In recent days a document containing the proposals arising from the 1st Assembly of the 5th Australian Plenary Council has been released. The updated version, released 15 Dec 2021, has 110 pages. If you would like to read it, the link is provided below:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wi8RrPZPBKSHX-b6jjY3gvMdQQ26tcse/view

Yes, I have read it, but confess to skimming over sections that contained repetition because a few small groups dealt with 2 questions instead of 1 question.

In advance I apologise for how brutal my assessment of this document is.

As I read each page, I did expect something fresh and surprising to galvanise me with enthusiasm. Because that’s the hallmark of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is full of fresh vitality and loves to surprise us with new solutions to old problems and cause all of us to say, ‘Yes! Aha! That’s it! How come we never thought of that before? That’d actually work! Count me in!’.

What I did find were:
lots of personal agendas
lots of special interest group agendas
lots of human solutions, most of them anything but fresh,
lots of expensive requests for best practice research
expectations that formation will solve everything
expectations that better resources will solve everything
expectations that national standards will solve everything
expectations that things are quite OK, with a grudging openness to minor tweaks

So I conclude that the majority of participants were unable to relinquish their own agendas and their own pre-conceived notions.

I further conclude based on the complete squashing of the notion that ‘when considering the success or failure of educational facilities that the percentage of graduates who have become missionary disciples while at that educational facility really matters’ – that really listening to each other didn’t happen.

Listening to majority opinions happened; but listening to minority opinions not so much. Sometimes the voice of the Holy Spirit is in the consensus, (Acts 6:5, Acts 15:23-29) but sometimes the voice of the Holy Spirit is in a Daniel. (Daniel 13:41c-62)

Here are some interesting statistics:
In the document, the Holy Spirit (the One we were supposedly listening to), was mentioned 15 times, and 5 of those times were in the 9 Oct 2021 Concluding Statement.
Family was mentioned 33 times; families 19 times.
Evangelism and Evangelisation were mentioned 31 times.
Formation was mentioned a whopping 163 times.

Several proposals are good, but of the kind that cannot be imposed from without, and can only happen through people anointed by God, in His timing, to make them happen, eg a religious order dedicated to the care and healing of the abused and traumatised.

What we have is a list of very well-intentioned human solutions.

Yet all the questions considered by the Plenary Council small groups were based in Evangelii Gaudium 27

27. I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself. As John Paul II once said to the Bishops of Oceania: “All renewal in the Church must have mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of ecclesial introversion”.

And none of the questions considered the source of a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything.

Missionary impulses do not come from man,
they come from God.

Pentecost, (Acts 2), was a missionary impulse that changed everything.
Another missionary impulse that changed everything happened in Acts 4:23-31.
The conversion of St Paul (Acts 9:1-22) contained a missionary impulse which changed everything.

Likewise the conversions of St Augustine of Hippo, St Francis of Assisi, St Dominic, St Ignatius of Loyola and St Teresa of Avila changed the world, and are still changing the world.
The missionary impact of Our Lady of Guadalupe is still changing the world too.

None of these Plenary Council questions considered how to practically cope with the results of a such a missionary impulse (Isaiah 54:1-10).

People who believe that God is initiating a missionary impulse do make room, do enlarge the size of their tents, do spread their tent cloths wider, do lengthen the tent ropes, and secure the lot firmly with tent pegs.

If you really believe that God is going to send you a deluge of rain, then you stock up on umbrellas and gumboots, and you get extra water-tanks, you increase the capacity of your dams, and you clean out the gutters and fix the places that normally leak.

What, sincerely, do we need to do to prepare for a massive missionary impulse?

For example what would need to change if you had 3000 people show up at the parish office in one day; 1200 needing confession, 300 begging for deliverance, 500 begging for baptism, 700 wanting to know how to serve God better and do effective penance, 400 begging to become Catholic/do RCIA, 300 seeking explanation for the weird spiritual experiences they have been having, and 300 wanting to donate goods and large sums of money as evidence of their repentance to God?
What if that happened every day for a month?
Or for 3 months?
What if the numbers of the spiritually needy kept increasing each day?

My proposal is for the 2nd Assembly of the 5th Plenary council to spend half its time in prayer begging the Holy Spirit to grant such a missionary impulse to Australia, and to spend the other half of its time earnestly seeking guidance from the Holy Spirit for how to both effectively plan and respond to the results of such a missionary impulse.

Then we might see this land truly embrace its destiny of being the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit - and see that longed for missionary impulse happen.
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Amen? Amen!!
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​A printer-friendly version is available below, 3 x A4 pages

It was put to me that a 3000 person response in a day was unlikely, even with the Holy Spirit as the instigator.

I think that is under-estimating the Holy Spirit and there are numerous historical precedents.

Pentecost, when 3000 were added to their number, is the first precedent.

But we’ve also seen in recent history the extraordinary pulling power of St John Vianney and St Padre Pio, people came from all over the world to see and experience the holiness of these men, and their God-given gift of reading souls.

We’ve also seen the numbers of people who continue to flock to pilgrimage sites like Lourdes, Fatima, and Medjugorje.

Even 30 spiritually needy people in a day would overwhelm the resources of an average parish office, and 300 spiritually needy people per day even more so. But 3000 is mild by Holy Spirit standards.

Our parish is rather average. About 25% of the people in the area might culturally identify as Catholic according to Census records. That’s around 10,000 people, and pre-pandemic we were getting 5-10% of them at Mass each weekend. Could a wave of Holy Spirit power bring 3000 of them to the parish door in one day? Yes, He could, easy-peasy.

You could ask, why doesn’t He? Many parishes have fire evacuation plans, and In Case of Emergency kits. But how many of them have In Case of Revival resources and plans? How much capacity has your parish to welcome and respond adequately to spiritually needy people? If you could only adequately cope with 10, and 300 came to the door, how many of the 290 would persevere until they were helped? How many would walk away? How many would begin doubting that the experience of God they had was real? How many would never return?

After the first Divine Renovation conference in 2014, the parish office in Halifax was getting something like 100 phone calls each day from all around the world asking for more information and asking specific questions. It was to meet that need, and to allow parish staff to attend to parish needs, that Divine Renovation Ministries was set up.

Have a read through some of these accounts of Holy Spirit activity, often called revivals:

The Welsh revival 1904-1905
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1904%E2%80%931905_Welsh_revival
The revival lasted less than a year, but in that time 100,000 people were converted.

The Azuza Street revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azusa_Street_Revival
The core membership of the Azusa Street Mission was never many more than 50–60 individuals, with hundreds if not thousands of people visiting or staying temporarily over the years.

The 1859 Ulster revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1859_Ulster_revival
It has been reported that the revival produced 100,000 converts.

The 1859 Welsh revival
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/welsh-history-month-wales-religious-10248368
It is estimated that as many as 100,000 new converts were added to the Welsh nonconformist churches in the year in which the revival burned most brightly.

