Greater Transparency Will Evolve the Church - Fr. Frank Brennan, SJ - 24 May 2012
/Text is from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address 'Re-imagining the Mission — A Pilgrimage of Faith Catholic Education Sandhurst Conference 2012: A Pilgrimage of Faith, presented 24 May 2012 at Catholic College Bendigo.
[Note 1: highlighting of text is our’s.]
[Note 2: In his address, Fr. Brennan references Australia’s Bishop William Morris. Bishop Morris was forced into early retirement by the Vatican because of his suggestion to open dialogue about women’s ordination. Morris’s pastorally sensitive suggestion was made out of his concern for growing numbers of Catholics being deprived of the Eucharist due to priest shortages. Women’s Ordination Worldwide publicly stood in solidarity with Bishop Morris and issued this press release: WOW Supports Australia’s Bishop William Morris - May 25, 2011.
Bishop Morris’s removal happened in the context of Cardinal Bernard Law being given a post in Rome (and thereby escaping prosecution in the USA for protecting pedophile priests). Running parallel to this was the news of two bishops named in Ireland’s Murphy Commission whose resignations were rejected by the Vatican. The Murphy Commission found that despite sexual abuse being 'endemic' in boys' institutions, the church hierarchy protected perpetrators and allowed them to take up new positions teaching other children after their original victims had been sworn to secrecy.
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Keynote Address, Sandhurst Catholic Education Conference
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, the Jaara people, and pay respect to their elders, past and present. We commit to working alongside Aboriginal people for reconciliation and justice.
Eight years I was here when your beloved Joe Grech had been your bishop for just three years. He was still fresh and full of energy. He was yet to show his compassion and commitment to refugees and asylum seekers which became his national contribution to the life of the Australian Church and society. Today I am with you in company with your new bishop Les Tomlinson and I join with you in praying that he will have a long, fresh and energised time as Bishop of Sandhurst.
2012 marks the 50th Anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council and the Strike for State Aid in Goulburn NSW in July 1962, both very significant events in the development of Catholic Education. We are invited to take these days to reimagine our mission on our pilgrimage of faith. Thanks for doing me the honour of opening the proceedings.
Catholic education and social justice
In the wake of the Gonski Review coming 50 years after the Goulburn Strike, I will offer only two observations on school funding, asking that there be a fair go for all children no matter what class of school their parents might choose for them.
First, I am one of those Australians who is not helped when told by one protagonist of an argument that funding is inequitable when one makes reference to the funds provided by only one level of government. In a federation like Australia, the equity of funding arrangements can be judged only by considering the taxpayer funding received from all levels of government.
Second, funding arrangements need to take in to account the heavy lifting done by different schools and networks of schools in providing education services to the neediest students including those with acute learning difficulties and those from families where parents have both few resources and little motivation for providing for the education of their children. There is much talk at the moment about residualisation of some state schools which are left to do the heavy lifting especially for children who just do not fit anywhere else in the education system. Schools which perform this heavy lifting deserve a higher level of funding. I make no attempt to quantify what that level should be.
When I studied philosophy more than 30 years ago, the guru on justice was Harvard professor John Rawls who wrote a book A Theory of Justice. He was in the social contract mould, proposing a simple thought experiment. Imagine everyone is placed behind a veil of ignorance where they do not know what their attributes, interests or place in society will be. In this Original Position, people would then choose a list of suitable arrangements to which they would be bound or to which they would voluntarily comply. Everyone would be entitled to the same list of basic liberties. The key offices in society would be open to everyone without discrimination. The unequal distribution of goods and opportunities would be justified in so far as it assisted the worst off in society to be better off than they would have been if no unequal distribution were permitted. For 30 years, social philosophers made their mark by agreeing or disagreeing with Rawls.
