​In the readings for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C we see both Elijah and Jesus seemingly brusque and impatient with Elisha and with three men invited to become full time disciples. This is confronting behaviour which feels quite unreasonable.

Why is it so?

There are two reasons. The first is that the context of these encounters is rarely explained to us. The second is that none of us like admitting that God has an absolute right to do with us what He wills, because He is our creator and redeemer.

So what’s the context with Elisha?

Prior to this encounter with Elijah, the prophets of Baal have been slaughtered and Queen Jezebel being hopping mad wants Elijah dead a.s.a.p. Elijah having nothing left in the tank tells God that he wants to die. Then the angel of the Lord wakes Elijah up and gives him the nourishment necessary to travel to Horeb, the mountain of God. Here God reveals that Elijah is not alone, others have not bent to Jezebel’s ways, and that God has three strategic tasks for him to do: to anoint two new kings, and to anoint Elisha to continue Elijah’s prophetic ministry.

There are then at least three reasons for urgency:
Jezebel’s henchmen are on the lookout to kill Elijah.
Elijah needs to find and anoint the two new kings before the henchmen catch up to him.
Elijah doesn’t know how much time he has left, and he needs to pass on to Elisha as much training and instruction as possible before that finale comes.

So what’s the context with Jesus?

This is the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus has a lot of time in ministry around Galilee until the time of the Transfiguration, and then Jesus sets out on the one-way journey to Jerusalem to die on the Cross for our salvation. Jesus is not going to pass by these towns again, this is their last chance to see Jesus, and to experience His ministry. The time left is counted in weeks.

On the way Jesus has encounters with 3 men.

The first is attracted to follow Jesus, and Jesus disabuses him of any romantic notions the man has by describing one of the harsh realities.

The second one has definitely been called by Jesus as a full-time disciples, but he wants to fulfil his family duty first, and Jesus doesn’t mince words saying the call on his life to preach the Gospel far outweighs any family obligation.

The third one is also attracted to following Jesus, but wants to say goodbye to his parents first, and Jesus quotes Elijah’s words to Elisha to him. Once you say Yes, it has to be a complete and unconditional Yes.

When you look at the short amount of time of public ministry left to Jesus before Calvary, the need for urgency becomes clear. This is a one-time opportunity which will never be possible again: to walk, and talk, and live with Jesus and the disciples in the last days of public ministry. That time with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem is what will distinguish a valid witness to Jesus from anything less; and the kingdom of God being built needs as many valid witnesses as possible. There’s no time to go and do something else and catch up later.

The call to be disciple to Elijah and the call to be witness-disciple to Jesus are extraordinary privileges beyond fathoming when looked at from our vantage point in salvation history.

The call is worth the cost.
Like the parable Jesus taught us, it is the immense treasure to be had for the price of the field it is buried in.

Now we need to come to terms with why both Elijah and Jesus were so insistent on an immediate and unconditional Yes.

For this we will need an analogy or two.
A very rich and influential king is visiting a far-flung region of his kingdom and comes across a person working in the fields. For reasons of his own, the king invites the worker to come and live at the palace and to become a courtier, dining every day at the king’s table. Would such a worker dare to hum and haw about the offer? Would such a worker dare to delay in giving an affirmative answer? Would such a worker dare to delay entering the king’s service? No and no and no. Any delay and any refusal would be an affront to the king. Even if the worker has only a tiny idea of how immense this invitation is, the king is fully aware of it. Chances are the expectation would be for the worker to join the king’s retinue there and then. Anything in the worker’s life would be set at naught and thought irrelevant compared to the king’s invitation.

Replace the king with God, and Elisha and the three men with the worker, and we begin to understand.

Those of you who watched the West Wing series on TV or DVD would remember how staffers in the White House when given a presidential request would reply, “I serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States”. That is the kind of immediate readiness needed to respond to whatever the King of Kings asks of us. That’s the kind of response the holy angels always give to God Almighty, and which we are called to emulate.

