Serving the Australian Bishops in their promotion of social justice and human rights: 1987-2004.

The above title was given to this paper because I was invited by the Australian Catholic Historical Society to speak about my work over the past seventeen years as the first Executive Secretary to the Bishops' Committee for Justice, Development and Peace (now re-named the Bishops' Committee for Justice, Development, Ecology and Peace, to highlight the Australian Bishops' recent more explicit commitment to addressing ecological and environmental concerns).

Reflecting on the paper's title, I see a need for one brief preliminary comment. When I speak of 'serving' the Australian Bishops I am reminded that, in this area even more than others, their own is more a serving than a commanding role. In promoting social justice and human rights, they are offering an essential service to both the Catholic and the wider communities. As the Pope has reminded bishops in his recent memoir, Alzatevi, Andiamo, they must 'serve while governing, and govern while serving'.

Historical context

My involvement in this activity commenced on 16 October 1987, when I took up my appointment as Executive Secretary to the newly formed Bishops' Committee for Justice, Development and Peace (BCJDP). To place the work in a wider historical context, I will summarise the way in which the Church in Australia had carried out its social justice mission at national level in the preceding decades.

In the words of Cardinal Clancy, there was 'a continuing and wide-ranging commitment by the Australian hierarchy to the Church's social teaching during the century initiated by Rerum Novarum'. 'He was referring, among other things, to the influence of Pope Leo XIII's 1891 Encyclical Letter on the efforts of Catholic organisations and individuals to support more just conditions for exploited workers during and after Cardinal Moran's period as Archbishop of Sydney; to the growth of socially and politically active lay movements in the 1930s and 1940s following the appearance of Pope Pius XI's Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno; and to the initiative taken by the Australian Bishops from 1940, when they launched the first in a long (and still continuing) series of annual statements marking Social Justice Sunday.

It is outside the scope of this paper to go into detail about most of this period. Some of its features have been explored by writers like Patrick O'Farrell, James Murtagh, Bruce Duncan, Paul Ormonde, B. A. Santamaria, James Griffin, Gerard Henderson, Ross Fitzgerald, Jeff Kildea, Paul Smyth and Michael Hogan. A comprehensive history of the Church leadership's undertakings in the social justice field in Australia since 1891 is still awaited, although Michael Hogan in particular has paved the way for such a project with his two books, Australian Catholics: The Social Justice Tradition (1993) and The Sectarian Strand: Religion in Australian History (1987), and his two annotated collections of the annual Social Justice Statements published between 1940 and 1987, Justice Now (1990) and Option for the Poor (1992). (2)

Hogan's second collection brings us to the point where I can begin to speak from personal experience of the work carried out in this area by and on behalf of the Australian bishops since May 1987, when the BCJDP was formed at a plenary meeting of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and it was decided to employ a full-time Executive Secretary to service that Committee.

These events occurred in a controversial context. Since 1972, an agency named (from 1976) the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) had been operating at national level under the Bishops' supervision. One of the responsibilities of this mainly lay entity had been to continue the traditional annual preparation and publication of social justice statements. Usually endorsed by the Bishops but with some dissenters at times, the documents dealt with such subjects as population, morality in public life, the situation of Australian women, immigration, the rights of indigenous people, unemployment, housing, youth and peacemaking. A few of the Statements in the 1980s were prepared with the cooperation of other churches. Criticism of some of the public stands taken by the CCJP, coinciding with the raising of questions about the use made overseas of some funds raised in the Catholic community by the Commission's sister organisation, Australian Catholic Relief, had persuaded the Bishops in 1986 to undertake a review of what was described as 'episcopal initiatives for the promotion of education for justice, peace and development'. (3)

The task of conducting the review was given to an Irish-born parish priest and recently retired Catholic Education Director in Perth, Monsignor James Nestor. It was Nestor's report on his year-long inquiry which formed the basis of the decision by the Bishops Conference in May 1987 to establish a new Bishops' Committee, the BCJDP, to foreshadow the formation of a new advisory body, the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council (ACSJC), and to terminate the mandate to the CCJP. The Bishops adopted as the aim of the changes what was described by Monsignor Nestor as 'a deeper integration of the Church's action on the social field with the rest of the mission of the Church--education, liturgy, spirituality, pastoral planning, media and other dimensions'. Archbishop William Foley of Perth was elected to chair the BCJDP, which had five other Bishop-members, making it twice the size of most of the other eighteen or so committees of the Conference. It was also agreed that, unlike other Committees, the BCJDP should have its own full-time secretariat, to be led by an Executive Secretary who, in Nestor's vision, would be 'of credible stature, competence and mature sensitivity'. (4)

