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.
The details of the voting and final motions have been published online.
Find out more about the Plenary Council at: www.plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au
