Recent and unprecedented calls for legislative action in Delaware, Vermont, and Washington seek to remove the legal protection afforded Catholic priests under the seal of the confession when mandatory sexual abuse reporting laws are in […]
Participants in the Church in Australia’s Plenary Council in Sydney, July 9, 2022. / Australian Catholic Bishops Conference
Denver Newsroom, Jul 12, 2022 / 10:09 am (CNA).
The Catholic Church in Australia has concluded its Fifth Plenary Council. After months of debate and discussion on Church governance and pastoral priorities, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe of Perth declared the council closed on Saturday.
“There will be no renewal of the Church if we put ourselves above Christ or in some perverse way push him to the margins,” he said in his homily at the closing Mass in Sydney July 9. The plenary council, in his words, tried to “reimagine the Church in Australia through a missionary lens.” The archbishop encouraged members of the plenary council to continue to ask themselves what the Holy Spirit is saying.
The final session was held in Sydney over six days.
A plenary council is the highest formal gathering of all particular Churches in a country. It has legislative and governing authority. Laypeople were invited to participate in council sessions, and they joined bishops to vote on binding resolutions to be sent to the Vatican for approval.
All members signed a concluding statement. Council members characterized the council as an expression of synodality.
“Synodality is the way of being a pilgrim Church, a Church that journeys together and listens together, so that we might more faithfully act together in responding to our God-given vocation and mission,” the statements aid, adding that in their deliberations “the Holy Spirit has been both comforter and disrupter.”
Members of the plenary council also confirmed the plenary council’s decrees, which all Catholic bishops present then signed. The decrees will be sent to the Holy See after the November meeting of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. Six months after the Holy see receives this notice, formally known as a “recognitio,” the decrees will become law of the Catholic Church in Australia.
The plenary council formally recognized a duty to care for the Earth as a common home and to promote and defend human life from conception to natural death. It encouraged the Church to join Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si’” Action Platform and to develop existing action plans in the spirit of the pope’s 2015 encyclical on God’s creation and care for the environment.
The plenary council backed more use of general absolution, an alternative to individual confession generally only used in emergencies. It also endorsed an effort to seek a new translation of the 2011 Roman Missal.
Defeated proposals included one to allow lay people to preach at Masses.
On July 6 more than 60 of the 277 members protested the failure to pass motions on women in the Church, including the defeat of a motion to support the ordination of women as deacons if Rome agrees. The lay members voted for the proposals, but there were not enough votes from the bishops to pass the measures.
After some controversy, the council passed a motion to reconsider proposed language on women in the Church, which later passed in a slightly modified form.
“Much has been made of the division and drama of the week and that might frighten some and delight others,” Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney told The Catholic Weekly. “But I think the remarkable thing is that it did not break the Church. It did not lead to a walkout or schism or an alternative assembly being set up down the road as we’ve seen at different times in history.”
“In the end with more prayer and reflection we ended up with a much improved chapter on the dignity and roles of women,” he said.
The council decrees include the establishment of diocesan pastoral councils across Australia, diocesan synods to be hosted within the next five years, and broad consultation about the creation of a national synodal body for Church collaboration.
The plenary council’s closing statement said members “sought to be faithful to their commission to listen to and hear ‘what the Spirit is saying to the churches’.” It acknowledged the disruptions to daily life caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, natural disasters, and war.
Some moments during the council’s final week were “calm and harmonious” while others were “tense and difficult,” the closing statement said, adding, “every moment has been blessed; the entire week has been grace-filled, though never a cheap grace.” The statement praised “practices of listening and discernment” as “essential dimensions of the implementations of this plenary council.”
“They will re-shape our engagement with the world, our evangelizing mission and our works of service in a rapidly changing environment,” said the statement, adding, “the work has only begun.”
The implementation will be reviewed by the Bishops Commission for the Plenary Council. Interim reports will be published in 2023 and 2025, with a final review report set for 2027.
Archbishop Fisher reflected on the plenary council’s achievements and possible shortcomings in remarks to The Catholic Weekly.
“There’s been a direct engagement with some of the really ‘hard’ issues, like Indigenous issues, child sexual abuse and the place of women in the Church,” he said. “Those discussions were sometimes very emotional and potentially very divisive. Yet in the end there was a high level of agreement on most of them.”
“It’s much better that such matters were confronted directly rather than presenting a kind of faux unity by avoiding the hard issues,” the archbishop continued.