The decision not to renew the CCJP's mandate was greeted with consternation in some sectors of the Catholic community. Well attended public meetings were convened in a number of places. Bishop William Brennan of Wagga Wagga, a member of the BCJDP who had worked with the CCJP since his episcopal ordination in 1984, attempted courageously to explain the rationale for the changes to some of these meetings, at one of which, in St John's College, University of Sydney, I was present.

Although members of the CCJP's staff were retained on at least an interim basis to help to implement the new arrangements, most of them decided to resign a few months after the Bishops' decisions were announced.

In the meanwhile, the Executive Secretary's position was advertised and several applicants were interviewed by a panel consisting of three bishops, a male and a female religious and a laywoman. Most of the panel members had experience and qualifications in the education sector.

My decision to apply for the job was motivated by my interest in social justice and by a desire to make a contribution to the Church's activities in the area. In my application I pointed to relevant aspects of my background. After studies for the priesthood in Melbourne and Rome, I was ordained in Rome in 1955. There followed further tertiary study and pastoral experience in Rome until 1961 when I returned to Melbourne and was appointed Associate Editor of the Advocate. My request to Pope Paul VI for a dispensation from priestly obligations and a return to the lay state was granted in 1969. In the next eighteen years I held a variety of appointments in the media and the arts, ending with two years as Secretary of the Ethnic Affairs Commission of New South Wales.

These rich and varied experiences might have helped to persuade the Australian Bishops to accept the interviewing panel's recommendation that I be given the job of Executive Secretary to the BCJDP. At any rate, the Bishops did approve the appointment, which I have now held for some seventeen years--a personal record in my mixed employment history.

Early challenges for the BCJDP

Several challenges faced the BCJDP on 16 October 1987 when I moved into the Committee's Secretariat, at that time located in a small, shabby former Catholic primary school building behind and below the Scalabrinian Fathers' Church in Albion Street, Surry Hills. It had to be demonstrated that the Bishops were serious about carrying out the Nestor plan for them to have a more conspicuous leadership role in the Church's work for social action and justice. The Committee had a gifted and committed membership under the late Archbishop Foley. The other members were Bishops Murray, Brennan, O'Connell, Gerry and Pell. Bishop Brennan, who had been managing the Committee's affairs for several months in addition to running the Diocese of Wagga Wagga, was to remain most supportive and helpful until the unfortunate sudden decline in his health in May 2001.

The first major task of the Secretariat was to prepare the way for the formation of the new advisory organisation, the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council (ACSJC). After expressions of interest in serving as Council members were gathered from around Australia, the Bishops made the first appointments late in 1987 and the Council held its first meeting, with Bishop Brennan in the chair, early in the following year. At the same time, the Bishops' Conference approved a provisional charter or mandate for the new entity.

A second task for me was to participate in the preparation of the 1988 Social Justice Sunday statement. It had already been agreed that its theme was to be prison reform and that it was to be drafted on an ecumenical basis. A drafting committee was formed, including representatives of the Anglican and Uniting Churches, the Australian Council of Churches (as it was called at that time) and the Catholic Church. The statement was eventually published under the title Prison, the Last Resort. The principal drafter was the Reverend Chris Budden of the Uniting Church.

It was not the intention of the BCJDP to leave all social action in the hands of the ACSJC or the other subsidiary agency, Australian Catholic Relief. The Bishops themselves wished to undertake significant national projects in the area. With this in mind, they had sent Brother Mark O'Connor, a Melbourne Marist Brother, to the USA to investigate and report on the methodology used by the American Bishops in producing two substantial pastoral letters earlier in the 1980s--one on peace and the other on the economy. Brother Mark O'Connor was already well known for arranging speaking tours to Australia by renowned Church figures from overseas. They had included the Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara, whose visit in 1985 led to Brother Mark's decision to commemorate his presence by organising annual 'Helder Camara Lectures', usually on social justice themes. Brother Mark himself had been a member of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in its final year. With the assistance of expert advisers and researchers, he prepared a report to the BCJDP recommending a detailed methodology for national consultations on social issues. After it was agreed to adopt the proposal that a first consultation should take place in accord with the American method, the Catholic community was asked to suggest a suitable topic for the project. On the recommendation of the BCJDP, the Bishops Conference agreed in November 1987 to sponsor a consultation on the distribution of wealth in Australia.

