Catholics battle over power in historic meeting

Healing the fallout from sexual abuse scandals and power sharing in the church were key issues discussed at a historic Catholic council.

The delegates of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia made 16 suggestions. Picture: AFP

A historic, week-long meeting of the Australian Catholic Church called in the wake of sexual abuse scandals has ended with calls for better selection and training of priests and changes in the way the church is governed.

Sister Mary Julian Ekman told the 277 members of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia that young men entering seminaries came from a generation facing many challenges such as broken homes and drug use and “priestly formation is not essentially ­therapy”.

She said “We have to ensure that seminarians and priests have healthy experiences” and inter­actions with the community so that “they get the smell of the sheep and the sheep get the smell of them”.

Other delegates called for research into international models of seminary training, and the tradition of married deacons and priests in the eastern rites of the church.

In a sermon outside the online council on Sunday, the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, said the meeting was not “a parliament making decrees at will, as if everything were ‘on the table’ or ‘up for grabs’.”

“It’s a very particular pastoral strategy of gathering church leaders and some others, for prayer and discernment, to increase faith, revitalise morals, promote discipline and plan common pastoral action,” he said.

“All sorts of things came up this week past: some imaginative and wise, some unhelpful, even impossible.”

His comments came as the council - the first in 84 years - moved to its next stage of nine months of discussion leading to a July 2022 assembly that reformers hope will offer concrete change in running the church.

While the delegates - bishops, clergy and lay people - made suggestions on 16 themes, they did not have the power to submit ­motions to the bishops who run the church.

There was no public feedback on the discussions of the church’s handling of sexual abuse cases which, along with the treatment of divorced and gay people, were held in a three-hour closed session on Thursday.

On Monday last week, Archbishop Fisher told the council that disillusionment over child sexual abuse had accelerated the “secularisation of recent decades … Many now identify with no particular religion, institutional identity has corroded, young people are inoculated to faith by the culture, and some churchgoers are out of sorts with Catholic teaching.”

The last church census in 2016 found fewer than 12 per cent of Catholics go to Sunday mass and Archbishop Fisher noted: “Entire demographics are missing.”

He said there was a “pandemic of moral confusion” in society: “Just lately, Australia has adopted some of the world’s most extreme abortion, euthanasia, marriage and sexuality laws.”

One of the most controversial questions - how much power should be given to lay people through parish and diocesan councils - generated many comments in daily feedback sessions.

One delegate, Nimmi Candappa, of Melbourne, said much work had already been done on governance models but there had been “obstacles or resistance to their implementation”.

The divisions were clear on Sunday when Greg Craven, former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University and one of 20 specialist council advisers, known as periti, said the push for power via diocesan councils was coming from “aristocratic” Catholics who wanted to “effectively dictate to the bishops”.

“It is not about a ground roots revolution.” he said outside the council. “These are the most aristocratic, privileged and powerful Catholics who would like to move the next rung up.”