CathNews New Zealand

Bishop Anthony Randazzo’s address, delivered as President of the Federation of Catholic Bishops conferences of Oceania to the synod media on October 6th, 2024, brought to light several crucial concerns.

The significance of his address cannot be overstated, as it sheds light on key issues that demand our attention not only around his two niche issues but also around the framework of episcopal thinking that goes with niche thinking.

The two niche issues of governance in the church and women’s ordination are handled very cleverly rhetorically, especially with his summation of women’s issues in the Church, where he presents false alternatives.

Correctly, in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, women have all the rights and opportunities for women, both in public and private life, which is surely a good thing.

Because some people take it upon themselves to advocate for certain things, it becomes clear that there is a question here that is important and needs to be considered. The false alternatives are obfuscated by rapping them in the false clothing of exceptionalism and colonialism.

Australia and the Oceania perspective

From a political and cultural perspective, Australia and New Zealand are associated with the Oceania region, which includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.

Oceania is a broad and diverse expanse of islands and cultures across the Pacific Ocean. However, where it is politically expedient, New Zealand and Australia do not belong to Oceania, and the Church has historically shown this preference.

Contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand would consider itself more linked to Polynesia through the cultural and linguistic relationships between the Māori of Aotearoa than the bishop seems to understand.

The concern here is that the Church is again too clumsily speaking about regions of the world, cultures, peoples, traditions, histories and geo-political masters that, when oversimplified, become used as a means of secondary colonisation, which is what the bishop later does in his address, when he addresses his ‘niche issues’.

In describing countries in Oceania that he describes as “ecologically fragile,” Papua New Guinea is given as the example of a country rich in minerals and natural resources that ‘many nations look hungrily at’ to mine for their wealth and companies that offer ‘sweet packages’ to nations are ‘economically poor and vulnerable’.

This is true, and the Australian government and companies are in their “boots and all” alongside governments and companies from New Zealand, China, and the United States, to name a few.

People not ecology?

Turning attention to the care of the planet’s people and not just its ecology, the bishop asks us not to care for the planet at the ‘expense of the people who live on the planet’.

This is where his real agenda comes to the fore.

He describes those who cross untamed oceans to Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to settle as what one might describe as “climatic refugees” or “economic migrants”, without a single reference to Australia’s immigration detention facilities on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, and other facilities in Papua New Guinea, Nauru, and Manus Island.

There are also other processing and detention centres around Australia. These centres are used to detain people under the mandatory immigration detention policy for those who arrive illegally “in boats from across the seas” under the “Operation of Sovereign Borders”.

While the situation of illegal economic migrants and climate refugees are not similar in Aotearoa, New Zealand, to those in Australia, these are both “migrant” nations that profited from those who travelled across the world to come to these countries.

Nevertheless, all non-Aboriginal Australians and Manuhiri New Zealanders need to speak carefully about such issues, given our histories of colonialism and our treatment of our respective indigenous peoples, not to mention our respective colonial histories, geopolitical ambitions, and use of the Island nations of Oceania to our geo-political ends.

The bishop then uses reverse colonialism and Oceanian exceptionalism to defend his rejection of the “niche issues” of the wealthy and powerful Europeans and North American churches with access to money and technology: (1) the use of the language and thinking of business governance and management when describing the governance of the Church; and (2) the ordination of women when women in other parts of the world are not being respected as women.

Niche issues

“Niche issues” emerge ‘out of churches that have great wealth’ with ‘access to technology and resources’ and become an all-consuming ‘imposition on people who sometimes struggle to feed their families, to be able to survive the rising sea levels or the dangerous journeys across wild oceans trying to resettle in new lands;’ and they take the synod away from its presumably authentic trajectory into ‘a new form of colonialism’ that oppresses the most vulnerable people.’

This argument is used to justify detaining and killing gay and trans people in Africa because these issues are not “African” but “European”.

Exceptionalism and Colonialism

Hearing this, one needs to ask what a synod is for if not to listen to all the church and, in that process, reject an “Oceanian exceptionalism” that places the people of Oceania in a non-synodal place.

As a person of Oceania, I reject the bishop’s position as naïve and patronising. I know of plenty of women in Aotearoa New Zealand, and in Australia who advocate both for women’s ordination and for women in poverty.

The bishop’s understanding of colonialisation linked to ecclesial exceptionalism reflects that of the African bishop’s exceptionalism in their rejection of Fiducia supplicans, because it is a “niche issue” for the amoral West and a place of exception for the African bishops.

