Synodality and the Catholic Church in Australia

Pope Francis’s call for a more synodal Church is still something that has been more discussed than implemented. The 2022 Synod on Synodality will continue the discussion. However, there are a least two places in the world were there has been more than talk – Germany and Australia. The Church in the former is in the midst of what is being called a “synodal way”. The Church in the latter is well advanced with a national plenary council.

Readers of The Catholic World Report are undoubtedly well informed about what is happening in the German Catholic Church, but they may not know very much, or indeed anything at all, about how the Australian Catholic Church is responding to the call of Pope Francis. After a brief introduction to the history and spirituality of the Catholic Church in Australia, this article will attempt to outline how that Church is attempting to become a more synodal Church.

The History and Spirituality of the Catholic Church in Australia

Catholics first came to Australia in 1788 in what is called the First Fleet. The purpose of this fleet was to establish a penal colony and military base at what is now the city of Sydney. Most of these Catholics were Irish convicts, although a few were British soldiers. Most of the convicts were ordinary criminals, with a few others being rebels against the British rule of Ireland. The first priests did not arrive in Australia until 1800, and they were convicts themselves. In 1803, one of them was given permission to celebrate Mass on Sundays. This continued for about one year, until a convict rebellion, led largely by Irish Catholics, caused the British governor of the colony to rescind this permission. This priest ministered privately until 1809, when he left the colony.

Another priest arrived in the colony in 1817 but was quickly expelled by the British governor. However, before he was deported, he left a consecrated Host in a Pyx at the home of an emancipated Catholic convict. This Host became the focus of the spiritual life of the Catholics of the colony. Lay people kept a daily vigil before it, recited the Rosary before it, taught catechism there to their children, and prayed Sunday Vespers there. Mass was not legally celebrated again until two priests were sent from England in 1820. By 1828 there were about 10,000 Catholics in Australia. The first Catholic bishop arrived in 1835.

From that time, until after the Second World War, the Catholic Church in Australia was essentially an “Irish” Church, with many parish churches named after Irish saints, and most of the clergy being of Irish extraction. In fact, it was not until the 1930s that Australian born priests outnumbered those born in Ireland. From the 1820s, Catholic schools were established in Australia, and these received government financial assistance. However, from the 1850s onwards there was political and social agitation to make all education “free, secular, and compulsory”. Between 1872 and 1893, all six colonial governments removed “state aid” from Catholic schools. With no money to pay teachers, the bishops encouraged religious congregations from Ireland and other European countries to send brothers and sisters to staff these schools. The Catholic school system grew very large. Almost every Catholic parish had its own primary school. In the 1960s government “state aid” was returned to Catholic schools. Today, 20% of all Australian primary and secondary students attend Catholic schools. An increasing minority of these are non-Catholics.

After the Second World War, immigrants from many European countries began arriving in Australia. Besides Catholics with Irish surnames, there were now Catholics from Italy, Malta, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia, Hungary, and so on. From the 1970s and 1980s onwards, these were joined by Catholics from Vietnam, China, Lebanon, the Philippines, South Korea, India, Sudan, and many other countries. At present, Australia is the most ethnically diverse country in the world, with 26% of its population born overseas, and about 300 different ethnic groups. This same diversity is found in the Australian Catholic Church.

Currently, Catholics make up about 22% of the Australian population. Before the Second Vatican Council, they participated in their faith to a high degree. In 1954, 74% of Australian Catholics regularly attended Mass. Unfortunately, the decline in participation found in European countries has been mirrored in Australia. The latest available figures (2016) put the regular attendance rate at about 12%. Yet, there are also signs of hope. Many seriously committed young Catholics are very orthodox in their faith, as well as being devoted to the celebration of the Eucharist, Eucharistic adoration, the Rosary, and other traditional Catholic practices. Many of the “new ecclesial communities” are active.¹ Vocations to the priesthood are increasing, and as a lecturer involved in the theological education of seminarians, I can testify to the spiritual quality of these seminarians. An increasing number of dioceses are focusing on programs of evangelisation and “forming intentional disciples”.²

For example, in my own archdiocese of Sydney, the Parish Renewal Office, the Youth Ministry Office, the Life, Marriage and Family Office, the Communication and News Media, and the archdiocesan newspaper are all organized under the direction of the Centre for Evangelisation. In a few days from writing these words, I will be attending the first event of a Sydney archdiocese online series on parish renewal called Reclaiming Evangelisation. The first – Why Make Disciples? The Case for the Evangelising Mission of the Church – will be given by Bishop Robert Barron, auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles and founder of Word on Fire.³ This series will be continued in 2022 with the biblical scholar Dr. Mary Healy of the Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, and Fr. Jacques Philippe, author of many books on prayer and the spiritual life.⁴ Overall, it would be fair to say that the situation of the Catholic Church in Australia is not as good as in the USA, but not as bad as in Belgium and Germany.