Also consider a high-ranking army officer planning a surprise attack on the enemy. Every part of that strategy would be on a need-to-know basis. Each part of the attack would need precision timing. At least one part of the strategy would need a reliable and trustworthy officer to obey a seemingly weird command immediately and without question. It would be necessary for that officer to not comprehend the bigger picture, and to have no prior knowledge of the command before it arrives. Those kinds of officers tend to be a rare breed. Only a few officers would have sufficient trust in the high-ranking army officer to do that seemingly weird thing immediately and without question. Success or failure of the attack would be dependent on that officer’s prompt obedience.

Replace the high-ranking army officer with God, and the officer with any one of us, and we begin to comprehend the amount of confidence God places in us when He asks us to drop everything to immediately comply with His command. That changes everything, doesn’t it? We will then comply with great willingness.

It certainly goes against the grain of our habitual independence to realise that God has the perfect right at any time to require a big and unconditional Yes from us with next to no prior notice or preparation. But it is the truth.

Thankfully it is far more normal for an awareness of a calling from God to unfold over an expanse of time. But we do need to be reminded that some of God’s perfect plans require that we drop absolutely everything and immediately do what He asks – and that whenever that happens our immediate response is of the utmost importance to the bigger picture that only God can see in fullness.
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Let’s pray
O God, my creator and redeemer, all wise and all kindness, I acknowledge You to be the Lord of everything and the Lord of me. The thought of dropping everything and going on a completely different path scares me silly. But I will trust in You, because You have been so faithful, so generous and so provident towards all of us. I understand that should You ever ask this of me, that the stakes must be very high. I want to express my willingness in advance, because if and when that moment arrives I might not be capable of rational thought. I also want to express my confidence in Your ability to look after anything and anyone I leave behind so much better than I ever could, and my awareness that it is impossible for You to do otherwise. Help me to never delay my Yes to You. Amen.

The second assembly of the 5th plenary council of Australia is about 3 weeks away. If you have been following this saga for any length of time you have to be asking the question: is there any hope of a good outcome? What would be a good outcome?

I recall the twice daily blog Archbishop Coleridge wrote during his experience of part 2 of a synod in Rome. Most of what had been provided by part 1 was completely re-written. That’s not unusual, because part 1 is feeling out the scope of the discussion and making public what the stakes are. Once the stakes are known, minds become focused, and the discussions go deeper. It felt like up until the last 2 days of part 2 that things were still messy and unresolved, but by the time it ended the participants were happy with the outcome, and recognised that God had brought it about.

Will we see something similar here with the Plenary Council?

At least with the publication of the motions that will be voted on at the Plenary Council (released 1 Jun 2022) the stakes are now known at a broad-brush level. Whether there is enough time to get to grips with the pros and cons for each motion is a matter for concern.

To a pew-dweller like me many of the motions read like motherhood statements - and can be interpreted in vastly different ways. For an example, some motions talk about formation. Does this refer to any type of adult faith education? Does it refer to catechesis prior to sacraments? Does it refer to the training provided in seminaries and novitiates? What is meant by ‘formation’ matters.

The battlelines are largely between the values held in scripture and the values of the world. Whatever happens at the second assembly, those battles will continue. Among the values of the world we have inclusive language, third rite of reconciliation, lay preaching during Mass, women deacons etc.

Inclusive language, which removes gender and replaces it with non-gender, eg ‘O praise Him, alleluia’ becomes ‘O praise God, alleluia’ also makes the possibility of a personal relationship with God more distant. We read in Genesis, God made them male and female. This ongoing movement towards androgyny is the direct opposite of appreciating and celebrating the maleness and femaleness created by God.

A good outcome would be nay for the inclusive language motions. That is, if pleasing God and not man matters.

The push for women deacons and for lay preaching at the homily at Mass come under the banner of the push for women priests. Why this push doesn’t die, since the Church pronounced that it did not have the authority to do so, is beyond understanding. Unless you accept that rebellion began with Lucifer and his implacable hatred hasn’t ceased.