The Cane Ridge revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_Ridge,_Kentucky
It was estimated by military personnel that some 20,000 to 30,000 persons of all ages, representing various cultures and economic levels traveled on foot and on horseback, many bringing wagons with tents and camping provisions.
https://www.caneridge.org/

The Jesus People movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_movement
Unlike many other Christian movements, there was no single leader or figurehead of the Jesus movement. Many of the 80,000 young Jesus People attended Explo '72, an event organized by Campus Crusade for Christ.

The Brownsville revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownsville_Revival
During the revival, nearly 200,000 people gave their lives to Jesus, and by autumn of the year 2000 more than 1,000 people who experienced the revival were taking classes at the Brownsville Revival School of Ministry.

The Toronto blessing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Blessing
Charisma Magazine reported that an estimated 4,000 churches in England and another 7,000 churches in North America had been impacted by this new revival movement

As the song goes….
God can do it again, and again, and again,
He’s the same God today as He always has been
Yesterday, now, forever
He’s always the same.
There’s no reason to doubt, God can do it again.

With the Holy Spirit, the arrival of 3000 spiritually needy people a day is more than possible.

But are we ready, willing and expectant for the missionary impulses He loves to bestow?
​
We do have to do our bit, and work on increasing our capacity to receive His missionary impulses, locally, regionally and nationally.

What might we see as outcomes or potential motions arising from the Plenary Council?

Introduction

It has been a month since the conclusion of the first session of the Plenary Council, and as yet (11 Nov 2021) there has been no public release of the documentation of that session.

That documentation would include at minimum: all of the interventions, all of the minutes, all of the small group reports, and the proposals that had been submitted.

A few weeks ago a friend asked me what we might see actually change as a result of the Plenary Council process. It was a fair question. So I went back through the notes I had taken from the public parts of the first session with that kind of lens. I noticed that most of the public deliberations would never form a proposal or motion because a) they were about matters that you can’t legislate on or b) they were about matters that had yet to morph from motherhood statements into something more tangible.

Even many of the possible outcomes listed below are more likely to take a final form as recommendations than as local canon law.

But it is always easier to start with something rather than a blank page, so please feel free to copy and share it to aid discussion while we await the release of official documentation.
 
List of possible outcomes and possible potential motions
 
Encouragement for parishes to develop small groups, whether they be sharing/accompaniment groups, discussion/bible study groups, or what some people are calling ‘connect groups’ that have a mix of social and catechetical functions.
 
A commitment to inviting a First Nations elder to be on decision making bodies, eg parish pastoral councils and diocesan pastoral councils.
- This would both acknowledge the traditional custodianship of the locality, as well providing a pathway for that traditional custodianship of the locality to continue to be exercised.
 
The establishing of a national church agency to facilitate mutual enrichment between Eastern Rites and Western Rites.
 
Putting more formation opportunities (theological and leadership) online for access by people in outback, rural and regional areas.
 
A longer period of pre-seminary discernment, nation-wide.
- This emerged because so many potential seminarians (religious and clerical) are coming from dysfunctional families and out of periods of substance abuse and non-marital relationships. All existing wounds from trauma and broken relationships need to be healed and addressed before entering the seminary process. Such a healing process takes time, and it also takes time to build enough trust to even be able to talk about such wounds and to allow them come to the surface.
 
Changes to seminary formation that encourage a collaborative approach to parish life.
eg. having some study units done with both lay (men & women) and seminarian participants, and some of the study units taught by women.
- These are measures designed to reduce clericalism. There is widespread dismay at recent crops of seminarians acting like lay people in parishes know nothing and have nothing worthwhile to offer/contribute; and anyone with such a mindset coming into a parish will act like an autocrat and not like a collaborator.
 
Changes to seminary formation which include being in-situ in parishes while online learning takes place, on a regular basis, throughout seminary studies.
- Another measure designed to reduce clericalism.
 
Putting the desire to preach the Gospel as a non-negotiable in the seminarian selection process.
- Without a heart for the mission to make disciples, how could you possibly lead the mission to make disciples?
 
Introduction of ongoing accreditation for clergy and annual professional oversight/reviews.
- This is a practical measure to identify potential problem behaviours and address them before they become abusive behaviours. It has the potential to provide support systems that are currently lacking in diocesan life. When it becomes normative for priests to access these systems, then when issues surrounding loneliness, substance abuse etc do arise, priests can seek the help they need without any social stigma. Regular accountability is needed for the main thing to remain the main thing, and to counteract the tendency to choose the urgent crisis over the important mission.
 
The establishment of a mission support team in all parishes; making disciples being the mission.
- To enable mission to continue and grow despite the inevitable changes of pastors that parishes experience.
 
Developing a nationally accepted process of discernment as to whether a priest has a calling from God to be a bishop or not.
- The length of time where dioceses are without bishops and where archdioceses are without sufficient episcopal vicars must be reduced both for the good of the people of God and for the effectiveness of the mission of the people of God. Starting from scratch with the bishop selection vetting process every time a new apostolic nuncio is appointed isn’t working. The earlier a diocese can spot the rare combination of true leadership talent with true calling from God, the fewer resources will be wasted in training inappropriate candidates, and the fewer clergy will be embittered by hoping for something that’s never going to happen.
 
The addition of leadership training as part of seminary and/or post-seminary formation; using collaborative leadership models.
- Training for leadership - in the sense of bringing out the best in people, helping them work together optimally, and commissioning them into areas of service where they can be most effective for mission due to recognition of gifts, charisms and talents – is currently non-existent. The prevailing model is: find a person who is breathing, available and willing to comply and get them to do what most needs to be done right now. That’s crisis management not leadership: and it does untold damage to both the mission and to the person (mis-match of gifts, charisms and talents causes burnout at minimum and toxicity at worst).
 
There was a ground swell of support (read frustration with a capital F) that in so many areas (eg. parish councils) laity have only a consultative role and never a decision-making role.
But how to formulate that into a motion that the bishops would say yes to? That’s the question!
- Perhaps a threshold of 75+% disagreement with a pastor’s proposals automatically puts that proposal up for review by an independent diocesan panel (composed of canon lawyer, liturgist, theologian, financial advisor etc) – might work.
- It would deal with cases where a) the parish council is right and the pastor is wrong; and b) where parish council is wrong and the pastor is right; - which are the two situations where so much of the frustration currently experienced arises.
- It would also put an incentive in place for working towards collaborative solutions; an incentive which currently doesn’t exist and which is sorely needed.
- Such a review process could also be sought when both pastor and parish council recognise that none of their currently proposed solutions will work and they together decide to seek the wisdom of the review panel.
- Such a review process may also serve as an early warning system to the local bishop as to which of his pastors are not suited to collaborative ministry.
- If both pastor and parish council agree on the wrong solutions… May God set them straight.
 
The issue of women deacons isn’t going away.
- In rural and outback areas, where there is Mass once a fortnight or less, many women are already doing a lot of what a deacon does but without a title. Baptisms, funerals and marriages could be conducted by women deacons in such rural and outback areas. Civil celebrants (male and female) are already doing funerals, weddings and naming ceremonies in secular settings and getting paid. If we want to give our people in rural and outback areas the opportunity for a Catholic rather than a secular celebration of such important life events, the issue of women deacons needs due consideration.
 
