Recovering the ‘TRUE CHURCH’: Challenges for Australian Catholicism beyond the Plenary Council
Paul Collins
Paul Collins, who for many years has written lively and radical articles and books about the Catholic Church commending extensive change, has entitled his latest book: Recovering the ‘TRUE CHURCH’: Challenges for Australian Catholicism beyond the Plenary Council. The capitalised words of the title and the emphasis on recovery indicate that he argues for a contested thesis. Something has been lost and must again be found. The symptoms of the loss are the failure of leadership, the sexual abuse crisis, clericalism and the inertia of bishops.
Collins traces the loss back to the defensive Catholic response to the Reformation, in which it imagined Church as a monarchy. In the face of a secularising culture marked by a loss of depth and of meaning, the Church has little to offer beyond asserting its authority. It fails to engage in the deep religious formation of its members despite the opportunity offered by the coherence between the Gospel and the hunger for justice in secular society.
The Plenary Council is thus hamstrung by conflict between Catholics’ desire for honest conversation about the future of the Church and the need of bishops to assert their own authority and control. Collins supports Pope Francis’ more recent call to Catholics to go out to the boundaries to win people. He sees little hope, however, that a Church structured around Pope, bishops and priests will transform itself into small groups of committed Christians with a well-structured but not uniform liturgical life. The history of the Church is in large measure a story of failure to live the Gospel of Jesus when its world is dominated by clericalism.
Recovering the ‘TRUE CHURCH’ will be an invaluable companion to those involved in the Pastoral Council. Not because it necessarily provides the right answers but because it raises large questions that could easily be shelved. The question with which it left me to me was how the future he envisions would address the great erosion in Church energy and allegiance made evident over the time of Covid. This has accelerated a process already at work in ageing communities. How will faith survive and discipleship thrive in the Catholic tradition without structures and institutions to nourish them and without people who are committed to stable communities as part of their expression of faith? 3
COVENTRY PRESS
ISBN 9781922589163