Q&A WITH ARCHBISHOP TIMOTHY COSTELLOE – NEW CATHOLIC BISHOPS PRESIDENT

Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB has officially taken over the presidency of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. Health Matters spoke to him about his role, his faith and the importance of Catholic ministries.

What drove your Catholic faith and encouraged you to enter the priesthood? I grew up in what I would call, in the best sense of the word, an ordinary Catholic family in Melbourne.

I grew up in what I would call, in the best sense of the word, an ordinary Catholic family in Melbourne. My parents made great sacrifices to ensure my brother and I were able to go to Catholic schools, primary and secondary, and as a family we were very faithful to Sunday Mass. Being Catholic was just a normal part of my life. I was greatly influenced by the priests in the parish in which I grew up and, as young people often do, I thought to myself, “I would like to be like him (them) when I grow up.” This was reinforced by the Salesians as I came to know them as a student at Salesian College in Chadstone.

Catholic Health Australia’s mission is centred on bringing Christ’s healing ministry to people, with a focus the most vulnerable in our society. How has your formation through the Salesians informed your mission as an Archbishop, particularly as the first member of a religious order to take on this position?

The founder of the Salesians, Saint John Bosco, once said to his Salesians that it was not enough to love the young, for they have to know that you love them. I have always understood this to mean that our love has to be real, active, concrete and “down-to-earth”.

This doesn’t just apply to young people. It applies to everyone, and therefore to all those who undertake any ministry in the name of the Church. We are called to express our love in concrete ways, adapted to the particular person or people we are seeking to serve.

Theoretical formulas don’t always work; it is only through personal relationships that we can share Christ’s love in a way that touches people’s live, and hearts. After all, this is the way Jesus operated. He met each person in the concrete reality of their situation and, through establishing relationships based on respect, he was able to help them move forward.

This is the approach I try to follow, though sadly not always as fully as I would like.

From your perspective, what are the gravest challenges facing the Church and its ministries in today’s society?

There are so many that I hardly know where to start, but perhaps my response to the previous question provides the basis of an answer.

One word I would use is “fidelity”. In a culture which in many respects seems to be detaching itself from its Christian foundations, it is not easy for us as Catholics to keep alive a sense of who we are and just what God is asking of us at this time (the early decades of the third millennium) and in this place (Australia). This is, of course, the key question being addressed by the Plenary Council.

In this regard the Second Vatican Council spoke of the need to discern, which is to recognise and evaluate, the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel. But for this to happen we must be sure that we, God’s faithful people, are deeply steeped in the Gospel, so familiar with Jesus, if I can put it this way, that we have an instinctive understanding of the “mind and heart” of Jesus and therefore know how to respond to the very complex situations we face.

In this regard I think we all have a long way to go. And this is why, I suspect, the theme of “adult faith formation” has emerged so clearly as a central issue for the Plenary Council to consider.

The Church no longer holds the same position of influence it once held in our society. There are many reasons for this, but chief among them is the dreadful failures of Church institutions and individuals in relation to the sexual abuse of the young.

We must continue to respond with compassion and generosity to those who have been so badly hurt, we must be brave enough and humble enough to learn the hard lessons from our failures, and we must continue to explore every avenue to ensure that no-one is ever damaged again in this way in any of our communities.

And here, again, it is a question of fidelity, for surely no one could dispute that the widespread abuse of the young in Catholic institutions represents a dreadful failure in fidelity to what the Lord requires of us.

This question of fidelity, in all aspects of the Church’s life, will require from all of us in the Church a challenging and confronting “examination of conscience”. And this is as essential for our Catholic healing ministries as for any other dimension of the Church’s life.

Both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have alerted us to the danger of our Catholic ministries becoming NGOs rather than communities of discipleship. Here, too, we must remember that it is his Way that we follow, his Truth that we proclaim and his Life that animates us.

Catholic Health Australia and its members have been working to cater to the needs of Australians during an immensely difficult period due to the Covid pandemic. What does the Australian Church and its ministries need to address together as we combat the impacts of the pandemic?

As I reflect on the experience of the COVID pandemic, one thing which stands out very strongly for me is the value of the Church’s tradition concerning the “common good”.

We live at a time in history, at least in many societies, where the rights and desires of the individual are often exalted at the expense of our responsibility to care for others in our society. In the Christian “worldview” we are called to “break our bodies and spill our blood” in memory of Jesus for the sake of others.

Catholic Health Australia, at least as I have experienced it “on the ground” in the Archdiocese of Perth (and I am sure this is the case in other places through the country), has been outstanding in responding with courage, flexibility and compassion to this challenge. This is equally true of Catholic education, of Catholic social services, and indeed of local Catholic parishes and other communities.

And I must say that this is not unique to Catholics or to Catholic institutions. In many respects the pandemic has brought out the best in so many Australians of all religions and none.

At the same time, it has been distressing to see how some people have put their own concerns above the need to take the necessary steps to protect others from a very dangerous disease. For me this underlines the importance of the fundamental principles upon which our faith rests: they are not dry philosophical or theological formulations; they are life-giving guides to practical action.

Pope Saint Paul VI once said that if people listen to teachers, it is because those teachers are first witnesses. It is not enough for the Church to proclaim in words, written or spoken, the fundamental truths about humanity to the wider world; the Church must, above all, proclaim these truths by the way we act, and by the coherence between what we say and what we do.

As President of the Plenary Council, you have overseen some significant conversations with Catholics nationally. What messages are emerging for ministries like Catholic Health through this process?

One of the key discernment themes, or questions, which emerged through the discernment process of the Plenary Council was this: What does it mean to be a Christ-centred Church which is humble, healing and merciful? This is a rich theme and one which will need ongoing prayerful reflection which hopefully leads to action.

In relation to being a Christ-centred, healing Church, I would say that this has special resonance for our Catholic health and aged-care ministries. I would think it fair to say that for Catholics, for people of other faiths and for people of no faith, there is a high expectation that the quality of care and personal engagement they encounter in any of our institutions is irreproachable in both aspects.

We might sometimes feel burdened by these high expectations, but in a very real sense they are a compliment to us, and a recognition that we are grounded in something special. Often people cannot easily verbalise what that “something special” is, but they certainly know when it is missing.

I would suggest that the “something special” is what I might call “the Catholic thing” or the Catholic worldview.

It is much more than, for example, the particular medical procedures we will not perform in our hospitals, or the particular stance we take in relation to voluntary assisted dying in our facilities, thought it certainly includes all that.

It is that vision of life which recognises that God exists and is the foundation of all life, that God has made himself known in and through Jesus, and that the presence and work of Jesus continues in the Church through the power of the Holy Spirit.

One of the great challenges for Catholic health care (and for other Catholic ministries) is to recognise this reality, embrace it willingly, and live it faithfully. It is the solid foundation upon which our ministries rest. If the foundation is undermined, the whole building may eventually become unstable.

Each Catholic institution is being called to discern, within its own particular circumstances and according to its own particular ministry, how it can best ensure the solidity of its foundations, so that, in the case of our healing ministries, we really are a “sacramentalising” of the presence of Jesus as the great healer.