Participants in the Church in Australia’s Plenary Council in Sydney, July 9, 2022. / Australian Catholic Bishops Conference
Denver Newsroom, Jul 12, 2022 / 10:09 am (CNA).
The Catholic Church in Australia has concluded its Fifth Plenary Council. After months of debate and discussion on Church governance and pastoral priorities, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe of Perth declared the council closed on Saturday.
“There will be no renewal of the Church if we put ourselves above Christ or in some perverse way push him to the margins,” he said in his homily at the closing Mass in Sydney July 9. The plenary council, in his words, tried to “reimagine the Church in Australia through a missionary lens.” The archbishop encouraged members of the plenary council to continue to ask themselves what the Holy Spirit is saying.
The final session was held in Sydney over six days.
A plenary council is the highest formal gathering of all particular Churches in a country. It has legislative and governing authority. Laypeople were invited to participate in council sessions, and they joined bishops to vote on binding resolutions to be sent to the Vatican for approval.
All members signed a concluding statement. Council members characterized the council as an expression of synodality.
“Synodality is the way of being a pilgrim Church, a Church that journeys together and listens together, so that we might more faithfully act together in responding to our God-given vocation and mission,” the statements aid, adding that in their deliberations “the Holy Spirit has been both comforter and disrupter.”
Members of the plenary council also confirmed the plenary council’s decrees, which all Catholic bishops present then signed. The decrees will be sent to the Holy See after the November meeting of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. Six months after the Holy see receives this notice, formally known as a “recognitio,” the decrees will become law of the Catholic Church in Australia.
The plenary council formally recognized a duty to care for the Earth as a common home and to promote and defend human life from conception to natural death. It encouraged the Church to join Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si’” Action Platform and to develop existing action plans in the spirit of the pope’s 2015 encyclical on God’s creation and care for the environment.
The plenary council backed more use of general absolution, an alternative to individual confession generally only used in emergencies. It also endorsed an effort to seek a new translation of the 2011 Roman Missal.
Defeated proposals included one to allow lay people to preach at Masses.
On July 6 more than 60 of the 277 members protested the failure to pass motions on women in the Church, including the defeat of a motion to support the ordination of women as deacons if Rome agrees. The lay members voted for the proposals, but there were not enough votes from the bishops to pass the measures.
After some controversy, the council passed a motion to reconsider proposed language on women in the Church, which later passed in a slightly modified form.
“Much has been made of the division and drama of the week and that might frighten some and delight others,” Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney told The Catholic Weekly. “But I think the remarkable thing is that it did not break the Church. It did not lead to a walkout or schism or an alternative assembly being set up down the road as we’ve seen at different times in history.”
“In the end with more prayer and reflection we ended up with a much improved chapter on the dignity and roles of women,” he said.
The council decrees include the establishment of diocesan pastoral councils across Australia, diocesan synods to be hosted within the next five years, and broad consultation about the creation of a national synodal body for Church collaboration.
The plenary council’s closing statement said members “sought to be faithful to their commission to listen to and hear ‘what the Spirit is saying to the churches’.” It acknowledged the disruptions to daily life caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, natural disasters, and war.
Some moments during the council’s final week were “calm and harmonious” while others were “tense and difficult,” the closing statement said, adding, “every moment has been blessed; the entire week has been grace-filled, though never a cheap grace.” The statement praised “practices of listening and discernment” as “essential dimensions of the implementations of this plenary council.”
“They will re-shape our engagement with the world, our evangelizing mission and our works of service in a rapidly changing environment,” said the statement, adding, “the work has only begun.”
The implementation will be reviewed by the Bishops Commission for the Plenary Council. Interim reports will be published in 2023 and 2025, with a final review report set for 2027.
Archbishop Fisher reflected on the plenary council’s achievements and possible shortcomings in remarks to The Catholic Weekly.
“There’s been a direct engagement with some of the really ‘hard’ issues, like Indigenous issues, child sexual abuse and the place of women in the Church,” he said. “Those discussions were sometimes very emotional and potentially very divisive. Yet in the end there was a high level of agreement on most of them.”
“It’s much better that such matters were confronted directly rather than presenting a kind of faux unity by avoiding the hard issues,” the archbishop continued.
He praised the assembly’s work to offer “some good thoughts on liturgy, marriage catechumenate, youth ministry, formation programs for lay leaders including those in rural and remote areas, and stewardship of the earth.” He also welcomed its appreciation for the place of the Eastern Catholic Churches in Australia.
However, Fisher worried there was not enough content dedicated to the “missionary impulse” and to “a passion for bringing people to Christ, to conversion and new life in Him.” He thought there was too little attention paid to people on the margins and there were “no practical proposals” to promote religious freedom at a time when it is “clearly threatened.”
He worried that “ordinary” priests and lay Catholics, including those born overseas, were underrepresented in the assembly, and this might have had a distorting effect on the proceedings.
Still, he said, most proposals had “a very high rate of acceptance among the lay members and the pastors.”
“Everyone will find some good things in the final decrees when they come out, and people should look for those, look for inspiration and encouragement in their own missionary discipleship,” said Fisher.
People will also find gaps and subjects they think should have been addressed, Fisher said. He wondered why so little attention was given to lay men, mothers, vowed religious, or “Catholics whose principal vocation is in the world.”