Agency leaders (education, hospital, social service etc) need to be chosen/selected because they are skilled, faith-filled, effective leaders who are committed to ongoing formation in mission (making disciples) and in Catholic social teaching.
- We seem to have an existing system that selects for skills and effective leadership first, and with faith, orientation to mission and commitment to Catholic social teaching as optional extras. There could also be a lack of courage in insisting on strong Catholic faith credentials due to a desire to appear tolerant and inclusive together with a desire to not make co-workers with weak Catholic faith credentials feel uncomfortable. But if we are truly committed to the mission of making disciples, then the existing selection system must change.
 
The establishment of a First Nations seminary in Port Pirie diocese (somewhere near Port Augusta to enable ease of remote community rail travel and for geographical closeness to multiple landscape types that are similar to ‘own country’) staffed by First Nations people, with the establishment of a First Nations Ordinariate, and with a mandate to develop a Rite for First Nations use. Studies would be in small blocks of residential learning, interspersed with large blocks of online learning while ‘on country’, with regular in-person visits to country from seminary support staff. (See the Appendix below for more detail).
 
Appendix

As a result of the open sessions from the 1st Assembly of the Plenary Council, I have been reflecting on the lack of First Nations clergy, and on the obstacles that First Nations peoples face to both entering and persevering in seminary life.

So I have begun to dream of a First Nations seminary, based somewhere near Port Augusta, in the diocese of Port Pirie, and to dream of the development of a First Nations Ordinariate and of the organic development from both of these of a First Nations rite (like the Anglican use rite).

As it stands at the moment, potential First Nations seminarians face at least 2 big obstacles,
having to leave country for extended periods of time,
and being in a city environment far from the landscapes of home;
as well as not having a curriculum structure which permits times of walkabout.

So I have begun to dream of a First Nations seminary, staffed as fully as possible with First Nations people in leadership, teaching and administration with guest lecturers on the major theological disciplines.

I have begun to dream that such a seminary would also be eventually open to members of First Peoples from across the world; tribal Africa, native American, tribal South America, Inuit, ethnic Chinese etc.

I have begun to dream of a First Nations seminary that has short blocks of residential learning, 3-4 weeks long, interspersed with 2-6 months long online learning while living ‘on country’, with moral, technical and learning support provided from the seminary. Many First Nations seminarians would be well familiar with School of the Air procedures. During the times of ‘on country’ learning, visitors from the seminary would arrive on a regular basis to learn first-hand about the cultural group the seminarian belongs to.

I have begun to dream of a First Nations seminary that permits seminarians to learn at their own pace, faster in some subjects, slower in others.

I have begun to dream that the location of such a First Nations seminary would be near Port Augusta in the diocese of Port Pirie for 2 reasons:

1. Because in that locality you are never more than an hour’s drive away from salt plains, wetlands, billabongs, grass plains, salt water, desert, and mountains (Flinders Range); and therefore, not far from something that resembles country of origin for First Nations students.
2. Because Port Augusta is easily reached by rail by most outback and remote communities, via the Ghan, the Indian Pacific, and the various rail networks that connect to them, giving relatively cheap, safe and direct transport to quite a central national location.

To these reasons could also be added a 3rd reason, the rejuvenation of the local townships by the seminary and utilization of buildings erected in times past that are currently falling into disuse (eg the leftover building complexes from past mining eras).

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On 10 Oct 2021 the 5th Plenary Council of Australia concluded. Between now and the final 2nd Assembly in early July 2022 the steering committee and the drafting committee will turn proposals from the 1st Assembly into motions to be voted on at the 2nd assembly, and the rest of us begin to digest all the input from the 1st Assembly.

The official document from the 1st Assembly is going to be a large one.

In the interim here are two documents to get you started:

The first one is the concise Tweet-sized version of the livestreamed part of the 1st Assembly. It runs to 7 pages and includes associated online comments on the whole process.
It is a good starting place to get an overview of the deliberations that took place.

The second one is a rough transcript of the livestreamed part of the 1st Assembly. It runs to 21 pages. This includes the Mass Homilies, the reports from the small groups discussing the Agenda Questions. 

What it doesn't cover are the Interventions which happened each day. These were presentations by members of the Assembly that were no longer than 300 words each. Some were read out during the Assembly, the rest will be included in the official records of the Assembly.

Some of those Interventions were published on the Catholic Weekly website. How long they will remain available online is unknown. https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/category/plenary-2020/

May the Holy Spirit bring to full completion the work He began in the First Assembly of the 5th Plenary Council of Australia.
Amen.

In a few days’ time the first session of the Plenary Council of Australia will begin. From Sunday 3 Oct to Sunday 10 Oct there will be all kinds of online meetings going on.

The timetable is here (if you scroll down a bit)
https://plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au/assembly-1/

(But as that website page has been a bit glitchy, this is the timetable as it was online as at 30 Sep 2021.)

And the YouTube channel where you can find the livestreamed Masses and ‘open to all’ sessions is here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPKFmOZcjJfMQ9SfcotyZJg

The second session will happen mid-2022.

If this goes according to normal Vatican Synod precedents, the first session tends to be a bit of an ice-breaker, and sets the conversation going, and then second session is where the nitty gritty stuff happens – because the first session gives everyone a handle on where the battlelines are and what the stakes actually are.

Yes, the first session is necessary, just like a football game the first half is where you size up the strengths and weaknesses of the other team, and the second half – like the second session – is where the game is decided.

It is a process that involves real people, with their own talents, responsibilities and agendas; the prayers of the church local; national and universal, and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Do not underestimate the Holy Spirit;
we know from holy scripture that He is just as adept at bringing God’s plans to fruition through the evil, the skullduggerous, the fool, even through a donkey, as well as through the well intentioned and the truly good and holy.

Obviously the Holy Spirit can do far more with willing collaborators than with the unwilling ones. The degree of willing collaboration determines whether the Father’s base plan, His better plan, His outstanding plan or His jaw-droppingly-wonderful plan is enacted.

l want to see the jaw-droppingly-wonderful plan happen,
don’t you?

Yes, there are massive forces working against this,
including the enemy of our souls and his minions as well those who independently want to shape the church in their image rather than in God’s image, and the potent zeitgeists of our era.

Yet this is the great south land of the Holy Spirit.
We have yet to see anything here that would deserve a smidgeon of that epithet.
But that’s what gives us hope, that this is the time,
among the chaos and lockdowns,
among the inability to freely and publicly access the sacraments,
when it most certainly can’t be by our doing,
that God can do it,
that He can do it in such a way that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God alone did it.

That’s why beyond all our fears that this is going to be a secular-agenda-led talk-fest and a complete waste of time,
that it will be known as the Plenary Council of the Holy Spirit.

That doesn’t mean we stop praying.
It means we intensify our prayers.

