https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-23/the-changing-face-of-catholicism-in-australia/104967032

Commentary

Now, regarding the issue of women and leadership, I verily think that the Church at its head needs to be steered by a Paternal heart, reflecting the Father Heart of God, as dictated by the Petrine tradition. However, additionally, I think reform should consist of creating or forming a Chancellery, much like that of traditional universities, say Oxford and Cambridge, remembering too, that the original blueprint for that which we know of as the (now predominantly secular) university education system began or sprouted from the Catholic Church’s own educational and catechetical life. This Chancellery vision is a wider synodal composition of ecclesial leadership which should involve women. Just as you have women who are professors and who are actively involved in academic positions in secular universities, the Church needs to look at a path to reform at the highest levels of leadership involving women and men together as a Chancellery. Women would need to occupy ordained pastoral roles to sit in the Chancellery but these are not episcopal as episcopal roles still need to be reseved for the paternal line in honour of the Petrine tradition. The Chancellery would have a kind of parliamentry/collegiate feel but would not be primarily a political institution but rather, an educational institution with a responsibility of shared or synodal governance with the Chair of Peter at its head.

One of the main problems in the liturgical life of the Church today, and more predominantly and particularly, we see this as a proliferation of an ill-fitting secularism entering the parish-life in the form of say, lay ‘special ministers’ of the Eucharist doling out Holy Communion in a very slap-dash and ultimately irreverent fashion. Firstly, I don’t think there should be lay people administering Holy Communion. Rather, I believe that women and men ought to be ordained in a position of pastoral responsibility that renders them fit for this kind of service. I think laity should be acolytes but you know how the role of “altar boys” soon became that of “altar servers” instead, and this was because girls could now join their ranks? This, the Church hierarchy had no problem with, and I am not sure why, as women are still barred from entering the ordained pastoral ministry! Because, when you come to think of it, what are these “altar servers” doing? They are assisting the main celebrant in the liturgical rites of the Mass. And, what’s more is, they, like the main celebrant, wear vestments of sorts. However, you also, in the contemporary life of the local Church, have these lay people, who are ‘auxillary ministers of the Eucharist’ and whose function it is, to assist in the distribution of Holy Communion and they are shamelessly wearing pleb attire! 🤣 Yes, I’m laughing now, only coz it stands out in a sore thumb-ish kinda way that is at one and the same time beyond a joke as well as pathetic because, much of the time, I’m very sad to say, there is absolutely next to no reverence in these people whatsoever! And to add insult to injury, you have these lumpen pastors who are also too unashamedly worldly in their attitudes that even they do not take the sincerity of care that ought to be taken when administering Holy Communion during Mass. Often times, I’ve had the Sacred Host thrown into my hands in a manner devoid of respect and reverence alongside a vocal utterance from the pastor accompanying this slap-dashedly profane way of administering the sacred, that smacks of disdain for the very Life he is supposed to be conscientiously aware and appreciative of, considering too, he is supposed to be administering this holy Sacrament in a holy and therefore worthy manner.

And this brings to the fore the other issue, which seems to me, from an experiential standpoint, to be the most glaring. The state of the Church is actually only cosmetically, somewhat universally representative of that which Christ Himself founded. Apart from the artistic zeal and creative drive, the real tangibility of love itself, in its rawest, most treasured and most intimately knowable form as storge/agape should be, is on the whole, majoritatively absent from my own unfortunate plethora of personal encounters on the Australian and Asian scenes in this regard – with the bright & most laudible exception of my growing-up years, where attending Mass every Sunday was a joy for me because I was able to attend with my mother, who btw, alongside my maternal grandmother, my father and my darling pet cat and pet dog, gave me everything I could ever learn, know, and appreciate about the true meaning of love as it primordially originates first from God, then pours through the giver’s soul as conduit to the one receiving it. And for readers then to make a negatively presumptuous value-judgement about me personally, on account of me telling them here how everso tragic and shortfallen my more recent Church experiences over the last two decades have been, would be nothing short of dire hypocrisy at its most debased. I really cannot fathom why this entire spiritual landscape of “collective worship within a public space” as it stands from the depth and breadth of my own personal experience is so aridly parched to the core, so barren and devoid of true love as it’s supposed to be shown from others, for if we were to pit the world of sales-driven marketing and that of the Church as she currently is, the only difference to mark the two would be the core thematic emphasis, and the existence of a theoretical moral compass for the Church. The rest is pretty much the same relationally-speaking: cold, hard-core logical relationality completely absent of warmth and sincerity, and which further says a great deal about why Jesus thought it necessary to talk about the difference that should distinguish those who follow Him and serve God instead of mammon, which btw, is none other than a constant heartfelt adherence to and living out of the Two Greatest Commandments, which are: “to love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, strength, and will; and to love your neighbour as yourself”. (Matthew 22 : 37-39)

