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Listening to Catholic Teachers…
Dear Friends,
The latest issue of Mission and Spirituality News (published by the Broken Bay Institute and Church Resources) which was published yesterday contains a copy of Br Luke Saker's 2000 and 2006 study of the attitudes of Catholic University students towards their faith. This is not a new report, it received quite a bit of coverage in both the diocesan and secular press when it was published in 2006. It is worth re-visiting though.
I have placed a copy of the full report on the Catholica website HERE (94kB PDF document).
It contains a quite soul-destroying list of the decline in relevance of institutional Catholicism in the minds of what ought be the vanguard of Catholic tertiary students as these are the one's looking for a career as teachers in Catholic schools. It was partly as a joke that I selected the only statistic with a positive trend to use as our headline but even a rate of 16% who actually agree with Church teaching on this issue is hardly anything anyone in Rome might get very excited about.
Here's just a small selection of some of the other statistics:
Any use of artificial contraception during sexual intercourse is sinful:
14% in 2000 and 4% in 2006
Having a sexual relationship before marriage is sinful:
14% in 2000 and 6% in 2006
Each and every sexual act must be open to the possibility of procreation:
14% in 2000 and 16% in 2006
Missing Mass on Sunday is sinful:
18% in 2000 and 16% in 2006
I agree with the Church’s teaching on Sunday Mass and Holy Days of obligation:
20% in 2000 and 1% in 2006
When the male sperm unites with the female egg you have human life:
69% in 2000 and 31% in 2006
Abortion is the murder of an unborn child:
60% in 2000 and 27% in 2006
Remember, the foregoing are survey statistics from 1st and 2nd Year University students who have been taught in Catholic secondary schools and who aspire to be teachers in Catholic schools.
WHAT CONCLUSIONS CAN WE DRAW FROM ALL OF THIS?
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Dr Luke Saker FMS |
Firstly, I think we might all agree that there is some kind of crisis. The second question we might ask though is what is the crisis about? Does Br Luke's study really indicate a crisis in Catholic Education or is it more truly reflective of a much larger crisis in the inability of Rome (and the Bishops who continue to support "the company line") to get their message across? In other words ought we be blaming Catholic teachers, and the Catholic Education system, for this situation, or ought we be directing our concern at the Popes and Bishops and their dwindling coterie of supporters around the world who foist on the system a set of beliefs that most ordinary people today simply do not believe that is what God is telling us anymore? I think these statistics are a devastating critique of the senseless and abysmal damage done by Humanae Vitae. As I argued in recent days, there is actually much that is actually very good in Humanae Vitae, and Catholic thinking about human sexuality in general. The tragedy is that most people do not even bother to listen to the good bits anymore such is the damage that was done by this encyclical in the one central, but essentially smallest part of its teaching. The utter intransigence of the leadership to face up to the fact that an enormous mistake in communications was made is absolutely beyond belief.
One does not need to be an Einstein to work out today that most parents with children in Catholic schools today do not agree with the teaching on artificial contraception. Neither do most teachers whom the institution expects to pass on this teaching. It really is like peeing into the wind to believe that conservative bishops can find in Australia the numbers of "orthodox Catholic teachers" that Br Luke suggests are needed who are actually convinced of the institutional wisdom on this subject and who can teach it with a straight face and any conviction. Kids are not stupid. They can tell from about 40,000 paces when a teacher does not personally believe in what they are required to teach. The worst tragedy though is that today the scepticism today is not confined to the single issue of artificial contraception. It extends virtually across the entire phalanx of morality. The institutional leadership stand there like stunned mullets — or the Emperor without any clothes. The sexual abuse scandals have only made the situation far, far worse. In fact, I would argue, there is probably a large measure of the influence showing up from the sexual abuse scandals in the differences between Br Luke's two sets of figures. The drop-off in compliance of belief between 2000 and 2006 is devastating and that was the period when the sexual abuse scandals — both the abuse itself and the revelations of cover-ups by bishops — have become regular fare in the mainstream media.
What do you think might happen if every bishop in the Western world wrote a letter to Pope Benedict and said "Listen, Your Holiness, you need to change this teaching. People simply do not believe us anymore. They don't think that is what God is saying to them." Do you think he might listen? I doubt that you'd get 100% of them agreeing but I would bet my last dollar that far more than 50% of the bishops in the Western world believe that privately.
Sadly, I don't believe there is any set of statistics that you could produce to Rome that might convince them that any mistake was made in 1968. Even when we get to the situation where 95% have vamoosed out the door — but are still sending their kids to Catholic schools for a range of other reasons — they'll still be burbling on about how "the Holy Fathers" never make any mistakes, that they are not human beings and have some special line to God not shared by anyone else on earth, and that they definitely must never admit that any prior teaching or ruling needs to be changed. It'll upset "the little people". Meanwhile the rest of humanity can effectively "go to hell" as far as the leadership in Rome seems to be concerned. I wonder who will eventually pay the price for so many of them actually choosing to "go to hell" because of flawed leadership or methods of communication?
AND A GOOD NEWS STORY FROM BR LUKE…
Interestingly, Br Luke also has another article in Mission and Spirituality News, which reports some good stuff about a recent liturgy the Marists held at Homebush Bay for 4,000 of their students. His outlook there is far more optimistic and accords with the similar experiences I had recently attending two big events at Homebush Bay to celebrate the Bicentenary of the Patrician Brothers (LINK). As I said when reporting those events, if the Church took the muzzle off Catholic teachers and the religious congregations in Australia the Catholic Church in Australia in a very short order of time would have neither a crisis in participation nor a crisis in vocations! And the rest of us probably wouldn't have to cringe every time something "Catholic" appears in the mainstream media. There'd actually be a Church we might be proud to belong to, and one our children and grandchildren might feel proud to belong to as well.
Br Luke is a friend of mine. We used to work together when I was based in Perth. I'm endeavouring to make contact with him and perhaps might arrange an interview to explore all this stuff further.
I'll place this email message as a post on our forum as a starter post for anyone else who might wish to comment on Br Luke Saker's research. <Link to the forum string> |
