The Plenary Council, the most significant event in the life of the Catholic Church in Australia for 80 years, comes to its conclusion in early July in Sydney, with the second session.

For most people who have been on the journey of these past six years it has been a fruitful time. My own experience is that while the process was unfamiliar to me, it is not an unfamiliar pathway of the Church over 2000 years. I have found that one can only understand what synodality is all about when you are part of it. Just because it is unfamiliar; just because it has called us to learn new, or forgotten skills such as listening, collaboration and discernment; just because it is not perfect, does not mean that the process is wrong or that we should as those signs on the highway say ‘Go back wrong way’. It is a legitimate pathway forward.

Local members are meeting together for two sessions of “discernment and reflection” as they prepare for the second assembly of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia being held in Sydney in July. With the motions for the assembly now released publicly for discussion, members gathered at the Archbishop’s House on June 4 and are scheduled to meet again on June 15 with the broader members of the diocese.

Family road trips tend to be the stuff of lore. Growing up in the American Midwest, my family of six regularly piled into our Ford Econoline conversion van to drive several hours across state lines to visit grandparents and cousins. Even the short trips required planning, packing and multiple references to the road atlas. As soon as we climbed into the van, dad would lead us in a prayer for a safe journey and off we went. Stops were frequent – petrol top-offs, toilet breaks, roadside cafes, or the need to blow off some steam after an argument. There were the occasional flat tyres or some other mechanical failure that would force us to delay our trip. Sometimes weather events like a blizzard or tornado would force us to turn around and go back home or spend the night in a roadside motel.

There are tensions in our Church life today in Australia. The processes of consultation, listening, dialogue and discerning in preparation for the Plenary Council, our own Diocesan Assembly and now for the worldwide Synod in 2023 have highlighted differences amongst us in responses to the challenges facing the Church. How can we be united in facing these challenges? Use the See, Judge and Act process.

We need to begin with the real situations of people’s lives today. We need to listen, dialogue and grow in understanding of others. We accept and value human experience. We don’t start from what people should be doing or how they should be living. We can’t start from the way things were in the past and just turn the clock backwards. We value and accept the ‘see’ and ‘the truth of experience’.

I am looking forward to the week and expect it to be both a challenge and an occasion of great hope. Let me explain those two things.

First, the challenge. Our Church is diverse – culturally, socially, and in terms of our various approaches to faith. Sure, we are ‘one in Christ Jesus’, but we have different insights into the faith, and see ourselves called in different directions. So, the members of the Plenary Council will be challenged to come to agreement on ‘what the Spirit is saying’ to the Church. The process of dialogue will involve each member listening deeply to the perspectives of others, attempting to understand the world on the others’ terms. Real dialogue is intense and sometimes exhilarating. But it won’t be perfect.

We drown in information today. What was so brilliant about the consultation and discernment phases of the Plenary Council and our own Diocesan Assembly was the role of discernment and asking that vital question, ‘What do you think God is asking of Australia at this time?’.

If we are not still asking that question then we might be a little bit stuck on that previous question, ‘What’s in it for me?’. While not a bad question, it is inadequate. We need the ‘What’s in it for us?’ so continuing to ask ‘What do you think God is asking of Australia at this time?’ is vital.

How do the Diocesan Assembly, Plenary Council and 2023 Synod of Bishops tie together?

The former Sacred Heart College student is currently the pastoral associate (students) at Australian Catholic University’s Blacktown campus but previously worked as a youth minister in Adelaide and is a member of the Plenary Council for the Archdiocese of Adelaide.

Madeline, 25, has been actively involved in the Australian Catholic Youth Festival and has a strong interest in social justices issues.

“I was surprised when contacted by the Dicastery and humbled by the invitation to be a part of the international youth advisory body,” Ms Forde said.

There was a shift from the Church of the bishops to the Church of the people and bishops. It gave Catholics a platform and they found their voices. The events of the Plenary Council were online, available to see and hear for anyone who was interested.

Our previous experience of similar Catholic gatherings was proceedings behind closed doors with official announcements and reports later. If we were lucky, leaks occurred over time to reveal what really went on.

The first general assembly of the Plenary Council, meeting October 3-10, was an extraordinary experience. About 300 members of the Catholic community in Australia engaged in a process of communal discernment involving people from almost every sphere of Church life including laity, deacons, bishops and priests.

Within the space of a month, three significant events have happened within our church: our local Diocesan Assembly, the first session of the Fifth Plenary Council of the Catholic Church in Australia and the beginning phase of the next Synod of Bishops to be held in 2023 on synodality.

A round-up of articles about the Plenary Council from the Southern Cross Newspaper.

There have been times when I wondered if we would ever make it. But after all the delays and changes of plan, we have come at last to the first assembly of the Plenary Council, which has quite a pre-history.

The bishops took the decision to move to a Plenary Council in 2016, but the roots of that decision reach way back to the early 2000s. It was then that the late Archbishop Philip Wilson proposed that the time was right for the Church in Australia to prepare for some kind of national ecclesial event.

https://thesoutherncross.org.au/news/2021/08/16/plenary-poised-for-virtual-guidance/

Teamwork and the sharing of wisdom are critical for the success of the Plenary Council and beyond, according to one of the Archdiocese’s lay delegates who will attend the local hub assembly in October. Ian Cameron said he felt privileged to participate in next month’s Diocesan Assembly and the Plenary Council gathering the following month and represent the views of the diverse Catholic community.

“Lay and religious work seamlessly in many areas of Church life,” he explained. “Bishops and lay people need to combine their experience, expertise and wisdom to get the best results. “This teamwork and combined wisdom is critical for the Plenary and beyond – it is critical that Church teachings, rules and laws are written with ordained and lay teamwork, including parents, for more authentic content and credibility.

As the fifth lay delegate named for the Adelaide Archdiocese, Kiara, 35, will be attending one of the assembly’s province hubs, most likely in Queensland, as for the next six months she and her husband Dan and four young sons are heading on the adventure of a lifetime.

“Life has changed since I put in my nomination to be a member…lockdown changed our direction as a family and changed Dan’s work and we have decided to go travelling around Australia for six months in a camper trailer,” she told The Southern Cross.

Having been installed as Archbishop some 13 months ago, I have often in this time thought about the Christian notion of ‘stewardship’. While there is rightly a lot of talk about leadership and governance in preparing for both the Diocesan Assembly in September and the Plenary Council which begins in October, at the heart of all of these and underpinning all that we do, is the quality of being a good steward.

The Council agenda, which has emerged from three years and several layers of prayer, listening, dialogue and discernment, will shape the program of the Council’s assemblies – the first of which opens on October 3 this year.

The agenda’s preamble draws from Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, which explores the Pope’s “dream of a ‘missionary option’”.

About 400 people are expected to attend a Diocesan Assembly in September to reflect on the life of the local Church community, in conjunction with ongoing discernment for the Plenary Council taking place at a national level in October.