clear to them.
In doing so we should all bear in mind that the July Second Assembly will be very short. There will only be four working days. Squeezing in a multitude of propositions will be extremely difficult. It appears that the approach will be to identify thematic focuses, perhaps, as Shane Mackinlay explained, one broad focus for each of the four days.
No 10
Monday 1 November 2021
TRANSPARENCY ESSENTIAL FOR NEXT STEPS OF PLENARY COUNCIL PROCESS
The Plenary Council (PC) is now entering a new phase. The first assembly has been completed and another nine-month journey has begun. The second assembly will be held in Sydney from 4-9 July 2022. The Catholic community and the 277 active Plenary Council members are now reduced to interested onlookers.
It is up to the Plenary Council authorities and the Australian bishops to publish in full the proceedings of the first assembly. This large document has recently been completed and sent to the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) for consideration at its November 9-12 plenary meeting. Quick publication should be a high priority given the appetite in the Catholic community for more information about the proceedings.
No one, including Council members, has a clear idea of how the development of the papers for the July 2022 Assembly will take place, although we do know that it will occur from 18 October 2021 to 4 February 2022. The process should be clarified immediately. What is known is that the Steering Committee will continue to operate and that it will be joined by a Drafting Committee. But the latter body is yet to be activated. There is talk of the Periti group (the expert advisers) meeting monthly to consider the role they might play in the ensuing months.
This is the context for two further developments. The first is the parallel but separate Australian consultation for the next Synod of Bishops, scheduled for October 2023, which was launched by Pope Francis when the Plenary Council was concluding. The theme is “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission”.
Catholics are invited to make online submissions to a new portal which has been set up, with the national coordinator being Dr Trudy Dantis, director of the National Centre for Pastoral Research of the ACBC. Dr Dantis has played an important role in the Plenary Council as her centre produced the summary of the Plenary Council submissions and she herself was a member of the four-person group which produced the Plenary Council Working Document (Instrumentum Laboris).
This new consultation (17 October-12 December) will inevitably overlap the Plenary Council process. It might possibly strengthen it through a double dose of synodality; but it is more likely that it will confuse matters. Are Australian Catholics ready to again participate enthusiastically in a church consultation process? Many will feel hurt by the cavalier way in which their 17,500 submissions in 2018-19 were ultimately disregarded by the Plenary Council authorities in the preparation of both the Working Document and the subsequent Agenda Questions.
Once again there will be a danger of dilution of submissions made in good faith. In this instance submissions will initially be considered at the diocesan level before being fed into a national process to produce a national-level Australian report. If the Catholic community is to be convinced that this second example of walking together can be trusted, then it would be wise for church authorities to provide some details about how and by whom diocesan and national reports will be produced. Otherwise, the community might feel once bitten twice shy.
The second further development, initiated by South Australian Catholics for an Evolving Church, is the lay-led Synod now planned for May 2022, prior to the Second Plenary Council Assembly. Any community engagement with the Plenary Council, such as this lay synodal initiative, must now also take into account the likely impact of the official Synod of Bishops consultations. The themes will almost certainly be similar. Indeed, it is highly likely that most new submissions will rework ideas and proposals previously presented in the context of the Plenary Council. The Catholic community must decide whether to engage on two official fronts or to continue to concentrate its attention on the Plenary Council.
END FIRST ASSEMBLY
NO 9
Sunday 10 October 2021
SYNODALITY REMAINS UNTESTED ON RESOLVING DIFFERENCES….
Solemn High Mass at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Brisbane with Archbishop Mark Coleridge has brought to a close the First Assembly of the Plenary Council. What direction are we heading? What is our Catholic identity? Did we come as far as could reasonably be expected?
These questions first need context. The church reform community shares characteristics and aspirations but remains diverse.
Some members are ensconced in the mainstream church; others are hanging on by their fingernails; still others have left. Some have been badly hurt by the institution; others have been more fortunate. Some reformers have been journeying for years; others have just joined in. Some want radical change quickly; others are happy enough with slow, incremental steps.
There will be many different perspectives on these big questions. My immediate answer is that this ‘window of opportunity too good to miss,’ is still open. But the hardest work is still to come.
