Executive Officer’s Report: August 2019
Not surprisingly most of my August was spent preparing for the AMPJP AGM and annual Canonical Stewards Forum.
There was an AMPJP Council teleconference on Friday 02 August to sign off the annual financial report and deal with urgent business. Then I set to work on the myriad of administrative and event management issues needed for the AGM, the AGM dinner and the Forum.
Immediately following our Forum was the Catholic Health Australia Governance Symposium. I, and many of Ministerial PJP Trustees, stayed on for the Symposium. There were a great range of speakers who provoked our thinking on governance in the Church health/aged care context.
I also found two days to be an interview panel member assess 15 applicants for the 7-9 positions on one of the one of the Plenary Council 2020 Discernment and Writing Groups. The applicants were truly outstanding people who would all bring a wealth of skills, knowledge and experience to the role. As a panel we worked well and in good humour to eventually reach a consensus on a list that we recommended to the Facilitation Team and the Bishops Commission for the Plenary Council.
The interviews for the Plenary Council 2020 Discernment and Writing Group were held at the Catholic Mission office in Lavender Bay which is immediately behind the North Sydney train station. You can save yourself a 400 metre walk around the block by using a hidden shortcut. Having lived in Lavender Bay some 30 years ago, I knew of this stairwell connecting an office forecourt with the Church car park.
While using the shortcut I started to think about other situations where having particular information is an advantage. I pondered the burden and power of having knowledge that others don’t have or don’t even know of.
In relation to the Plenary Council 2020, I was thinking of the extraordinary lengths that the facilitation team go to in sharing information and of developing inclusive processes. The Plenary Council is a new structure and process none of us know what it involves as this is the first time Australia has held a Plenary Council with an open agenda and with significant lay involvement. We are all making the path as we walk it.
The Bishops could have written the Plenary Council papers or they could have selected one or two people to write them. This would have been a secretive and controlled process. However, they chose to publicly advertise for people to join the Discernment and Writing groups. They then chose to have independent panels interview and shortlist the applicants. While there will be two Bishops on each Discernment and Writing group, they are outnumbered by the 7-9 other members. Like so much of the Plenary Council, the benefits are as much in the process as the eventual outcome. We are learning new ways of being Church. Come Holy Spirit!
New events listed on the website:
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- 05 September 2019 A Spirituality of Leadership for a Changing Era
- 06 September 2019 Shared Leadership: Insights and challenges for Catholic services
- 06 September 2019 A New culture of Leadership to Revitalise the Church
- 07 September 2019 Heroic Living Workshop
- 10 September 2019 Pope Francis – ‘other centred’ leadership
- 11 September 2019 Leadership and Spirituality Breakfast
- 13-19 October 2019 Anti-Poverty Week
- 6-21 May 2020 Encountering the Mystics of Europe
- 24-26 August 2020 Catholic Health Australia National Conference
New website content:
The public news section of the AMPJP website now has the following posts:
- AMPJP AGM (28 August 2019 – also accessible to AMPJP General and Council members)
- AMPJP Canonical Stewards Forum (29 August 2019 – also accessible to AMPJP General and Council members)
The member section of the AMPJP website now has the following posts:
- AMPJP Council contact details (29 August 2019 – only accessible to AMPJP General and Council members)
