AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter
Jul. 19, 2012
By Phyllis Zagano
MELBOURNE and SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Ten days in Australia isn’t nearly enough, except to find that the church is alive and kicking.
Mostly kicking.
My first-time-ever trip to Melbourne and Sydney in mid-May was as guest of Garratt Publishing, which publishes Australian editions of my books Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future (with Gary Macy and William T. Ditewig) and Women in Ministry: Emerging Questions about the Diaconate. Garratt sponsored conferences and talks, and introduced me both in person and on various radio programs to an alive and questioning church.
The issues in the Australian church are such that I might as well have been in the United States. Except instead of a “Fortnight of Freedom,” the Australian bishops are supporting “A Year of Grace” from Pentecost 2012 to Pentecost 2013. In their program, every single brochure, video, Web page and mailing talks about Jesus Christ. It seems the bishops — or at least the staff of the bishops’ conference — have their “messaging” under control.
The visit was full of surprises. Following the example of several U.S. donors who had purchased and sent the book Women Deacons to every U.S. diocesan ordinary and auxiliary, Australia’s Catholics for Renewal group sent copies of the book to 42 Australian Catholic bishops and auxiliaries. The cover letter asked for a “broadening of the role of women in ministry.”
Whether Catholics for Renewal has started a new conversation remains to be seen. There are but a relative handful of deacons in Australia. Would the bishops support adding women to the mix? One indication: They’ve just elected conservative Melbourne Bishop Denis J. Hart as their conference president. Hart, said to be a protégé of Sydney’s Cardinal George Pell, succeeded Pell as bishop of Melbourne in 2001. Hart, vice chairman of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, may be best remembered locally in Melbourne for telling a badgering sex-abuse victim, “Go to hell, bitch,” after she knocked on his door in the middle of the night in 2004. Without “recalling” his exact words, Hart apologized in court several years later.
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