Panoramic answers are hard to formulate, given the style of the Assembly. The small groups are hard to characterise. Their internal dynamics will become clearer as informal and/or diocesan networks debrief over coming days. The individual Interventions, which often had more passion and power than the group work, often did not connect directly, if at all, with the group deliberations.
The agenda questions sometimes became a straight-jacket and some omissions, like the failure to tackle questions of gender and sexuality head on, remain a stain on the church in Australia. The official advice during the formation sessions that these sixteen questions were broad enough so that any issue could be squeezed between the cracks proved misleading, because such issues could then be characterised by another member as peripheral to the core task of the group.
The outcomes can best be categorised issue by issue.
My impression is that on child sexual abuse and safeguarding the Assembly will insist on zero tolerance and enduring repentance and generosity towards survivors.
On two big social issues, recognising Indigenous culture and spirituality, and ecological conversion, both with internal and external aspects, the Assembly wants both internal action and stronger external leadership by the church in wider society.
On the role of women in decision-making within the church there is also a clear appetite for inclusion, accountability, and equality. This is driven, despite some cultural and theological objections, by widespread acceptance of synodality and co-responsibility. Religious women and PJPs are strong advocates.
On governance reform there is widespread support too, though it is a topic on which discussion can be easily diverted by resource concerns. The need for diocesan and parish pastoral councils are almost universally accepted.
Sexuality, including justice for LGBTQI+ Catholics, is the elephant in the room. It can’t be avoided, though authorities try hard to do so, because through many families and children it touches most of us across various divides within the church. Most young Catholics can’t abide church hypocrisy towards the LGBTQI+ community.
Women in ordained ministry remains a tough battle. Here there are not just theological questions but the Australian Church’s sense of itself comes into play. Tackling Rome remains daunting for many, especially the bishops. There is a common ‘little Australia’ syndrome.
My hesitation to get too excited relates not just to diversity and polarisation within the church, however, but to the Plenary Council process itself.
Our attention should turn now to the key committees, including the steering and drafting committees, which will progress the passage of prospective resolutions towards the Second Assembly. Neither the council members nor the wider Catholic community will accept again the closed and unaccountable process which led to the flawed Agenda Questions for the First Assembly. They are now feeling so empowered that the authorities would try this on again at their peril.
The First Assembly process turned out to be too compressed and rushed, especially over the final 36 hours. We started slowly and finished with a disturbing ‘helter-skelter’. This led key elements, such as the final group papers and the final communique, to proceed without proper examination. This too must not be repeated.
Finally, the method used to resolve differences of opinion remains unexplored, because we took no substantial votes in either small groups or plenary sessions. This is where synodality remains untested. Pope Francis hopes for surprising overflow by which contrary positions may come together. But this outcome must not be reduced to a lowest common denominator position, or it will be to the detriment of the church across Australia.
NO 8
Saturday 9 October 2021
A FEW LESSONS LEARNED….
The closing Mass tomorrow from Brisbane will bring this historic First Assembly of the Fifth Plenary Council to an end. Only the final production and distribution of the proposal papers remains. Then it all starts again as the run up to the Second Assembly begins. It is time to offer initial reflections upon both the process and the outcomes.
This has been a massive exercise of which the church should be proud; a shout out to everyone involved, especially those behind the scenes. These include the Facilitation Team, the technical advisers, the chairs, the group facilitators, the expert advisers, and the Steering Committee. Many people have worked hard into the evenings to make morning deadlines; to turn around the paperwork; the technical support has largely been effective, coping with a membership often challenged by technology; the members have applied themselves diligently and raced to digest it all on the run.
Its broader impact on the sociology and dynamics of the church in Australia is incalculable. Networks and recognition of common interests have developed on all sides. We remain a ‘house divided’, in the words of one member, but some silos have been broken down. There will be unpredictable consequences into the next year and beyond. The life of the church may be enlivened and may never be the same. However, there will be the great temptation to move back to business as usual; resist it!
As an example of synodality in action the First Assembly process should be examined for its lessons before the next stage of the process is set in concrete. These lessons should not be forgotten.
The general lesson is the most important. The process did not fully model the transparency and accountability which should be at the heart of synodality. The People of God, including the members, were excluded from the process at times when they should have been included. The consequence was that chances to make the process better were lost.