The Australian Plenary Council

On the 17 October 2015, in a speech commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis pointed out that the very word “synod” is derived from the Greek syn hodos, which means to travel together. He then defined a synodal Church as,

a Church which listens, which realizes that listening ‘is more than simply hearing’. It is a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn. The faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other, and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of truth’ (Jn 14:17), in order to know what he ‘says to the Churches’ (Rev 2:7).⁵

Less than a year after this speech, Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane unveiled plans to hold a plenary council of the entire Catholic Church in Australia.⁶ He credited the Pope’s speech with inspiring this initiative.⁷ The Archbishop saw the plenary council as an exercise in the kind of synodality of which the Pope speaks. In defining the nature of this synodality, both the Pope and the Archbishop stress the need for the bishops and all the faithful to listen to the Holy Spirit and to each other. The reasons given by Archbishop Coleridge for the Australian bishops agreeing on the need for a plenary council was that “we are at a time of profound cultural change. Not only in the wider community, but in the Church. I think we have to accept the fact that Christendom is over – by which I mean mass, civic Christianity. It’s over. Now, how do we deal with that fact?”⁸

Particular issues such as the recent Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of children in non-government institutions and the legal introduction of same-sex marriage in response to a national plebiscite were identified by the Archbishop as issues to which a plenary council could respond.⁹ In Australia, a Royal Commission is the highest form of government inquiry into matters of public importance. However, according to the Archbishop, “Everything is potentially on the radar screen, anything that does not infringe on the Church’s faith, teachings or morals.”¹⁰ The plenary council could also expect to engage with contemporary issues of justice, peace, development, and the environment.¹¹ According to the Archbishop, a plenary council would be “primarily an ecclesial event. We are trying to discern what God wants and we are invoking the Holy Spirit”.¹² Furthermore, he thought that questions need to be asked about how to become a more missionary church, about ordained ministry, the Church’s response to the diminishment of apostolic orders, the relationship between the newer communities and parishes, and the whole future of the parish.¹³

Finally, the Archbishop said he expected significant international interest in Australia’s plenary council: “Certainly in the Asia Pacific region there will be enormous interest. Other places will be watching with interest because a lot of the issues we’ll be addressing would be issues common to all western churches that are culturally similar to Australia.”¹⁴

In preparation for the plenary council, about 222,000 people participated in “listening and dialogue encounters,” and 17,457 submissions were made. The number of participants in the “listening and dialogue encounters” is equal to about 4% of the total Catholic population of Australia. Also, it is equal to about 35% of regular Mass attendees in Australia.¹⁵ From this consultation, six national themes for discernment were identified. The themes are: How is God calling us to be a Christ-centred Church in Australia that is 1) missionary and evangelising, 2) inclusive, participatory, and synodal, 3) prayerful and Eucharistic, 4) humble, healing, and merciful, 5) a joyful, hope-filled, and servant community, 6) open to conversion, renewal, and reform. Six small committees were appointed to compose “discernment papers” on each of these themes.

We can see from all this that there has been a great effort by the Church in Australia to prepare for the plenary council. According to the Australian Catholic theologian Ormond Rush, doing so will be a substantial fulfilment of the Second Vatican Council’s call to pay attention to the sensus fidelium:

The theological meaning of our forthcoming Plenary Council can only be appreciated fully when we locate it within the comprehensive vision of Vatican II regarding revelation and faith, its transmission through history, and, consequently, the nature and mission of the church. It is this conciliar vision which is clearly grounding Pope Francis’ calls for ‘a listening church, a synodal church,’ at all levels of church life. The Holy Spirit, he says, must be given breathing room to bring forth such a church. The Spirit’s instrument for interpreting divine revelation is the sensus fidei, a ‘sense of the faith,’ or better, a sense for the faith. It is capacity which the Spirit gives, along with the gift of faith, to every baptized believer and to the church as a whole. A synodal church is a church that listens to the Spirit communicating through the sense of all the faithful, the sensus fidelium. The Plenary Council, in its preparatory stage and in its celebration, will be a concentrated moment in the life of the Australian church of listening to the Holy Spirit, by listening to the sensus fidelium.¹⁶