“There’s very little that speaks to the crisis of vocations to marriage and parenting, and to priestly and religious life,” he added.
While there is a whole chapter on the importance of the liturgy, especially the Eucharist and the sacrament of Penance, Fisher said, he had wanted to see “positive proposals” on how the Church can secure the priests who can celebrate those sacraments.
In late 2021, Fisher said he hoped the council would focus on priorities like responding to a culture of secularism and declining religious practice.
Last year he told the Catholic Weekly that currently only 1 in 10 Catholics in Australia regularly attends Mass. The Church in Australia is experiencing a vocations crisis, not only to the priesthood, but also to marriage and religious life.
In addition to a culture of secularism, the Church continues to respond to sexual abuse scandals. A 2017 royal commission report found that the Catholic Church and other institutions in the country showed serious failings for decades in protecting children from abuse.
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For everyone, life is short and sweet. Unfortunately leaders are taking bold decisions against themselves. Genuine peace adds life to our life span. Long live peace worldwide.
Bergoglio has no lessons to impart to us regarding the pandemic. On the long list of crimes and offenses he has committed against the Church, faithful and the world, this has to rank fairly high. He was an enthusiastic proponent of the terribly useless and destructive and lockdowns and masking mandates. Then he had the audacity to declare receiving the experimental and, likely dangerous, Covid vaccine to be a universal moral obligation. As he has on so many other issues, he fully aligned himself and the prestige of the Catholic Church with the evil globalist political and economic cabal that is attempting to impose a worldwide tyranny. I would say that one lesson that we could draw from era is that Francis is an enemy to be resisted, but that was clear long before “coronavirus” entered the common parlance.
Orthodox Catholics prefer hard-hitting truth like Tony’s to the passive-aggressive nonsense rolling off bifurcated lips and tongues of apostatic men on the payroll of the Church.
Just like VCII, the pandemic happened. Sinful men know nothing of the mind or the will or the love of God. Does Francis condescend to mention Him in the New Year message about war?
Homerun! Knocked it out of the park!
In full agreement Deacon Ed. And not once was the Prince of Peace mentioned.
Agreed, Tony. Bergoglio is all about promoting the “evil globalist political and economic cabal,” as you pit it — i.e., leftism.
Another lesson: the faithful have pitifully few faithful shepherds they can trust.
” experimental and, likely dangerous, Covid vaccine ”
Not to mention that the vaccines were made using cells derived from aborted babies in research and development.
Another excellent point. Thank you.
The fact of the evil ways employed in production does not make the vaccine being EVIL ITSELF. To the challenge that ITS USE implies a cooperation in an evil production one may reply that the cooperation varries in the degree and circumstances, may not be evil in all cases. I would also add that the life itself is the greatest gift of God, and we must not neglect this gift. A failure to protect our helth is the greatest evil we could commit if unreasonably exposing ourselves to infection.
I suppose the one benefit of the whole Covid outbreak was learning how many vaccines, pharmaceuticals, over the counter drugs, food products, etc. have been created, researched, or tested at some point on fetal cell lines.
Sometimes the best you can do is to try to choose those with the least approximate connection to evil because otherwise you may have to avoid pretty much every part of modern medicine.
Sadly, every university medical research lab, including Catholic institutions, makes use of these cell lines. It’s a universal problem and not unique to Covid vaccines.
What I meant to type: “He was an enthusiastic proponent of the useless and terribly destructive lockdowns and masking mandates. “
This is very easily answered.
The response to the pandemic satisfied my curiosity about how the populace of Germany could so easily be hoodwinked into particpating either actively or by their silence in the genocide of 6,000,000 Jews and others. It tellingly illustrates how powerful agents of the government can intimidate individuals into relinquishing the use of their reason and suspend their conscience to commit heinous atrocities.
A very blessed 86th birthday to our beloved Holy Father – the Octave of his birthday is Christmas … 🙂 ? may be related to line of St.Francis and his Christmas connection ..
the message of Peace above – much like that of the Christ Child in
The Womb as narrated in the Christmas Novena of Luisa – telling us his lowly, often ungrateful children that He wants our company ..His immense sufferings in Love for us . Noteworthy that the Pope Emer. Benedict also a devotee of St.Hanibale who promoted the Novena-
https://luisapiccarreta.co/?page_id=13506 –
A theme of catechesis based on above – adoring the unborn Baby Jesus with all , to be thus set free from the wounds that are manifesting ever more vicioulsy , as fear and contempt for life in our times with all related confusions … laws that condone that desperation ..
Read the good news about the millions who came to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe this year .. loving and adoring The Baby too ..may same serve as the antidote for the trials and troubles of our times – as we too often echo – ‘Blessed is The Fruit of thy Womb Jesus’ – consoling and being consoled ..
seems that theme too is hidden in the words of blessing from the Holy Father ..
Blessings !
I too noticed the absence of God in PF’s message. Probably a lesson there somewhere.
2000 years ago, when The Son of God was born in Bethlehem of Judea, Herod was King, and Caiphas was High Priest.
These days seem analogous regarding state and church.
What an apt comparison. And among Herod, Caiphas and Pilate, it was Christ who got caught in the squeeze. And in 2022 it’s still the same. Different players but the same ole game.
Pope Francis has nothing to teach to any Christian. His globalist messages alternate from indifference to the teaching of Christ to outright hostility.