One way to do that is to join in with the full rosary (20 decades) being livestreamed through St Mary’s Cathedral Sydney from 3pm to 4.30pm on Sunday 3 Oct 2021.
https://www.stmaryscathedral.org.au/event/holy-rosary-with-the-cathedral-clergy-3rd-october-2021/
(Remember Daylight Saving starts in NSW that morning! Fix your clocks.)

Another way to pray is to do what Archbishop Polding did when times were tough on the sea voyage from Sydney to London via the bottom of South America in 1846, when they risked being becalmed for weeks.
He got everyone to pray 5 Our Fathers, 5 Hail Marys and a Memorare for suitable wind.

We certainly need the wind of the Holy Spirit in our nation Australia,
and in the people of God who reside here,
in the Plenary Council of the Holy Spirit,
and in those who are on the path to seeking Him
but don’t quite realise it yet.

It seems like a good plan,
and achievable between now and 10 October,
especially as a family or household group,
to pray the 5 Our Fathers, 5 Hail Marys and a Memorare daily;
and if you feel so led,
to continue to pray them daily until the close of the second session in 2022.
…………………………………………
Our Father
Our Father, Who art in heaven,
hallowed be Your Name.
Your kingdom come,
Your Will be done,
on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Hail Mary
Hail Mary, Full of Grace,
The Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of your womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners, now,
and at the hour of our death. Amen.

The Memorare
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known
that anyone who fled to your protection,
implored your help,
or sought your intercession was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence,
I fly to you, O Virgin of virgins, my mother;
to you do I come,
before you I stand,
sinful and sorrowful.
O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in your mercy hear and answer me. Amen

Recently I was asked by a relative to contribute to answering some of the Questions given in the Agenda for the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia 2021.

​plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Plenary-Council-Agenda.pdf
 
While I’m still very concerned that the Plenary Council process has been a waste of time, talent and resources, I did agree to attempt some answers. Here they are:
 
1.CONVERSION
 
How might we better accompany one another on the journey of personal and communal conversion which mission in Australia requires?
 
To accompany one another on any journey means that we have to get to know one another and spend time with each other.
 
The current culture of arriving just in time for Mass, and leaving as soon as it is finished (or even beforehand), does not lend itself to learning to accompany one another. What needs to be done is part of the shift that has to happen from church goers being consumers to church goers being participants in mission.
 
We know from the end of Acts 2 that it was the Holy Spirit who bonded the members of the early church together in unity, community and mission. Without the Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit there is no impetus/motivation to accompany each other and to care for each other.
 
But the wine of the Holy Spirit needs to go into fresh skins, so some kind of structural shift is needed that celebrates, rewards and makes accompanying each other possible. From experience we know that morning teas after the last Sunday morning Mass are not sufficient. Even though we sit beside many of the same people in the pews each weekend, ‘breaking the ice’ with each other isn’t easy; and the cringe factor when we are invited to say hello to each other at the beginning of Mass or during the homily is palpable.
 
But unless that ice is broken somehow, and at more than a superficial level, then the courage to join any kind of discussion group won’t materialize. Yet it is only in small to medium groups (3-20 people) which meet monthly, or more frequently, that true accompaniment takes place.
 
God must have a plan for such a structural shift, but we are only going to find His answer through assiduous communal prayer.
 
How might we heal the wounds of abuse, coming to see through the eyes of those who have been abused.
 
First we have to recognise just how prevalent abuse is; the statistics are something like 1 in every 4 women, and 1 in every 10 men have suffered some kind of sexual abuse; and that doesn’t count any other kind of abuse.
 
It is a widespread problem that so many people in society and in our pews live with the wounds from that kind of trauma and in ever present fear of that kind of abuse happening again.
 
On the other hand that means there are also a significant number of people committing abuse, some because they can, others due to various kinds of compulsion stemming from abuse that they themselves suffered. They are in our pews too.
 
Both groups need the salvation and healing that Jesus Christ freely offers.
 
But when was the last time you heard a homily about the power of Jesus to heal these wounds? When was the last time you heard a homily about the power of Jesus to help you forgive those who have hurt you – and to forgive yourself – as well? When was the last time you heard anyone talk about how to bring the most shameful things to Jesus in the sacrament of Penance?
 
These things don’t go away with an apology.
 
They don’t go away with any kind of retribution or revenge either.
 
And people with the specific God-given natural gifts and training necessary to do the kind of deep listening that is therapeutic, they are rather rare. While they are effective; that effectiveness can only deal with the tip of the iceberg of this societal problem.
 
Obviously God must have a solution. It is a God-sized problem.
But has anyone or any group even begun seriously interceding for the revelation of His solution?
 
NB. Some people have suggested that something akin to a Truth and Justice Commission would be a way to deal with this situation. But the Truth and Justice Commission in South Africa was not as effective as people hoped it would be. Not everyone wanted to publicly recount the trauma they had been through; not everyone wanted to be identified as a victim, and many perpetrators managed to obtain amnesty when they should have been charged with crimes.
 
How might the Church in Australia open in new ways to indigenous ways of being Christian in spirituality, theology, liturgy and missionary discipleship? How might we learn from the First Nations peoples.
 
We can learn from their knowledge of relationship with the Great Spirit gathered over millennia;
  from the methods they developed to keep families and tribes together
  from their concept of stewardship, and temporary custody of the land
  from their methods of dealing with due punishment for crime
  from their lived experience of all things being held in common (both the good aspects, and the not so good aspects where advantage is taken of the vulnerable)
  from their balance between the need for times of community and for times of solitude (walkabout).

While there is greater openness to including First Nation cultural rituals into our community lives and liturgy, such things should only be done after very careful and thorough discernment of each religious ceremony; since not all of them arose from relationship to the Good Spirit.
 
How might the church in Australia meet the needs of the most vulnerable, go to the peripheries, the missionary in places that may be overlooked or left behind in contemporary Australia? How might we partner with others (Christians, people about the fate, neighbourhood community groups, government) to do this?
 
This isn’t something that pertains to diocesan and national leadership, except in terms of giving permission/encouragement and confirming/commissioning what is happening at grass roots (parish level)

These ministries spring up at grassroots level in response to local conditions and to local needs.

Two examples:

Mary Mac’s Place, Woy Woy
It began as a parish outreach to the homeless, with companionship, lunches, and a place of safety to go to. Over time Catholic Care and the St Vincent de Paul Society added input and degrees of oversight and funding. These days many of the volunteers aren’t parishioners and are from other Christian communities.

Food Bank, Dartmouth, Canada
Part of that parish has the lowest socio-economic levels in the region, and an opportunity opened up when a local Christian community lost their place of worship to provide not only hospitality for somewhere to gather for worship, but also to join together the two parish’s food banks into one, and become more effective together in meeting local needs.

You can’t ‘legislate’ for these things, but you can give pastors and their parishes permission and encouragement to take ecumenical options for works of mercy when opportunities arise.

Likewise you can give pastors and their parishes permission to explore how to best serve the neediest in their locality, but it will always be a matter for local research into local needs/conditions and of local response to how God is calling them to answer those needs in His way.

