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Catholics for Renewal has drafted this letter in consultation with many Catholics strongly committed to the teachings of Jesus and their Church. People of the Church have been distressed by the increasing failings of our Church, particularly in the context of the...

by Peter J Wilkinson
15 May 2012 originally published in The Swag

A plenary or national council (or synod) is an assembly of the bishops, clergy, religious and laity of a particular nation working to ensure that the pastoral needs of the People of God in that nation are provided for (C. 445).

It is 75 years since the last plenary council of the Catholic Church in Australia, held in 1937. That, and earlier ones in 1885, 1895 and 1905, were exclusively male clerical gatherings, with only bishops, theologians and superiors of male religious orders attending.  Women, religious or lay, took no part.

The question now is: Has the time come to convene a fifth plenary council or synod in Australia, to be held under new inclusive rules (C. 443) which allow wider participation of Christ’s faithful, including women, to address the critical issues of our times?

 how it should occur, and why this is important by Peter Wilkinson The Diocese of Melbourne was established in 1847.  It became an archdiocese in 1874.  To date, it has had 8 archbishops.  The first three were Irish: James Goold (1848-1886), Thomas Carr (1886-1917),...

Bishops for the Australian mission

From 1788, when the First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay, until 31 March 2016, seventeen popes have entrusted the pastoral care of Australia’s Catholics to 214 bishops. Until 1976 the popes had also designated Australia a ‘mission’ territory and placed it under the jurisdiction of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide which largely determined the selection of its bishops.

The first five bishops never set foot on Australian soil. All English, they shepherded from afar, three from London, and two from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa where, from 1820 to 1832, they tendered their flock in distant New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land via priest delegates.

The selection and appointment in 1832 of Australia’s first resident bishop, English Benedictine John Bede Polding, as Vicar Apostolic of New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land, was the result of long and delicate political and ecclesiastical negotiations between Propaganda, the British Home Secretary, the Vicars Apostolic of the London District and Cape of Good Hope, the English Benedictines, and the senior Catholic clerics in NSW. The process was repeated until English candidates were no longer available and the majority Irish Catholic laity in Australia had made it clear that they wanted Irish bishops.

Peter Johnstone, President of Catholics for Renewal Inc, outlines a proposal for selecting the nine new bishops Australia will need soon as outlined in the article by Peter Wilkinson This year, nine new Australian diocesan bishops could be appointed – NINE! –...

by Paul Collins

I was talking recently about the Synod with a very experienced parish priest. He said that if the bishops thought we were all waiting with bated breath for their decision regarding the divorced remarried receiving Communion, then they really do live in cloud cuckoo-land. Nowadays divorced Catholics don’t just hang around waiting for a bevy of bishops to decide. They follow their consciences and do what they think is right, especially if they have talked to a sensible, pastoral priest. Sure, many have understandably walked away from the church, but many have stayed having made their own decisions about going to Communion – the internal forum solution.

So really it’s irrelevant what the Synod decided. Even on the gay issue sensible Catholics already understand that talk about people being ‘intrinsically disordered’ is not only utterly insensitive; it is also ‘intrinsically’ un-Christ-like and evangelically ‘disordered’!

But that doesn’t mean the Synod was a failure. It was a success because it recovered something of the church’s Catholicity. Genuine Catholicism implies a universal, multi-ethnic, non-sectarian church, a community of many parts and differing views. My major criticism of the two popes before Francis is that they were essentially ‘uncatholic’; they promoted a narrow, ‘pure’, sectarian church, the antithesis of Catholicity. That’s why they loved outfits like the Neo-Catechuminate and Opus Dei; they are sectarian in structure and intention.

by George Rippon

Article originally published in Catholica

As I sit down to write I am often not quite sure where I will end up. This time I know. Having seen most of my recommendations ignored over the years I will in faith and hope give them another run, with some variations.

Starting at the top I wish Francis in Rome progress in sorting out the entrenched Curia. Maybe he should sack the lot and start again. At this time I do not propose to give direct advice to His Holiness.

We need to have a say in the appointment of bishops…

I think that hope is more significant than faith and love. Hope is rooted in imagination, in the ability to grasp other possibilities, to conceive of other options. It helps us escape a monochrome, paranoid world. While we all have imagination, we need the artist to...

by David Timbs

Read paper HERE

Abstract: It is becoming more and more obvious that one of the most significant obstacles to the systemic reform of the culture and legal system of the Catholic Church is clericalism. The leadership of the Church has become increasingly more estranged from the prophetic roots of its mission to animate and to serve. As the Church became more institutionalised, its bishops became increasingly socialised into a patriarchal and autocratic mentality and praxis with little transparency and no provision for accountability, the essential safeguards of good governance. Ultimately a massive social, psychological and spiritual chasm was created which lead to dangerous disconnection between bishops and their people.

Reprinted with permission from The Swag, Autumn 2016

Underlying the proceedings at the 2^nd Vatican Council were two major principles: ressourcement, calling for a return to the sources, and aggiornamento, calling for a genuine update of the Church to increase its relevancy to the modern world.

For two millennia the ecclesia, founded on the leadership of the Apostles, had held firm to the essence of its faith, worship and governance, but with the passage of time and the vicissitudes of history had also acquired much peripheral baggage of beliefs, customs and practices far removed from the apostolic tradition. Many were also anachronistic, with little or no meaning for the Church and world of the 20^th century, and they were hindering, not helping evangelization.