The initiative, led by ACU theologians and a prominent governance expert, aims to examine the evolving role of lay leadership in Church governance.

The research will focus on how lay leadership can be nurtured and effectively integrated within the Church's governance structures.

Spearheading the project are Associate Professor Maeve Louise Heaney VDMF and Associate Professor Jamie Calder SJ from ACU's School of Theology. Commissioner Adjunct Professor Susan Pascoe, an award-winning governance expert, a team from Durham University and ACU PhD candidate Lawrence Hallinan join them.

Ministerial PJPs (Public Juridic Persons), a widely adopted governance model in Australia, will be a key focus. Under the Code of Canon Law, these entities serve as the Church's equivalent of civil corporations. They oversee Catholic ministries such as schools and healthcare.

Many of these responsibilities have transitioned from religious institutes to lay-led Ministerial PJPs in recent years. This makes them a crucial aspect of lay involvement in Church governance.

Discernment and decision-taking

Professor Heaney said the research would help improve lay leaders' ongoing formation through a theological lens.

"As a theologian, I'm interested in exploring the theologies of ministry underpinning these emerging forms and how they interweave and support a synodal Church that involves lay people in discernment and decision-taking. This theological lens will help us identify and provide adequate resourcing and formation for such leadership" Heaney said.

Professor Calder emphasised the vocational nature of lay governance in the Church.

"For ecclesial or Church leadership, the starting point is to understand that the role of a canonical steward is a vocation or a calling to exercise the ministry of leadership in the Church as service" Calder stated.

Professor Pascoe, who has played a key role in the Synod on Synodality, added that the project would offer valuable insights into the Church's journey toward greater synodality and shared responsibility.

The Association of Ministerial Public Juridic Persons supports the study which is expected to be completed by 2025.

Sources

Australian Catholic University

CathNews New Zealand

That is, unless they radically reform to give equal standing to women.

Dr Middleton, author of Jesus and Women, tells The London Economic (TLE) digital newspaper why the Church's future is important, and why it must be in female hands.

Why the Church is important

TLE: In an increasingly secular society, why do you think the Church is still important?

Middleton: A strong argument can be made that the gaining of female rights and freedoms in the West has its roots in Christianity.

It is also generally accepted that democracy could only have emerged in a culture grounded in the Christian belief that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

It was successive movements engendered by Christianity - both lay and religious - that gradually transformed the West into the society and culture that it now is.

Interestingly, Martin Luther's emphasis in the Reformation - which was initiated by him - was on the importance of individual religious and moral autonomy.

That is considered to have been a significant factor in the emergence of liberal democracy along with the separation of Church and state and emphasis on individual rights and freedoms.

It's a mistake to perceive the Reformation and the Enlightenment as events that happened in opposition to the Church.

Rather, the Church, in its upholding of and teaching of Christianity, generated these events due to the supremely high ethical standards it has always preached and the calibre of the education it provided.

The internal dialectic within the Church reflects Jesus' battle with the religious establishment of the biblical era and his efforts to reform Jewish legalism.

In such a context we can postulate that the establishment of Christianity in the Empire was the second move in this battle.

It took 1,800 years to reach the Enlightenment and 2,000 years to the first gaining of female rights.

The current falloff in church attendance can be defined as an important initiation of the next move, which has the potential to so furtherly progress the Christian West and to resolve Church schisms.

By doing the latter it will finish or change the role of the Roman Empire in the Church.

Overall falloff in attendance

TLE: While the major Christian branches in the UK, the Church of England and Catholic Church, have seen big falloffs in their congregations, there are many other smaller Christian sects. Are they in the same precarious situation and facing extinction?

Middleton: Overall, due to the increasing proportion of the young who claim they have no religion, in the UK church membership is forecast to decline to just over four per cent of the population by 2025.

Interestingly, the smaller Christian sects are closely related to the reformed tradition because they don't have hierarchies, and in many the congregations are autonomous.

It's reported, however, that in most there is still a falloff in church attendance - though not as high as in the largest UK churches, Anglican and Catholic.

There is one new Christian denomination that is said to be increasing both in the UK and throughout the world: the Pentecostal Church, says Middleton.

This denomination focuses on individual spirituality thanks, it says, to the love and action of the Holy Spirit.