He praised the assembly’s work to offer “some good thoughts on liturgy, marriage catechumenate, youth ministry, formation programs for lay leaders including those in rural and remote areas, and stewardship of the earth.” He also welcomed its appreciation for the place of the Eastern Catholic Churches in Australia.
However, Fisher worried there was not enough content dedicated to the “missionary impulse” and to “a passion for bringing people to Christ, to conversion and new life in Him.” He thought there was too little attention paid to people on the margins and there were “no practical proposals” to promote religious freedom at a time when it is “clearly threatened.”
He worried that “ordinary” priests and lay Catholics, including those born overseas, were underrepresented in the assembly, and this might have had a distorting effect on the proceedings.
Still, he said, most proposals had “a very high rate of acceptance among the lay members and the pastors.”
“Everyone will find some good things in the final decrees when they come out, and people should look for those, look for inspiration and encouragement in their own missionary discipleship,” said Fisher.
People will also find gaps and subjects they think should have been addressed, Fisher said. He wondered why so little attention was given to lay men, mothers, vowed religious, or “Catholics whose principal vocation is in the world.”
“There’s very little that speaks to the crisis of vocations to marriage and parenting, and to priestly and religious life,” he added.
While there is a whole chapter on the importance of the liturgy, especially the Eucharist and the sacrament of Penance, Fisher said, he had wanted to see “positive proposals” on how the Church can secure the priests who can celebrate those sacraments.
In late 2021, Fisher said he hoped the council would focus on priorities like responding to a culture of secularism and declining religious practice.
Last year he told the Catholic Weekly that currently only 1 in 10 Catholics in Australia regularly attends Mass. The Church in Australia is experiencing a vocations crisis, not only to the priesthood, but also to marriage and religious life.
In addition to a culture of secularism, the Church continues to respond to sexual abuse scandals. A 2017 royal commission report found that the Catholic Church and other institutions in the country showed serious failings for decades in protecting children from abuse.
Archbishop Julian Porteous of Hobart / Archdiocese of Hobart
Denver Newsroom, Apr 13, 2022 / 16:57 pm (CNA).
At a time when Catholicism in Australia faces crises such as a loss of faith and declining religious practice, a plenary council prepar… […]
Canberra, Australia, Jan 28, 2021 / 04:15 pm (CNA).- Starting in February, the Catholic Church in Australia will have a national protocol for responding to allegations of sexual abuse, the bishops of Australia announced this week.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, president of the Australian bishop’s conference, said the new protocol “demands an approach from the Church that is compassionate and just.”
“One of the strengths of the new protocol is that it provides a single national framework, which will ensure a consistent approach to the handling of concerns and allegations,” Coleridge said Jan. 28.
The National Response Protocol lays out principles that Church authorities must adhere to when responding to a child abuse allegation, as well as the concrete procedural steps that must be taken when an allegation is received.
These steps include mandatory reporting of criminal allegations of child abuse against current or former Church personnel to police.
The National Response Protocol will replace two protocols established in 1996, about which the Church had received criticism for their “inconsistent or incomplete application,” Coleridge said.
The existing protocols will continue to be in use until the end of the year, or the conclusion of matters currently being managed, Catholic Weekly reported.
A 2017 Royal Commission report on child sex abuse in the country’s institutions uncovered serious failings in the protection of children from abuse in institutions.
The Australian bishops’ conference responded positively to nearly all the Royal Commission’s recommendations, but has defended the sanctity of the confessional seal.
The new protocol was developed in response to recommendations in the Royal Commission report, and in two years of consultation with abuse survivors. The bishops’ conference of Australia adopted the new protocols at their November 2020 meeting.
The new protocols are based on National Catholic Safeguarding Standards which the Australian church adopted in May 2020.
The protocols also take into account Pope Francis’ motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi, which laid out universal norms on sex abuse reporting and took effect June 1, 2019, days after the adoption of the NCSS.
The norms of Vos estis lux mundi establish that clerics and religious are obliged to report sexual abuse accusations to the local ordinary where the abuse occurred. Every diocese must have a mechanism for reporting abuse. When a suffragan bishop is accused, the metropolitan archbishop is placed in charge of the investigation.
In December 2020, the Catholic bishops of Australia and two other Catholic entities launched Australian Catholic Safeguarding Limited, a company charged with the safeguarding of children against sexual abuse by clergy.
Catholic entities in Australia may— but will not be compelled to— “subscribe” to the ACSL. Those entities that subscribe will be expected to comply with its safeguarding standards, conduct reviews and audits of their abuse prevention systems at least every three years, and provide ACSL with a copy of their reviews, which will be published on the ACSL’s website.