Thought could be given to the provision of seed-funding for new ministries and support funding for ongoing ministries from a diocesan level.

It is important to determine at a local level who the most vulnerable people are and then set up programs where we may be able to assist. But we must learn from the mistakes of the past and not impose solutions from without. To truly help means to listen with open hearts to what they need – not what we think they need. Any solutions must have significant input and ongoing guidance from those in vulnerable situations. For example: we’ve often patted ourselves on the back for putting in access ramps – but what good are access ramps if there are no accessible toilets for people to use once they’ve got inside the building?

How might the church in Australia respond to the call to ecological conversion?  How can we express and promote a commitment to an integral ecology of life in all its dimensions with particular attention to the more vulnerable people and environments in our country and region?
 
This has to be handled very carefully, and from a distinctly Christian and Catholic perspective.

For many people, anything with a tinge of Green lobby about it has become an instant turn off.
 
How do you answer people who say, ‘well I’m much better than I used to be, I am reducing, re-using, and recycling, - do you mean that’s not enough?’
 
2.PRAYER
 
How might we become a more contemplative people, committing more deeply to prayer as a way of life, and celebrating the liturgy of the Church as an encounter with Christ who sends us out to “make disciples of all the nations”?
 
This topic tends to be where pleas for the return to the 3rd Rite of Reconciliation are given.
Please consider:
 
Grace might be free, but it certainly isn’t cheap.
And we should never treat it as cheap.

Everybody loves the easy option that doesn’t really cost them any more than an hour of time. It is akin to the difference of saying with others ‘we believe in one God’ compared to saying alone before others ‘I believe in one God’.
 
There’s no risk with the former; commitment with the latter.
 
Isn’t that the difference between ‘we have sinned’ vs ‘I have sinned’?

3rd Rite also encourages the consumer behaviour that we want to replace with missionary disciple behaviour.

A shepherd watches over his flock, but he treats each sheep individually when medicinal care is needed (worming, sheep dip, shearing, hoof scraping, inspecting for ticks etc).

Our Good Shepherd is the same, individual care for medicinal needs (healing of sin) is His way.
 
All of the perceived benefits of the 3rd Rite are present in the 2nd Rite (communal preparation followed by individual confession), and the 2nd Rite, produces better fruit than the 3rd Rite.

Each of us needs to hear the ‘I absolve you (singular)’ for certainty of forgiveness.
 
…………………………………………………….
 
How many of us are actually praying every day?

Yes there are some who pray their daily rosary and chosen devotions, and there are some who pray parts of the Divine Office daily, and there are some who incorporate daily reading of the bible into their prayers times, and others who do a bit of everything

but,

the vast majority of people in the pews have no regular prayer life at all.

Once someone has begun to pray, then you have a hope of deepening it,
but the commitment to pray daily is a pre-requisite.

Even 10 minutes a day can make a vast difference in our spiritual lives.
Without prayer we can do nothing.

Sustained encouragement for everyone to pray 10 minutes a day would be a very good start.
 
How might we better embrace the diverse liturgical traditions of the churches which make up the Catholic Church and the cultural gifts of immigrant communities to enrich the spirituality of worship of the church in Australia?
 
Providing devotional space for our immigrant communities would be a good step.

An exterior shrine, or an interior chapel, for localities with a significant migrant population should be encouraged, as places where they can honour the saint/s that are so important in their country of origin.
 
The parish at Marsfield has a chapel for a statue of Our Lady of Graces donated by the local Italian/Maltese community. It is a way of sharing our cultural/spiritual partonomy with each other.
 
When WYD pilgrims visited Sydney, many of them brought images and icons of the patron saints of their localities and nations as gifts to the parishes that hosted them, enriching all of us, and visually reminding us that we are the Church universal whenever we gather to pray.
 
3.FORMATION
 
How might we better form leaders for mission - adults, children and families, couples and single people?
 
Should you happen to have active children, families, couples and non-retired adults in your faith communities count yourselves especially fortunate.
 
The vast majority of parishes no longer have age diversity in their congregations.

In a recent May headcount at a vigil Mass, only 2.5% of those present were aged under 70.

The focus should be on how to form teams, and leaders of teams for mission, from among our 70+ year olds, for there to be any kind of missionary success.
 
How might we better equip ordained ministers to be enablers of missionary discipleship the church becoming more a ‘priestly people’ served by the ordained ministry?

How might formation, both pre- and post-ordination, better foster the development of bishops, priests and deacons as enablers of the universal Christian vocation to holiness lived in missionary discipleship?
 
Guided practical experience in discerning whether something emerging in the parish is of God (or not) would be the most useful. Because if something hasn’t been initiated by God, then pouring resources into it is ultimately futile.

Learning how to support laity whom God has commissioned in the catechising, evangelizing and charitable works of the Church would be the next most useful thing. Moral support and financial support: ‘How can I and the parish help you to be more effective in your calling from God?’

Because otherwise two things happen; the priest becomes a bottleneck rather than a coach/cheerleader/enabler who with God’s authority gives permission and commissions for mission; and people forget that lay ministry is crucial for the mission of the church and begin/continue to think that ‘Father and the nuns do all of that’.

Understanding the charisms the Holy Spirit bestows upon His people; and learning how to help His people grow safely and effectively in the use of those charisms, is one of the greatest services to the Church (and to the mission of the Church) that can be done.
 
By and large ordained leadership has been guilty of ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to recruitment for ministry (eg catechists, altar servers) – if you are breathing, and seem reasonable, you’ll do – instead of taking the time and effort to find those who have charisms of teaching to be catechists and to find those who have charisms of service (helps) to be altar servers.
 
It isn’t overly difficult to work out who the naturally out-going people are in a congregation; the ones who have a genuine interest in new people, and to give them some extra training as welcomers and evangelists – because that extra training in techniques and listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit will make them far more effective than they already are.
 
We have to comprehend that when we see parishioners we can no longer see pawns (ie. interchangeable worker bees), but we see that no one is a pawn, that they are all kings, queens, bishops, rooks and castles with very different God given callings and abilities. Likewise, we have to comprehend the double disaster of putting a rook in a castle ministry; the rook will burn out and be ineffective AND the castle that should have been there has had his/her talents unused.
 
But this goes for the ordained as well. A priest with a more than ordinary effectiveness in ministering to the sick should be placed in a position where he can use those gifts – and not moved to any position where that isn’t a major part of his regular ministry. Permanent deacons without people skills should not be put in situations where people skills are essential, but where the talents they do have can shine (eg livestreaming technology, events organisation, archivist)
 
This impacts preaching too: It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that everyone else has the same calling that you do. That’s why we see priests gifted as evangelists in their preaching calling everyone to evangelise like them when maybe 7% of the congregation has the charism for that ministry, and the rest have charisms for works of mercy, for intercessory prayer, for teaching, for administration and other charisms. Yes, we all have the small ‘e’ calling to evangelise, (the church exists to evangelise) but some have the big ‘E’ calling. Preaching ‘let’s all be big E’ puts off and confuses everyone who doesn’t have a big E calling.
 
