The Plenary Council of Australia

27 August 2018
Archbishop Mark Coleridge and Dr Massimo Faggioli. Image: Supplied.

 

The urgent need for a general council of the Australian Catholic church has been discussed for more than a decade. Such a council is now announced.

This Plenary Council, or “full council” of Catholics won’t begin until October 2020.  But it’s being planned as a space where hundreds of Catholic representatives will deliberate on how their Church moves forward – in a world where the authority of its clergy leadership is under unprecedented challenge.

It’s a bit of a radical idea on consultation- where lay Catholics , monks and nuns, all bishops, women, ethnic catholic churches, the marginalised, ex-catholics, survivors of sexual abuse, basically everyone, is being called to contribute to the critique and future planning of the Catholic church in Australia.

Listen to the report here.

Archbishop Wilson was the man who sowed the seed for the Plenary Council for more than a decade.

Can the planned council avoid simply being an expensive therapy session?

The President of the Bishops Conference of Australia Archbishop Mark Coleridge and Dr Massimo Faggioli, a lay theologian based in Villanova University, Philadelphia, join Noel Debien at the conference.

To find out more about Plenary 2020 in the Diocese of Parramatta, visit our website parracatholic.org/haveyoursay or contact Richard or Tanya on pastoralplanning@parracatholic.org

With thanks to the ABC.

 

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