Other aspects of World Youth Day 2008 have been discussed in previous posts which can be accessed here. In this post, I’d like to concentrate on why it is being held in Sydney at all.
Dr Paul Collins is probably one of the best known commentators on Catholic affairs in Australia. A former priest, he had his own run in with Cardinal Ratzinger and the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith a few years ago, which didn’t stop him from writing a rather upbeat assessment of the prospects of Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy in God’s New Man. Some of the hopes he had in 2005 have now dissipated and he takes a rather jaundiced view of the Church’s prospects in his new book - Believers: Does Australian Catholicism Have a Future?
Collins is on the “progressive” wing of the Church, and to pose the question in the terms he does implies a view that Catholicism in Australia is in crisis. But it’s worth noting that view is firmly shared by the conservatives, and in fact World Youth Day’s Australian sojourn is supposed to be a big part of the cure for the faith’s ills.
Pope Benedict’s comments - made to a group of Italian priests in 2005 - about the allegedly particular godlessness of Australia need to be seen in the context of the stoushes surrounding the Synod for Oceania, a meeting of Bishops from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Island nations in Rome in 1998, one of several “continental assemblies” convened in Rome by Pope John Paul II in the lead up to the millenium. The Synod was marked by controversy, with several Bishops expressing a desire for a married priesthood, and with Australian Catholic conservatives fighting a rear guard action to convince the Vatican (which didn’t need much persuading) that the Australian Church had effectively “gone native” and given itself over to liberalism and secularism. The Pope’s response to the Bishop’s deliberations - the Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Oceania - took a full three years to be issued, being finally promulgated in November 2001.
In the document, the Pope commented unfavourably on the processes of secularisation in Australia, and remarked:
…the Church in Australia now faces many modern “deserts” similar to those in other Western countries.
One of the issues which caused traditionalists most angst was the use of the Third Rite of Reconciliation - basically a replacement for individual confession - where an entire congregation is absolved in the lead up to Easter. The Exhortation says:
…many of the faithful are confused or indifferent about the reality of sin and the need for forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance.
The Exhortation also bemoans the “loss of priestly identity”. In its aftermath, there was a bit of a clamp down on what were seen as doctrinal and liturgical deviations, and this has gathered pace with the “reform of the reform” movement - basically arguing that those who claimed to be faithful to the “spirit of Vatican II” ignored the letter. The restorationists are certainly in synch with Pope Benedict.
Paul Collins doesn’t necessarily go into this background, probably because he has discussed it in earlier books (he’s a rather prolific writer). He does spell out the dimensions of the severe challenges the Australian Church faces, and in doing so usefully discusses empirical research that’s been conducted over the past decade or so on behalf of the Australian Catholic Bishops.
There are two aspects of the current conjuncture that are worth noting - the fact that Australia, unlike America in particular, lacks the vibrant but also often vehement “civil society” groups which might on one hand lobby for greater democratisation within the Church or on the other hand support the “orthodox” restoration, and that progressives and conservatives are broadly agreed about the scope of the problems the Church faces - ageing and declining congregations and an ageing and shrinking clergy.
Interestingly, Collins presents statistics which demonstrate that there was a spike in Catholic practice in the post-war period, and that Catholicism prior to World War Two was nothing like the total institution it became in the war’s aftermath. There’s a fair bit of consonance here with a whole lot of other sociological and historical data which demonstrates that a lot of what are now seen as “traditional values”, norms and practices were in fact an artefact of a few decades rather than some unchanging and fixed moral infrastructure which was somehow shattered in the 1960s. But no one concerned with the future of the Church can take any comfort from the fact that patterns of religious practice and knowledge were patchy in the past - because the difference now is rapid institutional decay and - as Collins demonstrates from census data and its interpretations by Catholic researchers - a massive conversion from nominal Catholicism to “no religion” between school age and early adulthood, and Gen X as essentially lost to the Church.
Qualitative research done on behalf of the Church shows that institutional factors and the perceived irrelevance of institutional religion are key drivers towards secularism. It’s no longer a matter of “dissent” - as it was with the Vatican II generation - but rather of indifference and a loss of most residual Catholic culture. The Vatican’s no doubt onto something with its angst over postmodern societies, but that doesn’t suggest that a return to orthodox traditionalism will stem the tide. The research Collins discusses about the religious and spiritual beliefs of Gen Y and Gen X suggests that there is a niche for conservative religion, but it’s a very small one, and it’s not really a living tradition but rather - in effect - yet another oppositional subculture and a “lifestyle choice”, albeit a conservative one.
