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If four football teams ran out on to the field on Grand Final day, one might expect confusion until the rules of engagement were clarified. We should not be surprised by the debate about the legacy of Vatican II. Catholic discussion of Vatican II is about the legitimacy of different ways of being Catholic.
My only contact with Catholics prior to 1963 was avoiding the local Catholic school when walking home, for fear of having stones thrown at me, in my state primary school uniform — sadly, some state schoolers did likewise to Catholic students. I remember it as a parable of pre-Vatican II Catholic-Protestant relationships in Australia.
The fresh wind of Vatican II has been reined in, with the focus turned to shoring up 'the firm wall of religion' against threatening forces from a world that had grown tired of the Church. As Christianity faces minority status in Europe, the Pope offers an intellectualised version of the ghetto mentality that Vatican II sought to break down.
'Looking to the future, I want to focus on the role of the laity in the growing absence of priests. And I want to insist on the need for due process, transparency and respectful dealing within the Church.' Full text of Fr Frank Brennan SJ's presentation 'Looking Back and Looking Forward Over Church and Life on the 50th Anniversary of Vatican II' at the Spirituality in the Pub Goulburn Valley Annual Dinner, 21 September 2012.
I've come to believe that the world beyond the institutional Church is kinder, gentler, full of more conscientious ethics, values and care for others; that the secular world in which lay people live is more functional and more ready to conscience-examine than the institutional Church. Why then am I still a Catholic?
Journalist, author and broadcaster Clifford Longley is one of Britain’s leading lay Catholics. He visited Australia to deliver lectures on the issues and challenges in developing a mature Catholic laity in the light of the teachings of the Vatican II.
'Research shows Catholics value the role of their priests and their bishops even when they disagree with them. They have a sense that all of us together are the Church.' Lay theologian Zeni Fox embodies the vast changes in the role of the laity that have occurred since Vatican II.
Prominent lay Catholic leader and public servant Robert Fitzgerald argues that, as lay people now run most of the Catholic educational, health and welfare institutions, this leadership needs more formal recognition from the Church and should be extended further into parish and diocesan roles.
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