PARIS (FRANCE)
LaCroix International
March 23, 2019
By Paul Collins
Two months from now Australia’s Catholic bishops will make their quinquennial visit to Rome reporting on the state of the church. During this visit ad limina apostolorum (‘to the threshold of the apostles Peter and Paul’) bishops meet the pope and officials of the Vatican to discuss issues facing their local Catholic community.
Originating as pilgrimages to Rome, these five-yearly visits became obligatory during the over-centralization of the church in the nineteenth century. What follows is what the Australian bishops ought to tell Pope Francis and what he ought to tell them.
The bishops should begin by confessing that they are deeply divided among themselves, as revealed in the evenly split vote for bishops’ conference president in May 2018 between Brisbane’s Mark Coleridge and Sydney’s Anthony Fisher, with Coleridge winning simply on seniority.
Essentially there are three groups in the conference: there is a sizeable minority who follow the uncompromising, Cardinal Pell, boots-and-all style of Catholicism, now led by Fisher. The majority are essentially ‘neutral’.
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