Leonard worked for 25 years in forming teachers and spoke recently to the South Australian Catholic school leaders in Adelaide, Australia.

For many children, Catholic schools are the only Christian community they may ever belong to, and they must find people who are passionate about Christ and the Church's best proclamations.

Currently parish priest of the combined parishes of North Sydney, Lavendar Bay and Kirribilli, Leonard quipped it also meant he was the parish priest of Luna Park.

Applying the teaching of loving God and your neighbour is key, he told Catholic school leaders.

"Our core business is applying the teaching of Jesus to all aspects of our schools - 'Love God and love your neighbour as yourself. On this hangs all the law and prophets'" Leonard stated.

Increasing demand for Catholic education

Leonard outlined key statistics showing declining religious practice in Australia, with only 9.1% of Catholics attending Mass weekly. However, he observed that the demand for Catholic education continues to grow.

"Demand for Catholic education is ever increasing. Our schools are going up (in enrolments), but participation in local parishes is going down, dramatically so" he said.

"Schools are not a business.

"They are a series of relationships - relationship with God, the church community and stakeholders.

"So how do we animate our vision for a faith-filled community that's neither pious nor fundamentalist?

"Unashamedly, we are following Jesus. It's Jesus' way, truth and light and we're on the same mission. Sometimes the parish and the school can feel increasingly like we're on two missions. It's the one mission with two expressions."

Leonard encouraged educators to create welcoming, hospitable liturgical communities with good music and preaching at their schools.

Evangelical moments

The Jesuit priest said that the perceived dilution of faith means some clergy want to close down Catholic education.

"I want to own right up front - there are some priests because I've heard them, who want to close Catholic education down. There have at least been a couple of bishops, the way they've spoken at Catholic education conferences that I've been at, the way they spoke to principals, the way they have berated them, they've chastised them, that people aren't going to Mass any more…that we've diluted the faith, it's just terrible."

On the contrary, Leonard wants to make the schools modern mission territories.

Leonard said nobody baptised or celebrated weddings and funerals better than Catholics "when we get it right".

"They are our greatest evangelical moments, people who go to a cathedral for a big funeral are probably not believers, but they're on our turf and we need to welcome them, take that group very seriously because they have an impact on who we are" he said.

"But the first thing we tell people is that they can't go to communion.

"Similarly, Catholic schools should be embraced" he said.

Sources

The Southern Cross

This is not the first time Sister Joan Chittister has called out Australia's Catholic hierarchy. She was recently embroiled in a censorship row with Melbourne's Archbishop.

Now she is renewing calls for women's ordination and for laypeople to be given more power over parishes.

Chittister's challenging call comes at a time when the nation's bishops are under pressure to overhaul the church after years of sex scandals and internal unrest.

Reforms such as these were meant to be thrashed out at this year's Plenary Council, which is scheduled to take place in October.

Said to be the most significant conference Australian Catholic bishops have held in 80 years, the working documents prepared for the event suggest some of the more contentious issues on the agenda may not get a full hearing - if they are discussed at all.

"Everyone knows that the church in Australia needs a major overhaul of its governance, culture and structures, but instead of setting out a clear, concise and coherent blueprint for reform, this document is a ground plan for inertia," says Catholics for Renewal president Peter Wilkinson.

"It is very disappointing."

Chittister says she shares concerns that suppressing Catholic reform "by the bishops" would impede much-needed improvements.

The upshot will be that ever more people will abandon their parishes.

"There are one of two ways that this can end. The bishops can embrace the concerns and the need for resolution or they continue to ignore the laity - at which point the church will some day wake up in the morning and find out that the church is in fact gone," she says.

Speaking to an audience of 3000 this month, she added: "Catholicism must grow up, beyond the parochial to the global, beyond one system and one tradition to a broader way of looking at life ... Why not married priests, women priests, or women cardinals?"

Chittister's appearance in Australia comes at a critical moment for the church ahead of the upcoming Plenary Council.

Expectations were high in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse, which found the hierarchical nature of the church, coupled with its lack of governance, had created "a culture of deferential obedience" in which the protection of paedophile priests was left unchallenged.

Whether the Church actually has a will to change is something Catholic Australia has yet to find out. It is reportedly concerned that change is not on the agenda.

Their fears were compounded in March when a working document prepared for the Plenary Council did not give enough credence to critical issues that members have been seeking to address.

Peter Johnstone, who is the head of the Australasian Catholic Coalition for Church Reform, is urging Australia's bishops to use the Plenary Council to genuinely tackle the "existential crisis" the church faces.

Source

• Brisbane Times
• Image: Vimeo

Hundreds of thousands of Catholics are pushing for the church to open itself to ordaining women, ending clericalism and enabling people who are LGBTI or divorced to be included more.

Prominent Catholics are sounding alarm bells, warning the Church that Pell's conviction should be seen in the light of the influence he has had on the church.

"A convicted paedophile has played a major part in the form of the Church we see today," Catholics for Renewal spokesman Peter Johnstone says.

"It can't just be business as usual."

An internal report, based on the input of more than 220,000 people is demanding radical reform at next year's Plenary Council, which will discuss the future of the Catholic Church in Australia.

The plenary council will be the first to be held since the second Vatican Council.

The internal report includes proposals such as:

• more inclusion for divorced and remarried Catholics
• better selection of priests
• more involvement for lay-people
• an end to discrimination against LGBTI people
• the need for women to have a greater role in the church
• more support for victims of child sex abuse

Whether the Church is open to change is a question many people are asking, particularly in the light of Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli's recent media statements.

These include Comensoli saying he'd go to jail rather than break the confessional seal to report on a paedophile.

He also said during a radio interview that he doesn't believe Pell is guilty. His conviction could have been a result of mistaken identity on the part of the surviving victim, Comensoli suggested.

Proposed new laws compelling priests to report on child abuse disclosed during confession are also raising questions about the Church's openness to change.

Labour MP Paul Edbrooke - whose father was sexually abused by a Catholic clergyman - hit out at Comensoli's comments, saying:

"It certainly takes a man detached from all logic and reality to go on radio and sell our community this rubbish. But it takes an even stupider one to expect people to believe it."

A spokesman for Comensoli said he would not be responding to Edbrooke's comments. He also refused to respond to suggestions that Pell's conviction should be viewed as a "wake-up call" for church reform.

Source

• The Canberra Times
• MNews Today