Forward to the Second Plenary Council Assembly

John, thank you for your honest summation of this ‘hidden’ document. My heart bleeds when I read your words. So much possibility was on offer when the council was called. So much disappointment in the secrecy that surrounds this document and in it not being shared with or let alone discussed by those of us who have been holding our collective breath waiting to read, discuss and hold close what we prayed the Holy Spirit would achieve when the Council gathered. As a woman who has been a loyal and active member of our Church for over 70 years, I weep.

Gosh John, I admire your fortitude. Sounds like the response of a Catholic Church under siege which it is, and one that is not able to understand that WE are the Church! Perhaps there is a dearth of thinkers left standing but are the parishioners such pariahs to them, requiring such secrecy? The Holy Spirit will not work in such a secretive chamber, deaf to Christ's teaching and example. Shame.

There must be millions of Catholics like me looking to re-engage with the Church after the horrors of the Royal Commission, hoping for a glimmer of light from a Church that is cloaked in darkness. The answer to 2000 years of secrecy is not more secrecy.

John I admire your patience and forbearance. Who should be surprised about the hidden document?
The candidates were chosen in secret. The Bishops in the previous PC published their recommendations in Latin. Since the Royal Commission the Vatican have thumbed their nose at 12 of the 14 findings.

The secrecy of the Hierarchy is deafening. Their complete lack of sanctions against the child molester clergy in their midst and their obdurate refusal to laicise over 2000 offenders or indeed even investigate their crimes and their own cover ups is another indication of Business as usual.
This PC is a cover up by a carefully selected clique of non boat rockers who are ultimately window dressing for the hierarchy and preservation of their power and prestige within the "church".

The great cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky observed that “whoever sets the agenda controls the outcome of the debate”. Clearly, those controlling the Plenary Council process are doing just that. The approach is counter to all the principles of inclusive leadership and counter to the Pope’s endorsement of synodality, made even worse by the secretive process adopted and the assistance of unnamed advisors.
Worse still, the many voices from the wider Catholic community over the past four years “have been deliberately excluded in favour of a discernment bubble” and a falsely labelled ‘fruits’ document presenting proposals of mainly individuals as the product of the 1st Assembly.
Clearly, the agenda for the critical 2nd Assembly of the Plenary Council is under the control of those who happen to have the decisive vote at the Council, the bishops of Australia.
The Plenary Council consultative vote is thus hamstrung by the topics allowed onto the agenda, not to mention the controlled time limit for the 2nd Assembly of 5 days that will prevent considered discussion and discernment.
This is NOT synodal process. Plenary Council consultative members should follow the example of the bishops of the world at the Second Vatican Council in 1962 and insist on: a) the opportunity to revise and agree the agenda before the 2nd Assembly commences, and b) the extension of the Assembly sufficiently to allow adequate debate of that agreed agenda. The Australian bishops must then comply with the canon law requirement (c.127) that they must not act contrary to the consultative vote without an overriding reason, a canon not even mentioned in the Plenary Council statutes.
Plenary Council members can still save this Council and ensure that the Council properly reflect the sense of faith of the Australian faithful.

What if the "sense of faith of the Australian people" exists only in the miniscule minority of Australian Catholics who follow and practice the Faith? Perhaps the Council might be better off listening to the vast majority who have given active Catholicism away rather than the few who want to be protestants.

In my understanding, neither the Plenary Council nor the Synodal process of which it is part is intended to be an instrument whereby the pope and bishops relinquish their official responsibility for the Church's teachings and practices.
In alleging that Australia's Catholic bishops are acting ultra vires at this stage of proceedings, is the reform coalition represented here open to the possibility that some of the proposals submitted are not compatible with the routinely invoked "sensus fidei fidelium", the discernment of which is ultimately the responsibility of the Church's hierarchy (cf. Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium" III, 18-25; CCC, 888-896; 2034); and that our bishops, a distinctive mandate of whose office is to ensure doctrinal integrity in the Church may well, in this context, have "overriding reason" - not least, Church unity - in their exercising of discernment at this stage in proceedings?

In reading your article on the preparation of, and the continued secrecy in regard to, the document 'Towards the Second Assembly', it is almost as if Sir Humphrey Appleby is orchestrating the proceedings on behalf of Church authorities. As Nigel Molesworth said, 'any fule kno' that synodality is not about surrendering the Magisterium. It is about decent and open governance of the affairs of the Catholic Church. It was in obscurity and through obfuscation that the dreadful evil of child sexual abuse was perpetuated. The Royal Commision was absolutely scathing about this. The lines from the song: "when will they ever learn..." spring to mind. I am aghast. Stupified.

Thank you John. As always you have provided tantalising insights and whetted my appetite to read more. Agree with commentaries so far that secrecy breeds distrust at a time when trust is what we need.

