www.therecord.com.au
16 NOVEMBER 2023
Edition #459
AUSTRALIA’S ARCHBISHOP COSTELLOE: CARDINAL NEWMAN’S ‘DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE’ IS KEY TO UNDERSTANDING THE SYNOD
PHOTO: THIERRY BONAVENTURA/SYNOD.VA
By Gerard O’Connell
“I don’t think we experienced the inversion of the pyramid model of the church at the synod; rather we experienced a different model altogether of the church,” the Australian archbishop Timothy Costelloe, S.D.B., one of the president delegates of the synod, told America’s Vatican correspondent in this exclusive interview in Rome on Oct. 30. A member of the Salesian order, Archbishop Costelloe has been archbishop of Perth in Western Australia since Pope Benedict XVI appointed him to that post in 2012. The 69-year-old archbishop is the president of the Australian Catholic bishops’ conference, served as president of the Plenary Council of the Australian church (2021-22) and is a member of the preparatory committee for the synod. In this interview, which has been edited for clarity and length, he
described “being a synodal church” as “an experience” that “we have to live in order to understand it.” Gerard O’Connell: You were one of the nine president delegates of the synod. What’s your overview of what you’ve experienced? Archbishop Costelloe: I remain very positive about the whole experience. I think it’s important to remember that this is the end of the first assembly and there’s another assembly in 12 months’ time. So, the question I would ask is: Are we well positioned now to take the next steps in the discernment process? The answer is yes. If people were expecting final de cisions at t he end of t he first assembly, they’ll be quite disappointed. But it was always going to be the case that at the end of the first assembly we would hopefully have clarified what the main issues were, delved into them a little deeper, allowed things to rise to the surface so that we now know what
it is that we really need to discern more deeply as we move forward. I think we achieved all of that. One of the synod’s conclusions is the need to do more theological reflection on what synodality means and and how to codify it in the canon law. That’s true! But I think before we can codify it in canon law, we need to understand it better theologically. We’ve had a lot of talk about the inversion of the pyramid model of church, where the pope is at the top, then come the cardinals, the bishops, and so on with the laity at the bottom. Pope Francis has talked about the inversion of the pyramid. But I don’t think we experienced the inversion of the pyramid at the synod; rather we experienced a different model altogether of the church, as a community of people which has within it, at its service, the ministry of the ordained. Full Text available at
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