The Church in Australia during July 2018 launched a compensation program for victims of institutional child sexual abuse, which is expected to run until June 30, 2027.
Denver Newsroom, Jan 13, 2021 / 09:01 pm (CNA).- Three North Dakota state legislators introduced a bill this week that would oblige Catholic priests to violate the seal of confession in cases of confirmed or suspected child abuse, on penalty of imprisonment or heavy fines.
The bill was introduced Jan. 12 by state senators Judy Lee (R), Kathy Hogan (D), and Curt Kreun (R), and state representatives Mike Brandenburg (R) and Mary Schneider (D).
The current mandatory reporting law in North Dakota states that clergy are considered mandatory reporters of known or suspected child abuse, except in cases when “the knowledge or suspicion is derived from information received in the capacity of spiritual adviser”, such as in the confessional.
The bill, SB 2180, would amend that law to abolish this exception. If passed, priests who would fail to report known or suspected child abuse, even if revealed in the confessional, would be considered guilty of a Class B misdemeanor and face 30 days in jail or fines up to $1,500 or both.
Priests are bound by canon law, deriving from divine law, to keep the contents of a confession confidential, and are not even allowed to reveal whether or not a confession took place. The Code of Canon Law states that “the sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.”
Priests cannot violate the seal even under threat of imprisonment or civil penalty, and can incur a latae sententiae excommunication if they do. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1467, explains the Church’s teaching on the seal of confession:
“Given the delicacy and greatness of this ministry and the respect due to persons, the Church declares that every priest who hears confessions is bound under very severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him. He can make no use of knowledge that confession gives him about penitents’ lives.” Christopher Dodson, the executive director and general counsel for the North Dakota Catholic Conference, told CNA that he was “surprised and greatly concerned about the bill, because it would infringe upon a person’s privacy and religious counseling and confession, not just for Catholics, but for everyone.” “In the United States, we expect to exercise our religion, including going to confession and having spiritual counseling, without the government invading our privacy,” he said. Dodson said that the bill was especially surprising because it was introduced a week after the conclusion of an 18 month long investigation by the state on child sexual abuse by clergy in North Dakota’s two dioceses, which found that all but one accusation of abuse by priests in the diocese had already been reported. The state identified the case of one additional priest who had been accused of abuse in the 1970s, and was not on the initial list because he was not a diocesan priest.
“The Catholic Church, including the dioceses of Fargo and Bismarck here in North Dakota, have gone to great strides to create safe environments (for children),” he said.
“The Attorney General in North Dakota just concluded an 18-month investigation of all the diocesan files and did not find anything of concern and nothing that hadn’t already been reported by the two dioceses. And most of those cases of priests with sufficient allegations against them happened a long time ago. That’s why we say this bill comes as a surprise.” Dodson added that there is “no evidence” that the proposed law would prevent “a single case” of child abuse, and instead it would likely dissuade some Catholics from exercising their religious freedoms, which should include going to confession and having that confession kept confidential. Lee declined to comment to CNA about the bill, while senators Hogan and Kreun could not be reached by press time.
The issue of the sacramental seal in cases of child abuse is one that has arisen several times in recent years. A similar bill that would have forced priests to violate the seal was introduced in California, and then dropped in 2019, out of concerns for religious liberty and problems of enforcement. In 2016, a Louisiana state appeals court upheld a priest’s right to uphold the sacramental seal of confession in an abuse lawsuit.
Several Australian states, including Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory, have already adopted laws forcing priests to violate the confessional seal, following recommendations made by the Royal Commission on clergy sex abuse. However, bishops and priests in those states have said they plan on defying the law and upholding the seal regardless.
CNA Staff, Dec 4, 2020 / 12:23 am (CNA).- On Thursday, the Catholic bishops of Australia and two other Catholic entities launched Australian Catholic Safeguarding Limited, a company charged with the safeguarding of children against sexual abuse by clergy.
The launch of the agency comes three years after the release of a 2017 Royal Commission report on child sex abuse in the country’s institutions. The new agency was created by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Catholic Religious Australia (CRA) and the Association of Ministerial PJPs (Public Juridic Persons).
“We have discerned what was working well and what needed to change, and we are convinced this new national agency will make the Church’s work more coordinated, accountable and best prepared to ensure the safety of people in Catholic settings,” CRA president Br. Peter Carroll FMS said in a December 3 statement marking the launch.
The new agency, also known as ACSL, “will reduce duplication and consolidate work previously undertaken by Catholic Professional Standards Limited, the Implementation Advisory Group and the Australian Catholic Centre for Professional Standards,” the statement noted.