The philosopher Amatya Sen who won the Nobel Peace Prize for Economics recently published a book The Idea of Justice. He gives a simple example of three children and a flute. Bob is very poor and would like to have the flute because he has nothing else to play with. Carla made the flute and wants to keep it. Anne is the only one of the three children who knows how to play the flute and she plays it beautifully bringing pleasure to all who hear her. Who has the best claim on the flute? Sen tells us that the economic egalitarian would give it to Bob. The libertarian would insist that Carla retain the fruits of her labour. Most Australians without a second thought would simply assert, 'Carla made it; it's hers; the rest should stop complaining; if they want a flute they should make their own!' The utilitarian hedonist would give it to Anne. Fortunately we have more than one flute to appropriate for education in Australia. The resources are divisible. What are the relevant considerations when it comes to distributing the education dollar? Education for the poorest? Education for those who would most profit by it? Education for those who can afford it? These are real tensions for all of us making judgments on formulae for the allocation of scarce education resources.
Vatican II and Catholic Education 50 years On
In 2004 when addressing the Sandhurst Diocesan Education Conference, I asked, 'What Do Our Students Rightly Ask of Us, the Church who are Many Parts, One Body?' I gave nine answers:
Take us beyond our comfort zones
Help us to count our blessings without feeling guilty
Assure us that the balance holds
Trust us and teach us to form and inform our consciences as we decide how to act, how to relate, and how to love
Inspire us and console us that there is such a thing as truth
Provide us with the tools to critique our society
Invite us to participate in a Church that speaks to us of life, love, mystery, suffering, death and hope
Teach us to engage in respectful dialogue in our Church and in our society
Put everything in the context of love I think our students are still asking the same things of us.
Back then I copped a little flak from some of our church leaders for daring to insist on the need for teachers to trust their students and to teach them to form and inform their consciences and to their consciences be true. Just as it is too simplistic to equate following one's conscience with doing what one feels like, so it is too simplistic to equate it with doing what Father, the Bishops or the Holy Father has to say. I am quite unapologetic in according primacy to the formed and informed conscience of the individual. Any Catholic taking their faith and church membership seriously will be very attentive to the teaching office of the hierarchy, especially the Pope. But at the end of the day, all of us, whether lay or cleric will have to act according to our conscience before God.
In the last month, the Canadian and US Bishops Conferences have issued lengthy pastoral letters on freedom of conscience and religion. Suffice to say, bishops cannot lecture to governments about freedom of conscience unless they also concede to the laity the same freedom within the Church. The Canadian bishops have neatly summarised the challenge to parents and teachers re-imagining the mission of the Church 50 years after Vatican II. They say:
Families and schools are the primary places of formation where young people receive a correct understanding of what is entailed in the right to freedom of conscience and religion. Parents and educators have an especially important task to fulfill in forming the consciences of the next generation in respect for their brothers and sisters of different religions. Their constant challenge is to develop in children a conscience that is truly upright and free: one that can choose what is truly good and right and thus reject what is evil. They have the duty of helping young people conform their conscience to the truth of the moral law and to live in conformity with that truth.
Among the human and Christian virtues acquired in the family, certain ones in particular prepare today's youth to resist the attacks on freedom of conscience that they will inevitably encounter: courage, justice, prudence, and perseverance. This formative work also entails forming citizens ready to call to account any person or institution that would intrude upon their right to freedom of conscience or religion.
My parish
On Sunday I was so bold as to announce to the parishioners in Canberra where I say mass regularly that I would be addressing you in Sandhurst today on the 50th anniversary of Vatican II. I asked their advice. Being north of the Murray, many of them did not know where Sandhurst was so I explained that I would be coming to Bendigo.
The overwhelming reaction of the parishioners was one of delight and thanks that they had the opportunity to speak their minds in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance which is the Church. Some thought I was being brave in allowing people to speak their minds. It does not take courage, only trust that the Spirit is alive and active amongst the People of God. Let me share with you some of their thoughts.
Sometimes I think the laity have just been too lazy, not taking up the challenges and opportunities. Other times, I think the clergy have been too anxious to hang on to power and control. 50 years on, maybe this is the action of the Spirit as we move backwards and forwards with this movement.
Being a Catholic primary school principal, I know that primary schools are the face of the modern Church. Everyone wants their children educated at a Catholic primary school. Our schools are bursting at the seams. But the parents don't necessarily want to be involved with the Church. There are none of our children here at the regular parish mass. But their parents will be delighted to turn up in droves for first communion and confirmation. The problem is that we are not able to make the liturgy relevant to them. We have a confirmation mass coming up and we are not even allowed to change the reading of the day even though it talks about sex and things that have no relevance to the children.