The Bishops' 'Wealth Inquiry'

Archbishop Foley launched the consultation in Surry Hills in February 1988. Although the project was initially expected to take less than two years, the final report, a pastoral statement of 198 pages and titled Common Wealth for the Common Good, did not see the light of day until September 1992, four and a half years after the launch. (5)

Administering the consultation was my principal task during my early period as Executive Secretary. Especially memorable were the public hearings in several capital cities, organised by Brother Mark and chaired in most cases by Archbishop Foley. The submissions came in three waves--following the first invitation to the community in 1988, the publishing of a progress report on the consultation in October of that year and the issuing of a draft report, titled Common Wealth and Common Good, in January 1991. (6) The work of analysing the many hundreds of submissions was done in the BCJDP Secretariat with the help of several well qualified people, mostly volunteers. As the principal drafter of the final report, I later welcomed the assistance of a few friends and colleagues in completing that difficult assignment.

Before Common Wealth for the Common Good was published, the draft was submitted for amendment and final approval to the full Bishops Conference. It was launched on television at the National Press Club on 16 September 1992 by Cardinal Clancy, in his capacity as President of the Bishops Conference. The statement received widespread media coverage and became the subject of discussion in both Houses of Parliament, with about a dozen speakers participating.

The BCJDP engaged Professor Muredach Dynan of the Australian Catholic University to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the process used for the consultation. The conclusions in his report were mainly positive. He wrote: 'The process is perceived as manifesting the concern of the Bishops for social justice issues, projecting them into a strong leadership role in the Catholic and wider community, and bringing enhanced credibility to the Church among its own members and throughout Australia.' At the same time, Professor Dynan noted 'the relatively modest level of involvement of many parish communities'. He reported that many respondents to his evaluation survey 'expressed a strong view that it is essential that there be a prolonged commitment, led by the Bishops, to the dissemination and implementation of the contents of the final Statement throughout the Catholic community and m the wider community'. (7)

It is difficult to estimate either the short-term or long-term effects of documents like Common Wealth for the Common Good. It touched on some of the major socio-political issues facing Australia in the early 1990s, most of which are still with us today in one form or another. They include issues in the areas of taxation, employment, health care, immigration, refugees, social security, financial deregulation, housing, health care, education, family life and the particular disadvantages experienced by certain groups, for example, women, children and Indigenous people.

The BCJDP and its advisory agencies have tried in different ways to keep the statement's message alive. An abbreviated, 'popular' edition of the report was published together with the full version. In 1993, the novelist Thomas Keneally launched an audio summary in the crypt of St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney. Well attended seminars on the statement's themes were organised in a number of places after its launch, while promotional visits to several dioceses also took place. Further interest in those themes was awakened during 1996, the international Year for the Eradication of Poverty, when the national 'People First' conference, attended by over 500 people, was held on the Strathfield campus of the Australian Catholic University. In 1999, the BCJDP surveyed action on poverty eradication taken by Australian Catholic agencies since the conference, reporting on the findings in the booklet Responding to the Challenge: A Poverty Action Report. (8) And early in 2003, the Committee launched another publication, titled A Fair Society? Ten Years After Common Wealth for the Common Good. (9) It included essays by seven expert commentators on wealth and poverty in Australia in the early years of the new century. The booklet formed part of a joint submission by the BCJDP and the ACSJC to the Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee Inquiry into Poverty and Financial Hardship.

I believe that the Australian Bishops made a wise decision in choosing wealth distribution as the theme for their first, partly experimental, national consultation. It was a subject well suited to meeting one of the Bishops' aims, to educate the Catholic community about the Church's social teaching and its application to a wide range of issues and to the situation of various disadvantaged and unfairly treated groups in our society.

