The Gospel for this Sunday, the 3rd Sunday of Lent Year B, comes from the second half of chapter 2 of St John and contains an account of the cleansing of the Temple.

In the other three Gospels this account is part of the final visit of Jesus to Jerusalem, but with John it occurs very early in His ministry just prior to the first Passover after His encounter with the Holy Spirit in baptism at the Jordan river.

Why?

Part of the answer is in the traditional preparations for the Passover. In the preparation time all of the yeast and all leavened products are expelled from Jewish homes. The whole family does it, but the father of the family has the most authority to do so.

Yeast, if you have ever worked with it, is a rather stinky pungent substance. Getting rid of the yeast is symbolic of getting rid of anything offensive to God, especially our sins, and the whole of Lent has this purpose.

So we can see in this event Jesus with the authority of the Father cleansing the Temple of the things that didn’t belong in a place of worship and prayer.

Jesus was bringing the Temple back to its original order and purpose, and making the place more conducive to finding God during the years of His public ministry.

It was a very confronting and dramatic thing to do, and it took a deal of courage.

The rest of us would probably complain and grumble privately and never do anything to fix it because fighting ‘city hall’ is never easy.

Why do it that way?

Well how did things get that way in the first place?

To me the following seems like a plausible scenario:

In the beginning all the animals and stuff were outside the Temple walls, a short distance away. Then one day it must have rained hard, and the merchants moved their unblemished animals closer to the Temple for shelter. The dove and pigeon sellers possibly got just inside the front door, and then they got more business because of the better/closer location, sellers and buyers were happy and the birds made next to no noise. But one pigeon table became two tables, and two tables became more tables. Not too long after the lamb sellers thought they’d see if they could muscle in too. The slow creeping encroachment continued. By the time the presence of the sheep had been accepted as normal, the cattle sellers made their move. Time passed and the presence of the doves, pigeons, lambs and cattle in the outer Temple precincts became tradition. No one remembered that it had ever been anything different. People occasionally grumbled about the noise and the smells and the mess, but it was what it was, and it was still convenient.

So how do you fix something like that?

Obviously an incremental approach; remove the cattle, then remove the sheep, then remove the birds isn’t going to work. Why should I move my stall if the other bloke isn’t moving his?…etc.

How do you fix it so that no one dares to even think about creeping back in for a very long time?

You have to do it dramatically, and emphatically, and all at once.

And that is exactly what Jesus did.

We might even see Him do it again.

We have seen a lot of creep over the years ourselves, no fault divorce, contraception, abortion, cohabitation, redefinitions of marriage, gender fluidity, euthanasia. Young people today cannot even imagine a time when these things weren’t accepted and weren’t celebrated.
 
Likewise an incremental approach to fixing it is unlikely to work.

Something bold, dramatic, authoritative and emphatic that brings us back to God’s original vision for marriage and family and contains enough awe for us to never to consider that other stuff again for many centuries. That’s what would work. Something only God can do.

In history we see that whenever societal norms have swung too far one way, the pendulum swings back the other way. Similarly the ying yang concept of the orient implies that if you go too far ying then everything becomes yang, and if you go too far yang then everything becomes ying, and quite dramatically so.

Lent is a time for us to work on clearing out any compromise and any increasing levels of compromise in our lives, in order to put God emphatically first.

But we also shouldn’t be surprised if God does some dramatic and emphatic spring cleaning too; individually, in families and parishes, and on a worldwide basis.

It is wonderful that God has this kind of zeal for our salvation, and that He is willing and able to clean everything up and restore it to original order and purpose.
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May He have His way in us, and in our troubled world. Amen.

Towards the bottom of this blog-post is the 43 x A4 page document that contains the combined reference material from the Plenary Council Theme 6 cycle of blog-posts.

The links for each part of the cycle of blog-posts are here
Vision, Interview List and Pre-Requisite Reading
Open to Conversion
Open to Renewal
Open to Reform
Topics of Controversy
Sample Response re Women in the Church
Sample Response re Women in ministry and leadership 

A few of the blog-posts prior to 12 Aug 2019 also refer to the Plenary Council and Theme 6.

My hope is that this gathering of reference material may assist those working on the Plenary Council for Theme 6: Open to Conversion, Renewal and Reform at national, diocesan, deanery and parish levels. 

This particular part of my Plenary Council journey is now done.
I place whatever happens next in God's hands. 

This is the resource material I had collected for the third of the three sub-parts to Theme 6, and it is a loose grouping because there will be a degree of overlap with the other two sub-parts.

It should be useful for choosing people to interview and lines of inquiry for research, and providing common language to talk about these ideas.