Peter Johnstone. "The many who have walked away" have in truth walked away from the Church founded by Christ and so doing have walked away from Him. My point is that we do not know why the vast majority of baptised, nominal Catholics have walked away and that should be investigated because it might throw considerable light on what the problems really are. There is nothing which supports the assumption that you favour: viz that people have walked away principally because of bad management. It is more likely that they have walked away because they do not have faith or belief - perhaps because we now have lost two generations of Catholics who find nothing to revere in practice and have not been educated in the teachings of the Church. The destruction of the sacred liturgy following Vat II and the relegation of religious studies in Catholic schools to the level of comparative philosophy and a points scoring exercise for university admission have excluded Christ and his teachings from many and they have nothing uplifting to inspire them. Business management is a minor consideration when it comes to faith and belief - it is a man made construct which can be easily altered, unlike the divine construct that is Christ amongst his people in a sacramental body, God and man as one in the very image of Christ himself . Its time to get over the disappointment that Vat II didn't change the administrative/ management systems of the Church and didn't give certain elements what they wanted and hoped for, [such as married clergy, female ordination and liberal contraception] re-visit its promulgations in the documents and implement them as intended and written not as we would choose to interpret them in accordance with secular/personal preferences. Later this week we would all do well to ask ourselves how often since the changes following Vat II has our God wept and pleaded, "Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do". Christ's Church is based on humility, acceptance of his Father's will and sacrifice not management theory.

You make some excellent points in your post of 12 April 2022, John Frawley. I don't think most Catholics have drifted away from the Church because they wanted to, at least not initially. It was gradual disillusionment. You were extremely lucky to have been brought up in a decent Catholic home where the Faith was practiced by both parents. There are multitudes like you. The problem tends to occur when there is not a united front at home. It is almost universally accepted now that some of those who claimed Vatican 2 inspiration got it wildly wrong. A lot of the mysterium went out of religion as a result. The English liturgy, if well celebrated, is good. Badly celebrated with crap hymns (excuse French) it is awful. Benediction raised one up. What does these days? The Church is not a watered down 19th Century Ethical Society. It is not about doing good and asking for money to do so. These are Fruits of the Spirit. There needs to be a revolution in holiness in the Church. That is the starting point. But transparent administrative reform needs to come too.

John Frawley's analysis and reflection faithfully and eloquently represents the feelings of many who experienced a Catholic upbringing in family, parish and school in pre-60s Australia - a generation in many places today who form the obvious majority of Mass-going Catholics and for whom the most important and urgent contemporary priority of the Church is the nurturing and communication of faith in an identifiable living tradition.
The relative complexities and challenges of a changed and changing society notwithstanding, the priority for renewal John Frawley recognizes can't be overstated; and within it, together with the admirable outreach to those in need our schools encourage, due exposure to and emphasis on doctrinal and sacramental practice of the faith.
As the Church's history shows repeatedly, crisis is the opportunity and harbinger of renewal and growth.

Great Thanks, John Warhurst, for the lucidity of your summation and the courage to break ranks in order to share it! Your disclosure of unnecessary episcopal secrecy highlights a problem endemic to the Australian Church.

With precious few exceptions, the ecclesial culture that spreads from open and unsecretive bishops animates diocesan culture and its settings.

Thus, Parramatta since +Bede Heather, Toowoomba (until his deposition) since +Bill Morris and Adelaide under +Lennie Faulkner.

Because incumbents and their laity have no say in episcopal succession, such cultures can be atrophied as happened in Toowoomba where half the faithful left in protest after +Bill's removal.

Culture, as you know, is a tenuous thing. While Bishops can stymie its development, it persists underground as Jesus' followers, like the early reformers a millennium and a half later, found in gatherings in upper rooms and garrets, priest-holes and dungeons, where a pilgrim faith is still nurtured in a thousand clandestine ways.

We live, it seems, at a time of The Catacombs. Only this time our persecutors are episcopal and clerical. Shrouded in in-house subterfuge and pathologically committed to power and control they wouldn't recognise the virtue of openness if they fell over it.

Fight on, John!

The catacombs you refer to Michael Furtardo, appear to be full of ecclesiastical 'bats', who continue to drop guano on the brave few who remain within the Church and who, like you, actually think for themselves. There are indeed good, sane Catholics, like John Frawley, who were formed, like you in decent believing homes with a decent Catholic education. One of the things those responsible for Catholic education are doing and which will bear real fruit is opening the system to Non-Catholics. In the great days of the Raj, when a place like St Joseph's North Point accepted all comers, many found their way to the Faith through the excellent Belgian Jesuits who ran it. The Church needs to wean itself from the old sectarian laager mentality fostered by the likes of Mannix. John Warhurst is a gem. I am so grateful to him. Mille Fois Bravo, John!