Consultation on Young People and the Future

After Professor Dynan had reported that his survey revealed 'virtually unanimous support for the use of a similar process to be followed in the preparation of major statements by the Bishops', (10) it was decided that a second consultation should be attempted. In April 1994, in the light of suggestions from the community, the Bishops chose 'Young People and the Future' as the next theme to be explored.

Taking account of the lessons learned during the wealth inquiry and of the special nature of a study about the lives of young people, the BCJDP used a slightly different methodology for this project. Its first stage, in 1995, was a listening exercise, involving group discussions, questionnaires and open forums in which the Bishops heard from young people themselves. They received the views of thousands of respondents in over three hundred submissions. The Bishops reported on their listening in a 1996 publication titled Lean on Me. Introducing the report, Bishop Manning, coordinator of the consultation, said that one of the messages emerging from the listening was 'that young people give enormous value to their personal and social relationships'. (11) Other themes that arose spontaneously were multiculturalism, racism, family, friends, violence, safety, pressure, identity, drugs, alcohol, youth suicide, unemployment, careers and Church issues.

A second stage, called 'Understanding the Issues', was introduced by an invitation to the whole community, young and old, to reflect on and discuss the key themes. The point was to understand the issues better so that practical suggestions could be developed for action to be taken at all levels. The third stage took the form of a challenge to the whole Australian community to make a commitment to take action. All of this led to widespread participation of people, especially the young, in every State and Territory.

The Australian Bishops published their report on the project in 1998, under the title Young People and the Future. (12) The report identified the following three priority issues seen by the young: unemployment; drug and alcohol abuse; and identity and the search for meaning. The Bishops undertook to encourage Church groups, State Governments and the Federal Government to take appropriate action on each issue. In an open letter to the young people of Australia, Cardinal Clancy, on behalf of all the Bishops, said:

   We will continue to work towards a just society in which young
   people are given opportunities to participate fully. We have
   endorsed many of the actions requested by you and the broader
   community. We take your message seriously, but indicate that some
   suggestions are beyond our control to implement. In addition, lack
   of resources and of a clear consensus within the Church or among
   yourselves means that we have not accepted all points of view. We
   ask you to take up with us the challenges, and to participate in
   the actions to which we as a Church are committing ourselves.

The Bishops' letter also suggested that the approaching Jubilee Year, 2000, would be a suitable time for young Catholics to remember and celebrate the life of Jesus, which was 'devoted to reconciling the world with his Father'.

Until 2000, the BCJDP continued to monitor and stimulate follow-up to the action suggestions contained in the report. In that year, responsibility for this was transferred to the Bishops' Committee for the Laity.

Research on Women's Situation in the Church

Since 1993, the BCJDP had been considering a suggestion coming from several sources for a project examining women's situation in the Church. If there was hesitation about this, it might have arisen from the awareness that an attempt by the American Bishops to produce a pastoral statement on the same issue had failed, mainly because of concerns felt in some sections of the Vatican. Nevertheless, the Bishops' Committee kept the suggestion on its agenda. In 1994, the Committee had discussions with the Australian Catholic University about the possibility of a joint research project on the subject. A steering committee set up in June 1994 worked away at some fifteen meetings on planning the research until, with the approval of the Bishops' Conference, the committee was reconstituted on 28 July 1995 as a Management Group, with Bishop Manning as convenor and Professor Peter Carpenter in the chair. On 21 August 1996, at a function at Sydney's Cathedral College, Cardinal Clancy formally launched what had now become the Australian Bishops' research project on the participation of women in the Catholic Church in Australia. It was the BCJDP's third major project, following the consultations on wealth distribution and on young people and their future. It was to be conducted jointly by the BCJDP, the Australian Catholic University and the Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes.

Although it had at first been conceived as a relatively small-scale undertaking, it soon became apparent that it would become one of the largest research projects ever sponsored by the Church in Australia. The launch was followed by a widely advertised invitation to the community to make written submissions. Within four months, the BCJDP had received over 2500 submissions. These were to be supplemented in 1997 by public hearings in twenty-three centres on thirty-two days. The analysis of all of this vast material would not have been possible without the voluntary help of a team of religious and lay people, mostly women. They worked under the direction of the Australian Catholic University's Dr Marie Macdonald, who, helped by the other seven members of the Management Group, then prepared the meticulously detailed report on the research project. This was presented to a Plenary Meeting of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) on 12 April 1999 and published by Harper Collins Religious as a 496-page volume titled Woman and Man. One In Christ Jesus. (13)

The Bishops then appointed a Report Implementation Committee, to be convened by Bishop Michael Putney, with the task of preparing recommendations for the Conference. The Putney Committee's report went to the May 2000 Plenary Meeting of the ACBC, where the Bishops agreed to adopt the recommendations and to issue the Committee's report as their own response to Woman and Man: One In Christ Jesus.

