Inaugural Meeting of the Diocesan Pastoral Council

Keynote Speech #2

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Saturday 4 July, 2026
Salvatorian Retreat Centre, Currumbine

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As I begin this second address today, I am conscious that I am doing so following on from what will have been for some of you your first experience of what we call “Conversations in the Spirit”. During our Plenary Council, which pre-dated the Synod, we used this same method but called it spiritual conversations!

I would like to say a few words about this particular approach to discernment as it was the basis of all the discussions during the Plenary Council’s two assemblies and during the two assemblies of the Synod on Synodality.

As you have just experienced, this is a very structured process which can at first, for that very reason, seem rather mechanical and even artificial. At the same time, even for those who have never experienced it before, it may have opened your eyes to its potential.  One of our aims in introducing this methodology to you today is to begin to familiarise yourself with this approach to discernment which we hope and intend to make the basis of all our Diocesan Pastoral Council deliberations. This is because, as I mentioned earlier today, we are wanting to create a Diocesan Pastoral Council which is a discernment body. Our fundamental aim is to form a community of disciples who together seek to discover just what God is asking of us at this time in our archdiocese.

At this point it might help for me to turn to some authoritative sources to deepen our understanding of what a discernment body is in our Christian and Catholic understanding. And, of course, the first and best place to turn is the scriptures. So let me start with the gospels. In St Luke’s gospel we read of this moment in the life of Jesus:

 Jesus said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time? (Luke 12:56).

The point Jesus is making here is that while it is easy enough to read the signs of likely weather events, it is not so easy to read the deepest meaning of the events and situations in which people find themselves at any given time - and in particular, of course, that the true significance of the presence of Jesus Himself among them is something that they are really struggling to grasp. In other places in the gospel Jesus will attribute this to people’s hard hearts. This is an important reminder to us as we begin to delve more deeply into what discernment requires of us.

This challenge in relation to reading the signs of the times correctly does, I think, explain the famous line in the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, about the signs of the times. Unfortunately, this simple phrase is often taken out if its context, which ultimately robs it of its true meaning.

The Church has the duty at all times to scrutinize the signs of the times and to interpret them in the light of the Gospel in such a way that she can respond, in a manner appropriate to each generation, to the eternal questions of men and women about the meaning of present and future life and about their relations with each other (G&S 4:1).

This catches the key issue in discernment: we are not simply called to be alert to things that are happening, whether they are local issues in our faith community or wider social issues which are part of the culture of our times. We are called to scrutinize them, to delve into them, and to evaluate them in the light of the Gospel, which is to say, of course, in the light or God’s self-revelation in Jesus.

This need for discernment is captured in one of Paul’s Letters, the letter to the Romans. Living as the Christian community did at that time in a culture which was not particularly friendly to Christianity, Paul had this advice for the community:

Adapt yourselves no longer to the patterns of this present world but rather let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed. Then you will be able to discern the will of God and to know what is good, acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:2).

The First letter of Saint John sums it all up well:

Dear Friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they come from God (1 John 4:1).

From these various indications from the scriptures we can begin to draw a picture of what a discernment community looks like: it is a community which is alive to the realities of the cultural, social, political, and religious situation in which it finds itself; it is aware that its task is to reflect deeply on this complex context and bring the light of the gospel to its understanding of the challenges and opportunities this context provides for those who wish to walk in the footsteps of Jesus; it is confident that a faithful application of the gospel to the cultural realities it faces is capable of responding to the deep yearnings, hopes and dreams of the people of our time; alert to the dangers of an uncritical acceptance of the “patterns of behaviour of those among whom it lives and moves; determined to make the search for the Will of God its primary focus; and conscious of the need to take the time required to test whether or not the direction in which it is planning to move is a faithful response to the promptings of the Spirit of God. The verbs themselves are helpful here I think: alive, aware, confident, alert, determined, and conscious. We might want to add a few extra descriptors - humble might certainly be one – but the list is not a bad one to reflect on.

There is another descriptor which I am sure both Pope Francis and Pope Leo would want me to add: listening. At the opening of the Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis offered this thought, among many, to those present:

The Synod … offers us the opportunity to become a listening Church, to break out of our routine and pause from our pastoral concerns in order to stop and listen.  To listen to the Spirit in adoration and prayer ……  To listen to our brothers and sisters speak of their hopes and of the crises of faith present in different parts of the world, of the need for a renewed pastoral life and of the signals we are receiving from those on the ground. 

And more recently, Pope Leo, in his address to the Italian bishops, has added his own voice to this – and as I mentioned earlier, when in this context we read the word bishops we can legitimately interpret it as referring to all of us here today:

We bishops are called to profound listening: to listen to the Word of God, to listen to the People of God, and therefore to listen to the signs of the times, to listen also to what challenges our pastoral practices. Where listening is genuine, the community does not close in on itself, but becomes a place of discernment and mission and, with that end, knows how to renew itself. (Pope Leo, Address to Italian Bishops, 28 May, 2026)

In the time that is left to me this afternoon, and in view of the insistence of both Pope Francis and Pope Leo on the importance of listening in a Synodal Church, I want to share some thoughts with you about two different, though I believe intimately connected, dimensions of the type of listening which must characterise a discernment body in the life of the Church. Both dimensions of what we might call the “art of listening’ in a Synodal Church touch on two fundamental questions: to whom and to what must we listen and how must we listen?