Now I will make this caveat, in outback areas that have Mass once a month or less, and there are people serving in the ministry of deacon (preaching outside of Mass, providing pastoral care, co-ordinating efforts to assist the poor and vulnerable) without the grace of ordination to assist them, it seems a matter of justice that something needs to be done. Maybe we need to come up with a new title, and a new sub-diaconal installation rite? In such outback areas we want to give our people a faith alternative to seeking a secular civil celebrant for christenings, weddings and funerals in the absence of a priest.

The push for lay preaching etc isn’t going to address the underlying problem of unhealed wounds due to the various forms of clericalism. Those wounds form whenever someone’s voice is muzzled because that voice isn’t ordained or doesn’t belong to someone in the curia. There are untold wounds of the following variety: someone has been serving diligently with the altar flower arrangements for umpteen years, new parish priest arrives, shortly afterwards that someone is ignored, or ostracized for a while, before being told his/her services are no longer required with zero explanation, and zero appreciation of past service, not even a thank you in the parish bulletin. Who can that someone take his/her case for unfair dismissal to?

Where is the person who can do something about it, and not consider it trivial? It is far from trivial to that someone. And that’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the high-handedness that clericalism permits, the kind that changes daily Mass times without consulting the congregants, the kind that cuts down mature trees without consultation nor explanation. The hurts are real, the anger is real, the high-handedness doesn’t get curbed, and the only hope left is that God sees and will devise something suitable in purgatory for the offenders.

Are there any motions to address this regular kind of pain and anger? No.

Although some think that adding an extra layer of governance will fix it.

This isn’t something that any kind of committee can solve. This is something that requires admission of guilt, request for forgiveness, and real tokens of contrition. This is something that requires forgiveness from those who have been hurt, and progress towards healing and reconciliation.

The abuse crisis was enabled because these lower forms of clericalism were given a free pass.

The outlook is bleak because there are so many forces and special interest organisations that want to secularise the church. God’s ways require complete commitment and the narrow path that so many misunderstand as intolerance. His ways are unpopular, choosing life rather than abortion, choosing life rather than euthanasia, choosing marriage as a lifelong, faithful, fruitful commitment between one woman and one man.

But God is God. He is always in control. Nothing escapes His notice. Nothing comes as a surprise to Him.

Our hope is that God will raise up champions at the second assembly to challenge any motion that is displeasing to Him.

Our hope is that these champions will give others courage to resist the values of the world.

Our hope is that God will not leave us in the worst punishment of all, of being in error and not knowing that we are in error, leaving us to the consequences of our worldly thinking and our lack of seeking His will as our only good.

May the Lord God look upon those who have prayed in season and out of season for God’s outcomes from the plenary council process. May He look with compassion upon those who stopped praying because they lost faith in His omnipotence. May He hear the prayers of His people, and see all of the work done in good faith over the years, and bring His holy outcomes to birth. May we look back one day soon and clearly see His fingerprints in the outcomes.

Human solutions cannot prevail.
Godly solutions can.

In You alone, Lord God we place our hopes for the second assembly of the 5th plenary council of Australia and its outcomes short term and long term.
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Only in You, Lord God, is there any hope.

​Just in case you haven’t been using the woftam catchphrase, it means waste of time and money – although some people like to include an expletive starting with f. The Framework for Motions document, the working document for the second assembly of the 5th Australian Plenary Council, was released on 1 Jun 2022. The actual assembly starts 4 Jul 2022, so it doesn’t give any of us much time to assess what each motion means, and what the implications are should it pass.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EiQBQV8U8-T5DemhN1TY-WSlT4uSzy-v/view

It isn’t an easy document to read, even though it is only 44 pages long. That’s because it is couched in a language that’s part lawyer and part education bureaucrat.

To even begin to read it, you have to get past the title, and when I think Framework for Motions a toilet cistern is what comes to mind, and for that reason ‘motions’ is an unfortunate choice too.