My concern is with our young people. They have lost their way. The church is not there for them. Our liturgies are too boring for young people. I and most of my siblings still go to mass. But none of my four children do. I am a good parent. Liturgies can be inspirational for young people, and more liturgies should be directed at them.
The Church must not let the government take over all the welfare services telling us how to do things. Some things we know best how to do. The churches should co-operate more together to help those in need.
In 1988, our then archbishop made a commitment to reconciliation and we have celebrated Reconciliation Sunday ever since. This has been a great boost for the diocese. How welcome for us to be asked. A church with no room for Bishop Bill Morris or Paul Collins is hardly going to be able to fulfil the mission of today's gospel: 'Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole of creation.' Rather than Vatican II, I think we risk going back to Vatican I.
It is time for the women to stand up, and it is time for women to be given their rightful place in the Church. Other Churches have done it. Why can't we? The Church's position and treatment of women is now counter-cultural and has no theological explanation. When the priests are running out, why don't we women take part? Do they think we are not good enough?
The new translation of the mass is a disgrace. It's a wonder that any of us still come.
My daughter in law is REC at a large Catholic school. She swears like a trooper, hardly goes to mass, and has more spirituality than any one else I know. Why can't we just let them find God in their own way?
We might have read the Vatican II documents when they came out but we haven't really looked at them since. I remember a priest telling us that it would be like the new grass growing. It would first be cut down but then it would shoot again. I guess after 50 years we are just at the stage of the grass being cut down for the first time. We'll have to wait and see what grows back.
Looking back 50 years
In 1962, I moved from the Brigidine Convent at Indooroopilly in Brisbane to St Joseph's College, Nudgee Junior, under the care of the Christian Brothers. I was an impressionable eight-year-old and was in grade 3. I well recall one of the brothers taking the class up to the top floor of the school. We gathered outside the chapel in front of the large portrait of our Lady of Perpetual Succour. Brother told us that there were very significant events occurring in Rome. Pope John had convened a Vatican Council. We were instructed to pray for all the bishops because this council would affect the future of the church. I have no real recollection of the prayers we offered, and thus am not in a position to say whether or not they were answered. But like you, I know that things have changed very significantly in the Church and in the world since that group of eight-year-old boys offered prayer and supplication.
50 years on, we gather to celebrate as Catholics, confident that the gifts of the Spirit will assist us in proclaiming the Good News to each other, to our fellow believers, and to our fellow citizens no matter what their religious beliefs or none. Let's recall that it was the week of Christian Unity in 1959 when John XXIII gathered with a small selection of his cardinals in the Benedictine chapterhouse beside the Basilica of Saint Paul-Outside-the-Walls when he said, 'I am prompted to open my mind and heart to you, because of this feast of the Conversion of St Paul. I want to tell you frankly about several points of planned pastoral activity which have emerged in my thoughts because of my brief three months here within these church circles in Rome. In doing so, I am thinking of the care of the souls of the faithful in these modern times.'
The great historian of Vatican II from the 'Bologna School', Giuseppe Alberigo, recalls that Roncalli upon election as Pope and on choosing the name John emphasised his commitment to being a good pastor consistent with Jesus' discourse in John 10 on the Good Shepherd. Roncalli said, 'The other human qualities — knowledge, shrewdness, diplomatic tact, organisational abilities — can help the Pope to carry out his office, but they can in no way substitute for his task as a pastor'.
There at St Pauls Outside the Walls, the new Pope said:
I am saddened when people forget the place of God in their lives and pursue earthly goods, as though they were an end in themselves. I think, in fact, that this blind pursuit of the things of this world emerges from the power of darkness, not from the light of the Gospels, and it is enabled by modern technology. All of this weakens the energy of the spirit and generally leads to divisions, spiritual decline, and moral failure. As a priest, and now as the shepherd of the Church, I am troubled and aroused by this tendency in modern life and this makes me determined to recall certain ancient practices of the church in order to stem the tide of this decline. Throughout the history of the Church, such renewal has always yielded wonderful results. It produces greater clarity of thought, solidarity of religious unity, and abundant spiritual riches in people's lives.