Launched by Archbishop Carroll in Canberra on 13 September 2000 as the annual Social Justice Sunday statement, the report opened the way for the formation of a new national entity, the Commission for Australian Catholic Women. At the November 2000 Plenary Meeting of the ACBC, the first three-year appointments were made to this nine-member Commission, which was to be chaired by Mrs Geraldine Hawkes. Its first meeting took place on 2 February 2001. Although it was decided that the Commission's link with the ACBC would henceforth be through the Bishops' Committee for the Laity, the BCJDP continued to give it administrative support until its office was established at the ACBC Secretariat in Canberra towards the middle of 2001 and an Executive Secretary, Mrs Therese Vassarotti, was appointed.

The Bishops and 'Ecological Conversion'

The BCJDP's fourth major project resulted from a decision by the Committee to give a higher priority to the need for what Pope John Paul II has called 'ecological conversion'. The decision was reflected in the inclusion of the word Ecology in the Committee's name.

In December 2000, the Committee appointed an ad hoc advisory group, convened by Bishop Brennan, to offer advice on the most appropriate ways of exercising this responsibility. A first report from the group went to the BCJDP in May 2001, coinciding with the part-time appointment of Mr Col Brown, as an assistant to the Executive Secretary, particularly on matters relating to the area of ecology. Col Brown is a solicitor who has specialised in environmental law. On the advisory group's recommendation, the BCJDP took steps to implement an approved recommendation of the 1996 'People First' Conference: 'that a new national Catholic association be established, dedicated to the environment, based on sound theological and philosophical foundations, and having volunteer members'. (14)

At their May 2002 Plenary Meeting, the Australian Bishops approved the formation of such an agency, to be called 'Catholic Earthcare Australia (CEA)'. The ACBC gave it an interim mandate and endorsed the provisional appointment of its first members. The national launch of the new agency by Archbishop Bathersby, Chairman of both the BCJDEP (its new acronym) and CEA, took place in the St Francis of Assisi parish church, Paddington NSW on Sunday 30 June 2002. Several State and regional launches were organised in other centres in the following months. A revised mandate describing CEA as 'an executive arm of the BCJDEP' was approved at the May 2003 Plenary Meeting of the ACBC.

In the meanwhile, the agency had distributed over 4000 copies of a 20-minute educational video, titled 'The Garden Planet'. On the invitation of the European Episcopal Conferences, Brown attended their annual consultations in 2002 and again in 2003 on responsibility for creation. Participants showed considerable interest in CEA and in the educational video, which has now been screened to appreciative audiences in a number of European countries and Canada.

The new body helped to promote and distribute the Bishops' 2002 annual Social Justice Statement, A New Earth: the Environmental Challenge, which Brown had helped to draft. In 2002 and 2003, CEA organised annual dinners to coincide with its aptly named Father Cyril Hally Lecture, delivered in 2002 by Father Sean McDonagh and in 2003 by Bishop Christopher Toohey, who had succeeded Archbishop Bathersby as CEA's chairman after the ACBC's May 2003 plenary meeting.

Other initiatives of this very lively body have included: the production of educational resources to mark such observances as World Environment Day, the Feast of St Francis of Assisi and National Tree Day; encouraging parishes and other Church organisations to demonstrate outstanding commitment to care of the environment; forming a young people's committee on the environment; offering advice to schools, parishes and organisations on environmental audits; sponsoring public lectures by overseas speakers, including Father Scan McDonagh. Dr Celia Deane-Drummond and (in collaboration with the National Council of Churches) Dr David Hallman; participation in conferences and discussions on climate change and other pressing issues; and organising a retreat, led by Father McDonagh, for people active and interested in these issues.

Later this year, with CEA's help, the Bishops of Queensland will publish a statement on the environmental threat to the Great Barrier Reef, while Bishops from the Dioceses bordering on the Murray and Darling Rivers will speak on the need to protect those precious natural water resources.

