Dear friends,

Whichever way you look at it the Holy Roman Catholic Church is in the midst of an enormous crisis. This morning's front page story in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding Cardinal Pell's call for all Catholic School Principals, Deputy Principals and Religious Education Co-ordinators to take an Oath of Allegiance to Church teachings underlines the crisis from one side. One hardly needs to be Methuselah to appreciate the crisis where 85% of the baptised faithful across the Western world have now vamoosed out the door has now reached the point where, privately, even principals, deputy principals and religious education co-ordinators have serious misgivings of what the institutional leaders believe is "the truth". When might the ecclesial leaders of the Church start demanding Oaths of Allegiance from parish priests, religious and even bishops and cardinals who disagree with the small number of issues out of the millions that presently cause so much contention in Catholic teaching? A serious question does have to be asked though: will Orwellian style tactics borrowed from the Totalitarian States of yesteryear that try to impose compliance on the faithful who are still trying to participate address the underlying cause of the crisis?

The crisis is not all one-sided though. In news overnight from the United States, one of the principal activist groups in the Church disenchanted with the present direction being forged by the Church's ecclesial leaders is itself in crisis. 38 newspapers across the United States yesterday carried an Associated Press story about the financial and membership crisis facing Voice of the Faithful.

The Church faces an enormous crisis at the moment. In the Western world, 85% of the ordinary faithful have just "given up" and quietly walked out the door without leaving any protest notes. They don't write to the pope, or any bishops or parish priests explaining why they have left. They seem to have figured it simply isn't worth the effort. No one is listening. These men seem to think they have all the answers, they know God's mind even better than God knows it himself, and they never make mistakes.

The sad thing is that there are no really effective voices at the moment strong enough to protest. In Australia we have little in the way of independent scrutiny of the policy direction being taken by the institutional Church's leaders other than what small space the mainstream secular press can give it occasionally. At the end of last year we lost OnLine Catholics the first "independent voice" seeking to treat religion and spirituality issues seriously and from a standpoint that did not automatically assume that "Father knows best". The truth is that OnLine Catholics was largely funded by the religious orders seeking to try and stir up interest from the broad ranks in the Church. In many ways the hope for reform continues to rest with the religious orders as they are the ones with the time, and commitment to be taking spiritual and theological issues seriously. But their numbers are rapidly dwindling and the focus of the Orders today seems to be increasingly focused on attending to the welfare of their members in aged care facilities. ACLRI (Australian Council of Leaders of Religious Institutes), the joint voice of the Religious Orders in Australia, seems to be in solid retreat and that probably explains the demise of OnLine Catholics and the re-focusing of the Orders on the internal welfare of their members than it does on what's going on in the wider world.

There is actually cause for some hope. While there has been a massive slide in participation in the spiritual and sacramental life of the institutional Church, this is not matched by any catastrophic decline in interest in spirituality and belief in God or Jesus Christ more generally. One measure of this is that even though the institution seems to have lost interest in the spiritual welfare of its flock others, like Papal Knight, Rupert Murdoch, and other media barons and publishers have perceived there is a significant audience out there with spiritual needs and we have seen a steady increase in "body and soul" type programming. In Australia the quality of religious programming on our own national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has increased substantially in recent decades. Less and less of this secular programming is even interested in examining the decline of institutionalised religion and the failings of the existing system and it is forging out endeavouring to meet the aspirations of this now vast sector of the population that has left the likes of Cardinal Pell far, far behind. The people might be sick of the Church. They are not necessarily sick of God, sick of Jesus Christ, or the appreciation that the spiritual side of life is important.

Another cause for hope is that even though there has been this massive decline in Church "liturgy" there has been a corresponding massive increase in secular "liturgy" — secular programs that seek to help ordinary people access the spiritual dimension of their lives and aspirations. Even organisations like the NRL and AFL have a very keen appreciation these days for the importance of "secular liturgy" served up as part of their football games.

The challenge each of us faces as an individual is where do we place our bets? Do you put your life, and eternity, on the line that the Cardinal has the right answer? Or do we have to strike out on our own? Self-evidently most have chosen the latter. My confident expectation is that the measures the Cardinal is presently implementing — which are basically a regurgitation of the policies that have failed so abysmally for close on 200 years and which have largely been responsible for driving the faithful out of the pews — will only exacerbate the drift. With the added power of World Youth Day and the liturgical fare that we now hear rumoured to be in the pipeline, one can expect that after all the immediate glitz has faded the exit will be exacerbated in even more spectacular fashion.

My advice, for what it is worth, is just make sure you book a seat on the right trolleybus to where the final accountability for what has happened over the last 200 years is finally evaluated. It will not be evaluated by any "democratic vote", nor by any cardinal or even Pope, but alone by that Prince who does hold the ultimate welfare of "everything and everybody" in their Word!

Blessings, Brian

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©2007Brian Coyne

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