
EVENTS
Australia’s historic Plenary Council ended on Saturday with a Mass
and approval of a final statement by the 277 Council members that “The
Holy Spirit has been both comforter and disrupter”. The Council’s final six-day assembly in Sydney included tense and difficult moments, especially last Wednesday (July 6) when the assembly was left in disarray after two motions aimed at promoting women’s roles in Church did not pass. The motions were redrafted and five, reshaped motions relating to the role of women in the Church went to a vote on Friday and passed. Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge who flagged a Plenary Council in 2016, said decisions made after voting on dozens of plenary motions would “have their effect in communities all around Australia”. “These
are not decisions made on Planet Mars, they are really quite concrete
decisions that will have all kinds of effects seen and unseen upon the
communities that make up the Catholic Church around Australia,”
Archbishop Coleridge said. “I can’t predict in detail what those effects will be, but I know that they’ll happen over time.” The
final statement said the Council had been an “expression of the
synodality that Pope Francis has identified as a key dimension of the
Church’s life in the third millennium”. “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,” it said. The statement
agreed with Pope Francis’ assessment that synodality is “an easy concept
to put into words, but not so easy to put into practice”. Townsville Bishop Tim Harris agreed the Council assembly had been a “powerful and palpable experience of synodality. “And I think that now we’re at the end it’s proved to me that what the
Pope has asked us to do is the right thing to do… the end of the Plenary
is now the beginning of the implementation,” he said. The Plenary Council directly engaged with some of the tough issues
that have confronted the Australian Church – First Nations recognition
and identity, historic child sexual abuse and the safeguarding that is
now needed, and the place of women in the Church. The Plenary
attempted to capture the major issues affecting contemporary Churh life
in Australia, hearing from 222,000 people and the contribution of 17,457
submissions. Now, after final voting, dozens of motions will be scrutinised in the weeks and months ahead. The Plenary concluded with Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral in central
Sydney on Saturday morning. Earlier Council members confirmed the
decrees of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia, which were then
signed by all bishops present. After a November meeting of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, the decrees will be sent to the Holy See. Once recognitio is received by the Holy See, the decrees will be implemented and become the law of the Church in Australian six months later......(MORE) Photo: Plenary Council expression of synodality Mark Bowling Catholic Leader 20220711
Plenary Council backs action on ecology, Church governance reform
Extract from ACBC, 7 July 2022, Catholic Outlook, 7 July 2022
Plenary Council
Members have passed all six motions they considered on Thursday across
parts of the agenda in the areas of Church governance and integral
ecology. Among the reforms backed
were a call for the establishment of diocesan pastoral councils across
the country, the hosting of diocesan synods within five years of the
conclusion of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia and the undertaking
of broad consultation about the creation of a national synodal body for
Church collaboration. Those were
captured in the four motions that emerged from Part 7 of the Council’s
Motions and Amendments document entitled “At the Service of Communion,
Participation and Mission: Governance”. All four
motions achieved a qualified majority in both the consultative and
deliberative votes cast on Thursday, and so were passed. Members also
voted on two motions in Part 8, Integral Ecology for the Sake of Our
Common Home, with those two votes achieving a qualified majority in both
the consultative and deliberative votes, therefore passing. The
Council said ecological conversion is “both personal and communal”, and
that there was “urgent need for action” from Catholic entities through
the development of, or alignment with, Laudato Si’ Action Plans inspired
by Pope Francis’ encyclical letter of the same name. The Council
called for the promotion of initiatives in Church and society that
“promote and defend human life from conception to natural death,
especially those who are most vulnerable”. Details
on the final wording of motions and the voting outcomes can be found on
the Motions and Voting page of the Plenary Council website. Follow the second assembly HERE
View the Voting Outcomes for the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia on
Parts 7 and 8 of the Motions and Amendments Document, announced on 7
July 2022, HERE. Rewatch the livestream of the opening session of Day 5 of the Second Assembly HERE.......(MORE) Image: Plenary Council Members plant seeds table gardens PC 2nd Assembly Sydney, ACBC, Catholic Outlook 20220707
Pope Francis to appoint women to Vatican office responsible for selecting bishops,
Extract from Christopher White, Vatican, National Catholic Reporter 6 July, linked here 7 July 2022
ROME — Pope Francis intends to appoint two women to the Vatican's Dicastery for Bishops, marking a historic first for the office tasked with advising the pontiff on which Catholic priests to appoint as bishops across the world. "Two women will be appointed for the first time in the committee to elect bishops in the Congregation for Bishops," Francis told Philip Pullella, the Reuters' Vatican correspondent, in an interview that took place on July 2 and was published on July 6. Under the Vatican's new constitution, which took effect on June 5, all Vatican congregations and councils have now been renamed with the newly streamlined title of "dicastery." The constitution also notes that "any member of the faithful can preside over a dicastery," and in the newly published interview, Francis said that Vatican's office for Education and Culture and the Apostolic Library are among those that could be headed by a lay man or woman in the near future......(More). Photo: Pope Francis Sister Jolanta Kafka, president of the International Union of Superiors General May 5, 2022, CNS Vatican Media, NCR 20220606
2nd Assembly Results of first six Plenary Council votes announced
Extract from CathNews, ACBC Media Blog, 5 July 2022
The outcome of the initial rounds of voting for the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia were announced yesterday, with all relevant motions being passed with a qualified majority. Members of the Plenary Council voted on six motions from the Motions and Amendments document. Prior to voting, the members agreed on three amendments. Under the Reconciliation: Healing Wounds, Receiving Gifts theme, the members voted to pass a motion that would, among other things, commit the Church to say sorry to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for the part played by the Church in the harm they have suffered, as well as endorsing the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The members voted for Catholic schools, parishes, dioceses and organisations to respond to recommendations contained in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council position paper “Embracing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the Life of the Catholic Church”. Members also approved a motion for the Bishops Commission for Liturgy and NATSICC to "develop options for the liturgically and culturally appropriate use of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander symbols and rituals in Catholic liturgical contexts”.
