THE first assembly of Australia’s historic Plenary Council has closed with Mass and a call from Brisbane’s Archbishop Mark Coleridge for the Council’s 278 members to continue journeying with the Holy Spirit to discern the future shape of the Australian Church.
“Without the Holy Spirit there would be no Council,” Archbishop Coleridge said during his homily in Brisbane’s St Stephen’s Cathedral. He is president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and a key instigator of the Australia’s fifth Plenary Council – the first since 1937.
“There may be a meeting but it would be no more than politics and ideology, the crude struggle for power.
“But in what we have experienced there has been much more, something more mysterious, something greater than Solomon (cf Matt 12:42).”
About 40 concrete proposals for change within the Church emerged after six days of mainly closed sessions and working group meetings with members drawn from across the country and representing lay men and women, deacons, religious as well as priests and bishops.
Many of the proposals address the Church’s relevance in contemporary Australia, in parish life and reaching out to the peripheries of society.
The working groups proposed solidarity with the aspirations of Australia’s First Nations people for constitutional recognition; adoption of innovative models for lay/clerical governance; expansion of programs for contemporary lay and religious formation; professional supervision for clergy and Church workers and importantly, the expansion of the influential participation of women, including consideration of women deacons.
An entire day was dedicated to the clergy sexual abuse scandal, the Church culture that allowed it, and the ongoing pain of survivors. Council members reflected on questions about seeing through the eyes of those who have been abused and reaching those on the peripheries.
Read a summary of working group reports and proposals here.
A team of Church experts and advisors will now research and develop the proposals for further discussion when the Plenary Council assembles for a second time in Sydney in July next year.
“Through the journey of the Plenary Council and this week’s assembly, the Word of God has come to us as a call, every bit as much as it did to the rich man in the Gospel we have heard,” Archbishop Coleridge said referring to the parable of the rich young man (Mark 10:17-30).
“Rich he may be, but he is also a searcher, as we have been through this week.
“Hence the question he puts to Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He’s looking for more; his question rises from a sense that this isn’t enough.
We are told that Jesus looked at him and loved him… The rich man is called to leave everything and to enter the infinite love if he wants to know the fullness of life.
“To all of this the man says no, and – we are told – he goes away sad. This is the sadness that always come when we say no to the call of Jesus, when we refuse to enter the love that is before us, fearing that we will lose too much.
“If there is a sadness in our heart or in the Church or in the world, this is the reason.
“The Council is the Holy Spirit drawing us beyond our fears into the love, so that we can find the answer to our questions.
“The answer to those questions is clearer now than it was in 2016 when the journey began, and it is clearer still at the end of this first assembly.
“But the journey is not over; the answer must grow clearer still.
“As we turn from this week, we look to the months till the second assembly where we will – please God – gather face-to-face in Sydney.
“Our discernment will continue intensely through the months of fermentation, so that the seeds sown in the first assembly may finally bear fruit in the second assembly, equipping us well for the journey beyond the phase of the Council’s celebration to the long phase of implementation of its Spirit-shaped decisions and decrees.
“The facilitator of my small group at the assembly had for many years been a midwife for many years, and at one point she likened what we were doing through the week to bringing a child to birth.
“The process is slow, painful and messy, but in the end it is wonderfully fruitful and joyful as the baby is born.
“Beyond the maelstrom of this week and all that lies ahead may the Church in Australia come to know the fruitfulness and joy which the Holy Spirit brings from all the pain and all the mess, because nothing is impossible for God.”