NB. I have not repeated the relevant material from the pre-requisite reading list which you can find here 
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Open to Reform: Changes in structure and paradigm, at parish, diocese, national and world-wide levels

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/be-open-to-the-surprises-of-the-holy-spirit-pope-francis-advises-78992?platform=hootsuite 28 Apr 2016
Pope Francis asked Mass-goers at the Santa Marta chapel April 28 how the Church responds when faced with something new, and perhaps never done before, clarifying that this is “not worldly newness, like fashions and clothes, but the newness and surprises of the Spirit, because the Spirit always surprises us.”
The answer, he said, is “by meeting, listening, discussing and praying before the final decision.” This is the same method the Church has used since the beginning, and is how she answers resistance based on assertions such as “it was never done this way,” or “you must do it like this.”
This process of gathering to speak and pray about an issue is “the so-called synodality of the Church, in which the communion of the Church is expressed,” Francis observed, noting that it is the Holy Spirit who creates this communion.
“What does the Lord ask of us? Docility to the Spirit. What does the Lord ask us? Not to be afraid, when we see that it’s the Spirit who calls us,” he said.

Tweet from @DisabilityJ  (Disability&Jesus) 10 July 2016
https://twitter.com/DisabilityJ/status/752028684559720448/photo/1
The biggest lesson that I learned on the journey is that all of us are created in His image, that is all of us, equally without exception or qualification. There is a huge movement of the Holy Spirit through the wider Church right now, at the heart of which is the message of inclusion.

https://www.hprweb.com/2016/08/the-church-just-did-for-movements-what-she-did-for-religious-in-1978-only-better/
1 Aug 2016  Fr Matthew Schneider LC
An introduction to Iuvenescit Ecclesia
The deeper theology in Iuvenescit Ecclesia gives it a much higher starting point than Mutae Relationes when it gets to the practical elements. Charisms are not just seen as useful for the Church, but seen as something fundamental to our nature and something which cannot be independent from the hierarchy by nature, rather than do something which, for practical reasons, cannot separate itself.

The gist of the Welcome to Country address at Proclaim 2016:
Uncle Neil Evers a direct descendant of the Guringai clan that lived in this area (Chatswood) gave the Welcome to Country address.
I draw upon and acknowledge the strength and courage of the traditional custodians of this land. The word that we use for 'Welcome to Country' means 'Come Together'. Welcome to Country is a rite of showing respect to the custodians of country, whether you were going through their land or to their land. Otherwise it would be like going into someone's house uninvited. If you have seen a map of the Aboriginal language groups of Australia, you would know that there were at least 350 language groups. Each one represented a different country. Everyone knew the boundaries of each country, because they were clearly marked. You only went in with permission and with respect to the rules of the country you were in. This wasn't political correctness, but age old tradition. Imagine how it was before European colonisation, with everything crystal clear, an abundance of wildlife, with designated hunting, gathering and hunting grounds. They didn't own the land, they were custodians of it. When we 'come together' we can be strong, we can make a difference. The more we learn, the more we understand. On behalf of them, elders and custodians past and present, I welcome you to this beautiful country.

https://catholicmissionarydisciples.com/news/without-accountability-we-will-not-grow
Approx Feb 2018
'Having worked in the Catholic Church for many years now, I know many of the dysfunctions which are part of the internal culture of Catholic parishes, dioceses, and ministries. It is no secret that many are not healthy places. There is mistrust, lack of clarity in mission, church politics, infighting, fighting for power, etc. In other words, sinners run the Church! Furthermore, there is a culture of management - not mission. There is little vision for growth, but maintenance of decline. There is little transformation and a lot of status quo.
Even with all of this, we see a lack of leaders, who know what to do about it and want to change. There are numerous reasons, some of which I will lay out here:
•Seminaries (and grad schools) aren't forming leaders for the modern parish
•Pastoral training rarely helps our leaders understand real evangelisation and discipleship
•Change is hard, and all of us like comfort
•Lack of openness to 'experimentation' and new movements
•Culture of teaching (good), but with little evangelising (bad)
•Stopping after we make converts – so we fail to raise up missionary disciples
•We don't change, because to do so means we have to admit we haven't always operated the right way'