The Instrumentum Laboris

Using the six discernment papers, an Instrumentum Laboris (working document) called Continuing the Journey was composed as the basis for the deliberations of the plenary council. Some key themes to be found in this document are the need to:

• renew a Christ-centred Church that heals wounds and warms hearts;

• strengthen practices of discernment and synodality;

• answer the call to co-responsibility in mission and governance;

• embed in the Church a response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse;

• renew and support the ordained ministry;

• promote discipleship in parishes, families and amongst young people;

• form prayerful and Eucharistic communities that are eager to engage in society for the service of all;

• proclaim the Gospel in an era of change;

• renew the Church’s solidarity with First Australians (aboriginal peoples) and those on the margins of society;

• and promote an integral ecology of life for all persons, societies and our common home, the Earth.¹⁷

The First Session of the Plenary Council

Using the Instrumentum Laboris as the basis for their deliberations, 277 members of the Council met over a period of six days in October 2021. The members were drawn from the 28 Australian Dioceses, 5 Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, the Military Ordinariate, the Anglican Ordinariate, the personal prelature of Opus Dei, leaders of religious congregations, representatives of church ministries, seminary rectors and heads of theological institutions, and others. Representatives from each diocese included the diocesan bishop/s, priests, religious, and lay people. Because of the pandemic, the meetings took place online. In a way, this was serendipitous, since much of what occurred at the council can be viewed online.¹⁸

During the first assembly the members of the council attempted to discern “what the Spirit is saying to the Church” in Australia. This was done through times of prayer, general sessions, small group sessions, and brief individual interventions. The texts of a number of these interventions have been published by the Sydney archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Weekly.¹⁹ The topics covered include:

• The evangelistic potential of married couples.
• The need for a “marriage catechumenate”.
• The establishment of “houses of discernment” for young men.
• The contribution of Eastern Catholic Churches.
• The contribution of families to the life and mission of the Church.
• The need to go out onto the streets as missionary disciples.
• The contribution of the Anglican Ordinariate.
• The need for greater asceticism (prayer, fasting and almsgiving) in the Church.
• The need for ordained minsters to help lay believers become missionary disciples.
• The need for all states of life (ordained, religious, and lay) to strive for holiness as missionary disciples.
• The need for a renewal of Eucharistic adoration.
• The need to minister to isolated Catholics in rural areas.
• The role of deacons as “bridges” between clergy and laity.
• The need for “ecological conversion”.
• The increase in vocations to the priesthood in dioceses which, until recently, have suffered from a vocational “drought”.
• Mary as the example par excellence of the ministry of women in the Church.
• The Sacred Liturgy as the life and heart of the Church.
• The need for Catholics, as missionary disciples, to “go to the margins”.
• The work of the Holy Spirit in the “new ecclesial movements”.
• The need for large families to be welcomed joyfully in the Church.

We can see from the above that the plenary council being held in Australia is radically different from the “synodal way” being held in Germany. The former is being conducted according to Canon Law, whereas the latter is not.²⁰ In Australia, great efforts have been made to genuinely “consult the faithful”. In Germany, any consultation has been mainly with what could be called the “bureaucratic Church,” that is, the Central Committee of German Catholics. The Australian plenary council includes Catholics from the whole spectrum of opinion to be found in the Church, from Opus Dei to those who would like to see women priests. The German synodal way has proved to be very divisive, with some German bishops expressing grave reservations about it, and organisations such as Neuer Anfang (new beginning) proposing an alternative program of reform.²¹

Some Reflections on preparing for the Second Session

A fundamental question needs to be asked about what has happened at the first assembly and what will happen at the second assembly in May 2022. It is, How will the members discern “what the Spirit is saying to the Church?”

Desire

I suggest that a first step should be an examination of their desires, followed by this question, “Do my desires conform to the desires of Jesus?” To answer this question, we must know what the desires of Jesus are. In the Gospels we are presented with a number of these desires. Some of the most prominent are: 1) To gather his people under his protection – “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not” (Mt 23:37). 2) To cast fire on the earth – “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!” (Lk 12:49). 3) To do the will of his Father – “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work” (Jn 4:34). 4) That his Father be glorified – “Father, glorify your name!” (Jn 12:28)

It is this last desire that I wish to draw particular attention to, since it seems to be “missing in action” in the deliberations thus far. There is no mention of it in any of the six discernment papers, nor in that otherwise commendable document, the Instrumentum Laboris, not even in passing. The only place that I have found it to be explicitly mentioned in the context of the plenary council is in an excellent presentation on discernment given by Br. Ian Cribb SJ.²² Yet this desire could be said to encompass all the other desires of Jesus. This is what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus – “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples” (Jn 15:8). AMDG – to the greater glory of God. When I first went to school, the Sisters of the Good Samaritan had me write this at the top of every page. We will find it carved on innumerable foundation stones of our churches and other buildings. Why is it that it is not only not prominent in our deliberations thus far, but not even “on our radar?”

