Each Diocese is spoken of in Church documents as
the local Church. We might think of the
Parish as being the local Church which in some ways it is. But the bishop and the Diocese are key to the
life and mission of our Parish community.
If the bishop is to know what our needs and expectations are we must be
able to effectively communicate with him and he must be able to effectively
respond. Fifty years ago our Diocese was
formed – out of a much larger Diocese – so that we could do this better. And a new bishop marks a new stage in the
processof attempting to achieve this.
We are gradually getting to realise more fully that
the Church is not the Pope and the Bishops.
It is all of us – all the baptised – and we are all responsible for its
growth and development. The Pope and
Bishops are there to assist us to play our part in building up the Body of
Christ. They are meant to encourage us –
but we are also meant to encourage them.
We need each other and can only fulfil our task if we work together and
have the courage to trust one another.
No group has all the answers – least of all the clergy!
One of the greatest saints of the Church was
Catherine of Siena who lived at a very difficult time in the life of the
Church. (When was there an easy time?)
The Popes were living in Avignon in the South of France and were not at
all keen on returning to Rome. Catherine
decided that she would encourage the Pope to do the right thing. She was not always regarded as being a
particularly gifted person. She had
learned to read with difficulty and only learned to write in adulthood. She was born in 1347 and continued to live at
home and died at the age of thirty-three. She never became a nun nor did she marry.
She had enormous courage, urging and finally
convincing Pope Gregory XI to return from France to Rome. She wrote to him: ‘Don’t be a fearful child,
but a grown man.’ She gave advice to his
successor Pope Urban VI telling him bluntly that he needed to control his
temper. When the Popes returned to Rome,
things seemed to get worse for the Church.
There were rival claimants to the Papacy and it was not always easy to
tell who was the Pope and who was the false claimant, or anti-Pope. She wrote to the Cardinals who supported the
anti-Pope: ‘What made you do this? You
are flowers that shed no perfume, but a stench that makes the whole world reek.’
She was summoned to Florence to be interrogated but
she was given a very holy and learned Dominican friar to support her. He later became Master-General of the
Dominican Order and wrote a biography of Catherine who was canonised
in1461. She travelled widely to press
for the internal reform of the Church and to foster peace between States. Because of these efforts Pope John Paul II
declared her co-patroness of Europe.
When she learned to write she did so with great
effect. She wrote a widely acclaimed
work on spirituality and in 1970 Pope Paul VI declared her a Doctor of the
Church. Before that Pope Pius XII
declared her patroness of Italy. Pope
John Paul II praised her ‘impassioned liveliness’ and ‘freedom of
initiative.’ In her lifetime no Pope –
publically at least – lavished such praise on her, which is very
understandable! She certainly made her
voice heard.
For our age, more than any other, it should be easy
to find channels of communication within the Church. But where are they? Surely new processes could be devised to
enable people in our Parishes to communicate with the local Church of the
Diocese and with the Universal Church.
This is how a healthy body is meant to function. St Paul never tires of telling us that in a
body each member has an essential part to play and it is imperative that there
be mutual respect and co-operation among all the members. How to achieve it might be a fruitful subject
to explore at open meetings at Diocesan, Deanery and Parish level. We could do with more ‘impassioned
liveliness’ and ‘freedom of initiative.’