4.STRUCTURES
 
How might parishes better become local centres for the formation and animation of missionary disciples?
 
Just like each baptized person has a call to a particular mission of the church,
and just like we find that there are calls within calls among our priests and religious (some priests are more gifted at visitation of the sick than others; some religious are more gifted at being memory keepers/archivists than others; some religious are more gifted at spiritual direction than others)
 – so too does each parish have a particular call from God within the general call of being a parish.
 
For example, St Patrick’s Church Hill, understands that it is everyone’s ‘second parish’, either for Mass or Confession, or both, and that a degree of anonymity for those who walk through the doors is needed to preserve that special calling.
 
Only when a parish begins to know and come into agreement with its special call within a call from God, will it truly thrive and become a local centre for the formation and animation of a specific missionary calling (eg inner healing, evangelization of workers, promotion of the rosary etc).

NB these are long term callings, well beyond the lifespan of any pastor, and often linked in some way to the spiritual patronage of the parish.
 
For example the parish of Our Lady of Lourdes at Earlwood has long been known for its healing Masses; and is it a complete surprise that a parish under the patronage of St John the Baptist has retained 4 regular weekly opportunities for confession (when most other parishes only have one?
 
How might the Church in Australia be better structured for mission, considering the parish, the diocese, religious orders, the PJPs and new communities?
 
Most parish and other budgets only look at costs for maintenance of buildings and salaries, and existing ministries (eg sacramental programme/s).
 
Even 5% of budget set aside only for funding the start-up of new missionary initiatives would be a worthwhile beginning.

(Remembering that new initiatives often take until the 2nd year to bear fruit)
 
5.GOVERNANCE
 
How might the people of God, lay and ordained, women and men, approach governance in this spirit of synodality and co-responsibility for more effective proclamation of the Gospel?
 
How might we recast governance at every level of the Church in Australia in a more missionary key?
 
It would help a lot if what we reward and celebrate wasn’t so ‘parish building’ focused.
 
The real mission field is outside the church walls where the believers interact with the non-believers in various ways.
 
The visible ministries of choir, lector, altar server, sacristan, musician get far more regular kudos than the invisible ministries of mothering young children, caring for the elderly, taking Holy Communion to the sick, serving with the St Vincent de Paul society, facilitating small groups of bible study, and listening to the young. That has to change.
 
90% of the miracles Jesus worked happened outside the synagogue and Temple walls. Outside the parish building is where the laity should be focused on the mission to which God has called them.
 
Remember, we should be encouraging our nurses to become holy nurses; our carpenters to become holy carpenters, our shop assistants to become holy shop assistants so that they can have maximum impact in the places and careers, ie the specific mission fields that God has placed them in.
 
You’d much prefer a holy nurse who prayed for you and with you as she changed your wound dressings than a secular nurse, wouldn’t you!?
 
We have a duty to mutually encourage each other to both holiness and mission.
 
We have a duty to help each other see the missionary possibilities that are present in our existing careers and vocational callings, and to encourage and train them to act on the opportunities that arise.
 
Possibilities like taking the opportunity to pray with customers and work colleagues who are distressed, like asking the extra question (you’ve sorted out your legal/financial situation, but have you done anything towards sorting out your eternal situation?), like noticing patterns where vulnerable people are falling through the cracks of bureaucratic systems and working with others- together with prayer- to find an effective solution.
 
6.INSTITUTIONS
 
How might we better see the future of Catholic education ( primary, secondary and tertiary) through a missionary lens?
 
I honestly don’t know if the existing structures have a future.
 
Can we in all good conscience say that our schools at any level (primary, secondary, tertiary) are producing believers, missionary disciples? We see less than 5% of them inside our church walls in any given 12 month time period.

Shouldn’t we be putting our resources where there is good fruit, and pruning away that which is producing no fruit or bad fruit?
 
What we do have are secular schools with a Catholic veneer that are very good at inoculating young people from having any commitment to Catholic faith at all.
 
During this time of pandemic we have seen families cope with homeschooling their children with the ‘remote’ support of teachers and online resources.
 
We could let our already secular schools become fully secular, and instead invest in setting up hubs of teachers to support the homeschooling efforts of Catholic families. But those hubs of teachers need to be fully practicing Catholics with full adherence to the teachings of the Church. It is true that we learn as much from the character and beliefs of a teacher as we do their subject matter.
 
How might we better see the future of Catholic social services, agencies and health and aged care ministries as key missionary and evangelising agencies
 
We could look at them as current and future bastions against the evils of euthanasia, abortion, and care proportionate to the benefits of treatment vs the burdens of treatment.
 
In dire circumstances often hearts open up to the need for God. We are called by 1 Peter 3:15 to always have our answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have.
 
We would be derelict in our duty if we didn’t train our staff in these services, ministries and agencies to be able to do give their answers when asked.

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​The Instrumentum Laboris (working document) for the first session of the Australian Plenary Council was released on 25 Feb 2021, and I eventually finished reading it sometime in mid-March.

You can read it yourself:
https://plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au/instrumentum-laboris/

It wasn’t an easy read, despite it being beautifully presented. Penitential, it was. Firstly it takes a very long time to set the scene and give a situational analysis of the Church in Australia. Many times I wondered if the document would ever get to the point. Secondly it uses lots of ambiguous language that feels like it was written by a combination of church bureaucrats and school teachers. It would be easy to decode for them, but not for me. I longed for some footnotes that gave situational examples to aid understanding.

In particular I longed for concrete and contextual explanation of this passage from 166:

“Not infrequently, Catholics and their family members find themselves in an uneasy situation regarding particular Church teachings or disciplines, not because they identify any less as Catholic, and not because their attachment to Christ has grown “lukewarm” (Rev 3:16), but because of shifts in cultural norms and expectations that they once relied on to support their Catholic faith. Very often, however, this tension between people’s lived experience and the teachings of the Church reaches the point where people withdraw from parishes or communities, and no longer identify as Catholic.”

Is this about going to Mass on Sundays, cohabitation, same sex attraction, blended families, or about some, all or even more than this? How do you even begin to discuss this passage without knowing what the original catalyst for the passage was? How do you begin to frame questions that ask, ‘prove to me how attachment to Christ hasn’t grown lukewarm despite being out of synch with Church teachings, disciplines and practices…by what other means can you show strong attachment to Jesus Christ (John 12:26, James 2:17-18)?’?

I admit I was struggling to reconcile the somewhat rosy view the Working Document paints compared to what I am seeing in the pews. Then Philippa Martyr’s article came up while I was trying unsuccessfully to find any online commentary on the Working Document which wasn’t a clone of the official press release. It is well worth a read:
https://gaudiumetspes22.com/2021/03/05/stranded-under-the-southern-cross-news-from-a-shrinking-church/

I found it a more accurate analysis of the Catholic Church in Australia 2021.

In particular I found her imagery of a carapace to be valuable, viz:

“I tend to see the Church in Australia as consisting of the ‘real Church’ and an unpleasant outer structure that I call The Carapace. The Carapace is like The Borg in Star Trek, if it helps. It attaches itself to the real Church and feeds off it. Its principal purpose is to employ people, and its mission is to protect the Church’s assets at all costs.”

