Bishop’s Exchange: Taking risks together

19 Dec 2019

By Eric Leslie Martin

By listening to the sincere voice of the young people of Australia, the Bishop’s Exchange was an opportunity to more clearly listen to what the Spirit is saying. Photo: Josh Low.

By Eric Martin

The Bishop’s X-Change sessions at the 2019 Australian Catholic Youth Festival (ACYF) invited the generations represented by the Church to come together in conversation with each other, in response to Pope Francis’ Synod of the Youth and subsequent Apostolic Exhortation Christus Vivit, and the question ““What does it mean to you, for us to be a Christ centered Church, who are taking risks together?”

The youth in session two were joined by three bishops: Port Pirie Bishop and Administrator for the Archdiocese of Adelaide, Bishop Greg O’Kelly, Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, and Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fischer.

“There’s no way that someone like me, as a Bishop, can listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit if I don’t also listen to voices like yours,” Archbishop Coleridge said in his introduction.

“I am genuinely interested in what the voices in this room that I’m a part of have to say, because it just might be that through you, the Spirit is heard.

“I have grown more and more convinced in my years as a Bishop, that we are, as the Church in Australia, at the point where if we don’t take risks together, then the Church will die some kind of death: The Church will never truly die, but there are many deaths,’ he explained.

“I think we are at the point, very obviously, where we cannot put up a fail-safe sign, under a notice saying ‘business as usual,’ we have to take risks, make big decisions: and that’s what the Plenary Council is all about; big decisions under the influence of the Holy Spirit – in other words, not dumb decisions, knee-jerk reactions.

“But risks that are rooted in the past and rooted in the experience of listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit – that, we try to do together.

He stressed the word together, explaining that the Plenary Council is a process, rather than an event, and is a journey that we must undertake together, as a united Church.

Each session was broken down into small groups to facilitate genuine interaction between the youth and the Bishops. Photo: Iceberg Media.

Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fischer shared a poignant example of a recent risk taken by the Church, one especially relevant to his audience.

“I was Bishops Delegate for Youth for a long time and it’s a real passion of mine.”

“That great movement in the Church goes back to Pope John Paul II’s saying to his people in the Curia one day, I think I’m going have a meeting of the young people of the world.

“And they said, ‘Aaah, don’t do that: it’s dangerous, they won’t come and it will be an embarrassment to the Church; they’ve got no faith and they’ve got no ideals. If they do come, they’ll make a mess; who knows what they’ll say? It’s a big risk!” he shared.

“We’re talking about taking risks for God today and that’s an example, he took a big risk in calling the first World Youth Day. Of course, did they come? They came in their hundreds of thousands at first, then their millions (World Youth Day Manilla, 1995, recorded 5 million in attendance) – they made something very beautiful for God.”

At the end of the discussions, each group was called upon to share the outcome with the rest of the session, with the answers recorded by Dr Debra Sayce for the Plenary Council.

Pilgrims gathered together with the Australian Bishops to discuss how the issues being discussed at Plenary Council affect them. Photo: Josh Low.

The emergent themes included:

  • The fact that sharing your faith in Jesus means stepping out of your comfort zone and that it is most effectively achieved through influence, not force. The youth of 2019 are clear in their Catholic identity and want to be a witness of love, sharing their faith not doctrinally, but rather through personal relationships.
  • We need to move beyond our fear of change and become open to it, while acknowledging the need to be clear in our identity and our Gospel values.
  • The Church needs to be open to the invitation of the Holy Spirit and works to address the often contentious issues affecting young people today, such as sexuality, and avoiding reactionary behavior by looking for Jesus in others and centering our own lives on Jesus before anything else.
  • Re-attracting youth back to the Church by going back to the fundamentals of Catholicism, focusing on the importance of Jesus, salvation and providing opportunities for youth to come to know Jesus personally.
  • Having the confidence that comes with the strength of that relationship within the reality of the modern world: “I know Jesus and Jesus knows me.” Being able to articulate that faith in an informed, rational manner that engages with the community.