There were also some particular lessons.
The 16 Agenda Questions were too bland and did not do justice to the 17,500 submissions and the community ferment which surrounded the consultation process. Some issues, like the role of women in decision-making, were not tackled head on.
The decision to squeeze fourteen of the questions into ten groups, creating double-pronged group agendas, generally led to outcomes less than optimal. The late allocation of members into each group on the Saturday morning prior to the Assembly made their job even harder in terms of appropriate preparation.
The decision to take both institutional child sexual abuse and reaching out to the most vulnerable (Qs 2 and 4) into one special plenary session created an intense and moving occasion, but it also led to some confusion and loss of focus.
From the wider Catholic community’s perspective one other issue which stands out is that vagueness about the notion of ‘representation’ remains. It may never be resolved because each member approached their role differently, though we were warned not to consider ourselves representatives (because that term had a parliamentary whiff).
This variety was shown by what members brought to the table in both the small group work and the Interventions. Some interventions were like parliamentarians speaking to their electorates. I have no problem with that.
My impression was, for instance, that the members of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council brought a strong sense of representing the Indigenous community and did so successfully. Some Eastern Rite members also showed a strong sense of identity and spoke for their communities. Rural members, including bishops, made appeals on behalf of their suffering people.
The church reform movement should bear all these lessons in mind. As we intervene in the on-going discussions and implementation of proposals, the process, that is the way things are done, should be at the front of our minds.
NO 7
Friday 8 October 2021
SPREADING THE WORD….
The wider Catholic community has only been able to glimpse the tip of the iceberg during this Plenary Council. The livestreaming has allowed the community an insight into short summaries of the work of the small groups; but the plenary Intervention sessions have been off limits.
Some cogent reasons have been advanced for this decision – protecting individual privacy and encouraging members to speak openly – but the cost has been huge. The community has been denied the fullness of this special experience.
In dealing with this dilemma the Council authorities have not consulted with members, nor have they exhibited any creativity, although I know that discussions continue at the highest level. Their position remains unaltered.
Like with so many things the members have not been asked their opinion. One creative option, as with the earlier question of making email addresses public, would be to divide the Intervention sessions into two parts, according to the wish of the member, into open and closed sessions. This would allow another 45 minutes of live streaming.
The whole community would have been electrified and humbled by many of yesterday’s Interventions in the Special Plenary on Questions 2 (healing the wounds of abuse) and 4 (meeting the needs of the most vulnerable). They are still reverberating inside the Council, producing public angst and private politicking. Some of these interventions could have been delivered in a public session and I’m sure many of the speakers would have been pleased with the opportunity to speak to a wider audience, not for personal gratification but to bring important issues before the whole church in Australia.
Into this gulf come the church media. Just as important as what the Council does is how it is reported back to the Catholic community.
The Council authorities have done a lot in this regard through media releases, blogs, personal member stories, and other means. In addition, the diocesan church media have added flourishes of their own. My own diocesan Catholic newspaper in Canberra-Goulburn, Catholic Voice, has provided extensive coverage. The new archdiocesan Chancellor, Professor Patrick McArdle, formerly Dean of the Canberra campus of ACU, produced instructive short videos addressing some key questions in the week before the event.
But that is not enough. The church cannot be relied upon to report on itself. My great hope is that the diocesan Catholic media enable their communities to hear the full range of voices that we members have heard this week. The Light from the Southern Cross report (R. 63) asked church media, in the interests of free discussion, to ‘encourage the exchange of diverse views conducive to dialogue and discernment amongst the People of God’. The Council is a test case. Without a diversity of voices, certainly witnessed internally in this Council, the Catholic community cannot be fully informed. Without full information there can be no full synodality or co-responsibility.
The record of some diocesan media is that they fail to present a variety of voices. They are gatekeepers of top-down orthodoxy. They should not be afraid of opening up to alternative views.
The value of mainstream journalism, like Plenary Matters, Geraldine Doogue’s podcast, and the blogs of members like Francis Sullivan (Plenary Speaking) has been immense. They lead not just to real insights into the church, like Geraldine’s interview with Sydney Vicar General, Gerry Gleeson, but to a wider audience. It was no surprise that The Drum on the ABC featured Francis and Geraldine on the evening of the Special Plenary Session.
