By JEFF DILLON
The Dunedin Diocese synod hui struck a bit of initial turbulence at its startup at St Patrick’s Basilica, South Dunedin, on November 18. The keynote speaker, Dr Therese Lautua, a theologian from Auckland, missed her flight to Dunedin earlier in the morning, and had to arrange a later arrival.
Unfazed by the hiccup, the organisers went ahead with discussions about aspects of the draft Diocesan Strategic Plan document with the 50 or so attendees. Participants came from Invercargill, Gore, Balclutha, Alexandra, Oamaru and Dunedin. Once the meeting got underway, they were provided with seven leaders, and participants could self-select which small group of about seven people they would join to discuss some key questions.
At the beginning, Bishop Michael Dooley spoke about the background to the day, and recommended that discussions should follow the synodal pattern of prayer, discussion, and then a three-minute period of silent reflection to allow for any inspiration by the Holy Spirit.
Discussion was to focus on selected parts of the draft plan, which had been developed from the earlier Diocesan Synodal Synthesis. The draft had identified four “calls”, which were “Leadership”, “Inclusive Community”, “Liturgy” and “Outreach”. The first discussion session focused attention on Leadership. Comments were recorded, and a summary was provided in a reporting-back session to the whole gathering. Further discussion sessions followed, with a lunch break about 12.30 pm.
Dr Therese Lautua delivers her address at the Dunedin diocese synod hui.
The main afternoon session was the talk by Dr Lautua. She was on the writing group for the Oceania Synod document. The experiences of having a mixed cultural heritage, as well as her Catholic faith, have inspired her research pursuits in the areas of Practical and Contextual Theology, Pacific identity and mental well-being. At the start, she identified that her own ancestors came from multiple places, Samoa, Ireland, and Switzerland, and that she was proudly from Manurewa in South Auckland.
The reason she talked about positionality and kinship ties was because this is really unique and important for our region here in Aotearoa, in the way that we view synodality and how we relate to one another in our parishes. She then put up a slide with the title “Talanoa”, and asked the attendees to form pairs for a couple of minutes, and discuss what they thought a Samoan proverb meant in this context. (“Papata pe, ke na’e lalanga” which means “It may be coarse in texture, but it was woven well”).
After a chance for comments, she then went on to express her view that the Catholic Church in Aotearoa needs to be a bit stronger in expressing our multi-cultural identity, and commitment to being bi-cultural without it being lip service or tokenistic.
Dr Lautua then went on to share some observations about the Trinity and the relationship with our existence. She explored several aspects of this.
Commenting about the Church and its mission, she suggested that there ought to be greater recognition that the parish should exist to support family life, and not that families simply exist to support the parish.
Church is an ongoing movement of parishioners working and walking together in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.