Because I was curious, I wanted to know if the Holy Spirit was mentioned in any of the motions that were of a non-introductory nature. After all, if we have been truly listening to the third person of the Most Blessed Trinity, shouldn’t He be mentioned a la Acts 15:28? (It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves ….). The answer was no. In fact, references to the Holy Spirit could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

However there were references to the Spirit, spiritual and spirituality, and some of those references would make just as much sense with Zeitgeist being substituted for Spirit, and sadly maybe even more sense, than substituting Holy Spirit for Spirit.

This curiosity extended to seeing what kind of splash this new document was making in the Twitterverse. I had to really dig to find any response at all, and it’s been over 48 hours since release. Indeed this kind of ‘non-event’ status has been observed on Twitter throughout the whole Plenary Council saga.

Thinking back the communication policy seems to have been drop a document, provide press statements for dioceses to use, and then have radio silence until the next document drop. As I said back then, that’s not the way to engage minds and hearts in the process, and without grassroots engagement the Plenary Council process cannot rise above woftam status.

Where there has been engagement is with levels of church bureaucracy (diocesan curia et al) and with catholic education bureaucrats, and maybe with the odd bishop or two (yes I know that’s a tautology). The Plenary Council process has been bureaucrats taking to bureaucrats about things that matter to bureaucrats.

Every so often during the whole Plenary Council Process I’ve tried to find blogs with Plenary Council commentary. After you wade through page after page of diocesan blogs with word for word copies of the official press statements, you give up looking. So all you have left is commentary from semi-regular journalists in the Catholic Press. Of them, Dr Philippa Martyr has been the most prolific and reliable commentator. The upshot of this is that non-bureaucrats haven’t been able to find other non-bureaucrats to compare notes with on Plenary Council matters, unless they are long-suffering family members and similarly long-suffering friends -and those long-suffering ones tend to be people in the stratum between bureaucrat and disinterested laity.

Unless the whole church in Australia is engaged in the Plenary Council process then adoption of any approved motions (amended or otherwise) isn’t going to happen. If the outcomes of the Plenary Council process are not ‘received’, then it has been a colossal woftam. For a Council or a Synod process to be received something more than just engagement is required, people have to be both convinced about the necessity of change AND inspired to work towards it.

Compared with the fruit of the Detroit Archdiocese synod https://www.unleashthegospel.org/the-letter/ and its high levels of inspiration, the Framework for Motions document is lacking in inspiration at all.

Several of the Plenary Council motions have more to do with virtue signaling and public opinion than anything else.

The ongoing problem is that the Church is a movement not a bureaucracy, even though it needs levels of bureaucracy to fulfill its God given charter to draw people to holiness and to send them out to co-operate in establishing God’s rule on earth. The Church is a theocracy, it is not, and can never be a democracy, because the only person’s opinion that matters is God’s.

We are here to please and serve Him, not public opinion, not ourselves and not our own preferences for ways of doing things.

So the only proper lens to view each motion through is, ‘Is this what God wants?’ and can we back up any yes with evidence that this is what God wants from scripture, tradition and magisterial teaching? How does each motion assist the universal call to holiness and the universal call to mission?

How do these motions measure up against what I consider are the Big Three of what God wants?
Scripture -His message to us, to help us know, love and serve Him better.
Family -His plan for human life, which has been under extreme attack in our lifetimes.
Holy Spirit – how to open up pathways for the charismatic dimension of the Holy Spirit’s activity to flow through the Church and bear superabundant fruit.

Scripture is rarely mentioned, except for a push for inclusive language, which is itself based in an ideology and not found in scripture or tradition.
Family and families get mentioned in the introductory parts of motions and are given an oblique and not primary focus.
The Holy Spirit’s charisms are mentioned sometimes in a general way, and usually with the connotation of some people being better at doing certain tasks than others, not in the charismatic way of openness to the ‘dynamin’ power of Acts 1:8.

There are a minimum of 104 motions for the second assembly to consider in the space of 4 days. Each one deserves far more time for consideration, modification and the development of referendum-like pros and cons than the brief weeks between now and July 4. Does this speed imply an expectation that each motion will get rubber stamped? Many of the introductory motions will need several amendments, and each amendment will need to be voted upon.

