Communal discernment a way forward

By Fr James McEvoy

Published in the Southern Cross Newspaper on 5 November 2021

Excerpt:

“The first general assembly of the Plenary Council, meeting October 3-10, was an extraordinary experience. About 300 members of the Catholic community in Australia engaged in a process of communal discernment involving people from almost every sphere of Church life including laity, deacons, bishops and priests. The heart of this process was a three-hour period of ‘spiritual conversation’ on five days. Members formed 10 groups of 30 people each, and these were divided into smaller groups of 10. For those five days, each group prayed about and discussed one of the Plenary Council’s six key themes: conversion, prayer, formation, structures, governance, and institutions. Focal questions guided the discussion. Besides the spiritual conversations, the meeting observed the usual processes of such a formal gathering.

What I found extraordinary was that while early on some members engaged in a vociferous staking out of territory on difficult issues, by week’s end the groups had arrived at more nuanced accounts of the issues, and of what’s required for the Church to flourish into the future. Not that the major difficulties have been overcome. They haven’t…yet! Important questions still face the Catholic community in Australia. But the spiritual conversations seemed to bear great fruit.”

Read the full article here: https://thesoutherncross.org.au/opinion/2021/11/05/communal-discernment-a-way-forward/