Department of Leadership & Governance

This paper illustrates how the key elements of the emerging synodal Church are oriented to transformation, and how this transformation is effective at the three levels of ecclesial life as individual, community, and universal Church.
Several themes are emerging as foundational to the task of building a synodal Church. This paper focusses upon three in order to demonstrate synodality as commitment to transformation: journeying, bridge-building, and responsibility.
This paper employs the theology of Bernard Lonergan and the Transcendental Method of intentional consciousness as the most appropriate means of engaging with synodality and its demands upon philosophical and theological thinking. Concrete examples of the paradigm of synodality at work in the life of the contemporary Church are drawn from recent diocesan synods in the USA, and from the words and actions of Pope Francis. These are also instructive for Australia’s Plenary Council in 2021-2022.

Pope Francis' exhortation Amoris Laetitia (2016) invites the Catholic Church to perceive families not as a problem, but an opportunity. The key themes of this document - along with some insights and criticisms - are discussed in this brief review for the website of the Redemptorists of Australia and Oceania (April 2016).

This presentation looks at learning as "craftsmanship" (C. Wright Mills) and education as a "person-making activity."
It was a short presentation given at the 2016 Postgraduate Student Experience Symposium, supported by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching.
https://postgraduatestudentexperience.com/symposium-presentation-videos/

The search for a holistic and satisfying description of the human person is, unsurprisingly, a difficult task. In "The Theological Notion of the Human Person" Gregory Brett investigates an insightful paradigm of the human person: an understanding of persons as oriented to communion and as “agents for communion.” The dialogue partners are two twentieth Century figures: renowned German theologian Karl Rahner and Scottish philosopher John Macmurray.
This book review was added to Amazon Reviews:
https://www.amazon.com/Theological-Notion-Human-Person-Conversation/product-reviews/303431258X?reviewerType=all_reviews

The purpose of this thesis is to establish foundations from which an ecclesiology of synodality can be developed. Synodality marks a new era of meaning for the Catholic Church and work in this area is breaking ground every day.
The unique contribution of this thesis to the field of ecclesiology is through its engagement with Lonergan’s insights into transcendental consciousness and its relationship to theological method, in order to investigate and provide foundations for synodality, and to define synodality as the Catholic Church being authentic in the contemporary world.
The self-understanding of the Catholic Church in the contemporary world requires development of an ecclesiology that is dynamic and relational, and supportive of a vision of mature and co-responsible members of the Church. Foundations for such an ecclesiology will ground this vision, pointing to it as a journey that supports growth in authenticity, and therefore the healing, co-responsibility, and missionary activity of the People of God. This thesis describes what it means for the Catholic Church to exercise synodality in its praxis and governance, while demonstrating that synodality is already emerging and impacting upon all of the Church’s relationships.