Evaluating plenary: One journey ends, another begins

Edward's analyses, arising as they appear out of the pages of a Billy Bunter novel, are highly entertaining. His longstanding critique of Australia's currently well-established and multicultural indigenous Church, employing a punter's view of equine personality and Jockey character relating to breeding and ethnic origin, might well draw more than a tear from many a sentimental Irish-inflected Australian eye, though I fear it might be more of laughter than admiration. Nuncios - although the last one was more Liverpudlian than Francophile 'corps diplomatique' - have a poor record for assisting with episcopal appointments, still less of reflecting the spirit of Vatican II, bound as they are by their appointment both to the Australian state as well as their status as the Pope's link with the Australian Church. Might I recommend that he continue to amuse us with a cosmology drawn out of the world that made sense to Charles Hamilton? Let's see: there was Bob Cherry, the head of the Sixth Remove, as indeed at least one stereotype of an Indian, called Hurree Jamshed Ram Singh. Edward could then safely focus his commentaries on the College of Cardinals, failing which he might refer to Andy's essay here on disciplining words.

‘would have risked hurting Edward…a thought that obviously never registers with you’ (29/10/21, Handing on a Tradition). Or, it seems, with you. Is this the ‘progressive’s’ Orwellian disregard for what was said yesterday or merely the goldfish’s groundhog day astonishment at finding a new corner of the aquarium?

John Warhurst's article makes good sense. He has worked with the Australian Bishops, as I have, although in my case in educational and social justice contexts. My experience of what the Church means by evaluation and the rest of the world does differs markedly. In my research on school funding I dug into the archives of various organisations and commissions charged with investigating the school-funding arrangements of our nearest neighbours, New Zealand. Everyone I asked (clergy, bishops, directors, archivists, university librarians) recorded stories of researchers despatched to NZ and who had returned with negative recommendations. Even the NZ Catholic Education authorities provided the names and dates of those who had 'consulted' them. However nowhere did I unearth a written report, nor even of at least one that the NZ Church could claim to have received as a matter of courtesy. This followed a similar pattern of reliance on hearsay when I left the classroom to focus on School-Level Evaluation, the Disadvantaged Schools Program and the Teaching for Human Rights Project. Catholic Education Authorities were keen to avail of government funding but seldom had records to show how it had been spent. This 'culture-specific' attitude, prejudicing accountability, has profound Synodal implications.

While your wonderings may occupy your thoughts, it would seem they seem to me to attribute far too casually motive to others. Our bishops inability to effectively mobilize the resources within their own dioceses to combat the sweep of euthanasia across this country is a testament to the fact that, to most, they are speaking to deaf ears whether that be in the public square or the faithful. Abuse of children is and was their stumbling block. The bulk of them were revealed as lacking moral fortitude. Until they do something to change that perceptions can whistle in the wind all they like.

‘Our bishops inability to effectively mobilize the resources within their own dioceses to combat the sweep of euthanasia across this country is a testament to the fact that, to most, they are speaking to deaf ears whether that be in the public square or the faithful. Abuse of children is and was their stumbling block.’

‘Stumbling block’ is an excuse. Even if there were no abused children, the spirit of the times would have had the secular public and a lot of the faithful in two minds about euthanasia and one mind about same-sex marriage. After all, are the abused children blocking the ‘progressives’ from any episcopal message about poverty, the environment or asylum seekers?

On the issue of mixed or blocked messages, is it really the case that a person can’t tie her shoelaces and chew gum at the same time while processing the messages coming at her in this interconnected world? The human brain can prioritise and sort dozens of incoming intellectual stimuli. That’s why you’re reading and writing on ES instead of sitting in a tree. ‘Abused children’ is just a convenient excuse for ‘progressive’ disobedients. If that excuse didn’t exist, the disobedients would have found another.

"‘Abused children’ is just a convenient excuse for ‘progressive’ disobedients. If that excuse didn’t exist, the disobedients would have found another." Do you have any evidence ro support that opinion, Roy?

Ginger Meggs, the controversy over Modernism precedes the child abuse scandal: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/what-dissenters-mean-by-the-spirit-of-vatican-ii

That's not evidence Roy, that's just another opinion.

‘That's not evidence Roy, that's just another opinion.’

That the philosophy or ideology of Modernism existed before the known child sex abuse scandal within the Australian Church is fact and that modernists were blaming bishops for not adopting their views is fact.

As to your opinion that that’s not evidence, what is the fact that proves that you are stating a fact and not an opinion?

Roy, I checked the credentials of the journal from which you quote your article. Frankly it surprises that someone like you, with recently cited Jesuit credentials, should now cite an article from a known Opus Dei front organisation. Not that nomenclatural association should always be employed to discredit information, but when that organisation is noted, like Freemasonry, for infiltration, indoctrination and apologetics, associations of this kind are better known than not. While JP II's 'personal prelature' endowment of Opus Dei gave it some immunity from Catholic scrutiny, at a time when the contemporary Church has shed its history of secrecy and justification, albeit universally wrung from it by exposure of massive cover-ups on the child abuse question, this is no time for using such a discredited information source. Opus Dei is nothing more than a secret organisation of ancien regime reactionaries, now openly prepared to make common cause with millenarian Protestants and others to advance a common politico-religious agenda. I should know, Roy. I was a student resident at Netherhall House, their UK House of Formation during my study of Religious Education at St Mary's University, London. Deliberate attempts were made to recruit and indoctrinate practicing Catholics at the time.

'with recently cited Jesuit credentials'. Where? I don't cite credentials. I lay a transparent path from reasoning to conclusion. When you can't rebut a point, you don top and tails and do an opaque song and dance with smoke and mirrors. The article you disparage also has transparent reasoning but you disparage it because of some hocus pocus that it is connected to Opus Dei. I don't know if that is so. It's irrelevant whether it is or not.

Roy I must say though that the carefully crafted agenda appears designed to preserve the power, authority and position of the hierarchy and has about as much relevance to the legacy if abuse in the 21st century as China's likelihood of embracing democracy. I think it's a show council. As they sit back after its over sipping their cup of tea they'll say "We showed those bastards!"

Wouldn't that be a surprise John RD that the so called "Reformists" would want to drag the Hierarchy kicking and screaming into the 21st century and challenge their inept, bumbling, holier than thou, we cannot question Rome, obeisance into the light of day.

Perchance Brian Leeming needs to review and be more precise about his use of words. Bureaucracies, common to both clerical and political elites, comprise the ever-present and often faceless component of what those in charge, whether clerical or partisan, decide needs to be done. In France the shift from a hereditary and unaccountable aristocracy supported by an equally unaccountable clerical hierarchy to a secularised, anticlerical and elected republic at least reflected popular opinion and support. While I hear no one here suggesting that all synodal decisions be made on the basis of a popular vote, the Church needs to stop playing 'Let's Pretend' and acknowledge that it is a highly complex entity, often torn apart by competing and partisan interests. The main way forward if we are to avoid the obfuscation and confusion leading up to the highly contested First Stage of the Plenary Council, as Warhurst shows, is to avoid a repeat of it by embracing transparency, inclusivity and accountability en route to conducting its Second Stage.