Then 'trembling with a bit of emotion', he announced his intention to hold a diocesan Synod for Rome, and an ecumenical Council of the universal Church, as well as an aggiornamento (bringing up to date) of the code of Canon Law. He thought such initiatives would not only produce 'great enlightenment for all Christian people' but also 'a renewed invitation to our separated sisters and brothers so that all may follow us in their search for unity and grace.' What's happened to our ecumenical spirit?
He spoke of 'bringing the modern world into contact with the vivifying and perennial energies of the Gospel'. And this is the invitation to you, the Church of Sandhurst, fifty years on. John O'Malley SJ, the finest contemporary historian of Vatican II writing in the English language has provided us with 'a simple litany' of the changes in church style indicated by the council's vocabulary: 'from commands to invitations, from laws to ideals, from threats to persuasion, from coercion to conscience, from monologue to conversation, from ruling to serving, from withdrawn to integrated, from vertical and top-down to horizontal, from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to friendship, from static to changing, from passive acceptance to active engagement, from prescriptive to principled, from defiant to open-ended, from behaviour modification to conversion of heart, from the dictates of law to the dictates of conscience, from external conformity to the joyful pursuit of holiness.'
I am one who welcomes these changes. I am not one of those Catholics so wedded to the continuity of the tradition as to think that nothing happened at Vatican II, and that we should be back to business as usual as we were when those eight year old boys gathered with the Christian Brother around the portrait of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.
Contemporary faith
Most of you who are parents or grandparents wonder how any practice of the Faith is to be handed on credibly to your children and grandchildren. You know that the younger generations are more impressed by actions than by words, and that talk of justice rings hollow with them unless there are structures in place to ensure justice is done, and that talk of God's love rings false unless it is lived through deeds and witnessed by a real sense of transcendence and respect for every person's human dignity elevating the believer above the materialism and power of the world. If our faith is to be handed on to the coming generations, we need to be sure that we the Church are not an obstacle but rather a bridge for bringing the modern world into contact with the vivifying and perennial energies of the gospel.
The Czech theologian Tomas Halik sees the Church as the community and the institution which helps to instill a person's original, untested, unreflective faith. It is also the privileged space for the person whose original faith is shaken by life to come to a 'second wind faith' which is at home with paradox, engaged with the world, and accepting of inevitable Church shortcomings. The crisis and severance of faith can have various causes: 'It can be some traumatic disillusionment with those who imparted to us our original faith, or it can be a private drama, in which our original trust and certainties are eclipsed, or just simply a change of circumstances and 'mental climate'.' Teilhard de Chardin thought Christianity was in its infancy. Many contemporary thinkers assert that it is obsolete and its time has expired. Halik thinks both may be mistaken. 'Maybe our Christianity is actually going through its midlife crisis — a time of lethargy and drowsiness.'
Halik quotes Joseph Ratzinger's conversation with the journalist Peter Seewald published under the title 'God and the World'. The present Pope holds that faith is not like some mathematical formula that can be rationally demonstrated apart from the experiment of life: 'The truth of Jesus' word cannot be tested in terms of theory. The truth of what God says here involves the whole person, the experiment of life. It can only become clear for me if I truly give myself up to the will of God. This will of the creator is not something foreign to me, something external, but is the basis of my own being.' Halik posits God himself placing the 'metaphysical disquiet' of the need to seek meaning within the human heart. God responds to this questioning with His Revelation. We then respond in faith with an act of trust and self-surrender 'to that divine sharing, the Word, wherein God gives Himself.'
Halik is not one for the certainties of the Catechism or the latest Vatican declaration. The certainty of doctrine and submissiveness to religious authority are no substitute for facing the hard reality of true religious experience. This well connected cleric in good Vatican standing proclaims, 'The religion that is now disappearing has tried to eliminate paradoxes from our experience of reality; the faith we are maturing toward, a paschal faith, teaches us to live with paradoxes.'
Hope, paradox and reconciliation
In Spe Salvi, his last encyclical, Pope Benedict says: 'Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey.'