Collins’ solution to the crisis in the Church is to call for bravery on the part of “pastoral Bishops” - to go ahead and ordain married men and perhaps women to the priesthood - but you get the sense in reading his book that he doesn’t really expect this to occur. It’s the sort of thing Anglicans might do, but it’s unlikely that the bureaucrats of Rome in the Antipodes are going to display any such courage - their browbeating by the Vatican authorities a decade ago and the denunciation to the Vatican of the one diocesan Bishop who might have contemplated taking such a step - William Morris of Toowoomba - suggest the hope is an empty one. The future is much more likely to be, as I think Collins knows, a continuation of the present - everyone knows that priestless parishes and disengaged and despairing parishioners are the way things are heading.
The traditionalists’ solution is World Youth Day, more or less. But even if it were to inspire a rush of vocations, it would have to be enormous to go anywhere near making up the deficit which sees a diocese like Melbourne looking at covering 225 parishes with 70 priests in a decade or so, and dioceses like Toowoomba and Townsville reduced to a clergy in single figures. Nor is the longitudinal research conducted on the long term effects of previous World Youth Days particularly encouraging - such events, it seems, confirm the faith of that small proportion of nominally Catholic youth who have some to begin with, but do little to spread it.
Collins notes that entire churches have disappeared before. That’s not to say that the Catholic Church is going to go away, but the Catholic Church in its present Australian form may be in its death throes. World Youth Day might be a rather joyous requiem. We’ll see.
It is foreseeable that in Australia there will be spotfires of religious enthusiasm on a darkening landscape of religious indifference.
Who knows, WYD may produce something of a flare-up. but I’d be surprised were anything to come of it in the medium term.
One is slightly amused to see prelates straining every fibre of their faith to find a positive message in what has transpired so far.
Yet, it must be clear to all who have eyes to see that the rhetoric and body language of WYD participants is saturated with pop-celebrity culture. The A-Lister at this event is Benedict XVI. Would the crowd behave much differently were the A-Lister on show prove to be Paris Hilton?
Moreover, all those flags look a lot like Cronulla or Gallipoli, vintage 2006.
“to go ahead and ordain married men and perhaps women to the priesthood”
My mother in her mid-nineties is aghast at such a suggestion. And she is also terribly upset that her new parish priest comes from the Phillipines. BTW, she lives in one of the dress-circle suburbs of Brisbane.
Things are not looking good - or not. A matter of perspective?
On the celeb thing - indeed, Katz, which is one reason, as I’ve observed before, Ratzinger himself was a WYD sceptic before he became Pope. Lord knows what the thinks of it all now - though I’m sure he’s enjoying the chamber music and the donated kitten at the Opus Dei retreat.
Why would Collins think ending the celibate male priesthood would revive the Catholic church? It’s not as if other denominations with married and/or female ministers are thriving, and in fact Catholicism already has a respected place for female ministers –they’re called nuns. There might be a slight increase in the number of priests, but it won’t be huge — not enough to stave off the demographic problem you mention. The current snob value of having your child attend a non-public school will probably do more for the church in the long term, simply because more people will (presumably) have been taught the doctrines.
wpd, actively importing priests is one of the strategies being used at the moment. I’m troubled by the sort of thing that is in Collins’ writing and that of other (largely middle class and middle aged) “progressive” Catholics who’ve spoken on this issue - hostility because the foreign priests “don’t understand Australian culture”.
FWIW, I think a lot of what Collins writes exemplifies and where he’s coming from is a pretty narrow middle class suburban Catholicism. But his diagnosis of the problems is well grounded in research, and not really in dispute, though obviously there’s a lot of dissensus about solutions.
I believe there is a maxim “If you draggin a dead dude around, you church rooted.” all WYD can achieve is a concentration of plonkers.
Chookie - indeed. The mainstream of the Anglican Church is hardly flourishing with married and female priests. As to education, some of the more data from some of the studies cited on education relates to senior students complaining about how RE took up far too much time that could more profitably be spent on studying for the HSC.
