tvc.dsj.org | April 2, 2019
IN THE CHURCH
15
Gospel Builds One’s Immunity against Selfishness, Pope Tells Students
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY -- Despite a busy
day scheduled with meeting Rome’s
mayor and city council, Pope Francis
made a surprise, early morning stop to
offer a Lenten reflection for university
students, encouraging them to build up
their immunity against individualism
with the Gospel.
“You understand well how the
Gospel gives us the most radical and
deepest antidote to defend ourselves
and heal from the disease of individu-
alism,” he told the students and staff
at Rome’s Pontifical Lateran University
March 26.
They should pursue their studies
and their lives “with an open mind and
on one’s knees” in prayer -- with an atti-
tude of seeking and certainty based on
the truths of reason and faith, he said.
After arriving unannounced for the
8:30 a.m. appointment, the pope led
the school’s traditional annual event
as a “lectio divina,” a form of prayerful
meditation on the word of God.
Reflecting on the day’s first reading
from the Book of Daniel (3:25, 34-43),
the pope underlined the importance of
listening to Scripture from the vantage
point of “today’s reality” so as to unveil
Pope Francis visits the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome March 26, 2019. (CNS photo/
Vatican Media via Reuters)
deeper and further meaning.
In the reading, Azariah praises God
for his mercy and faithfulness, as he
spared him and his two companions
from all harm when they were thrown
in a furnace for refusing to worship
an idol.
Yet Azariah knows God’s goodness
includes divine justice for the sins of
his people, who have been reduced
“beyond any other nation, brought
low everywhere in the world this day
because of our sins.”
Pope Francis said today’s “cultural
context” is a lot like that burning fur-
nace, raging with one mindset that
“engulfs and lulls everyone to sleep
with its deadly embrace and burns
every form of creativity and dissenting
way of thinking.”
Like Azariah and his companions,
he told the students, “you walk un-
harmed thanks to being rooted in Jesus
and his Gospel,” able to keep a gaze
fixed on high while remaining firmly
a part of and active in today’s world.
In fact, going to a pontifical universi-
ty is not meant to isolate them from the
real world, he said, but to get them used
to it with a sense of “critical awareness
and the ability to discern” so that they
can have an impact on and contribute
to society and culture.
Adhering to the Gospel and embrac-
ing church tradition, he said, are not
meant to stop people from thinking or
encourage them to listlessly repeat the
same old phrases. Scripture and tradi-
tion “want first of all to give you a point
of view that is free, authentic, faithful to
what’s real,” and, “healthy” compared
to what else is out there.
People are strongly tempted to live
“a comfortable and cheap individual-
ism” that cares nothing about others,
God’s creation and the future, the
pope said.
He told the students that if they let
themselves be led by the Lord and his
angels, they will not “be burned” but
walk away full of life and hope.
Christianity puts the focus on re-
lationships, encountering the sacred
mystery of the other and seeing univer-
sal communion with all of humanity as
the vocation of everyone, he said.
Christians must stay rooted to their
history, to the memory and dreams of
the people of God because a firm sense
of belonging will ensure they have “the
antibodies to not commit the same mis-
takes” as their ancestors, against God,
against others and against creation.
God’s mercy overflows, he added,
when he sees “our heart is truly contrite
and remorseful.”
Australian Church Completes First Phase of Historic Plenary Council
By Michael Sainsbury
Catholic News Service
SYDNEY -- The Australian Catholic
Church has completed the first phase
of its 2020 Plenary Council, in which
laypeople will be allowed to vote and
decisions could be binding on the na-
tion’s Catholics, once ratified by the
Vatican.
The meeting’s organizers have
received more than 20,000 submis-
sions from more than 75,000 Catholics
around the country in a 10-month
“listening and dialogue” process that
finished March 13.
The landmark meeting that will take
place in two Australian cities during
2020 and 2021 is already bringing to
the surface debate about the role of the
laity in the church and other reforms
that are becoming more urgent in the
wake of the ever-growing global sexual
abuse scandal.
The Australian meeting will be
only the third plenary council to held
anywhere in the world since World
War II; the Philippines held one in 1991
and Poland in 1993. There were three
plenary councils in the United States
before 1884, but none since.
The Australian council was an-
nounced in 2017, during the five-year
Royal Commission into Institutional
Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
That inquiry documented decades
of abuse by Catholic clerics, clergy
from other faiths and adults from
nonreligious institutions and handed
down its findings in October 2017. Some
findings related to the administration
of the Catholic Church and the forma-
tion of clergy, including a recommenda-
tion that the seal of the confession be
removed for abuse cases.
“Around the start of the new millen-
nium, the Australian bishops started
discussing the possibility of some
sort of national gathering to take up
the challenge St. John Paul II issued
in his apostolic letter ‘Novo Millen-
nio Ineunte,’” Lana Turvey-Collins,
facilitator for Plenary Council 2020,
told Catholic News Service. The let-
ter said the new millennium was the
perfect opportunity for every church,
nationally and on a diocesan level,
to reflect on the faith and determine
what pastoral actions to take in order
to make Christ known and loved in
today’s world.
A plenary council is the highest
form of gathering of any local church. It
has legislative and governance author-
ity, and decisions made at the council
– if approved by the Vatican – become
binding for the Catholic Church in
Australia; a synod does not have this
legislative and governance authority.
The Australian church has been
rocked by the sex abuse scandal, Royal
Commission and recent conviction
of Cardinal George Pell to six-years’
imprisonment for sexually abusing
two 13-year-choirboys. The cardinal
remains in jail pending an appeal hear-
ing in June.
Jack de Groot, CEO of St. Vincent de
Paul in New South Wales and chairman
of the Implementation Advisory Group
to Australian bishops and religious
on sex abuse, said in many ways, the
country is a test case for the church
worldwide.
“The plenary council of the church,
it’s only going to have credibility if
laypeople get to vote on its recommen-
dation -- and that they have at least half
the vote,” de Groot told CNS.
“There are still some bishops who
have a default setting to the way things
were, and that needs to change,” he
said. “There are 5 million baptized
Catholics in Australia and 800,000 kids
in Catholic schools around the country;
they need to be given permission to
speak, and they need to get some power
with this voice.