Just two weeks ago, I was travelling around the Catholic parish of Khompong Thom in Cambodia in company with the parish priest, Thai Jesuit Fr Jub Phoktavi, and Director of UCAN News, Australian Jesuit Fr Michael Kelly. As we drove through the village of Prek Sbeuv, Jub matter-of-factly pointed to Pol Pot's old house. It is an unremarkable house, and if tourists happened to be this far off the beaten track they would have little idea that this was the residence of one of the world's greatest war criminals. I thought back to 1987 when I met a Khmer leader in the Site Two refugee camp on the Thai Cambodian border. I asked him if he could ever imagine a return to government in Cambodia. He looked very sad as he told me how the Khmer Rouge had killed most of his immediate family. He could not trust the Khmer Rouge again. I had the sense that he would find it hard to trust any of his fellow Cambodians ever again in rebuilding his nation from such ruins. Reconciliation was a fashionable textbook concept. Twenty five years later, there is a certain routine to life in Cambodia, though poverty in the villages is widespread and government corruption legendary. The previous evening I had been asked to address a multi-faith group of NGO and Church workers on faith, justice and public policy.
What could I, a Catholic priest from Australia, say about such matters in a largely Buddhist country devastated by genocide? Whether Christian, Buddhist, or Muslim, faith is about my having, owning and reflecting on a belief system which allows me to live fully with the paradoxes and conflicts of life and death, good and evil, beauty and suffering. It is only fundamentalists who are able to live as if these paradoxes are not real, as if they do not impinge on our sense of self and on our considered actions every day.
By embracing these paradoxes and confronting these conflicts, the person of faith whether inspired by Jesus, Mohammed, or Buddha is able to live an engaged life of faith. I am able to commit myself to others, in love and in justice. I am able to be open to reconciling, or at least being reconciled to, the previously irreconcilable. I am able to accord dignity to all others in the human family, no matter what their distinguishing marks, and regardless of their competencies, achievements or potentialities. I am able to surrender myself to that which is beyond what I know through my senses. I am able to commit myself to the stewardship of all creation.
Some guideposts for re-imagining the mission
We need to foster our contemporary sense of the transcendent and openness to the other, the world and culture which are not all bad. We need to be attentive to the arts and culture, open to ecumenical and interfaith dialogue and mutual learning.
We need to be credible in agitating for justice and dignity for all, espousing not just equality and non-discrimination, but also the common good and the public interest, with a particular eye to the voiceless and those whose claims on us do not enjoy fad status.
We need to celebrate liturgy which animates us for life and mission — being faithful to the routine of life including weekly Eucharist and daily prayer, being sufficiently educated in our faith and familiar with liturgy to celebrate the big events and sacramental moments of life, attentive to our local cultural reality and part of a universal Church which both incorporates and transcends all cultures. The clunky new translation provides us all with a real challenge, particularly when celebrating marriages and funerals when very few in the congregation know the responses.
Given the shortage of priests and religious in the contemporary Australian church as compared with the situation 50 years ago, we need to provide more resources and opportunities to the laity wanting to perform the mission in Christ's name — lay organisations, public juridic persons, volunteering, better structured opportunities for part time commitment to the apostolate, and provision by religious orders for young people wanting to make a commitment for a few years before marriage and life and work in civic service. The greatest challenge is providing a place in the Church for young women wanting to contribute to the mission. When I stood at that portrait of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour 50 years ago, there were almost 15,000 women religious in the Australian Church. Today there are less than 6,000 and their median age is 74. Only 6% of them are under 50.
When I joined the Jesuits in 1975, almost half the women religious were aged under 50. I caused alarm with some of my fellow Jesuits last year when I gave an interview to The Good Weekend saying: 'I wouldn't be a priest if I was 21 today. I am one of the last generations of Irish Catholics whose families made it professionally and were comfortable with the church. I love being a Jesuit but I can't honestly say I would join now. My religious faith has remained rock solid, but there are times when I feel really cheesed off with the institutional church, which sometimes treats its lay members and non-members in a too-patronising fashion.' From here on, it is essential that you the laity affirm and live out the reality that you are the hands, feet, heart, and mind of Christ in the contemporary world and in the contemporary Church. And you need to encourage your children to consider the call to priesthood and, given the later age of marrying and the longer life expectancy, to consider dedicating a couple of years to full time church service before marriage and again after retirement from full time paid employment.