The second theme considered was Choosing Repentance – Seeking Healing. The members voted for the Plenary Council to say sorry to abuse victims and survivors, their families and communities and recommit the Church to respond with justice and compassion to those who have suffered from the trauma of abuse. The members voted to request the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Catholic Religious Australia, and the Association of Ministerial PJPs, with assistance from appropriate experts, to study, acknowledge and address systemic factors which have facilitated abuse within the Church. The members also voted to adopt a new name for the annual Safeguarding Sunday, and for the Bishops Commission for Liturgy to develop appropriate rituals and liturgical resources to be offered to parishes for use on the day. The full details of the motions and votes can be found online at the Motions and Voting page of the Plenary Council website....(more). Photo: Plenary Council members vote on a PC motion ACBC, Fiona Basile, 5 July 2022
Towards a new hopefulness
Extracts from Gail Freyne*, Pearls & Irritations, John Menadue website 3 July 2022
....When Joan Chittister toured Australia these past six weeks a whole lot of hope washed over us.
And a very big meeting was opened: Thousands of us bought tickets to hear her in person, nearly two thousand in Melbourne, eight hundred in Adelaide, eight hundred in Sydney, eight hundred in Brisbane and they were just the public events. Privately, she spoke to hundreds at a gathering of Catholic Religious Australia, for her ‘family’ of Good Samaritan Sisters and Benedictines, and for Mater Health with its ten thousand employees. Most of these events were recorded for national and international viewing, many for religious working overseas. More thousands tuned in to the programme, ‘Soul Search’ on ABC National radio, and on ABC South Australia. Thousands watched a Zoom presented by ACCCR, read interviews in the Adelaide Advertiser, they watched her on The Drum on ABCtv, and listened to her in conversation with Rachael Kohn, Geraldine Doogue and nationally on Zoom conversation with John Warhurst for the states she was unable to visit: Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania. And, of course, for those in hospital, jail, aged care and the far reaches of the continent who were unable to attend in person. Finally, she spoke to two hundred and fifty of our 14-17 year old students from eighteen Catholic high schools in the Melbourne Archdiocese. They, the hope of the side, blessed with a privileged education, were urged to take the responsibility of being a Public Intellectual in the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching. Why did all these people turn up or tune in? One religious superior put it to me very succinctly: “Joan is an orthodox Catholic to her core”. She is not contradicting church teaching, she is asking us to live it and live it faithfully and more abundantly.........Here we are taught a theology that gives us all we need and yet it is a theology that for nearly five hundred years we backgrounded. The Council of Trent, concluding in 1563, was concerned not so much with orthodoxy but with reform: to abolish the sale of relics and indulgences, to critique the shallowness of church governance, the extremes of sexual and financial misbehaviour of our clerics that seem eerily close to our church today. Happily, this time we have a Pope who teaches that our problems arise from the still present evils of that clericalism and the hierarchy’s refusal to adopt the reform centred Council, Vatican II. Pope Francis has told us that the failure to implement the reforms of Vatican II is central to the dysfunctional situation in which the church finds itself today. Sr. Joan explains: “this Council called upon the church to be the church that the church was meant to be”........(More). *Gail Grossman Freyne, PhD, LL.B, Vice President of Catholics for Renewal, Founding Member, Women’s Wisdom in the Church (WWITCH).
Image: Church Ceiling, PxHere, Pearls & Irritations, 3 July 2022
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