But the big problem the Church has is that the great majority of students who receive a Catholic secondary education disappear for all intents and purposes immediately it’s over.
How ironic that the centre of the pop-celebrity culture of World Youth Day is an old man.
Well, that’s profound, silkworm. I take it you boycott Rolling Stones concerts on principle?
It all seems to come back to the product itself. Christianity is a risky gambit. It asks much, in the way of commitment and offers little in the way of immediate return ( sounds like a bloody tertiary degree, doesn’t it? )
It asks for intense concern for and identification with, the “other” and expects self discipline almost as a jail sentence, with no prospect of parole.
And apart from whatever sense of accomplishment you can gain from helping others, no prospect of a payoff this side of the grave. And you’re not really supposed to expect necessarily that much AFTER you’ve karked it, either. Virtue is its own reward, ho hum.
A bit like certain species of socialism in their disdain for instant gratification and comodity fetishism, but when a few opportunists ( or Simonists as they call them in religion ) break trust, it all breaks down and everyone goes back to number one.
Anger (a good buzz!) greed, lust in the sense of cold blooded tricking or “using”of others, get rich quick schemes, bongs, piss, appearance and so on; all in a big hurry, kicking and gouging, to make sure the rest of the fleeing mob doesn’t get to the pot of gold first.
Still, is it processive?
“- hostility because the foreign priests “don’t understand Australian culture”.
Exactly! It seems to me, that the locals’ reaction has very little to do with religion but a hell of a lot to do with ethnocentricism.
Or is that concept simply dated and therefore not relevant?
I think it’s very relevant!
As an outsider, all I ever really notice about christianity (not catholicism in particular) is a real sense that there is an expanding number of faiths competing for a shrinking number of faithful. At least, in Australia, that seems to be the case. Any post-war resurgance in catholicism that was driven by Italian immigrants has disappeared (was it ever really welcome in the old irish catholic dominated church anyway?).
The faithful that are left seem to be yearning not for spirituality, but for entertainment and validation, not enlightenment and guidance. That to me is the crux of the problem - you can’t entertain and validate their beliefs without compromising your central messages.
My stupid suggestion is to employ atheists to do the preaching. We work cheap, know almost as much as the fools who don’t understand the theology in the first place and can handle the more difficult questions with a larger palette of answers.
A bonus is that most of us are better practising christians in terms of marital faithfulness than the motley crew of suddenly embarrassed ministers the Anglicans have hauled through several country towns I know of but won’t mention. I can’t imagine the catholics to be much better.
It has to be remembered that the Catholic church has been around longer than left wing thought. The attempts by left of centre activists, the ABC and the Sydney Morning Herald to derail World Youth Day are a disgrace. Long after the legitimate concerns of victims of priest paedophilia have been addressed the Catholic church will be doing what it does best, spreading the word of Christ, helping the poor and addressing the big moral questions of the times. Fr.Collins and his ilk will be forgotten. It is the basic decency of the organisation that drives the recent overt expressions of hate towards the church. The obvious delight of the pilgrims must stick in their craw.
Jack, if you think the “legitimate concerns” of victims of sexual abuse have been adequately addressed, you might do better to watch Lateline right now rather than commenting on this blog.
Exactly so, Jack.
Sounds like a heap of sour grapes to me. Only to be expected here, of course.
In any case, I fail to see what the supposed unpopularity of Christianity in Australia has to do with anything really. Either the Church is right or it is wrong and that’s about all there is to it. If it’s right (which it is) then everyone ought to believe what it teaches. The fact that not all do is neither here nor there.
Well, I’ll be having a blast this weekend, worshipping the God I love and serve with so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ. So, whatever you’re all doing, I wish you all the best and God bless you.
the Catholic Church in its present Australian form may be in its death throes.
It may well be. But paying any attention whatsoever seems to be caring overly much about something which is frankly irrelevant to the modern world and certainly to the lives of modern secular liberals.
To an ageing baby-boomer WYD seems a typically missing-the-point kind of Church thing to do. I disagree with Paul Walter, above, and suspect that the Christian message could be quite attractive to young people. But the institutional nature of the Church works against it as a carrier of the message. Teenagers know hypocrisy when they see it. It’s really obvious when you talk about “the real thing”, but you don’t have it.