Discernment

There are some good resources on the plenary council website about how we can discern the will of God for us as individuals, and on discernment in general.²³ Yet the only place in which I have found communal discernment addressed is again in the presentation by Br. Cribb. Besides his famous contributions to discernment for the individual, St. Ignatius also has much to say about communal discernment. This discernment has three basic steps: 1) prayer for light from the Holy Spirit; 2) gathering all the possible evidence for judgement; 3) the continuing effort to find confirmation during each step of the discernment process as well as for the final judgement.

Much attention has been given to the first step. Regarding this step, all I will say is that besides prayer for light from the Holy Spirit, there must also be prayer for power from the same Spirit. This is what the early Church did when faced with challenging situations (cf. Acts 4:23-31).

Regarding the second step, besides listening to problems, so as to achieve a better balance for discernment, the council needs to also listen to “affirmations” and “testimonies”. Regarding the need for affirmations, this need was borne out in my own experience of participating in a preparatory group for the plenary council. I can say that most of the focus in that group was on what the participants saw as being wrong with the Church in Australia. In response to this, the submission made to the plenary council by the community to which I belong, while it included under the headings of “priestly,” “prophetic,” and “royal” a total of 80 concrete proposals for change, also made 38 “affirmations of existing realities in the Church in Australia”. In other words, we need to look at the work of the Holy Spirit that is already bearing fruit, so as to build upon that work.

In gathering evidence, a second problem to be overcome is the common human tendency for those who have a grievance to speak up while those who are content remain silent. So as to discern what the Holy Spirit wishes to say to the Church it is necessary to get a clearer picture of what the Holy Spirit is already doing in the Church.²⁴ Even Br. Cribb’s excellent presentation does not address this point. Although he refers to Jesus’ instructions to the freed demoniac to, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (Mk 5:19, Lk 8:39) as a model for how we should share what the Lord has done for us in our own hearts as individuals, he does not refer to what might be called the “Plenary Council of Jerusalem,” when the Church discerned the will of God by listening to Paul and Barnabas recount the signs and wonders that God had done through them for the Gentiles (cf. Acts 15:7-12).

This is also what Peter did when he reported to the apostles, elders, and brethren, first in the Church in Jerusalem and then at the first “synod” of the Church, about how the Holy Spirit had been given to Gentiles just as he had to Jews (cf. Acts 11:1-18 and 15:6-11). This testimony to what God was doing helped the nascent Church to develop its sense of the fides quae creditur, the faith that is believed. Such testimonies today should not be limited to those of individuals but should especially be testimonies from bodies of believers that are living the priestly, prophetic, and royal ministries in some substantial way. Indeed, these testimonies could be drawn from those communities, ministries, initiatives, and institutions that can be affirmed as already building up the body of Christ and participating in its mission.

Of course, this raises the further questions of what actually does build up the body of Christ, and what actually is the mission of that body. The usual understanding of the sensus fidelium pertains to the sense of the fides quae creditur, the faith that is believed (cf. Jude 3). However, listening to such testimonies would also be a way of listening to a form of the sensus fidelium – the sense of what God is doing – which in turn could help us attain a deeper understanding of the fides quae creditur, just as observing what the Holy Spirit did in the case of Cornelius and his associates enabled the Church to come to a deeper understanding of how and to whom the Gospel was to be preached.

Regarding the third step, the activities delineated in the first two steps must be continued throughout the entire time during which the plenary council meets, and even beyond, as the decisions of the council are acted upon.

Would it be possible for the members of the plenary council to hear some testimonies of how the Holy Spirit is working in the lives of so many Australian Catholics today? I hope and pray that all the members of the council will examine their desires and have many opportunities to listen to people “declare his glory among the nations, his marvellous works among all the peoples” (Ps. 96:2).

(Editor’s note: The original version of this article was published in the Hungarian theological journal Vigilia 87 (1) (2022).)

Endnotes:

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