According to a fact sheet on the ACSL, while it is “hoped” that all Australian Catholic entities will subscribe to the new group, it will not be mandatory. Those entities that subscribe to the ACSL will be expected to comply with its safeguarding standards, conduct reviews and audits of their abuse prevention systems at least every three years, and provide ACSL with a copy of their reviews, which will be published on the ACSL’s website.
The establishment of the ACSL is one of many reforms being made by the Church in Australia after the release of the Royal Commission report, which found serious failings in the protection of children from abuse in the Catholic Church and other major secular and religious institutions.
Other changes made in the wake of the report include a program to compensate victims, and an obligation on the part of clergy and religious to report abuse accusations to their local ordinary or metropolitan archbishop.
The Australian bishops’ conference responded positively to nearly all the Royal Commission’s recommendations, but has defended the sanctity of the confessional seal.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian Catholic bishop’s conference, said that the safeguarding agency was established after an extensive consultation process with people both inside and outside of the Church, including abuse survivors and their advocates.
“Australian Catholic Safeguarding Limited will build on the strong work of the previous bodies, including in demanding accountability of Catholic entities and in requiring independent audits and reviews of adherence to the National Catholic Safeguarding Standards,” he said.
Eva Skira is the chair of Association of Ministerial PJPs, a group whose members include canonical stewards of Church ministries in areas such as education, health care, disability and social services.
Skira said the group supported the creation of the new agency and is “deeply committed to child protection and safeguarding in our various contexts.”
“We are very pleased to be collaborators with the Bishops Conference and CRA, which have made significant progress in recent years,” Skira added.
Carroll said the inclusion of the Association of Ministerial PJPs in the creation of the safeguarding agency would help to extend its impact into more broadly Catholic contexts.
“Our focus must always be on the safety of all those who come into contact with the Church,” he said.
CNA Staff, Sep 8, 2020 / 08:01 pm (CNA).- The legislature of the Australian state of Queensland on Tuesday passed a law requiring priests to violate the seal of confession to report known or suspected […]
Brisbane, Australia, Feb 20, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, president of the Australian bishops’ conference, is in Rome for high-level discussions ahead of the Church in Australia’s first plenary council since Vatican II, set to begin in October.
According to The Catholic Leader, during his two-week trip to Rome, Coleridge will meet with senior curial figures and Pope Francis to discuss the plenary council, its key themes, and its organizing principles.
The council, to be held in Adelaide in October, is part of the Church in Australia’s response to the sexual abuse crisis, as well as a number of other issues, including efforts by local governments to pass laws encroaching on religious freedom and the seal of confession.
Although there will be lay participation in the council sessions, only the bishops will vote on binding resolutions, which will be sent to the Vatican for approval.
In Rome, Coleridge also reportedly plans to discuss the Vatican’s response to the Australian Royal Commission’s recommendations on the protection of minors, the seal of confession, and the case of imprisoned Cardinal George Pell.
A law passed in the state of Victoria in 2019 requires clergy to report suspected child abuse to the authorities, even if it was revealed in the confessional— requiring priests to break the sacramental of seal. The state’s premier, Daniel Andrews, said he hoped the legislation would “send a message” to the Church on child sex abuse. A national standard for mandatory reporting by clergy is also being considered.
Coleridge will also discuss Cardinal Pell, the former Vatican prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, who is now in prison near Melbourne following his conviction by a Victoria court in December, 2018.
Pell was convicted on five charges of child sexual abuse and sentenced to six years in prison, of which he must serve three years and eight months before being eligible for parole. Currently in a maximum-security prison, Pell has appealed his conviction to Australia’s High Court, which will hear the case on March 11 and 12.
As Coleridge traveled to Rome, another Australian bishop emphasized the importance of a valid ecclesiology, Catholic language, and clear expression of Church teaching during the upcoming plenary council.
Bishop Richard Umbers, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Sydney, said this week at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney that there must be a proper understanding of the hierarchical structure of the Church, and respect for Church teaching, during the council assembly.
Ecclesiology, he said, “is going to be one of the key areas of conflict in the plenary [and] I have been very vocal in asking for explicit ecclesiology,” as reported by The Catholic Weekly.
Umbers went on to say that “we need to use a language that is Catholic” when discussing issues at the council.
“Not all the ideas that circulate among the people of God are compatible with the faith,” he said, noting that “it needs to be said that we are not going to redefine sin. We are not going to change the sacrament of Holy Orders and neither do we have the power to do so.”