There is no doubt that the Final Document of the Synod highlights in a particular way the need for us all to listen to each other. Pope Francis was particularly insistent on this and based it on his understanding, his deeply traditional understanding, of baptism as the source of our mutual co-responsibility for the life of the Church and for the fidelity of the Church. Through baptism we are reborn into a new life in Christ and become, together, the body of Christ always, of course, with Christ as the head of his body. Because, together, we form or constitute the body of Christ we are, together, enlivened by and filled with the gift of His Spirit. The Spirit is given to us all, the Spirit is at work in us all, and the Spirit can speak in and through us all. This is the basis of Pope Francis's insistence that we must listen to all the voices and that the Church must be a welcoming home for everyone. Pope Francis is famous for his todos, todos, todos.  It echoes the teaching of Pope St John Paul II that the Church must be the home and the school of communion.

Situated within this insistence on the need to listen to everyone is the focus in the final document on the need to listen to the Word of God and to what the document calls the Living Tradition of the Church. This places our current situation within the historical context of the presence of the Holy Spirit who, in fulfilment of the promise of Jesus which we find in St John's Gospel, will lead the Church into the fullness of the truth (cf. John 16:13). The Spirit is constantly at work in the Church reminding us of all that Jesus taught and guiding us into an ever-deeper appreciation of the mystery of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

This is captured rather beautifully in one of the major documents of the Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, which deals with the mystery of how Divine Revelation is handed on through the centuries. The following paragraph, paragraph eight, is one which will repay careful reading and reflection.

This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her (DV 8).

What this paragraph reminds us of is that our listening must be, first and foremost, an attentive listening to the Word of God, and to the way in which the Church, the community of disciples, has over the centuries gradually come to a deeper realisation of what, at times, is only present in embryonic form in the pages of the New Testament. And it is in the light of this listening that we listen attentively, which is to say pay careful attention to, the realities of our own situation, the contemporary signs of the times.

I like to use the image of a juggler to help us understand the point I am trying to make. A Christian disciple who is seeking to be faithful, and a community of disciples who are seeking to discern God's will, must be like a juggler whose task it is to keep the three objects in the air and prevent any one of them from falling to the ground. The three objects of Christian discernment are: the Word of God as it comes to expression in the sacred scriptures and particularly in the gospels; the living tradition of the Church, itself carefully discerned, which gives expression to the work of the Holy Spirit leading us more deeply into the mystery of our faith; and the acknowledgement and careful scrutinising of the signs of the times which are always to be evaluated in the light of the gospel. Just as a successful juggler cannot allow one of his three objects to fall to the ground, so a Christian disciple in his or her discernment cannot afford to ignore any one of the three contributors to a truly faithful, Spirit-filled search for God's will.

These reflections have focused on the who and the what of our listening. We must also focus on the how. This is where the methodology, the challenge and the potential of Conversations in the Spirit come into play. Some of you have heard me speak of this before and I will content myself this afternoon with a short and simple presentation of what I think is essential. It is all summed up in a phrase that I have invented myself but which I hope you might find useful: I like to describe synodal listening, a listening that can be the basis for genuine Spirit-filled discernment, as non-defensive listening. It is, when it is properly understood and faithfully and generously implemented, something which allows the methodology of Conversations in the Spirit to be so fruitful. It is also, when it is absent from Conversations in the Spirit, what makes the experience of such conversations so frustrating and seemingly pointless.

If I want to enter into a process of non-defensive listening, I have to make a number of commitments and do my best to stick to them. The first is quite simply a commitment to listen patiently, without interrupting, to the person who is speaking. I have to resist the temptation to interrupt the speaker, either by agreeing with him or her or challenging him or her. I must simply close my mouth and open my ears. This itself is hard enough and requires real discipline. But the second commitment I must make is harder still: not only must I close my mouth and open my ears, but I must also open my heart. What this means is that I must let go of the temptation to listen with a view to seeing whether or not the person speaking is smart enough, insightful enough, or as open to the Spirit as I presume myself to be, to hold the same view that I hold. Another way of saying this is to suggest that I must listen without falling into the temptation of beginning to frame my response to what I am hearing, whether or not I intend to make my response known to anyone else. The reason for this is that if I am focusing on my response to what I am hearing, I have stopped listening to the person speaking and am only listening to my own internal dialogue.

I do want to point out that the reason why this non-defensive listening is so important is that it is based on a profound theological truth: that the Spirit of God can speak through anyone. The trick, if I can use that word, is to determine just what the Spirit might be saying through the other person. Perhaps a rather fanciful example might make my point clear. Imagine a parish discussion on the celebration of the weekly Eucharist during which someone in the group remarks that because we have celebrated the Eucharist for many centuries, and that for many it has become a mere routine, perhaps we should cease celebrating the Eucharist on a Sunday and instead institute a foot-washing ceremony on a Thursday. We might be tempted to dismiss such a suggestion as ridiculous and even to ridicule the person who is making it. If instead we are listening in a non-defensive way and with respect for the person who is speaking we might, when it is our turn to make our contribution, first acknowledge their sincerity, we might then recognise the significance of their appreciation for Jesus’s gesture of washing the feet of His disciples, we might affirm their insight that being at the service of others in a humble way is an essential part of being a faithful disciple, and we might then speak of our own understanding of and appreciation for the Eucharist, its central place in the life of the Church, and its unique capacity to draw us into a profound communion with the Lord.

Eventually, of course, the long story of the Church’s growing appreciation of the mystery of the Eucharist and the way it has come to be understood within our Catholic tradition, will also have to play its part in the process of discernment. In the end it may well be that through this person's intervention regarding the Washing of the Feet, the Spirit is leading us all into a deeper appreciation of the Eucharist itself.

As I said above, this is in a sense a trivial and fanciful example, but it does highlight for us some of the elements of discernment about which I have been speaking. It also highlights the need for sincerity, humility, and an openness to grow in our understanding of our faith. All of these are qualities which each of us will need to cultivate and develop as we continue our journey as members of the Diocesan Pastoral Council. As I conclude my presentation to you, I would like to borrow some words which recur often in our ordination ceremonies:

May God who has begun the good work in us, bring it to fulfilment.