We need to reform our church structures to be more aligned with contemporary notions of justice and due process. While preparing this address, I came across a blog reporting on the dismissal this week of Bishop Francesco Micciché from Sicily who is said to have misappropriated diocesan funds. He claims not to have had access to the report of the Vatican visitation which inquired into his financial transactions. The blog reported that another bishop had been 'toowoombed'. In the case Bishop Morris from Toowoomba, we know there was absolutely no suggestion of financial or other impropriety. A year ago, the Australian bishops told us: 'We appreciate that Bishop Morris' human qualities were never in question; nor is there any doubt about the contribution he has made to the life of the Church in Toowoomba and beyond. The Pope's decision was not a denial of the personal and pastoral gifts that Bishop Morris has brought to the episcopal ministry. ... We are hopeful that Bishop Morris will continue to serve the Church in other ways in the years ahead.'
When Bishop Morris went to Rome to meet in person with the Cardinal Leaders of the three relevant Congregations (Cardinals Re, Arinze and Levada), with Archbishop Philip Wilson present in support on 19 January 2008, Cardinal Re wrote:
Bishop Morris is a person of integrity in morals, a man of good will and other gifts. He can continue to do much good, but the right role for him is not that of Diocesan Bishop of Toowoomba.
He should be given another assignment, with special duties. With this in mind, the Holy Father asks the Metropolitan Archbishop of Brisbane and the President of the ACBC to help find the most appropriate responsibility in which Bishop Morris can continue to effectively serve the Church elsewhere in Australia, while obviously being assured of financial security for a suitable living.
Now that a new Archbishop has been appointed in Brisbane and a new bishop appointed in Toowoomba, let's hope that Bishop Morris might be given an appropriate episcopal task to which to dedicate his splendid pastoral gifts.
The process for dealing with Bishop Morris has been a disgrace. The people of Toowoomba still don't know why he was sacked, and we are all still waiting for a public credible explanation of the reasons for his dismissal. Are we really to believe that it was for having the temerity to point out that people overseas are talking about women's ordination? Fr Jack Mahoney SJ, a former principal of Heythrop College and author of the highly acclaimed The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Theology, has just published a new book Christianity in Evolution in which he says things like: 'Dispensing with the idea that Christian priesthood involves ordaining a man to act 'in the person of Christ' by offering his atoning sacrifice to God removes whatever ground there was for restricting ordination to the priesthood to men and for excluding women.' One of the most respected pastoral theologians in the English Church is Professor Nicholas Lash from Cambridge. He writes in a recent issue of The Tablet: 'When, for example, Pope John Paul II announced that the Church had no authority to ordain women to the presbyterate, and that the matter was not to be further discussed, two questions immediately came to mind: first, how does he know? (that is to say: what were the warrants, historical and doctrinal, for his assertion?); secondly, what theological note should be attached to his assertion? In view of the fact that, so far as I know, the question has never, in the Church's history, come up for serious and close consideration, that note cannot be very high up the scale. From which it follows that his further instruction that we must not discuss it lacks good grounds.' All Bishop Morris said in his pastoral letter of 2006 was that people overseas were talking about this sort of thing. They were, they are, and they will be. So why the need to sack not the theological agitators but the occasional pastoral bishop who merely points out that these things are being discussed? These issues are being discussed by people who love the Church and care passionately for its future.
You will recall that the Vatican appointed the American Archbishop Charles Chaput to conduct the formal visitation of the Toowoomba Diocese. Bishop Morris remains adamant that Chaput never shared with him the proposed contents of his report. Archbishop Chaput is adamant that he did. Five months after Chaput submitted his report, Morris was presented with an unsigned list of grievances from the Vatican. Seeking a way forward in charity and in truth, on 4 April 2012, I told ABC Radio National:
So from here in order to clear the air one thing that would be possible is Archbishop Chaput could provide Bishop Morris with the detail of what he says he discussed with Bishop Morris in Toowoomba and specifically, he would be able to provide a list of the matters of concern and we would be able to see whether they tallied with the matters that were then listed in the unsigned, anonymous document of September of 2007.