It’s not that money should be completely discarded by true, faithful members of Christ’s body. Money, at this point in time is still a necessary dilemma in our world, for without it, we cannot access food or other kinds of essential material resources. The way things are set up in modern societies is that the secular world dictates the mandatory payment of all kinds of “taxes” for this and that, and so without money, these obligations to render to “Ceasar” these worldly tithes would be made next to impossible and we would find ourselves in much bother logistically-speaking if we couldn’t make these payments. Hence, the world of sales-driven marketing is simply a symptomatic outgrowth of our Ceasarean times, the Ceasarean nature of the secular world. Is it possible to cultivate a certain harmony between these two divergent paths whilst being faithful to the teachings of the Gospel and the Church as Christ originally taught? To some extent it is possible but great and necessary caution must be exercised when doing so because otherwise, we risk doing all over again what has been done down the centuries all too often, and that is making the Church mirror the world to the lost and dumbfounded who are seeking refuge from the errors of the world inside her walls, instead of making the Church mirror Christ to the world, thereby setting the world free from “the world” indeed as Christ had commanded. For we see that our world is not yet free and its freedom is still a huge work in progress. The Church cannot effectively mirror Christ to the world until it has divested itself of the behaviours described by Joselito Cerna Asis in the article above. He says that in his homeland of the Philippines, the people treat their pastors “as royalty”. Now, what did Jesus say about this? None other than “Do not lord it over others as the princes of the world do to their subjects”. (Matthew 20 : 25-29) Do you honestly think that the behaviour of these pastors who are routinely “waited on hand and foot” is reflective of Jesus’ message from the quote above? Even though Joselito credited his time in Australia with the undoing of this worldly mentality for him, actually, the Australian scene is all-too-often just as guilty as the Philippino one for propping clergy onto a worldly pedistal.

I am a staunch advocate of seminary reform whereby seminarians are trained to do a lengthy live-in internship in either mental hospitals, prisons, drug & alcohol rehab centres or half-way houses. And this needs to last at least 6 months. And this needs to be mandatory if they have not had lived experience. Ideally, they ought to have some measure of lived-experience with such life challenges. Should they have had extensive lived-experience, they ought to be simply assigned as day-chaplains unless of course they so desire to do a live-in term for their internship. Live-in terms must immerse them in a life of practical servanthood – not merely training them as MCs (Masters of Ceremonies). They also must be immersed within the meeting human-needs side of daily care for these vulnerable people. They must be trained in the rigours of interrelational integrity and held to holistic account in all matters of interactive participation so that a lively culture of true Gospel-centered friendship can develop between them and those for whom they are responsible, as carers of the most ethically sublime kind.

It is well-known that seminarians by and large are chosen on the predication that they are particularly blessed with a natural gift for being excellent in matters of personal organization. This in and of itself is a tragic misuse of discernment. For it is not finesse in personal organization that makes someone a solid fit for the pastoral task but rather, the emphasis ought to be on the gift of counsel and empathy. If those are lacking, and cannot be begotten in the person even through training, then out the door they ought to go. For there is a misplaced emphasis on task-performance perfectionism – the kind that the religious leaders of the Old Covenant prided themselves on, and the kind nevertheless, that Jesus brought into the scathing light of His divine scrutiny. And because this perfectionism and finesse in the art of personal organization is actually a God-given natural talent, and because it is not as too many are inclined to presuppose, something that every single person in the whole wide world has, those who do not have it as an exceptionally affluent natural given, should not be relegated to the bin of unsuitability for the pastoral life, as such a life ought not to be first and foremost predicated upon such giftedness as an organizer, but much more so upon charitability of character and a very personable rather than aloof heart for service coupled with the charisms of unrelenting patience and compassion. For without these, all the finesse of personal organization is as good as a meaninglessly clanging cymbal. Adroitly, personal organizational prowess needs to be devoted entirely to the humble heartfelt service of those in most need. And when this is flourishing properly, as it should, there comes with that, a tender abiding wisdom and unflinching understanding that not all people are graced with such a gift of profound swishness in personal organization, be it from birth or from a graced position in the school of life, and yet, you have these pastors who automatically assume that because you don’t have it together as they and/or a great majority of very successful worldly people do, and are therefore instead burdened so heavily with a constant daily struggle just to live well because of being without this grace, then there must be something morally corrupt or wrong with you!….That you are then presumed all-too-readily by them to be simply ‘voluntarily lazy’. I mean how utterly heartless and Phariseic can you get?!!! So, do you see it? Do you see that more change for the absolute better is a vital necessity? Otherwise the risk of a greater chastisement for those who persist in chizzling and moulding a Church that merely mirrors the world instead of Christ to the world, is God’s only perogative. And would be a serious Rock-Bottoming.

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