There are, however, large falloffs in Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist denominations.

The reasons for the decline of Methodism are considered by its leaders to include the increased secularisation in the West and the intellectual changes in British culture with the rise of science.

This is a serious concern as the renewal of Christianity is necessary for the full possible progress and survival of our world.

Hierarchical inequality

TLE: How did gender and social inequality manage to seep into the Church hierarchy?

Middleton: Evolutionary biologists have discovered and described how religion and politics evolved in tandem with one another as a means for creating male patriarchal power structures to support male domination of the world and of women.

As a result, religions are forces for social control, especially of women.

For this reason, the distinction between religion as a phenomenon and the forms individual religions take while under the control of their founders must be kept in mind.

In the early Church, women and men were equally involved in Church ministries.

With its change of status into the state religion of the Roman Empire, however, it became highly patriarchal.

It was shaped by Roman political structures for several centuries and still remains under the influence of its imperial past.

The Vatican is a political state and the papacy itself is an absolute monarchy. Popes are supported by a hierarchical power structure of its ordained males that equates to an aristocracy.

As I discuss in detail in Jesus and Women, the revolutionary attitude of Jesus towards women is in stark contrast to that of the institutional Church, transcending time and place to such a degree that it provides further evidence of his divinity.

Women are vital

TLE: Your latest book, Jesus and Women, argues that women are vital to the survival of the Church in the 21st. century. What led you to this conclusion?

Middleton: Women were always the main supporters of Church attendance and in the early Church - as well as in Jesus' ministry - overall, the most drawn to his preaching and teaching.

The beginning of a large falloff in Church attendance in the mid-20th century was partly due to male and female disillusionment with hierarchical political and religious institutions stemming from the Second World War.

However, second-wave feminism was the main cause of church attendance falloff for women - due to the sexism of institutional Christianity.

There are female campaigns now for the achievement of equal female ministries in the Church, and also great female theology to guide it.

Due to Jesus' lovingly egalitarian treatment of women, the Church must eliminate its sexism by granting women equal authority.

If it does, there will not only be a massive renewal of church attendance, but a modern version of the ideal Pauline church whose communities were totally equal, regardless of social class or gender.

Such a reform will pave the Church into a much more spiritual and loving version of Christianity.

A version that will also impact on the public sphere to gain social justice for all and will be as lovingly liberating for males as for females. Read more

• Timothy Arden is a writer for the London Economic

Francis stressed the significance of lay ministers serving others rather than inflating their egos.

"I get angry when I see lay ministers who — pardon the expression — are ‘puffed up' by this ministry. This is ministry, but it is not Christian."

Ministers must never become self-referential, said Francis.

Service is one-directional, it is not a round trip.

In the speech, he stated that regardless of whether they hold a formal ministry, all baptised individuals are called to participate in the Church's mission.

He stated that the ministry of the faithful stems from the charism that the Holy Spirit distributes within the People of God for its edification.

First, a charism appears, inspired by the Spirit; then, the Church acknowledges this charism as a useful service to the community; finally, in a third moment, it is introduced, and a specific ministry spreads.

The Pope made these remarks in an April 22 address to the second plenary assembly of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.

"Those who command should make themselves the smallest"

Concluding his address, Pope Francis stated that ministry has two key features: mission and service.

He emphasised that at the root of the term ministry is the word minus, which means 'minor'.

And Jesus said so: Those who command should make themselves the smallest. Otherwise, they do not know how to command. It is a small detail but of great importance. Those who follow Jesus are not afraid to make themselves ‘inferior,' ‘minor,' to place themselves at the service of others," the Pope said.

"Here lies the true motivation that must inspire any of faithful who assume an ecclesial task, any commitment to Christian witness in the reality where he or she lives: the willingness to serve the brethren, and in them, to serve Christ.

"Only in this way may all the baptised be able to discover the meaning of their own life, joyfully experiencing being ‘a mission on this earth,' that is, being called, in different ways and forms, to ‘bringing light, blessing, enlivening, raising up, healing, and freeing' ... and letting themselves be accompanied," he said.

Pope Francis established the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life in 2016. The Dicastery held its first plenary assembly in 2019, devoted to "the identity and mission of the lay faithful in the world."