The value, it seems to me, is that such commentators speak to the 90 per cent of Catholics in the wider community rather than just the 10 per cent in the pews in a way that the diocesan church media have no hope of doing.
NO 6
Thursday 7 October 2021
FORMALITIES ASIDE….
Today has been one without either live streaming or small group work as the whole Plenary Council turns its attention to the crucial Questions 2 and 4, which deal with the church and the wounds of abuse and our reaching out to the vulnerable in society. Much turns on today and just what form any later public statement takes needs considerable thought.
The whole current episcopate is present in the Council, meaning that each of the ten small groups includes about four bishops. Their presence is central to two broad issues which have been discussed through the lead up to the Council, including during the formation sessions: hierarchy and formality.
Because I have been around the national church for several decades I know about a dozen of the bishops in one way or another. Some I consider friends. They treat me as friends do and I hope the reverse is true. Excessive hierarchy and formality doesn’t intrude too much.
Both these matters are organisational and cultural issues in broader society, including in families and work situations. I have come across them daily in my life as a university professor. How should students relate to me and how should I relate to my Vice-Chancellor? My preference is to break down hierarchy and formality as much as possible outside ceremonial occasions, but there are pitfalls for all concerned because cultural norms are deeply embedded.
Within the church much church reform, if it includes synodality and co-responsibility, depends on a loosening up of that hierarchy and formality. The matter was widely discussed during the formation sessions without any agreed conclusion because there are many perspectives. But fair to say that a majority of all classes of Plenary Council members, in my estimation, favour less of both hierarchy and formality. But putting that into practice quickly is not easy because the existing culture is embedded in our DNA in various ways. The matter of the use of first names in official identification during the council will now be resolved and implemented before the Second Assembly. At the moment it is formal.
Both hierarchy and formality are on display within the Council. I know some participants, lay, religious and clerical welcome it for religious, cultural and personal reasons.
Each day Mass is celebrated before the working sessions begin. A media release follows, incorporating the remarks the bishop has made during his homily. These media releases are then taken up and distributed more widely by CathNews and other official sources.
Does this matter? First, it gives the bishops a loud and privileged voice compared to other Plenary Council members. Secondly, even with the best will in the world those voices contain perspectives on what the church stands for and how it operates which frame the discussions within the Council.
Could it have been avoided? Perhaps not, because it is the natural order of things. But some consideration could have been given to distributing the masses among a wider range of clergy, including those in outback rural and regional locations. We should have also found a way for the ban on lay women and men preaching to have been finessed in some way, perhaps through alternative liturgies.
There is also the matter of what the broader society expects. It still wants to hear above all from the bishops, including if, and when, the Plenary Council issues a public statement regarding its deliberations today.
NO 5
Wednesday 6 October 2021
SENSE OF URGENCY RISING
Wednesday has come and almost gone. We are now half-way through the time available to us to come to our first conclusions on the questions we have been allocated. How can that be? It feels as though we have just started, but shortly after I conclude this blog I re-enter my ‘large’ small group to continue discerning Questions 14 and 16.
These last two ‘working’ hours of each day from 4.30 to 6.30 are crucial. Over five days we total only 10 hours together like this for free-flowing discussion about our questions. The morning plenary sessions are a different big-picture beast, while the early afternoon gathering is both more spiritual and more structured by design.
Our official group feedback this morning is now on the public record and shows where we are. The one ‘concrete’ step we have taken was to float the idea with the Steering Committee of inviting expert input on the idea of mission into our discussion. This initiative flowed indirectly from the two-pronged task which our group has been set, because ‘mission’ is seen as one common thread. This led to an excellent 5-minute address to the plenary session today by Professor Richard Lennan from Boston College.
Some in our group came to our deliberations because of an interest and background in social service, health and aged care agencies, while others brought an interest and expertise in governance, both practical and theoretical.
Our spokesperson today, Danny Casey from northern Sydney, described our agreed position: ‘Pressured, responsible and time-challenged dealing with two questions, vulnerable, hopeful. Becoming increasingly confident of the good that will come.’
Much of that resonates with me, but I feel an increasing sense of urgency to move forward at a more deliberate pace.
