Nigh on 250 priests gathered from across our land and from NZ to share in fraternity; to listen to good speakers and focus group leaders; and to express their joys and hopes their sadness and challenges in living out the ministerial priesthood today.

The reconciliation ceremony was a moving and cathartic moment as we acknowledged our individual and collective sin as priests (particularly in the light of the constant revelations of clerical abuse), and our need for God’s forgiveness and the poignant moment when representatives individually expressed their hopes in the midst of some trying realities in their ministry.

I would like to again thank:

• The local organising committee who did such a wonderful job in organising this convention.
• The team at our NCP National Office for their invaluable work.
• The many generous sponsors.
• The Bishop of Parramatta, Anthony Fisher, for his contribution and the support and contribution of various agencies from the Parramatta Diocese.

For those who couldn’t attend, the addresses by Donald Cozzens, Richard Lennan, Geraldine Doogue and David Tacey are available on the NCP website.

The final convention dinner saw the launch of the short history of the National Council of Priests of Australia written by Damien Williams and awards were presented to Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, Fr Paul Hanna, Mgr Rob Egar and Fr Bob Wilkinson.

There is much material from the convention for the NCP executive to mull over and focus our energies into the future. Over the weeks and months ahead we will be distilling the feedback from the convention and prioritising our efforts to work with some of the issues raised. One thing is for sure – the richness of the convention was due in no small measure to the long years of pastoral wisdom and ministry experienced by many of our members. Many were reassured of their own thinking by the resonance they heard at the convention: sometimes similar frustrations to their own were voiced, and they discovered again that they were not alone with their joys and hopes, challenges and disappointments.

A recent letter in the English Tablet 31 July 2010 by (Fr) J. Ambrose Walsh expressed his concern about what he called “the creeping emasculation of Vatican II reforms” and that, “nearly 50 years after LumenGentium, the Church’s central authority will still not implement in any meaningful way the doctrine of a General Council: Episcopal Collegiality.” He went on to say “to implement it would trigger structural reform at every level in the Church; to continue ignoring it is surely to be resisting the Holy Spirit.” It seemed to me, at the convention, that the majority were expressing our reaffirmation of the Vatican II reforms and the urgency for structural reform to renew the church and to allow the Risen Christ to embrace the world in which we live and minister.

Bishop Kevin Dowling CSsR, the Bishop of Rustenburg, South Africa in an edited extract from a talk given by him to Catholic laity in Cape Town (the full text can be found at www.thetablet.co.uk ) courageously and eloquently put it in a recent article (“Too safe a system”, Tablet 17 July 2010): “…if church leadership anywhere presumes to criticise or critique socio-political-economic policies and policy makers, or Governments, it must also allow itself to be critiqued in the same way in terms of its policies, its internal life, and especially its modus operandi. A democratic culture and praxis, with its focus on the participation of citizens and holding accountable those who are elected to govern, is increasingly appreciated in spite of inevitable human shortcomings. When thinking people of all persuasions look at church leadership, they raise questions about, for example, real participation of the membership in its governance and how in fact Church leadership is to be held accountable, and to whom. If the Church, and its leadership, professes to follow the values of the Gospel and the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, then its internal life, its methods of governing and its use of authority will be scrutinised on the basis of what we profess.”

His words provide a great challenge for us all.

IAN MCGINNITY