Well, it’s getting an enormous amount of attention, Idiot/Savant, not least in the rather curious speech Kevin Rudd made at the opening mass today. He certainly wouldn’t be speaking in those terms (or perhaps at all) at this event if the Church wasn’t among other things, an organisation with significant political power. The reasons why what it does with that power are worth scrutinising were given in this post:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/07/15/is-criticism-of-world-youth-day-automatically-catholic-bashing/
The Church is also one of Australia’s largest employers through its health and education systems, as well as one of the largest providers of social services. Its reach goes far beyond doctrinal considerations.
Having said all that, this particular post isn’t intended to be particularly polemical. And our visitors who want to recite Pell’s talking points are probably on the wrong thread.
I’m a Catholic myself, and I thought a bit of background and sociological context to why this event is occurring might be of interest. If you don’t find it interesting, no probs!
Mark, the ABC has agendas and that is manifest as an anti Catholic lame kinghit at present. As Cardinal Pell said, it is a coincidence is it not that these allegations surfaced last week. The ABC and other anti Catholic outlets are miffed at the obvious expressions of joy by the young pilgrims. You cannot fool youth as Russell remarked above.
Jack
Jack, everyone has an agenda. If furthering the interests of victims of sexual abuse and drawing public attention to their cases and causes is Lateline’s, it’s one I’d endorse. However, as I commented just now, this thread really isn’t the most appropriate one for this particular aspect of the discussion. I’d ask you to make any further points on the ABC or such like on this thread instead, please.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/07/15/is-criticism-of-world-youth-day-automatically-catholic-bashing/
Thanks.
Mark I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to derail the thread, the purpose of World Youth Day is to draw pilgrim youth together in celebration of their faith. I agree that priest paedophilia has no relevance to this day. On that we agree.
Jack
Jack, Louise, they’re draggin a dead italian around. Have a sniff. It’s over.
Yikes - Jack I was arguing the other way: that nearly all of the hordes that pass through 12 long years of Catholic schooling want nothing to do with the Church once they’re out of its clutches. For good reason. As for the WYD enthusiasts, well, youth and naivety go together; I daresay most of them will part company with the Church later on, though not necessarily turn their backs on the basic Christian message.
Russell, thanks.
You solved the problem. More thought in your couple of sentences than whole posts in this thread.
Louise/Jack. Get out of denial over the obvious and proven dark side of the church. Stop blaming others for the wrongs of brutes and liars. Bad advertisement for catholicism, philistines like these.
Years ago many priests were imported from Ireland, did they not understand Australian culture?
“You cannot fool youth”
Oh, mercy.
As a lapsed Catholic born slightly before Vatican II, I’m stunned at the Church’s shift to the doctrinaire political right in recent years, the reassertion of idol worship and the rise of pentecostalism.
The church embraced a more modern, more inclusive, less hysterical version of catholicism when I was growing up in the late 60s and early 70s, but it seems the lunatics have taken over the asylum again.
My take on this is that the marketing department of the Catholic Church has sensed the rightward, fundamentalist shift of religion globally and decided it wants a piece of it. This is an age when people cling to certainties even more fervidly, so why not give them what they want?
Personally, I can’t remember kids in my day ever being so “enthusiastic” as the ones now crowding Sydney’s streets, singing Kumbaya and proclaiming how they are filled with the ‘Holy Spirit’. Enthusiasm is normally an attitude I applaud, but history shows that in religion and politics it tends to end rather messily.
As an aside, look at the recent pictures of air punching, wild-eyed and passionate pilgrims on the front pages of the News Ltd papers and consider whether the coverage would be so favourable had those pilgrims been Moslem “enthusiasts” at a festival downunder.
In the meantime, I am sure the people who man the cash registers in the Vatican are enjoying the benefits of their new youth branding exercise. But it scares the bejesus out of this Catholic exile.
I think the problem for Xanity (not just Catholicism) in Australia goes right back to our European origins.
The devotional excesses of postwar Oz Catholicism were a product of surviving the worst war in history against a recognised spititual evil,(Nazism/Fascism) and a fear of Communism which convinced young schoolkids like me that the Russians and the Chinese plan for world domination was to invade Australia and kill all the priests and rape all the nuns, then martyr the rest of us (Catholics, that is).But they were not the norm. The norm was a kind of irreligiosity.