What bothers me greatly is that the Instrumentum Laboris seems to be written by the carapace, and the vast majority of the delegates for the Plenary Council sessions will come from the carapace.

What else bothers me is that God seems to be a minor stakeholder among many instead of the One and Only opinion that matters.

Why else would there be so much virtue signaling about sexual abuse, indigenous issues, women in leadership issues, ecology, etc? I’m not saying that they aren’t important, just that they pale into insignificance against the urgency of saving souls from eternities in hell. Dealing with these things of necessity will be part of that primary mission, for the salvation of the people in these minorities, but they should never overshadow that primary mission.

Which matters to God the most?

What matters to God the most?

I put it to you that growth in relationship to Him (holiness), family (His plan that predates Scripture), and bringing people into relationship with Him (mission) and co-operating in expressing His love to others (service: which is the natural overflow of increase in holiness and mission) are what matter most to God.

On everything but service we are not doing well at all, and even our service is usually human powered service rather than Holy Spirit empowered service.

My view from the pew looks like this:

Everything starts from Holy Spirit inspired preaching. But for Holy Spirit inspired preaching to happen lots of prayer, study of scripture and sacred tradition, openness to the charismatic workings of the Holy Spirit and surrender to the workings of the Holy Spirit are necessary; and the preacher has to be able to effectively use the language and language idioms of those he is preaching to.

It is ‘hymns, hospitality and homilies’ or ‘music, ministry and message’ that either engages a newcomer and keeps them returning or turns them off for good. Generally we are mediocre when it comes to hymns and hospitality with the occasional flash of brilliance, but where we consistently fall down is in homilies.

When was the last time a homily encouraged you to pray?
When was the last time a homily invited you to go to confession? (and made it available)
When was the last time a homily opened your eyes to how good and great God is?
When was the last time a homily made you want to know Jesus better?
When was the last time a homily kept you awake and hanging on every word?
When was the last time a homily contained anything memorable that wasn’t a pre-prepared joke?

Every day I pray that God will use the words of the homilist that day to touch hearts. Often I wonder if God hears me because even I can only decode on average 3 words out of 5 from our overseas-born priests, and the most common question when Mass is over is ‘What did he say?’.

But a preacher doesn’t have to be in a pulpit. We pew dwellers are just as bad because we talk far more about parish politics, weather and medical ailments than we ever do (if we ever do) about Jesus, about inspiration we have found in Gospel passages, answers to prayers, and about living out the vocations we have been called to.

There is such laser focus on encouraging priestly vocations that you could be forgiven for thinking that vocations to family life, religious vocations, career vocations and vocations to special non-ordained ministries aren’t important at all. Yet apart from a very few exceptions to the rule, priestly vocations grow in strong families and in devotionally vibrant parishes.

When was the last time you saw any parish-based initiatives for encouraging and supporting marriages and families?

Did you know that Australia has no (nil, nada, ziltch, zero) Retrouvaille ministry/weekends for marriages in crisis?

Schools. Shudder. They are supposed to be places where the Catholic faith is taught and flourishes. Yet they are places where those who do teach the demanding parts of the Gospel are persecuted in various subtle and non-subtle ways. But these days no one in the parish knows anyone with children at the local Catholic primary school, and vice versa, and about the only person who visits both places is the parish priest and any assistant priest. What we actually have are non-government schools. At what point do we call a halt to the massive investment in schools that don’t evangelise, barely catechize and consistently churn out students indistinguishable from atheists and agnostics?

Families with faith have been choosing not to send their children to Catholic schools, many have chosen to home-school, some have chosen Christian schools, and the rest are sending their children to state schools partly because the cost/benefit analysis has swung the other way. In times past parents were willing to pay the extra cost of the Catholic school because it helped support the development of faith in their children.

The view from the pew can look very different from the view of the carapace.

An example may be useful…
In recent years the St Vincent de Paul Society went through a centralization process, and created regional hubs for furniture and other items. The people managing the hubs were happy. Some of the people in the local outlets were happy ‘it’s great, we refer them to the hub’. But those who knew how things worked pre-hub, and the people in need were not happy. Locally there used to be a room where furniture could be stored on a temporary basis. For the hubs to work, they were told rooms like these had to be stopped. The thing is, those rooms enabled society members to respond quickly when needs became manifest. With a hub, you have to send requests up, wait for decisions, and for action to be sent down, and sometimes have to follow-up the requests, all of which means many days, if not weeks, before needs get met. As for the person in need who had enough trouble asking for help the first time, now they have to travel to the hub to get help; and ask for help a second time. How many of them don’t take the extra step? For some the transport costs alone would be prohibitive. For others it was so hard to admit they needed help, it would be a long time before they attempted to admit it again. Or they would seek other alternatives with quicker responses to their urgent emergencies.

Even more seriously, the local outlet loses the opportunity to begin a relationship of accompaniment with that person in need, and the probability of needy people falling through the cracks increases. But the hub managers will only see the turnover of furniture and other items, and fluctuation in staffing levels, and never record or quantify these other losses, and will assume everything is going great guns.

Thankfully there have been moves towards decentralization again.

There are very good reasons why the Church values the principle of subsidiarity, and why any moves towards adding bureaucratic layers for co-ordination of smaller entities has to carefully make sure that the principle of subsidiarity is not violated.

Pope Francis has encouraged leaders to take on the smell of the sheep, to take time to be with those on the fringes and on the front lines. It is the only way to find out what is really going on.

An example may be useful…
A person serving at the diocesan curia has responsibilities for parish support. Most of this person’s time is spent liaising with parish staff and with parish members who voluntarily take on co-ordination roles. The parish support team puts together a Lenten discussion group programme, sends it out to the parishes. Some groups will meet every year regardless. Other groups will only form if there is active encouragement from the pulpit, and some recruitment and engagement of group leaders. Some parishioners will use the contents of the programme privately.

The parish support team will know how many programmes got sent out, and have a rough idea how many groups formed and how many participated. But they don’t usually get information on how many programmes were thrown out because they were still on the display table several weeks later, nor information about why parishioners left them there, nor information about why groups didn’t form, nor why anyone gave up part way through (individually or group). The only way you get that information is by talking incognito (without them knowing what your role is) with people in the pews whom you have never met before and truly listening to what they have to say, even if it isn’t what you want to hear. (eg. “I picked it up, but I put it back when I saw you needed to download stuff. I’m not that good with computers, and there’s no one at home who is any better at it than me, no one who could help me if I got myself into computer trouble.”)

Can you see how from a curial vantage point everything could look rosy, and better than last year? And yet from a pew dweller’s view point it could look very different indeed?

That’s why I am so worried that the Instrumentum Laboris seems to be written by the carapace, and the vast majority of the delegates for the Plenary Council sessions will come from the carapace who haven’t taken on the smell of the sheep.

