Page 35 - The Priest, Summer 2015

The content on the ACCC’s website www.
clergy.asn.au is slowly expanding. Eventu- ally, every article ever published in The Priest will be available in electronic format, automatically in- dexed by Google.
In the meantime, previous issues of The Priest have been scanned and upload- ed as PDFs. The is- sues pro led here are available to view on- line and download.
25 years ago
The Priest, Vol. 2, No. 6. SUMMER 90/91
‘Bernard Häring on the Pastoral Care of the Divorced and Remarried’
by William May
‘Marriage & the Church’s Mission today’ (a three part series)
by Msgr Carlo Caffarra
‘The Universal Catechism in the light of several of its antecedents’
by Msgr Michael J Wrenn
‘The question of the ordination of women in the Catholic Church’
by Fr John Wilkinson CM
‘The AMEN of the believer’
Msgr Michael J Wrenn
‘Dr Jerome Lejeune’s Testimony’
A pro-life geneticist’s Testament
10 years ago
The Priest, Vol. 9, No. 2. DECEMBER 2005 ‘Radicalism, roots, delity’ by Archbishop Barry Hickey
‘Fleeting idea led to a priestly vocation:
pro le on Fr Michael de Stoop’ by David Williams
‘In memory of John Paul II: an eye-witness
account by a young priest in Rome’ by Fr Peter Mitchell
‘The role of the priest in the Church of today’
(Extract below) by Bishop William Brennan ‘From the windows of the Roman Curia’
by Msgr J Anthony McDaid
‘The fraternity of the ACCC: a
20-year personal re ection’ by Fr John Walter
‘Rights and process in Canon law: the
application of salus animarum’ by Msgr J Anthony McDaid
‘On catechising children’ by Fr Paul-Anthony McGavin ‘Introduction to Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year’
by Msgr Peter Elliott
‘Review of Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year’
by Bishop Luc Matthys
The role of the priest in the Church today
The late Bishop William Brennan was a founding member of the ACCC, and the keynote speaker at the Confraternity’s rst Na- tional Conference in 1985. His remarks were reprint- ed in the Summer 2005 is- sue of the The Priest, on the twentieth anniversary of the ACCC’s inauguration. This is a short extract; the entire address is now avail- able to read online.
From The Priest, Vol. 9, No. 2, DECEMBER 2005
From the archives
Journal of the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy
35
The priest and ecclesial unity
he unity of the Church is part of the faith we profess: “We believe in one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church”: “one” in the unique profession of the apos- tolic faith and being united as one in that one faith. The need to work for Church unity is not only in the sense of ecumenical activity among churches, but in the sense of unity within the Catholic Church. This is a new challenge for most of us. A brief study of Church history, even in apostolic times, should be enough to show us that in this regard the need to work for unity has been present. Even in its brief history, the Catholic Church in Australia has had its storms. What perhaps is new in our situation is that the strain on Church unity is felt in many parishes and at different levels.
The Extraordinary Synod [of November 1985, on the twentieth anniversary of Vatican II] addressed this issue also and made a num- ber of points, a couple of which I would like to dwell on. The one is the distinction – new to me I have to say – between plurality and plu-
riformity. One doesn’t have to travel very far to realise that we have variety and pluriform- ity in the Church. Even within a small country diocese one can encounter a great deal of it, although the Synod uses the expression more to indicate the diversity between dioceses than within them. The rich Catholic pluriformity is sharply distinguished from the “pluralism of fundamentally opposed positions [that] leads to dissolution, destruction and the loss of iden- tity” (Relatio Finalis II,C,4). In the thinking of the Synod, the difference between pluriformity and pluralism is that the former has its founda- tion in an ecclesiology of communion.
The cultivation of communion has to be one of the essential marks, I believe, of priestly spir- ituality today. It is based on the profound unity in pluriformity found in the life of the Trinity which we have been invited to share in Christ. This sharing of the life of the Trinity in Christ through the Spirit binds us in a totally new way to the other members of Christ’s Body, who share this same life. This common sharing is the basis of the mutual respect Christians show