Sources

Catholic Culture

Catholic News Agency

Their "mission is to serve, not to wield power or exert control over others."

Francis made the comments in a meeting last Thursday with moderators of Catholic lay associations, ecclesial movements and new communities. Many of these movements began in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

"The exercise of governance within associations and movements is a theme that is particularly close to my heart," he said.

"Especially considering ... the cases of abuse of various kinds that have occurred in these realities and that always find their root in the abuse of power."

"The positions of governance entrusted to you in the lay groups to which you belong are none other than a call to serve," Francis said forcefully.

There are two obstacles to the call to use leadership as a way to serve others, he continued.

"The desire for power and unfaithfulness to one's vocation as a Christian, that is, leading a double life that is no longer dedicated to God, but to other things, which always include money."

Francis went on to explain to the leaders - who were present in person and online - that there can also be unfaithfulness to the charism - which is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

He said this was disloyalty or "playing a double game".

"We say in words that we want to serve God and others, but in fact we serve our ego, and we bend to our desire to appear, to obtain recognition and appreciation."

Signs of this disloyalty appear when community leaders present themselves as the "only interpreters of the charism" or "the only heirs" so they do everything to stay in power "for life" or decide for themselves who their successors are.

No one is master of the gifts received for the good of the Church - we are administrators - no one should suffocate them," he warned.

"Instead, each one, where he or she is placed by the Lord, is called to make them ... bear fruit ..." he continued.

The Vatican has often had to intervene over the years in cases of "sickness," when the founding charism has "weakened" and fails to attract new members.

Francis then discussed the Holy See's recently released set of norms for international Catholic lay movements and associations that came into effect this month.

They were devised because of a consistent pattern of recurring concerns over the past several decades showed there was a need to make some changes

The new norms impose term limits on central leadership and mandate that all members have a voice in choosing their leaders as part of an effort to protect people from possible abuse by the groups' leaders, Francis explained.

They are meant "for everyone, no exception. There are not those who are better or less great, perfect or not. Every church entity is called to conversion, to understand and put into action the spirit that animates the regulations given in the decree," he said.

Source

• NCR Online
• Crux Now
• La Croix
• Image: YouTube

The lay women surveyed say these frustrations are barriers to them fulfilling their ministerial paths in the church.

Entitled "Mainstreaming Women's Ministries in the Roman Catholic Church," the survey was conducted by the Women's Ordination Conference (WOC).

Of the 224 young Catholic lay women in formation and ministry in the U.S. who responded, 82 percent of respondents think women's ministries are not valued equally to men's.

In addition, 80 percent are dissatisfied with the ministry opportunities available to them in the global church, and 73 percent said the same about local opportunities.

Survey respondents overwhelmingly described their Catholic identity as "extremely important." Eighty-two percent attend Mass at least once a week.

"What this survey affirms is that women of the church are overwhelmingly educated and trained and thoughtful Catholic leaders, and they will persist," says Kate McElwee, executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference.

However, they will only "persist to a point," McElwee says.

Young Catholics are choosing to disaffiliate with the institutional church.

"It's a loss that's happened for many generations before this one, and our hope is that we can work to support these women to stall their exit," she says.

McElwee says the survey responded to the WOCs Young Feminist Network and Women's Ordination Conference members' struggles with ministerial discernment after completing pastoral degrees.

The survey report cites women's inclusion and ordination as the two most common changes respondents wished to see in the church. Thirty percent of respondents say they would pursue ordination in the diaconate or priesthood if they could.

Although many respondents identified vocations that did not fit within the existing structure of the institutional church, 82 percent would not seek ordination through an independent Catholic movement.

McElwee says this result is "surprising."

"A lot of the members of the WOC really look to those movements as prophetic witnesses, living their vocation and modeling a new, renewed ministry," she says.

"To see that that really didn't seem like an option to the survey respondents is interesting for our movement to consider."

McElwee says the WOCs primary goal now is to "listen to the women who took the survey and to respond as a community" in the form of discussion groups and conversations among members of the Women's Ordination Conference and its Young Feminist Network.

The survey and the discussion it generates will show "women who are persisting in their faith and in their ministry and in their careers know that they're not alone," she says.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: National Catholic Reporter