Catholics for Renewal, Getting Back on Mission: Reforming our Church Together, Garratt Publishing, ISBN9781925009651
The core of Getting Back on Mission is a submission made to the Australian Plenary Council which will meet in 2020 and 2021. It was composed by Catholics for Renewal, a group of lay Catholics who have for many years pressed the need for reform within the Catholic Church. It is a valuable resource, comprehensive in its discussion of challenges affecting the Catholic Church and detailed in its proposals for meeting them. It also includes statistical information about the current situation of the Australian Church and the scope of plenary councils.
For Catholics who are interested in the Australian Church, its future and the council, it is essential reading. Whether or not they accept the shape of its argument, it offers a comprehensive list of issues and a view of their underlying causes that need to be grappled with. Given its focus on governance, it may also be of interest to a wider audience. Many of the strains and signs of dysfunction it finds in Church governance and internal are similar to those identified in public life in Australia and internationally.
At the heart of Getting Back on Mission is the claim that the Catholic Church has gone off-mission. The strongest evidence for this claim, and a major source of the passion infusing the book, is the extent of child sexual abuse by priests and religious over many years, the appalling suffering of its victims, its cover-up by Catholic Church leaders and the consequent loss of credibility of the Catholic Church.
The book claims that the root of this dysfunction lies in seeing the church as God's mission rather than as an instrument of God's will for the world. When the church is made the main show, its structures are sacralised in law and in institutional relationships, hierarchical boundaries are reinforced, and the good name of the church becomes sacrosanct. This culture breeds a silence in which crime and cover-up can flourish.
The source of healing conversely will be to enshrine in church practices and governance the shared mission of all Catholics to embody the Kingdom of God within the changing conditions of their own times. In that process the consensus of the faithful, lay as well as clerical, will guide the Catholic Church in discerning how to read and respond to the signs of our times. The submission supports this understanding by reference to the Second Vatican Council.
The first section of the book considers God's mission and the Australian context in which that mission must be embodied. In the following sections, each of which is followed by detailed recommendations, it reflects on the proper relationships between laity and clergy, on church governance, on pastoral leadership and parish ministry, and on the process and procedures of the Plenary Council. The recommendations identify areas where change is needed and outline transparent procedures and structures in which laity and clergy have an active part.
The value of the recommendations lies in the thought that underlies them and the concreteness of the proposals made. They call for a response. Delegates to the council and other interested Catholics should read them carefully, reflect on the seriousness of the issues they address, and if they judge these recommendations not fit for purpose, ask themselves what will better address the needs. It is a fine contribution to the council in expressing in its concrete suggestions the depth of the reforms demanded by Catholics.
"These themes both stress and relativise the importance of institutional reform and the recovery of reputation. The faith that underlies them cuts much deeper,"
The questions posed by Getting Back on Mission arise out of its virtues. Its focus on the process of needed change means that the treatment of the spirit that must animate it is sketchy. Regular meetings, detailed ground rules, local councils, in-service training and other procedures will be effective only if people are inspired by their faith to buy into them and if they are adequately resourced. In the numerically diminishing, ageing and financially straitened Catholic Church likely in the intermediate term the extent of the changes proposed in the book might be experienced as a burden, not a blessing.
The spirit animating the book is that of Vatican II, with particular emphasis on the consensus of the Church — laity and clergy — and on the Kingdom of God. Each of these themes is deployed to argue against making the inner life of the Catholic Church and its hierarchical distinctions decisive in visualising the future of the Church. They are levelling and culture affirming.
Historically, however, the energy of the appeal to the sensus fidelium and the Kingdom of God lay in seriousness about the received tradition and its challenge to prevailing cultural norms. The Arian debate in the fourth century saw the eventual recognition that a culturally more attractive understanding of God and Jesus was inconsistent with Catholic Tradition. This understanding had been accepted my many councils of bishops and the imperial authorities. But it was resisted by a few strong bishops and their congregations. They ultimately prevailed. The consensus of the Church was inherently conservative in its scope.
The Kingdom of God represents God's vision for the world and so goes beyond the boundaries of the Church. That the Son of God shared our human life in our world is culture affirming. But at the centre of the Kingdom of God lies the torture and death of Christ and his rejection by the ruling and cultural institutions of his day. Through rejection came reconciliation in Jesus' rising from the dead. This is always culturally challenging.
These themes both stress and relativise the importance of institutional reform and the recovery of reputation. The faith that underlies them cuts much deeper and expects to follow Jesus in humiliation and exclusion as well as in harmony, in fractured as well as in well-functioning institutions.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.