BishopAccountability.org
	St Mary's, Bishop Robinson and the Value of Dialogue By Frank Brennan Eureka Street March 27, 2009 http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=12611 On Monday I passed St Mary's Church South Brisbane, en route to a national human rights consultation at the local Convention Centre. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags were flying outside the church as were proclamations of Aboriginal treaty and the protest chant, 'We shall not be moved'. I had seen and heard Fr Peter Kennedy in the media. His interview on Richard Fidler's ABC Conversation Hour was one of the most moving presentations about priestly pastoral ministry I have heard on the national airwaves. He wept openly as he recalled the death of an Aboriginal man in jail. His Q&A appearance with Tony Jones left me a little perplexed about what he actually believed about Jesus and the Church. Knowing him and Archbishop Bathersby I was saddened that the standoff between such a pastoral bishop and a pastoral priest had come to this. Talk of mediation by retired High Court judge Ian Callinan has done nothing to lift my sadness. These disputes are not about property rights, and they are not resolved by assertion of property rights or conflicting claims of orthodoxy and pastoral practice. The mainstream media has now canonised Kennedy and demonised Bathersby. The former may be justified, but the latter is not. Bathersby and Kennedy are both very pastoral, down to earth, no nonsense men. And yet it has come to this. On Saturday I will participate in a public seminar in Sydney with over 300 Catholics gathering to discuss Bishop Geoffrey Robinson's book Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church. This is a pastoral book, which does not purport to be a learned theological text. It is a broad sweeping tome which highlights the concerns of a pastoral bishop reflecting on his years as a teacher and administrator. He devoted most of his later years as a bishop to improving the exercise of authority in shaping policies and practices appropriate for dealing with the curse of sexual abuse within the Church. Bishop Geoffrey will be in attendance. Unsurprisingly Cardinal Pell declined the invitation to speak at the seminar. But he went one step further and prohibited the use of church property for such a discussion. Last year the Australian Catholic Bishops provided Bishop Geoffrey's publisher with a bonanza when they issued their brief, simplistic statement claiming that 'the Church's Magisterium teaches the truth authoritatively in the name of Christ. The book casts doubt upon these teachings.' Though Robinson's fellow bishops conceded that 'the authority entrusted by Christ to his Church may at times be poorly exercised, especially in shaping policy and practice in complex areas of pastoral and human concern', they went on to claim: 'This does not invalidate the Church's authority to teach particular truths of faith and morals.' The condemnation of the book without detailed argument but with the bald invocation of episcopal authority guaranteed sales which would otherwise have eluded the author and publisher. The Church cannot thrive when its bishops feel constrained by fear, seeing no need to explain how and why they differ even from one of their own number who is game enough to express dissent from the Vatican's position. In his general acknowledgement of thanks to the unnamed persons who helped him with the book, Robinson writes, 'It says much about the need for change that, in the atmosphere that prevails within the church, I would be creating difficulties for them if I gave their names.' Robinson expresses doubts about the Church's prudence and wisdom in making infallible declarations about Mary. He questions papal and Vatican declarations prohibiting discussion about the ordination of women. He asserts that the Church has locked itself in 'the prison of not being able to be wrong'. He nails the danger for church authorities who deny the primacy of the formed and informed conscience of the individual, and who purport to teach and rule authoritatively with power which is neither transparent nor publicly reasoned. The recent PR disasters out of Rome, with the reception of the holocaust denying bishop and with the public's genuinely misinterpreted reading of the Pope's prescription for solving the AIDS crisis in Africa, highlight that hierarchical and secretive management of debate and dissent is no longer a prudent option for a Church committed to proclaiming the gospel as good news for all. It is time for dialogue under sponsorship of our bishops. We all know that the majority of our bishops agree with many of Bishop Robinson's assertions. They might not choose his arguments or mode of public expression. But the time has long passed for the landowners to deny the peasants an opportunity to reflect conscientiously on the truth and on good pastoral practice. Were the bishops to participate more openly in the dialogue we would all be able to appreciate their human, pastoral presence and not just that of the Kennedys and Robinsons. If there had been more open dialogue between John Bathersby and Peter Kennedy and between George Pell and Geoffrey Robinson, the Catholic Church would be more the Church that Jesus would want it to be. The community roundtables in the national human rights consultation provide a public space where people of wildly divergent views can respectfully speak and be heard. Why can't we provide such spaces in the Church which, as John Paul II said in Veritatis Splendor, 'puts herself always and only at the service of conscience'?
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