Other activities of the BCJDP/BCJDEP

I have touched on the four best known and most time-consuming activities of the Bishops' Committee in my time. Of course, that is only part of the story. It is the BCJDEP's responsibility to keep an eye on social justice and human rights developments within Australia and in other parts of the world. With the ACSJC, it gives attention every year to the annual Social Justice Sunday statements. Occasionally, the Committee itself speaks up or takes action, sometimes in the form of contact with governments or with Church leaders and agencies elsewhere. At other times, the full Bishops Conference or its President are advised by the BCJDEP on appropriate responses to what is happening here or overseas. More commonly, however, advice is sought by the Committee from its three advisory agencies (Caritas Australia, ACSJC and CEA), which are often left to act on their own initiative in accordance with their respective mandates. Each agency operates under the supervision of two Bishop-members of the Committee.

There has been no shortage of events and issues for the attention of the BCJDP and its subsidiary agencies during my years as Executive Secretary. Here are a few examples. In my first week in the job, a world-wide economic upheaval was precipitated by a stock market crisis in the USA. It was the beginning of the end of the so-called 'Decade of Greed'. The recession that followed made the Bishops' inquiry into wealth and poverty all the more timely. Soon afterwards, the fall of Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe occurred--and, with it, one of the world's most dramatic changes in all of history. Another historic change was taking place in South Africa following the release of Nelson Mandela early in 1990. Then came the first Gulf War and the tragic conflicts in places like the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and the Middle East. Other forms of human suffering have resulted from famine, disease (the AIDS pandemic) and natural disasters. More recently there were the awful events in the USA on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Closer to Australia during the 1990s were bloody upheavals in Bougainville, Solomon Islands and especially East Timor. There was also the terrible Bali bombing. All of this impacted strongly on the work of Australian Catholic Relief, which had changed its name to Caritas Australia in 1996, and also to a degree on the work of the ACSJC and (more recently) CEA. In Australia, financial deregulation, the introduction of the GST, the Mabo case, the Indigenous reconciliation movement, the detention of asylum seekers, the rural crisis, child poverty, the debate over the Kyoto Protocol, the Australia and US Free Trade Agreement and the phenomena of deforestation and salination are all examples of other issues that have faced and will continue to face the BCJDEP and the three agencies.

The work has been sustained and nourished during these years by the strong example and leadership of Pope John Paul II on social justice and human rights. His Encyclical Letters Sollicitudo Rei Socialis and Centesimus Annus appeared in my early years with the BCJDP. They had been preceded in 1981 by the important Encyclical Laborem Exercens. Together with his other frequent pronouncements and actions on social questions and especially on peace, the family and the right-to-life, John Paul II has helped to inspire those of us working in these fields.

The Australian Bishops themselves have taken seriously their responsibility to educate their community on these matters. The initiatives have included the issuing of pastoral letters, drafted by the BCJDP, for occasions like the centenary of Return Novarum in 1991 and the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1998; the sponsoring of national conferences, for example an international social justice seminar in 2001 for representatives from all parts of Oceania; the offering of scholarships to enable lay Catholics to study the Church's social doctrine in depth; and the building of closer links with Catholic Education Offices and with those teaching the subject in schools, seminaries, Catholic Universities and theological Institutes.

Activity at 'Leo XIII House'

Since 1989, the headquarters for this activity has been Leo XIII House in North Sydney. The building was once a primary school and later an annexe to the Catholic Teachers College. One of my early tasks for the Committee was to find the new premises and to arrange the move across Sydney Harbour.

As a good bureaucrat, I take pride in having arranged some ninety meetings of the BCJDEP in my seventeen years. In an ex officio capacity I have also attended about one hundred meetings of the governing bodies of the advisory agencies, many of them taking place over a whole weekend. Over the same period, no fewer than seventeen Bishops have had terms of appointment as members of the Committee. It has been chaired successively by the late Archbishop Foley, Bishops Murray, Heather and Brennan and the present incumbent, Archbishop Bathersby. The chairing of Caritas Australia has been undertaken over those years by Bishop Gerry, Bishop (now Cardinal) Pell, Bishop Deakin and Archbishop Doyle. The ACSJC has been led by Bishops Brennan (twice), Manning, Morris and Saunders, while the chairing of CEA has been the task of Archbishop Bathersby and now Bishop Toohey. I have much valued my association with these busy and generous men and also with my talented colleagues, the various chief executives of the agencies: Michael Whiteley, Tom Story and Jack de Groot (Caritas Australia's National Directors); Juan Federer, Keith O'Neill, Sandie Cornish and John Ferguson (Chief or National Executive Officers of the ACSJC); and Col Brown (Executive Secretary of CEA). It has also been a joy to work with the other very committed members of staff in the BCJDP's own office and in the Secretariats of the other agencies.