Some of the motions will produce ‘jobs for the boys’, opportunities for expensive studies, investigations and reports by bureaucrats which will keep said bureaucrats in employment and which may – or may not – produce information conducive to helping people respond to the call to holiness and the call to mission.

Some of the motions are so vague that whole sections of the Church in Australia could get on with business as usual, keeping the status quo, and concoct creative reports that speak glowingly about how well they have adopted those motions. The work necessary to concoct such creative reports will help keep the bureaucrats employed too. Ditto for the paperwork necessary to produce the careful investigations required for some motions.

I continue to mourn the lack of realism about Catholic education. According to the motion all we need is a new national forum to talk about all manner of things to do with education – which by implication means the education bureaucrats think everything is as rosy as pie. While the rest of us wonder if the huge amounts of money poured into the Catholic education system are doing anything worthwhile at all - since so incredibly few graduates of Catholic education live recognisably Catholic lives.

Have you been to a school Mass recently? They are a combination of a school concert and a school assembly with a Eucharistic prayer thrown in there somewhere. Youngsters who have seen such diminishment in importance given to the non-school parts of the Mass are unlikely to take those holy parts seriously.

Those who do care about the religious education of their children are voting with their feet and either home-schooling or sending their children to Christian schools where at least they will learn lots of scripture by heart. Image the number of full-time youth ministers and parish sacramental co-ordinators who could be employed if the budgeted funds were directed to that purpose instead of the national forum.

I note the motion for laypeople, especially women, to preach homilies within Mass. Anyone with a microphone kit and a computer these days can preach whatever they want and upload it to YouTube or similar platforms. If you are any good at it, you will get invitations to speak at retreats and similar non-Mass opportunities for preaching. But at Mass we do want the person in persona Christi, who has been the person in persona Christi throughout the rest of the Mass to speak to us in the homily; to break open God’s Word for us. So the push for laypeople preaching homilies at Mass has more to do with wanting the authority that comes from being regularly in public view than most other reasons.

One way to fix this is to provide regular opportunities for preaching outside the context of Mass.

The other major push for this motion is the abysmally poor quality of preaching in homilies. I get it, I really do. The majority of homilies come in the following flavours; word salads; retelling the Gospel narrative almost word for word, something obviously put together a few moments before Mass started, something poorly regurgitated from an online source, or something using examples from a non-Australian culture that do not resonate meaning with an Australian audience.

Another way to fix this is to replace this motion for lay preaching with a more useful motion containing constructive proposals to improve the quality of clerical preaching in homilies.

I am also concerned about the proposed motions which put those who vote nay to the motion in difficult positions. Consider this scenario. You agree that recognition of the custodial role of first nations people is a matter of justice, but you have reservations about whether all the subparts of the motion will bear good fruit; or you have concerns that some parts of the motion will have unforeseen and detrimental consequences. In conscience you cannot vote yay for the motion as it is, and no amendments have been proffered. In essence you disagree with specifics but not the general direction. On motions like these it will be so easy for people to unfairly conclude that the nay voters were first nations haters, rather than people who wanted a better motion to vote yay to. Under conditions like these having true freedom to vote according to conscience will be hampered.

A similar concern is the peer pressure to vote a certain way which is going to be much higher under in-person conditions than under zoom-like conditions. It is the nature of these things that factional blocks will form, and the better organized factional blocks will be a force to be reckoned with. Certainly we need to pray for the second assembly delegates because when how you know God wants you to vote is different to how the largest faction wants you to vote -voting true to God’s way is going to require extra courage.

I still think the best use of the days of the second assembly is to throw all the motions away, and spend those days imploring the visitation of the Holy Spirit upon Australia like a nation-wide Pentecost.

Whenever I overcome my repugnance, I’ll read the Framework for Motions at a much deeper level and attempt to come up with lists of pros and cons, even though such a task feels like a complete woftam.

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