The specific list of allegations included amongst other things a demonstrably false statement namely that no priests had been ordained in the last eight years. Well four had been ordained. It also contained the false statement that deacons were being used to replace priests. There were no deacons in the diocese. Now there is no way that Chaput could have provided that information so after the Vatican had Chaput's report they were still proceeding with a list of allegations against Morris which were inaccurate and therefore could not have been drawn from Chaput's report.
Bishop Morris did write at considerable length to Archbishop Chaput, and in a highly respectful and fraternal tone. On 16 April 2012, Archbishop Chaput responded. To be fair to Chaput, I will quote his breath taking response in full:
Bishop Morris, your imagination is in 'over-drive'. I did share everything with you. I did not keep any notes after sending the report to Rome. How would I — or anyone — ever respond to your questions from memory? You are involved in an exercise of self-justification that is obscuring the truth and good reason. I will pray for you.
This is what still passes for due process and pastoral care in the Roman Church. As Christ's faithful we have to insist on something better. And with greater transparency, we will get something better. Of course, we must continue to show due deference and respect to our bishops, our shepherds, but when they abuse even their own like this, we should ask for better, in Christ's name.
As Catholics, we accept that the Pope ultimately has full authority to appoint, transfer or dismiss bishops. Therefore any person recommending an appointment, transfer or dismissal to the Pope is obliged to act in a manner such that the ultimate action of the Pope could not be or be seen to be capricious, arbitrary, or prejudiced. Any person recommending a dismissal must accord due process and natural justice; otherwise their denial of same will infect the Pope's action. Why could Archbishop Chaput not simply have reviewed his report, repeating to Morris the key points, especially given that he claims to have already shared everything? Why would he not do what he could to refresh Bishop Morris's memory, bringing satisfaction to all those concerned that Morris has been denied natural justice?
Pope Benedict commenced his encyclical Caritas in Veritate with the words:
Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity.
Charity in truth should also be the principal driving force behind all dealings with each other within our Church. If only we were more committed to charity and truth, we the members of Christ's faithful would be able to be more trusting of Vatican moves in relation to Bishop Morris, in relation to the women religious in the USA, in relation to the Girl Scouts in the USA, and in relation to theological training in the Church in Ireland. If only we were more committed to charity and truth, we would have been so much better in confronting the horror of child sexual abuse within our Church. Fr Kevin Dillon from Geelong recently asked, 'If Christ was lying in this Church bleeding, would we say, 'Can we afford to heal him?' Well, Christ is in this church, bleeding. Not from wounds inflicted from Roman soldiers but from wounds inflicted from within. Victims first; true justice; genuine compassion.'
Conclusion
If we as the People of God rejoicing in the name 'Catholic' are to bring the modern world into contact with the vivifying and perennial energies of the gospel, we need to ensure that our Church is an exemplar of the noblest values espoused by people of all faiths and none. We need to recommit ourselves to charity, justice and truth both within our own structures when dealing with each other, and in all our dealings with those outside the membership of our Church, especially those who differ with us conscientiously about the moral challenges of the Age. We need to examine afresh our belief in 'a love or compassion which is unconditional — that is, not based on what you the recipient have made of yourself — or as one based on what you are most profoundly, a being in the image of God'. The Canadian Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor sums up the challenge as 'a difficult discernment, trying to see what in modern culture reflects its furthering of the Gospel, and what (in modern culture reflects) its refusal of the transcendent'. Thus exercised, we might bring even the young into engagement 'with the vivifying and perennial energies of the gospel'.
Re-imagining our mission amongst the young in our care, let's take to heart Pope Benedict's observations in Spe Salvi:
We need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. The fact that it comes to us as a gift is actually part of hope. God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is 'truly' life.
If we offer our students anything less, they will be rightly disappointed by a Church they perceive to be marked by hollow rhetoric, empty sacramentality, and authoritarian tradition. As teachers and pastors to the young, I invite you to be bold and confident in proclaiming the love in your hearts, the hope in each other, and the faith in our Church. Thanks for your witness and commitment thus far. I hope and pray that you will be energised during these days together so that you might 'go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole of creation.'
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Text is from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address 'Re-imagining the Mission — A Pilgrimage of Faith Catholic Education Sandhurst Conference 2012: A Pilgrimage of Faith, presented 24 May 2012 at Catholic College Bendigo.