This morning I shared my perspective with the official Vox Pop being conducted by the national Plenary Council communications team. My conversation with Neil Helmore from Townsville, will be posted on the official Facebook page. Having that conversation helped me clarify my views.
I am physically isolated in lockdown in Canberra, but not alone. I am connected not only with the wider world but with some of my fellow small group members on Channel 9 of Teams. Consider the following private snapshots of life in my group.
One lay woman said to me this morning:
‘I think we need to get stuck into the questions now without losing sight of the bigger themes. I think adopting The Light from the Southern Cross is a large part of the answer, but some in the group won’t even really have read it all I suppose. I am clearly in the frustration phase of this process. If we were in person, I think it would be much easier to galvanise as we would have had side conversations with half of the group by now, and got a read on things.’
A second lay woman admitted to me last night:
‘I may be revising my sense of optimism and progress that I expressed this morning. I feel like we’ve actually taken a step backwards.’
A lay man, whom I met for the first time on Monday, shared my concern:
‘John, like you I have a sense of urgency to get on with ‘concrete’ proposals; two days gone and we still seem to be finding a starting point. The two questions have definitely made the process difficult and seemingly unproductive so far. We are doing this in large part because of the Royal Commission with governance the glaring problem. I’d like to get on with it.’
We four are only a small part of our small group, much less of the whole Council, but I doubt that we are alone in our views.
NO 4
Tuesday 5 October 2021
THE MESSY BUSINESS OF DISCERNMENT
Where are we up to? The reports back from the small groups and the draft minutes from the first Plenary Session greeted the Plenary Council members when they woke up this morning. Only then did the members of each of the ten ‘large’ small groups learn in full how the other nine were going. Catching up and checking in is a substantial exercise. The draft minutes run to 35 pages including appendices.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge tells the story of his light bulb moment when he was in Rome for the Synod of Bishops on the Family. ‘For the first time – certainly at a Roman Synod – I saw discernment in action. It was messy and unpredictable; at the halfway mark it looked very unlikely that we would achieve anything worth achieving. Yet at the end we did produce something which wasn’t the last word, but was a real contribution to the ongoing journey of the church.’
A step forwards towards a real contribution to the ongoing journey of the church in Australia must be the aspiration of this First Assembly. The notes reveal that the members are knuckling down to the task, speaking openly, revealing their inner feelings, and making constructive suggestions. Some of the discussions have gone back to basic concepts. As we go about our discussions, I am holding Mark’s reflection lightly at the back of my mind.
One big structural problem, which should have been foreseen, has been revealed. Because fourteen questions into ten groups doesn’t fit, four of the groups, including mine, have been asked to address two questions in the limited time available. Questions 1 (personal and communal conversion) and 5 (ecological conversion), 7 (diverse liturgical traditions) and 10 (clerical formation), 9 (formation of ordained ministers) and 12 (better structures for mission), and 14 (governance) and 16 (social services, health care and aged care) are being addressed in a single group. These ‘pairs’ also cut across the six themes (Conversion, Prayer, Formation, Structures, Governance and Institutions) within the Agenda Questions.
The groups are each approaching their dilemma in different ways, by considering dividing their time or integrating their discussion. Clearly some radical options have been considered, including splitting these groups into two. All sixteen questions are related to some extent by the church’s mission, so there is scope for creative linking of the pairs of questions. There is also scope for reimagining the questions. Some early tentative steps have also been taken to suggest appropriate resources to insert into our early discussions.
The live streaming today captured the reports back from groups by spokespersons who had been chosen yesterday by their groups, not appointed by the organisers. After the live streaming ended there were a total of sixteen individual interventions, twelve pre-organised and four spontaneous. These were diverse, but one thread was strong, though not unanimous: thoughtful and passionate advocacy for women preaching.
Like many members I continue to benefit from reinforcement and encouragement from within and outside the Council membership. My Concerned Catholics Canberra Goulburn colleague, Francis Sullivan, whose brave initial Intervention yesterday morning on the issue of women’s participation in governance and ordained ministries made me so proud, has written in his blog, Plenary Speaking, of the same phenomenon. Heartfelt thanks to all once again. We are sharing responsibility together.