A few passages from the Instrumentum Laboris caught my eye:

Passage 74 page 27
Rather, Pope Francis, echoing the thoughts of his predecessors since the Second Vatican Council, insists that an authentically Gospel-inspired renewal of the Church flows from a renewed encounter with Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit and gives rise to a ‘pastoral conversion’ of the entire Church, a renewal that is expressed in a ‘missionary option’ or ‘missionary impulse’ for making the saving love of God known in every place.

Amen. Amen. What we all need more than anything is a deeper encounter with Jesus, and a deeper encounter with the Holy Spirit. Without that, nothing, but nothing changes for the better. We can’t make it happen, that is up to God Himself. But we can make the conditions and environment more conducive for those encounters to happen. Things like encouraging private individual prayer, corporate prayer (prayer meetings, public devotions, liturgy), scripture study, reconciling strained relationships, forgiveness of wrongs done to us, getting to know each other better so as to grow in unity, self-discipline, generosity to others, encouraging more frequent visits to the sacrament of penance, and asking God (individually and corporately) to grant us these precious encounters.

Passage 123 page 41
Submissions to the Council also raised what Pope Francis, among others, has identified as the danger of an unhealthy culture of clericalism within the priesthood and in the wider Church. At its most extreme, this has been identified as a significant factor in the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. It can also undermine the mission that belongs to the entire Church and discourage the exercise of gifts within it. Some fundamental questions arise in light of this concern: What are the causes of such a culture of clericalism? What are the theological, structural, psychological or spiritual influences that can contribute to it and how might the Church better equip its clergy and laity for mission today and for increasing co-responsibility in the decades to come?

Clericalism encourages an ‘us and them’ mentality, with ‘us’ being far superior to ‘them’. Sadly our seminaries are still full of it. We have seminarians visiting parishes on placement and making the assumption that no one in the parishes knows how to use incense properly except for them. That assumption most certainly gets up the noses of parishioners who have been serving at the altar and using incense for decades. Then there’s the practice of getting 2nd year seminarians and above to always wear soutanes at Mass, even if they are sitting in the congregation. That’s visibly making an ‘us’ and ‘them’ distinction well before the vocational discernment process has scarcely begun. It is very difficult to get to ‘we’ and ‘team’, albeit with different gifts and vocational callings, if from the ‘get go’ seminarians are treated as heroic and special. For the mission of the Church to proceed, ie the making of disciples of Jesus, clerics can’t do it without laity, and laity can’t do it without clerics. We vitally need each other. It is one of those ‘both/and’ things. Mutual respect will get us much further in that mission than clericalism.

Passage 131 page 43
There is not a well-developed understanding and practice of the Church as a community of missionary disciples. The Plenary Council offers the Church in Australia an opportunity to consider carefully, and prayerfully, what steps must be taken to awaken this awareness of the missionary vocation of every Catholic, for all the baptised are called equally to live and proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

This is true. Although there are sub-groups within parishes that have this awareness eg catechists. Vatican II speaks eloquently of the universal call to holiness and the universal call to mission and so have subsequent papal documents. Encouraging us pew dwellers to read these texts is one thing, helping us to understand how to respond in our own lives is quite another since most of us have no idea what that looks like, nor what it feels like. A possible way forward is gathering and sharing testimonies of how God has used pew dwellers to make disciples, with particular emphasis on how pew dwellers came to understand what God was calling them to do, and how that mission developed over time.

Not everyone is going to be called to be an evangelist (nor to the same evangelistic mission field eg family, co-workers, young people, PSTD sufferers etc); not everyone is going to have a calling to specific works of mercy; not everyone is going to have a calling to accompany people through the RCIA process. So there needs to be intentionality about gathering a wide range of stories, and in presenting them with an openness to the multiplicity of God’s callings. It is really easy to unconsciously fall into the trap of ‘God has called me to be a preacher, it is so wonderful and exciting, therefore God is calling everyone to be preachers’, thereby putting unnecessary burdens/guilt on listeners who may be called to very different missions.

Passage 135 page 44
Underpinning such renewal of practices and methods within dioceses, parishes, migrant communities and movements must be the renewal of sacramental life and prayer among all Catholics for it is the encounter with Christ in the midst of the Church that rekindles hope and makes genuine renewal possible. This is seen in the Emmaus story in Luke’s Gospel (24:13-35) where, in the midst of the disciples’ difficulties and even disillusionment, the faith of the followers of Jesus is restored and a new future opened for them by this encounter.

Without prayer and the sacraments, there is no fuel for mission. We can’t give what we don’t have. What we most need to give are God’s love and access to Jesus. Prayer and the sacraments give us access to the infilling of God’s love, and to experiential encounters with Jesus. We haven’t done a good job of proclaiming this truth about prayer and the sacraments, by and large it has been a well-kept secret, when it should have been ‘shout it from the rooftops’ stuff. Again one of the best ways to renew sacramental life and prayer is to gather testimonies from pew dwellers who are living as missionary disciples. We need to share with each other what a difference prayer (personal and communal) and the sacraments (baptism, penance, eucharist, confirmation, anointing of the sick, marriage, holy orders) make in our lives. It is good news, in fact it is great news. All of them make a big impact. But again, sensitivity is needed, because some people feel and experience lots and some people feel and experience little even when God’s grace is just as active in both. It is all too easy for a focus on feelings and experiences to get us chasing them rather than God, and for this focus to make those who barely feel or experience anything to rate themselves as second class citizens of the kingdom of God. For this reason it is always wise to focus more on the fruits eg growth in patience, generosity, peace, trust, improvement in relationships etc.

Passage 197 page 67
It is this assurance that should encourage us and empower us to speak and act with that parrhesia, that boldness and courage, which are a gift of the Holy Spirit: We need the Spirit’s prompting, lest we be paralyzed by fear and excessive caution, lest we grow used to keeping within safe bounds. Let us remember that closed spaces grow musty and unhealthy. When the Apostles were tempted to let themselves be crippled by danger and threats, they joined in prayer to implore parrhesia: “And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to Your servants to speak Your Word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29). As a result, “when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

It is my dearest desire that when the delegates gather for both of the sessions of the Plenary Council that they dedicate somewhere between a half day and a full day as representatives of the faith communities of Australia to imploring this parrhesia for Australia – and that they do so before they start any discussion of the Working Document. What this needs to be is heartfelt spontaneous prayer ebbing and flowing as the Holy Spirit prompts. Apart from an introduction and a conclusion, it needs to be totally unscripted. It needs to be allowing God to dredge up from the depths of our soul’s expressions of our personal, corporate and national desire for Him and for the dynamic action of the Holy Spirit in our midst, in words, songs, groans and anything else He inspires. It needs to include our leaders begging pardon of God for the ways we have failed Him personally and corporately, to include confessing our failures and our shortcomings, and asking God to step in, to take control, to take leadership and give us sure guidance and the courage to respond with an active Yes to everything He wants us to do.

Without this, nothing else will really matter.

Come Holy Spirit, Come!,
and through this Plenary Council
make of this nation Australia
the promised great south land
in complete synch with You.
Amen.

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