I was asked to respond to the question: The last Plenary Council was in 1937.  Why do you think it is important we hold a Plenary Council at this time, and what are some things you would like to see the Plenary Council address? 

This is the long version of what was published in the Catholic Weekly.

Correcting the Mission Drift

One of the most compelling statements I heard among the Plenary discussions was this: The Church does not have a mission; the Mission has a Church. In other words, the Church, as an institution and as a community, exists to support ‘the mission’.

But what is this mission? For me it is very straightforward: the mission is to bring people to Christ so that Christ might be made manifest in the world, i.e. to evangelise. Indeed, almost every Pope since Vatican II has repeated what Paul VI asserted in1975: ‘The Church exists to evangelise’ [EN n14].

If this is the mission and obvious question is “how are we doing?” Here in Australia, “not so well” would be the honest answer. It’s not just that our numbers are in decline (Mass goers, weddings, ordinations, baptisms etc), it’s that even among those who still show up, too few seem to be ‘alive in the Spirit’ and nourished by a deep and personal relationship with Jesus.

Subsequently, many of our activities as a church have lost the urgency of proclaiming Christ as our Redeemer. We do many, many good works in the name of the Church or supported through church-based institutions, but it seems that Jesus is frequently an optional extra, not central to them. Without Christ animating and motivating our good works, we are just another ‘NGO’ – something against which Pope Francis warned.

This ‘mission drift’ is not doing the Church or our mission any good. While some organisations are holding or even increasing the number of people they serve (e.g. some schools, hospitals and welfare agencies), they are not generally meeting the mission objective for ‘evangelisation’, if that even remains as an explicit objective on their mandates.

This is not a new observation and already in many dioceses, Sydney among them, there is a renewed focus on evangelisation and major restructuring to support this has already occurred. Central to this vital work is the ‘re-evangelisation’ of our own believers – a phenomenon noted by Pope John Paul II as the ‘new evangelisation’.

Crucial to success of the evangelisation agenda is the role of marriage and family. We know from sociological research that our relationship with our human father will profoundly influence our capacity for relationship with our heavenly Father. Yet many children now grow up without their biological father in the home.

Likewise, if we are to encounter Jesus as our bridegroom who calls us into intimate communion, our capacity to receive that reality will be greatly hindered by a history of broken family bonds and faulty models of love in the home. Almost every person in our community has tasted marriage breakdown in their home or been in close contact with a family member who has.

One of the most effective evangelists of all time, St Paul, referred the ‘Great Mystery’ [Eph 5:32]; the life-giving union of husband and wife that images the relationship of Christ and the Church. In other words: the ‘one flesh union’ of husband and wife images the ‘one flesh union’ of Christ and his bride in the Eucharist.

If the polls are to be believed, only a minority (~ 31%) of Catholics believe that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ (aka the Real Presence). That is, for most Catholics when they receive Holy Communion, there is no intimate encounter with the person of Jesus, no ‘one flesh’ union, only a symbol or memorial gesture.

I would suggest that the crisis of faith in the Eucharist is not just coincidental with the crisis of faith in marriage, but intimately related. Most Catholics no longer believe that God ordained the sexual union of husband and wife to be a sacred proclamation of Christ’s union with the Church, reserved for marriage alone.

Just look at the ‘hot button’ issues that came up again and again in the consultation and listening groups: contraception, divorce & remarriage, homosexual unions, married clergy, women priests, sexual abuse, clericalism, female leadership… they all relate to human sexuality – the very core of the ‘Great Mystery’.

Yet marriage and sexuality are in the spotlight of calls for ‘reform’ when it comes to moral teaching. Such calls illustrate how poorly the theology of marriage and human sexuality is known and understood among Catholics.

Clearly, we must be more active in forming people at all stages of life in the ‘Great Mystery’ (a process Pope Francis has called the ‘marriage catechumenate’). Most especially we need deep conversion among married couples who are called to witness to the ‘Great Mystery’ through their love.

Equally, we must be more proactive in bringing Christ’s healing into these areas of brokenness, where people experience debilitating pain and confusion. It is not enough to proclaim a vision but do nothing to heal the wounds of those who suffer through the failure to live it.

It’s an idea we term “radical demands – extravagant mercy”. The Lord has high ideals for us, he calls to ‘perfection’ so that we can share in his divine life – a demanding standard that the culture can’t understand especially as it relates to sexuality.

But God doesn’t make the demands in isolation; his radical demands are paired with extravagant mercy. Without God’s mercy, the demands are inhumane and frankly impossible. With it, they are the way of eternal life.

As our Australian Catholic community comes to terms with the impact of ‘living with Covid’, one thing seems certain: we will need to be very intentional about our priorities. There simply isn’t much padding in the budget for anything other than the essentials.

There are many areas of deficit and challenge in the Australian Church and most of them will be on the agenda. There is no shortage of great ideas, but there are real limits to the funding and personnel.

Whatever emerges from the Plenary Council discussions, we need to evaluate it in terms of short AND long-term cost-benefits. The Marriage agenda always loses out in the short-term but if we don’t build our reforms on the foundation of the ‘Great Mystery’, I fear our pastoral efforts over the long-term will fail to take root or bear fruit.

‘Falling in love’ is often the first encounter with the ‘Great Mystery’. Helping Catholics enter deeply into this reality is necessary to foster a vibrant culture of marriage. Vibrant marriages create vibrant families of faith. Vibrant parishes and schools (and vocations to religious/clerical life) are built and sustained by vibrant families. A vibrant Church can transform the culture.

And it all begins with the ‘Great Mystery’: man and woman called to one flesh union in the image of God. [Gn 1:26-28, 2:24].