This creates and sustains a false understanding of ecclesial communion that ironically relies on a “secularised” and limited understanding of colonialism to justify itself.

Church Governance

Restructuring the Church’s management and governance along more “secular lines” according to the “secular world” is another niche issue to be rejected, for which I offer four considerations.

Firstly, being offended when individuals describe restructuring ecclesial offices and structures using “secular” language is often the default position of hierarchs who do not want to give up power.

It is often linked to an inability to see that the presumptions of church governance are essentially exclusionary and lack transparency. It tends to forget that the processes of selecting a bishop, which use the current ecclesial processes, are not foolproof or transparent.

Secondly, it creates and maintains a dualistic understanding of language as “secular” and opposed to the “sacred”, which is arguably not the language of the Christian Scriptures or the Councils of the Early Church, where the secular and the sacred are put aside in the Incarnational.

Generally, when a church cleric condemns modern business management and leadership tools, processes, and languages, they display their central confusion regarding the difference between management and governance.

To decry the word “networking” in favour of ‘communion, fellowship and community’ is ok as far as it goes but let us not be naïve to think that networking is not also a means used by the Holy Spirit to attain the ends of God.

In this regard, perhaps the Spirit is more sophisticated in the administration of the Church than we would like to think.

Thirdly, this division, which argues for a unique sacred culture that is immutable, has been revealed as an abject failure in the numerous investigations and Royal Commissions into the abuse of minors and vulnerable people.

Indeed, understanding that the structures of culture, governance, management, and leadership that have led the Church to this place are part of the scandal!

Finally, it is worthwhile to consider that many of the “secular” goals of governance and management have Christian roots and that many—though not all—seek to work for the good of the employee, except in places where people are exploited for their labour, it is worth remembering that if the Church used modern management and leadership practices and processes, albeit using our lexicon, we might have avoided or dealt with the scandal of abuse more quickly and emphatically.

Women’s Ordination… But don’t mention the Diaconate!

The second “niche issue” concerns women’s ordination but avoids the elephant in the room, the female diaconate.

This issue seems to vex the bishop, even when he admits they are essential, but not for women in non-European and non-North American contexts. We aren’t told where Australia and New Zealand stand on this, but the presumption is that women in Oceania stand with the bishop.

Women’s ordination is a “hot button” topic that has been going ‘going on for years’ perhaps like a weeping sore with a scab that just will not heal.

In this, he avoids the issue of women’s ordination to the Diaconate, the tangible element that breaks open the question or rips the scab off the sore.

Thus, the medical analogy is not to be discounted. Most wounds need sunlight to heal, and this one will not be ignored or bandaged with the “mummy” or “womb” adoration of celibate men, which is so often the default position of those who are caught in a concretisation of the theology of the Church as a woman to her Lord Jesus.

The concretisation of this theology may account for the question coming back repeatedly.

A more worrying example of exceptionalism is used to reject the needs of wealthy, technological women as colonialism and to place the women in economic and technological poverty as a new class of colonised people.

The use of exceptionalism in this way, when linked to colonialism and economic, social and ecological power on the one hand and poverty on the other, pits women against women.

If this is true, then it is insidious that women are doing this to each other. Therefore, such a claim must be supported with empirical evidence because it is the abuse of women by women through the medium of synodal structures.

If this is true and the bishop can support it with empirical evidence, he is right to call it out. If not, he should apologise and resign.

Women, the Church

It sounds patronising to say that women have been at the heart of the Church since its inception.

Indeed, one can easily turn to Mary of Nazareth and to the first proclamation of the resurrection—a diaconal event—in the person of Mary of Magdala, but is it enough in the twenty-first century to state this as if it answers all questions?

Similarly, it is reasonable to state that the voice of strident, wealthy, educated, literate, well-fed women in North America, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Central and South America, Asia, Africa and not to forget Oceania may be the ones who know why, if or how the management and leadership structures of the Church need to change?

Similarly, is it potentially true that these same women, rather than being “exceptionalised” and “colonialised” might be the best ones to meet in synod and discuss the question of women’s ordination, if that’s not a blatant patriarchal suggestion?

• Dr Joe Grayland is an Assistant Lecturer, Department of Liturgy at Wuerburg University, Germany. He is the author of “Catholics. Prayer, Belief and Diversity in a Secular Context: A New Zealand Perspective” and of “Liturgical Lockdown: Covid and the Absence of the Laity. A New Zealand Perspective”.

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