A great article from Andrew Phelan, springing from what is happening in Canberra-Goulburn, speaks of the whole Australian situation. 

He emphasises the need for the church to go to its roots, tap genuinely into the sensus fidei, if it’s to become relevant. In the quote below referencing Francis, he writes of the need for a ‘contextual theology’ based on the wisdom of the common sense of the people. 

To quote Phelan: 

“Francis writes that theology cannot limit itself to “abstractly re-proposing formulas and schemes of the past.” It must confront “profound cultural transformations,” conscious that “what we are living is not simply an era of changes, but a change of era.” Good theologians, he writes — in a passage that deserves to be read aloud in every archdiocesan working group in Australia — are like good pastors: they “smell of the people and of the street and, with their reflection, pour oil and wine on the wounds of men.” The document calls for a fundamentally contextual theology, an inductive method starting from the concrete situations in which peoples find themselves, letting itself be “seriously questioned by reality.” It calls for the privileging of the wisdom of the common sense of the people as “a theological place in which many images of God live.”

https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/why-the-australian-church-needs-a-vision-not-just-a-process