Tweets about content from DR18 (Divine Renovation Conference 2018, and @FJMallon
Three advice to Bishops: 1) Period of Christendom has long been over. We need to change the model of running a parish;
2) Find and invest in the 16% of priests who are on fire for the mission; 3) Change the structure of the diocese to support the mission.
Fr. James Mallon on the question of moving priests every 4-6 years: 'if the diocese were to hire a consulting group to come up with a plan to ensure that the organisation would never reach their goals, this would be the strategy they would come up with.'
Some slide decks from presentations on Communications and Groups at DR18
https://app.box.com/s/268r9zlbhqqpifxmz7ckm30g4fwon9qx
https://app.box.com/s/heudqq8w4vlpnerc88i7ekgmc4zn93p4 
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https://careynieuwhof.com/some-thoughts-on-why-megachurch-pastors-keep-falling/
Feb 2019 Carey Nieuwhof
Billy Graham was certainly a leader who finished well. Most people in church leadership are aware of the Billy Graham rule: never meet alone with a member of the opposite sex…The Billy Graham rule actually had four aspects. Billy and a few of his colleagues got together in 1948 in Modesto California after seeing other evangelists become entangled in affairs, greed and running down local churches.
•Financial integrity…so that Billy Graham and his team would not raise money themselves at crusades.
•Sexual integrity…so they wouldn’t fall victim to affairs or impropriety.
•Respect for local churches…so they would build up local churches, rather than compete with them.
•A commitment to accuracy in reporting…so they would not exaggerate how many people attended or how ‘successful’ their ministry was.
You can read Billy Graham’s own description of the Modesto Manifesto here.

Gideon Goosen
https://www.booktopia.com.au/saving-catholics-gideon-goosen/prod9780648232469.html
This is an interactive workbook bringing together historical, theological, sociological, and experiential insights to illuminate the main issues surrounding reform. Taking a measured approach by looking at both the positives and the negatives arising from the experience of Catholics, Goosen examines such things as what reform actually is; the need for reform, and psychological attitudes and resistance towards reform. He tackles thorny subjects like clericalism head-on and addresses the abuse of power in the church. He also seeks out signs of hope--following the example of Pope Francis--and explores possible strategies for the future.

'The family is the basis in the Lord's plan, and all the forces of evil aim to demolish it. Uphold your families and guard them against the grudges of the Evil One by the presence of God'
St Charbel

'Dare to do something completely different', Sr Margaret Purcell sm

Ken Fish, speaking at Servants of Jesus (video and audio), on 'The Anatomy of an Awakening' on 22 Jul 2019 speaking about the prophet Daniel's links to the return of the exiles and the rise of the prophet Haggai, and how a radical turn around can take place in a short amount of time. An awakening is more than a revival, more like God pressing the reset button. Unless there is preparation and follow-up, a revival can fade very quickly, like a flash in the pan.
https://movies.toxicwap.com.ng/watch?v=ReO92EfwSEg

Submission of the Australian Council of Catholic Clergy to the Plenary Council
https://www.clergy.asn.au/the-chairmans-word/submission-to-plenary-council/
This is well worth reading and considering.

Part of the script, transcribed and edited from 'Brexit: the uncivil war', telemovie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit:_The_Uncivil_War
The vision wasn't flawed.....it's people that are flawed.
and they ruined it.
I said the entire Downing Street There is a systems failure
operating system needed overhauling.
in this country and across the West.
You were pushed out, once again.
You reset. And that's all I did.
We're languishing, we're drifting without a vision or a purpose.
when there's a systems failure?
And what do you do usually……I reset.
And what did they do?
What did all of you do? ...... You rebooted
the same operating system,
the same tired, old politics
and self-serving, small-thinking
of short-termism, the virus, it infects.
Yes, yes, don't think that I don't
but that's what the system does,
know I'm as bad as the rest of them,
But I was hoping, just praying,
..to actually happen, for someone
that someone, anyone,
with a minimalist amount of... of imagination or vision
could see that there was the
opportunity for something to...
to step in and do something...
..to just.....to make a change to...
 
When the nation ceases to put the highest value on the home, it will not be long before it ceases to put a value on a person. Soon a man will begin to be valued because of what he can do for a revolutionary class, and then comes communism.
When men and women reach appoint where they are no longer interested in watching a seed they planted grow, or caring for its flower; when they are more concerned about increasing dollars in their bank accounts than obeying the primitive impulse to increase and multiply then know ye that a night has dawned when a thing is more important than a person and Hic facet (Here lies) must be inscribed on the tombstone of democracy.
Beyond and behind all the schemes and blueprints of politics and economics there is nothing more fundamental to the revival of true democracy than the restoration of the family.
​Venerable Fulton J Sheen 1948
 
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The next blog-post in this cycle will be background reading resources for the Topics of Controversy pertinent to theme 6: Open to Conversion, Renewal and Reform.
#PlenaryCouncil #PlenaryCouncilTheme6

​At the very end of the cycle I will put it all together in a printer friendly PDF.