That secular bent is partly explainable by what was happening in Britain in the 1780s. The Europeans came to Australia at a time when England in particular was going through the last stages of a libertine secular culture,when the prevailing doctoral tenets of the Anglican Church verged on Deism. (I am aware of the arguments that 18th England was a confessional state, but am not entirely convinced by them)At the same time the later 19th century Evangelicalism was just beginning, but its influence had not yet permeated English society. So Europeans came here at a time when Anglicanism was nominal and the fervour of Evangelicalism was not yet established. For example, Governor Phillip told the evangelical Anglican Richard Johnson that his job was not to save souls, but to keep the convicts under control.Such religious indifference was compounded among the Irish convicts, almost entirely Catholic, who saw the Anglican Church as the church of the enemy, and were themselves for years without effective pastoral spiritual guidance, and so let their religious practice slip. I would argue that the founding years 1788-1810, where most of the Governors and many of the ruling elite practised a surface Christianity laid the groundwork for our tendency toward secular humanism. There was not to be a really strong emphasis on Xtan practice from the top until the arrival of Macquarie, but by then it was too late. The die had been cast, and our underlying attitudes to religion (ignoring it) were set in stone.
btw, the convicts burnt down the first church within days of it being built, which sort of illustrates my point.
The Catholic church provides Catholic hospitals and Catholic schools. Why doesn’t the Church support already existing public schools and hospitals? Catholic hospitals are no better than public hospitals. Catholic schools are no better than public schools. The only thing the Church provides is the illusion that they are superior to their public equivalents. This is is keeping with the spirit of Catholicism, which profits off the illusion of religion generally, the chief of which is the illusion of a benevolent creator, followed closely by the illusion of an historical Jesus. Never mind all the theological garbage (such as miracles and resurrecting) that is attached to this fictional figure.
The chief purpose of WYD is to push all these illusions even further into the public sphere.
My wife asked me “Why are they here? What is the point of World Youth Day?”.
I was a bit taken aback. I guess I hadn’t thought to wonder “why?”.
I proffered “they are here to see the Pope”. She, quite rightly, asked why people from Europe would come all the way to Australia to see him when he leans out a window on a fairly regular basis in Rome.
My best answer was “It’s like Scouts and Jamborees, you want to hang out with a bunch of people who think the same way you do and get laid”.
Maybe it is no more significant than a Formula 1 race, or a big soccer/rugby/AFL match. It brings in the punters and makes everyone associated with it feel good about themselves.
aidan @ 31,
The NSW Government and Cardinal Pell don’t want them to get laid. That’s why they used the nuisance laws to stop the No Pope people from handing out condoms. Suspect at least some of the kids might have different ideas, though.Wonder if they have brothers, priests, and nuns wondering around making sute the kids don’t share sleeping bags.
Sure they don’t.
My vicarious knowledge of Christian Youth Group activities leads me to believe that this is very much on the agenda.
Hand-job for Jesus? Now that sounds like an suitably annoying slogan for a t-shirt.
I would argue that the founding years 1788-1810, where most of the Governors and many of the ruling elite practised a surface Christianity laid the groundwork for our tendency toward secular humanism. There was not to be a really strong emphasis on Xtan practice from the top until the arrival of Macquarie, but by then it was too late. The die had been cast, and our underlying attitudes to religion (ignoring it) were set in stone.
I like this analysis, Paul. It sounds like the fundies missed that particular Overton window by two centuries or so.
“That’s why they used the nuisance laws to stop the No Pope people from handing out condoms.”
I heard one of the pilgrim guardians, on the news, concerned that the poor kids might take those condoms, thinking they were kind of trading cards. My worry was more that the little buggers thought it was bubble gum.
The Worst of Perth #23
What ‘dead Italian’ you are referring to TWoP?
Well, I’m glad that this point has been settled.
But on the down side, I guess the Australian section of heaven will be very sparcely populated. (Which may indeed be some folks’ definition of heaven.)
“What ‘dead Italian’ you are referring to TWoP?”
This one http://www.nd.edu.au/news/sydney/pier_giorgio_relics.shtml
Paul Burns wrote:
That’s an Aussie tradition I could get behind
Indeed yes, David, and there was also the famous synchronised mass farting performance by female convicts forced to attend a sermon by the Rev Samuel Marsden (known as “the flogging parson”, and a man also known for his personal interest in “rescuing” fallen women).