NO 3
Monday 4 October 2021
DOES THE AGENDA REFLECT THE HARD WORK OF THE 17,500 SUBMISSIONS?
The Plenary Council operates both plenary, that is for all members, and small group sessions. The action began on the first day with a plenary session, the first 75 minutes of which was live streamed. This public part was in some aspects truly inspirational, but largely involved the formalities. These included the requisite profession of faith signed by all members.
The remainder of the session included the first statements, known as Interventions, by members. Then the council went back behind closed doors. This was the chance for members to state their opinion on the controversial Agenda Questions, the starting point of proceedings. The background was the many calls by the church reform movement to throw out the agenda as unfit for purpose. Today, Terry Fewtrell, in the Australian newspaper, reiterated the timidity of the Agenda.
My intention was to take the opportunity to draw a line in the sand by recording for posterity that there was a serious disconnect between the voices of the faithful, voiced with enormous passion and effort, and the final ‘distilled’ version. In doing so I was expressing a widely held view among council members. It had to be said if the Assembly was not to drift into ‘business as usual’ mode.
Members took their chance with alacrity. Eleven spoke to their written statements and another five spontaneously. Both the speakers and the content were diverse, much of it fresh but some reflecting newspaper debates. Bishops were prominent. Topics were varied, including marriage, secular society and young people, and some not easily pigeon-holed. An increased role for women in the church was taken up by various speakers, lay and religious, and pointed references made to the minority representation of women (89) and laity (91).
I urged respect for the submissions made during the consultative process.
I wish to urge the Plenary Council to remember and respect the 17,500 submissions made during the consultative process. Priorities emerged clearly during the process [such as inclusiveness and equality for women in church governance]. I do not believe that these priorities and proposals have been reflected clearly enough in the official 16 Agenda Questions. I do not know why the Agenda Questions have disregarded the force of the submissions and because the process of drafting the Agenda Questions was neither synodal nor transparent we may never know.
Small group work then began in the afternoon in ten groupings and the first directions to emerge will be reported on Tuesday. This spiritual conversation process has been compared to the Camino pilgrimage, that is long and slow and proceeding at varied pace, rather than a quick fix. Br Ian Cribb SJ, an enthusiastic proponent, has been wary about how well the methodology can work under virtual conditions rather than face to face, and another Jesuit has cautioned me that ‘spiritual conversation presumes a lot of things before it bears genuine fruit’.
I’ll give it every chance. My first experience was a learning experience. Both my ‘large’ small group of 28 and my ‘smaller’ small group of nine represented the diversity of the church in Australia: geographical; Latin and Eastern rites; gender; age; profession; clerical, religious and lay. Members feel privileged, excited, determined, overwhelmed, daunted, and challenged (one or all of the above), but generally ready for the task before them.
A couple of final points. The work of the council is supported by many chairs (Theresa Simon from Sydney today), facilitators and technical advisers, coordinated by the Facilitation Team. They can make or break the council and, as anyone with experience in this field knows, may even materially affect the shape of the outcomes. The role of the twenty periti or experts is very much a work in process. While some are clear that their role means that ‘we don’t speak until we are spoken to’, others are uncertain. It just shows that we are all learning as we go.
Professor Emeritus John Warhurst AO
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NO 2
Sunday 3 October 2021
SYNODALITY AND CORESPONSIBILITY SHOULD ACCORD AN EQUAL VOICE AS WE WALK TOGETHER
Thank you for the many generous messages of support. I have been allocated to a group of twenty-eight members which will discern two questions: 14 (governance) and 16 (social services). Without knowing more that seems a big ask.
During the Opening Mass from Perth today I reflected upon my twin expectations: good process and good outcomes.
Good process for me includes three elements: practical two-way open-ness to the broader Catholic community, a full discussion of all the issues raised during the Plenary Council consultation process
(‘everything on the table’) and one voice one value. All three things may have to be fought for if recent history is any guide.
The Plenary Council authorities have resisted making it easy for the Catholic community to contact Plenary Council members directly. For more than a year now the idea of releasing the email addresses of members has been knocked back. Not only does this mean that the pesky church reform movement is kept at bay, but even church agencies themselves have had to scramble to manufacture their own home-made set of email addresses. This is crazy.
