Bishop Anthony Randazzo of Broken Bay, Australia –president of the Federation of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania spoke at a press conference about his experiences with synodality in Oceania. He mentioned that synodality is a common experience for Oceania’s people, whom, he said, have practiced widespread consultative models of leadership for thousands of years, and he criticized that the “niche issues” of rich Western countries receive more attention than real issues, such as environmental problems in his region where rising sea levels threaten the very existence of many countries. Randazzo criticized the “obsession” of a minority of Catholics in the West with female ordination. “Those issues become all-consuming and focusing for people, to the point that they then become an imposition on people who sometimes struggle simply to feed their families, to survive the rising sea levels, or the dangerous journeys across wild oceans to resettle in new lands,” he said. He added that he believes that female ordination has become the primary issue when discussing the role of women in the Church, which has left other important topics about women in the Church off the table. “When we talk about women in the Church, that’s the hot-button issue, and as a consequence women in many parts of the world and the Church who are treated as second-class citizens are totally ignored,” Randazzo said. He said this was a “scandal against the Gospel (...) all because a small minority, with a large powerful western voice, are obsessed with pushing this issue.” Randazzo called this focus “a new form of colonialism” that oppresses the vulnerable and which is “certainly not the mind of the synodal Church in mission.”
The spiritual climax of the Gospel of John, as Father John Waiss points out, occurs at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus utters his parting words: “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26-27). While these words were addressed to the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Church has long understood this moment as a universal adoption. To truly image Christ, we must share in His parentage; if we embrace God as our spiritual Father but reject Mary as our mother, we treat Christ as a half-brother rather than our "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). As Origen noted as early as the third century, the profound depths of the Gospel are only accessible to those who, like John, rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and receive Mary into their own homes. This maternal role is deeply rooted in biblical typology, positioning Mary as the fulfillment of the great mothers of the Old Covenant. She is the New Eve , the mother of all the living according ...
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