The Catholic Church can produce excellent public communication, such as its current election statement, 'Politics in Service of Peace', but it does so too rarely. That statement was, of course, commentary and advice for others rather than reflections about the inner workings of the church itself. That is where the blockage lies.
The church's Implementation Advisory Group (IAG), for instance, has been hard at work for many months now since its creation was announced in May 2018 by Archbishop Denis Hart and Sister Ruth Durick OSU, but you wouldn't know it for all the publicity it has been accorded by its masters, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) and Catholic Religious Australia.
The specific reasons for this lack of communication are unclear though they are deeply embedded in church culture. It may be a fearful official reaction to the earlier public role played by the Truth Justice and Healing Council in relation to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, though its splendid work was acknowledged when the IAG was set up. It may include tensions within ACBC about the priorities of the tasks set for the IAG. Or it may just be the lassitude and inertia that too often characterises church communications.
At the time of the IAG's creation its chairman Jack de Groot outlined the admirable intent of the group to 'offer advice on the development of the leadership and culture that is now required within the church and expected by the wider Australian society ... We need to build on the very good practices that church agencies have already put in place, and in doing so we will be assisted by the royal commission's recommendations on governance, transparency, accountability, consultation, and participation of lay man and women.'
One aspect of the IAG is its Governance Review Project Team, which met for the first time early in 2019. The project team's progress will be communicated shortly to the wider Catholic community, largely on the grounds of the principles laid out by de Groot, but in part because interaction with interested parties will improve the quality and usefulness of its recommendations. And there are many interested parties as shown by the 18,000 submissions to Plenary Council 2020 (PC 2020).
Why leave Catholics in the dark if progress is being made? Even if the ACBC and CRA wish to consider any reports which emerge from the IAG before releasing them to the