The 280 Plenary Council (PC) Members have just taken another major step towards the Second Assembly in Sydney on 3-9 July. Yet it is difficult to have a proper public conversation about this step because it has taken place behind closed doors.
On 28 February, the PC authorities published Towards the Second Assembly: A Working Document for Members. They also advised Members on how to approach their task of discernment, asking us to respond by 4 April. Feedback and input from Members, said Bishop Shane Mackinlay, Vice-President of the Council, was critical, but that, in revising the document, ‘important contributions’ would also be made by ‘various committees and advisors’.
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference will consider the revised document at its May meeting, after responses by Members are considered by the Drafting Committee. The final resolutions for the Second Assembly will then be released publicly at the beginning of June for public discussion.
Towards the Second Assembly comes a long way under the guidance of the four writing groups, whose membership has not been made public, although Members were informed and the names of the Drafting Committee and the periti are no secret. Though it is a mixed bag, it is probably the best document emerging from the PC, making it even more frustrating that it is not in the public domain.
The PC authorities remain resolute that the process will remain ‘in house’ as far as possible. The document is addressed to the Members alone and we have been discouraged from making it more widely available. We have been advised that it is not a secret document and that we are not gagged, but that we should not pass it on to others. It is none the less in limited public circulation.
'The wider Catholic community should be able to read and discuss Towards the Second Assembly. Yet it is officially prevented from doing so. It is not too late for this decision to be reversed. Meanwhile Catholics should try to get hold of a copy.'
The PC authorities must have heard the many voices from the wider Catholic community over the past four years urging a broader involvement in its deliberations. But those voices have been deliberately excluded in favour of a discernment bubble. PC Members have never been directly asked their opinion of this approach, though some of us have registered our disagreement on this point to no avail.
The wider Catholic community is ‘on the outer’