Catholic Communications, Sydney Archdiocese,
17 May 2013
17 May 2013
Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet in Sydney for the Great Grace Conference
The Great Grace Conference: Understanding Vatican II, one of the most significant religious gatherings to be held in Australia will begin next Monday, 20 May and offers the 450-plus participants from across Australia the chance to hear nine internationally-renowned speakers, attend a wide variety of intensive workshops and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the start of the Second Vatican Council.
In planning for more than a year, the four-day event will explore and celebrate the ongoing relevance not only to the Church today but into the future.
In addition to keynote addresses and workshops, the Conference will also feature a number of special events some of which are open to the public. This will include a public lecture, entitled "Yesterday's Council for Tomorrow's World," by the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell to be held at St Mary's Cathedral on Monday evening, 20 May at 7 pm, following a 5.30 pm Mass.
On Thursday, 23 May, participants at the Conference and those of faith from across Sydney are invited to attend a Mass in the Year of Faith to Celebrate Our Lady Help of Christians to be held at St Mary's Cathedral at 6.30 pm. The Mass will be celebrated by Cardinal Pell and Canada's Cardinal Ouellet, who is also one of the Conference's keynote speakers.
"To have Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who is one of the greatest scholars among the College of Cardinals, as one of the Conference's keynote speakers is a huge achievement by the Archdiocese of Sydney," says Professor Tracey Rowland, Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family (Melbourne) and also one of the keynote speakers who will address the Conference.
The Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Archbishop Emeritus of Quebec and member of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, during this year's Conclave to elect a new Holy Father, Cardinal Ouellet was suggested by some as one of the front runners.
Professor Tracey Rowland one of the outstanding keynote speakers at next week's Great Grace Conference in Sydney
"I was in Canada during the Conclave and was interviewed by media in Quebec about the possibility of a Canadian pope, and every time they'd ask the same old and secular question about whether a new Pope would change the Church's teaching on abortion. And to every question I'd reply that the sanctity of human life is a basic belief for everyone in the Church and not a single cardinal in the conclave is about to change that," Professor Rowland says.
Professor Rowland is not only looking forward to Cardinal Ouellet's address at the Conference but insists she is determined to hear as many of the other speakers as she can.
As one of the keynote speakers herself, Professor Rowland says she hopes all those attending the Conference, which has been organised by the Archdiocese of Sydney, will come away with a much deeper understanding of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.
In her own address, she will give participants a chance to explore interpretations of these teachings over the past 50 years and will contrast earlier readings with later interpretations.
In the years following Vatican II there was a "a pastoral strategy of correlationism," she says and describes this as "the idea the Catholic faith needed to be repackaged and correlated with reference to contemporary cultural terms."
In this context of adapting the faith to suit demands of the culture of the time, the reception of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council in Australia followed similar patterns to that of other countries in the Western world with interpretations of the teachings put an emphasis on the correlation of the Catholic faith to intellectual currents within the (then) fashionable culture of modernity, she explains.
This led to the mistaken presumption among quite a number of those interpreting Vatican II teaching in these early years that not only modernity was here to stay but a belief that the Church should adapt and accommodate such intellectual and cultural thinking.
Prior to becoming Pope, Blessed John Paul II was one of the great scholars and teachers
from Vatican II
from Vatican II
"These interpretations are wrong and are pastorally destructive," Professor Rowland says and dismisses such interpretations as out of step with contemporary cultural conditions and irrelevant.
By 1968, modernity was being superseded by postmodernity. But it was not until the 1980s onwards that what she describes as "correlationist projects" began to be overtaken by the Christocentric projects of the pontificates of John Pall II, at the core of which was Blessed John Paul II's "Christocentric anthropology."
A Permanent Fellow of the Institute of Political Philosophy and Continental Theology, a Fellow of the Centre for Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham and Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Faith Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame (Sydney), Professor Rowland explains that in 1985 Blessed John Paul II called a Synod of Bishops to discuss interpretations of Vatican II's teachings. And it was at this Synod that Blessed John Paul II, who had been at the Second Vatican Council more than 20 years before, emphasised the Christocentricity of the documents.
"The hallmark of his pontificate was that Christ should position culture, rather than the culture of the times positioning Christ," she says. "According to t his interpretation it is Christ himself who is the 'sign of the times.'"
She points out however that Christ cannot be understood without reference to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit and that one of Blessed John Paul II's early encyclicals interpreted the relationship between God the Father and the human person, the relationship between God the Holy Spirit and the human person and the relationship between Christ and the human person.
Apart from keynote addresses there will also be 24 workshops at the conferences discussing such topics as The Call to Co-responsibility: lay leadership in the church; The First Council for Women?; Proposing, Not Imposing: the place of the Church in the public arena and A Secret No Longer: the social mandate of the Church.
Also planned is a Youth Event to be hosted by Theology on Tap at the Commercial Hotel, Parramatta on Tuesday, 21 May at 6.30 pm. Open to the city's under 30s, the evening will be attended by Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet PPS and Cardinal Pell, who will use this special occasion to launch YouthCAT: Youth Prayer Book to help young people live their faith and deepen their spiritual lives.
Cardinal Pell will also launch a new exciting Catholic initiative called "Catholic Talk" at the conclusion of the Great Grace Conference. Catholic Talk is a group of people who can articulate a personal, relevant and clear Catholic perspective in the media and at public hearings.
To attend one of the public events of the Great Grace Conference: Receiving Vatican II today or to register for the entire four day Conference log on to www.thegreatgrace.org.au
Vatican II began 50 years ago and its legacy continues now and into the future
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