Australia’s historic Plenary Council assembly – the first in more than 80 years – has voted to promote the role of women in the Church, including motions that could lead the country changing existing decision-making structures, and accepting women deacons.
Landmark voting followed a day of drama two days earlier, when dozens of plenary members, mainly women, walked from the assembly floor, standing in “silent witness”, and it appeared the assembly could fall apart.
Members said they were frustrated that enough bishops had voted in a way that rejected motions aimed at ensuring women play a greater role in the Church, providing Pope Francis affirms the Council decisions.
By Friday (July 8), the final day of voting, five redrafted motions supporting equal dignity for women and men in the Church passed the arduous voting process that required first a vote by religious, lay men and women, and then a final vote exclusively by bishops.
“One message it sends is that the Holy Spirit is at work in the Church,” Brisbane archbishop, Mark Coleridge said, echoing a sentiment held by many plenary members that the Spirit had intervened to calm tensions and allowed the Council to continue with its agenda, that included passing 18 motions across a range of key Church issues.
Information on all the motions and voting outcomes can be found here. on the Motions and Voting page of the Plenary Council website.
The aim of the four-year Plenary Council process is to answer the question: ‘What do you think God is asking of us in Australia?’”
“I’m proud to say that I feel I can go home now to my daughter and say yes, the Catholic Church values women, and men.” elated Plenary member, Erin Gillard said.
A family educator and parishioner from St Mary MacKillop parish in Wollongong Diocese, Ms Gillard described the silent stand by plenary members as “probably a defining moment for the Church”.
On Wednesday, dozens of the 277 plenary council members walked to the edge of the assembly floor and stood in silence – some were crying – after two motions concerning the role of women in the Church received simple majorities, but not the necessary two-thirds to achieve a qualified majority.
“When we look back in history… that’s the moment the council changed and… we just let the Holy Spirit take over,” Ms Gillard said.
The plenary agenda was halted, and emergency meetings were convened – one by the Australian bishops and a steering committee, and another by a large number of the 277 plenary members dissatisfied with the voting process.
Plenary Council president, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, acknowledged it was a challenging moment.
“There is a long way for the Church to go in the understanding of the proper role of women in the life of the Church,” Archbishop Costelloe said.
“It is clear from the Plenary Council journey that the Church, the People of God, is committed to understanding the proper role of women.”
After overwhelming council support, a four-person writing group spent the next 24 hours redrafting motions on the role of women to put to the assembly.
Five redrafted motions on women were put to the assembly and passed decisively on Friday. They were among 19 motions considered on the final full day of sittings, with 18 of them passing.
Those motions relating directly to elevating roles for women in the Church include 4.2 that commits to women being “appropriately represented in decision‐making structures of Church governance at the parish, diocese or eparchy, and national level, and in Church agencies and organisations”.
Motion 4.5 supports the admission of women to become Church deacons, if the Pope agrees.
Brisbane member, Sr Melissa Dwyer FDCC, one of the women to stand in “silent witness” on Wednesday, was part of the writing group responsible for redrafting the motions.
Sr Dwyer said there was a “sense of discontent and hurt and pain that the deliberative vote [the vote by bishops] could end in rejecting the voice of women”.
“And yet, that turning point was transformative because it flipped the whole process on its head… I feel so satisfied and grateful that the Spirit was very much present in the mess, in the joy , in the struggle,” she said.
“It’s not the end of the journey, but we’ve made significant steps.”
Sr Maeve Heaney VDMF said the assembly had been “very graceful, very intense and very tough”.
“Tough, because I think we’re all committed to Jesus and this Church, and then we are so diverse,” she said.
“It was difficult to find that there are spaces in which we think so differently, and yet you want to build something that is going to serve the Church.
“I think it was graceful because we held our nerve, we didn’t step back from the difficult, I think we were honest, and I think the Spirit has worked every day.”
Council members also passed a series of motions under the headings “Communion in Grace: Sacrament to the World”, and “Formation and Leadership for Mission and Ministry”.
Some of those motions related to the sacrament of penance, review of the ministry of preaching and the development of formation programs.
Significantly, Motion 5.4 did not pass. It sought to amend canon law to allow lay preachers to delivery the homily, under the oversight of the local ordinary.
Across the week-long assembly many key issues received votes of support: an apology for victims of child abuse; moves to incorporate First Nations peoples into the life of the church and to endorse the Uluru Statement from the Heart; and an awareness of the need for ecological conversion, and setting up new governance structures.
The Plenary Council was flagged by Brisbane Archbishop, Mark Coleridge in 2016 and has sat in accord with a changed emphasis in the Church, driven by Pope Francis, ahead of the 2023 Synod of Bishops on synodality in Rome.
“For all its distress and darkness at times, the grace of this week is a seed sown in the soil for the whole Church in Australia. I don’t know what the seed will produce in the future, but it is a potent seed that has been sown,” Archbishop Coleridge said.
When the last Plenary Council was held in 1937, it was exclusively for bishops. There were no lay men or women, or religious. To put it in context, in that year Donald Bradman was Australia’s cricket captain. In the third test agaist England his 270 runs won the match for Australia and has been rated the greatest innings of all time.
“It’s a totally different world, it’s another planet almost,” Archbishop Coleridge said
“So God bless Don Bradman and the bishops of 1937. They did what they did in their day, but we’re in a vastly different world.
“I mean, I’m intensely conscious that what happened in the middle of the week has been y.et another blow to the credibility of the bishops – and we have to live with that.
“But I think the way in which not only the bishops, but this whole assembly have dealt with this moment of crisis, ought to be reassuring to a lot of people.”
Details on the final wording of all plenary motions and voting outcomes can be found on the Motions and Voting page of the Plenary Council website.