The plenary council was preceded by a “listening and dialogue phase” where the lay faithful submitted suggested topics on what is asked of the Church in Australia, and the future of the Church.
According to the final report on the listening phase, “strongly discussed topics included the rule of celibacy for priests, the ordination of women and the inclusion of divorced and remarried Catholics.”
The desire for “greater listening” and lay involvement in the Church, as well as better evangelization was also present in the submitted answers, the report said.
The Australian bishops’ close collaboration with Rome stands in contrast to the so-called synodal process underway in Germany.
Last October, the German bishops’ conference voted to begin a “binding synodal process” to consider the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, clerical celibacy, and the power and authority of the clergy.
The synodal assembly includes priests, deacons, religious, pastoral workers and other lay Catholic groups. Unlike Australia, each member can vote on resolutions, with the votes of laypeople carrying equal weight with those of bishops.
In September, the Vatican issued a canonical critique of the German synodal plans, concluding that they are “not ecclesiologically valid.”
In a September letter to Cardinal Reinhard Marx, head of the German bishops’ conference, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops—Cardinal Marc Ouellet— presented an assessment by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts which said the German plans were outside of the Church’s recognized structures. The process, the Vatican said, must conform to principles outlined by Pope Francis in June, in which the pope outlined the principles of authentic synodality.
In his letter to German Catholics, Francis said that “Every time the ecclesial community has tried to resolve its problems alone, trusting and focusing exclusively on its forces or its methods, its intelligence, its will or prestige, it ended up increasing and perpetuating the evils it tried to solve.”
The Vatican legal assessment of the German plans determined that the synodal assembly was actually better described as a particular council, similar to the Australian plans, but lacking the necessary cooperation with Rome.
Sydney, Australia, Feb 19, 2020 / 04:58 pm (CNA).- Parents of persons with Down syndrome are pressed to procure abortion, and their healthcare is negatively affected throughout their life, Australia’s disability royal commission has heard.
The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability began a hearing in Sydney Feb. 18. The two week hearing will listen to persons with cognitive disability and their loved ones, medical professionals, and advocacy groups about their experience with the health system in Australia.
Toni Mitchell told the commission Feb. 19 that when an ultrasound showed that her son, Joshua, would likely have Down syndrome and had a heart condition and was likely to miscarry, a doctor told her, “here’s your appointment for a termination”, handing her a piece of paper.
“In that moment they completely disallowed his life. They said he wasn’t worth living,” she reflected.
Joshua is now 19. He has Down syndrome, autism, and Hirschsprung’s disease.
Toni told the commission that she tossed the paper indicating the abortion appointment, and, “that was the moment I had to start justifying my son’s right to live and to be treated and I had to start justifying his value to be alive … They kept just judging us based on my decision to give him a chance at life.”
The commission’s chair, Ronald Sackville, told the inquiry during his Feb. 18 opening address that the consequences of poor healthcare for those with disabilities are “as disturbing as they are profound,” and that “they should shock the conscience of all Australians.”
Rebecca Kelly, whose son Ryan has Down syndrome, said that in the model of Australia’s health system “if you can’t cure it … then you eradicate it.”
“If you think that person’s life is a tragedy and that they suffer from this condition then you start to believe that it’s an act of kindness or that it’s a responsible act to do all you can to prevent that birth, and that becomes quite coercive,” she stated.
She added that the problems don’t end with pressure to procure abortion.
“If you have a doctor (who) thinks that possibly your life’s going to be a little bit better if your child doesn’t make it because they’re taking that burden away from you, that has horrible implications for the level of care that you don’t get.”
The disability royal commission was established in April 2019. It is to provide an interim report by October, and a final report by April 2022.
Such inquiries are provided for under the Royal Commissions Act 1902. They serve as independent public inquiries, initiated by the government, and can make recommendations on reforms to policy or legislation.
A 2013-17 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse urged a program to compensate the victims of institutional child sex abuse, which the Church in Australia established in July 2018.
It also proposed that priests be legally obligated to disclose sexual abuse sins which have been admitted in the confessional, or face criminal charges.
The Australian bishops’ conference responded positively to nearly all the sex abuse royal commission’s recommendations, but has defended the sanctity of the confessional seal.
Canberra, Australia, Nov 11, 2019 / 10:01 pm (CNA).- While the Catholic bishops of Australia have said a religious discrimination bill does not go far enough to protect religious freedom, former High Court Justice Michael Kirby has claimed the proposal… […]
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