Thanks to Linda Morris's article in The Age this morning, the story we broke yesterday (see www.catholica.com.au/breakingnews/011_bn_020807.php) seems to be generating interest in other parts of the mainstream media. For that reason I will be leaving the story on the front page of our website again today.

One of the interesting responses to my email yesterday — and there have been many — came from Lillypilly in our forum. (See Forum Entry "The last 'Hurrah'") Lillypilly is one of those stalwarts in the Church who has welcomed many priests and nuns into her home over the decades and provided them with a place of sanctuary or a place for what in military terms is called "R & R". One of the benefits flowing from this is that it has given her a better insight than most of us get into the real feelings of those in religious orders when they can let their guard down out of the public spotlight. For that reason I do find it always worth listening to anything this woman has to say.

Religious men and women providing the real leadership today...

Over the years, and particularly over the last couple of decades when I have had a closer working relationship with many religious, I have developed an increasing respect for the process of reflection that has been going on in the minds of many religious. Unlike dioscesan priests and the now sizeable paid professional workforce the Church can afford to employ, religious men and women are less bound by the silly little games of social conformism and "trying to please the boss" that have become the mark of much of the rest of the Church. They have had much to reflect upon as they have watched fewer and fewer people being attracted to the "whole of life" vocational commitments that they had made.

From my conversations and interviews with many of them in the last decade I pick up this real sense, far more than I detect it in diocesan priests in general or the vast majority of lay people, that they have been thinking about these challenges the Church is facing in a far less constrained way than most other people. Diocesan priests are still bound more by rules of social and institutional conformism than the religious. Most lay people simply do not have the time in their lives amidst the responsibilities of bringing up families and earning a living to think in depth or at length about spiritual and theological issues. Religious priests, brothers and nuns though have made a professional commitment of their lives to be thking about these matters. Many of them have had to face hard decisions about whether "religious life" as we have traditionally known it was finished and whether they should "get out" as many of their confreres had done.

It has been a long and complex process of evaluation taking place over decades and collectively through the minds of many individual women and men spread diversely around the globe. In many ways, and despite their dwindling numbers, I think religious men and women have, whether they fully realise it or not themselves, come to be the real leaders in the Church in the realm of ideas and, more importantly, about what might be dubbed "real theology" — a realistic, non hoop-jumping/social conformist, understanding of why we human beings ought bother ourselves about "God-bothering".

Collectively I think most intelligent lay Catholics do acknowledge the enormous debt we collectively owe to the tens of thousands of men and women, particularly in the teaching orders, who literally did "sacrifice their lives" in order to lift the sons and daughters of the predominantly working classes in nations like our own to take a place of equality in society with all other citizens. Our own country, Australia, socially today is itself testimony to an enormous social experiment that has paid a massive dividend. Ireland is another country where the dividend has possibly been even higher. The same game was also played out in North America to a slightly different orchestration. Tens of thousands of men and women from Europe in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries achieved something on a scale that would have been impossible even for governments. It should not be a surprise to us that now that that need has been met — the need to provide education for the poor and the second class citizens when nobody else was capable of doing it — that vocations have largely dried up.

In recent decades all of the religious orders have been searching for new directions — new "needs" that they might meet in society. Some of them are discerning that there remains a huge need in the developing world to repeat the experiment they were engaged in that helped lift the poor and dispossessed in the colonies of the European nations into a rightful place of equality to share in the governance and "common-wealth" of their nations.

The canaries in the mine...

I seriously suggest though that in a very real sense the men and women religious in the Church have also become the "canaries in the mine" as it were who do have a far more realistic understanding of the crisis within the institutional Church than our bishops and diocesan priests who seem today so caught up in this game of social conformism and not upsetting the neaderthal elements in the institution who are petrified to the point of terrorism of all social change.

As I have been saying often recently, my observation is that we are extremely lucky here in Australia compared to most other nations where there is a sizeable Catholic population. The Church today in this country is probably in a better state in terms of its material assets and the security of its recurrent income than it has ever been at any previous point in its history. While priestly vocations are certainly dwindling, the joyful reality is that it actually does have a far larger and far more theologically qualified workforce and actually paid at professional salaries, not stipends, than it has ever been able to boast before. I also sincerely believe that, in the main, we do have a crop of pastoral leaders in our bishops who are insightful individuals — the principal public evidence for this are the submission they made to the Oceania Synod back in 1999 that I am very sure the vast majority of Catholic lay people in this country would have seen as sympathetic to their pastoral needs. For a long time though these guys have been placed in a position that is akin to being between "a rock and a hard place". (And you can draw your own conclusions as to what "the rock" represents! LOL)

I think it is time for intelligent Catholic men and women to provide moral support to our religious men and women and to the great majority of our bishops. There are many, many reasons in this country to be optimistic for the future of our Church if only we can break the institution away from the clutches of the emotionally insecure who have placed a premium on the search for certitude in their lives at the expense of the search for "real truth" and the real guidance of the Holy Spirit that this Great South Land of the Holy Spirit so desperately hungers for today.

The organisers of the petition have informed me that they are setting up a website where people can sign the petition on-line. They will also be calling for volunteers from around Australia to collect signatures outside Sunday Masses. In the meantime if you would like to contact the organisers I have provided an email link at the bottom of the original news story. I understand they have been already flooded with responses so be patient if you are seeking a reply.

Brian Coyne is the editor and publisher of Catholica Australia.

We welcome your thoughts in response to this commentary in our forum.

©2007 Catholica Australia
(Originally published as Email Commentary 386)

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