Plenary Council members themselves can reach out to the community, but any outreach during the Assembly, like this blog, must contend with the Code of Conduct, which imposes a form of Chatham House rules for the small groups. This accords some privacy to small group discussion and rightly protects the integrity of the discernment process, but the general direction and vibe of the discussions should remain transparent to the broader community. I will be trying to walk that fine line.
We have been promised since the consultation began that every matter raised by the community must be on the table; and this means even matters which can only be resolved by the Vatican. Yet the Plenary Council Agenda Questions we have been presented with steer clear of apparently contentious issues – like women’s role in the church – that the community has definitely made a high priority.
The idea of synodality and co-responsibility means that all members should be accorded an equal voice as we walk together. But modern synodality is grafted onto the old clerical and hierarchical church. Undue deference to those in authority remains embedded and has been evident during the Plenary Council preparations so far. Challenging this culture is a constant necessity; yet it can grind you down.
Good outcomes mean an inclusive, transparent and accountable church and a humble church which engages with modern society and smell of the sheep. Ultimately this must mean cultural change within the church at individual and collective levels. The conduct of the Plenary Council itself should model these principles.
Inclusivity must mean an equal role in church decision-making for lay people, especially women. Transparency must mean that church affairs, including financial matters, are not restricted to privileged insiders. Accountability will naturally follow because leaders will be held to account in a way that is impossible now. All of this will mean the creation of new institutions, like diocesan pastoral councils, and the revitalisation of some existing ones.
Recent information provided to Plenary Council members has filled many gaps in our knowledge about the process, but apprehension remains. The first Plenary Session on Monday morning will set the tone. Let us hope that it points us in the right direction and is not bogged down too much with the necessary formalities.
Meanwhile I am off to our final orientation session, followed by the first evening of Plenary Tracker.
Professor Emeritus John Warhurst AO
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NO 1
Saturday 2 October 2021
LOTS OF PREPARATION BUT STILL IN THE DARK
Even before discussing my expectations of the Plenary Council, it is important to set the scene. I began my formation as a member in late June, more than 12 months after I had first been notified of my appointment, and since then I have learnt a lot. I have had one face-to-face meeting with my fellow members from Canberra-Goulburn, but other than that my whole experience has been online.
The formation session was full of technical training on how to manoeuvre around Microsoft Teams and introductions to small group work. The former is crucial to the whole enterprise and those most technically adept may prove to be the most effective. The latter is equally important because more than 50 per cent of the member’s time ‘at work’ will be in these groups of 10 or sometimes 30.
It also featured lectures on the Spiritual Conversations methodology by Br Ian Cribb SJ, on the PC Statutes and Regulatory Norms, and on the psychology of small groups.
Slowly we began to meet other members. I discovered that I knew a few people, mostly because I have been in and around national church agencies for decades. I still feel isolated, but many others must feel even more so. Some say the church in Australia is a small world, and I know what they mean, but most of us Catholics live in silos of one sort or another. This applies to lay Catholics especially and puts us at a disadvantage in a gathering of about 280 members, composed of clerics, religious and lay.
It has dawned on me that the Spiritual Conversations method may turn out to be the greatest influence on the outcomes of this council. This is a unique ecclesiastical event and quite foreign to anyone who expected a meeting or a conference like they may have experienced elsewhere in their professional life outside the church. Some friends and colleagues swear to me that the method, based on deep listening and discernment, will work and will not prevent open and robust conversations about the issues of the day for a church in crisis. I will take that on trust, and I will be entering the Council tentatively with just two or three practice sessions under my belt.
The small group work will be based loosely around 14 of the 16 Agenda Questions. The other two will be discussed in a Plenary next Thursday. Why that is the case has not been explained. That’s another feature of this whole exercise. Members outside the inner circle take what they are given. The framework has not been open for discussion by all.
No one yet knows which question they will be allocated to discuss. Recently we were asked to submit our preferences, ranked one to six, among the questions. I have heard we may get one of our two highest preferences, but that is just rumour. We’ve also been told that we can switch groups if we feel it is not working for us. Naturally members are anxious and remain pretty ignorant about these vital matters. It seems that too much has come with a rush in these last few weeks. This includes a Code of Conduct. More on that next time.
Professor Emeritus John Warhurst AO
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