The agencies have grown and prospered in these years. In the case of Caritas Australia, one indicator of its success is that both its income from the Lenten Project Compassion appeal and its staff numbers have almost trebled in this period. The ACSJC has produced a most impressive collection of papers, newsletters, booklets, media releases and other educational and promotional materials, while building a significant network of contacts throughout this country. The Council has also taken responsibility for the drafting of the annual Social Justice Sunday statements. And, as indicated above, CEA in its short life-span so far has already made a significant impact in Australia and abroad.

One of the Church's Glories

Those who feared that the laity's work was being down-graded or even eliminated by the Bishops' decisions in 1987 should be reassured. The activities described in this paper--and much that had to be left out for space reasons--have been carried out by or have resulted from the advice or initiatives of a host of lay people serving on the governing bodies of the agencies, employed on their staffs or acting, more often than not in a voluntary capacity, in dioceses, parishes and Church organisations in all parts of Australia and, in some cases, beyond our shores.

In a time when the Church has been much criticised and when it has been subjected to attacks that are often unfair and badly motivated, the Christ-like work done in the areas of justice, development, ecology and peace in Australia, the intended beneficiaries of which are those suffering from poverty and abuse, is surely one of the Church's glories and a cause for thanksgiving.

(1) Edward Cardinal Clancy, 'National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Australia', The New Dictionary of Social Thought, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1994, p.657.

(2) M. Hogan, Australian Catholics: The Social Justice Tradition, Collins Dove, Melbourne, 1993; The Sectarian Strand: Religion in Australian History, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1987; Justice Now! Social Justice Statements of the Australian Bishops, 1940-66, Department of Government and Public Administration, University of Sydney, 1990; Option for the Poor: Annual Social Justice Statements of the Australian Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, 1973-1987, Department of Government and Public Administration, University of Sydney, 1992.

(3) J. Nestor, Report of Review of Episcopal Initiatives for the Promotion of Education for Justice, Peace and Development, CCJP Occasional Paper (Special Edition), Sydney, 1987.

(4) Nestor, p.5.

(5) Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Common Wealth for the Common Good: a Statement on Wealth Distribution in Australia, Collins Dove, Melbourne, 1992.

(6) Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Common Wealth and Common Good: a Draft Statement on Wealth Distribution from the Catholic Bishops of Australia, Collins Dove, Melbourne, 1991.

(7) Muredach B. Dynan, The Wealth Distribution Inquiry: The Consultative Process Evaluation Report, Australian Catholic University, Sydney, 1992, p.45.

(8) Bishops' Committee for Justice, Development and Peace, Responding to the Challenge: A Poverty Action Report, ACSJC Catholic Social Justice Series No.36, Sydney, 1999.

(9) M. Costigan (ed.) and others, A Fair Society? Common Wealth for the Common Good: Ten Years On, ACSJC Catholic Social Justice Series No.46, Sydney, 2003.

(10) Dynan, p.45.

(11) Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Lean on Me: Young People Speak About Australian Society, its Future and Their Own, John Garratt Publishing, Melbourne, 1996, p.3.

(12) Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Young People and the Future, John Garratt Publishing, Melbourne, 1998.

(13) M. Macdonald and Research Management Group, Woman and Man, One in Christ Jesus: Report on the Participation of Women in the Catholic Church in Australia, Harper Collins Religious, Melbourne, 1999.

(14) Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, People First! Plan of Action: Recommendations to the Australian Catholic Community for the International Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006), John Garratt Publishing, Melbourne, 1997, p.32.

Dr Michael Costigan had careers in the priesthood, journalism and the public service before becoming Executive Secretary to the Bishops' Committee for Justice, Development and Peace in 1987. This article was originally presented in a paper to the Society on 11 July 2004.