EDITOR'S ROUND-UP

Saturday, 11 October 2008

The future, dear people, is up to me and you…

Dear Friends,

There has been quite a bit of interesting news overnight in the secular media which I've drawn atttention to in the forum. One story concerns the vote in the Victorian Parliament introducing the most liberal abortion laws in Australia. Sadly it also represents the continuing sharp decline in the capacity of the Church to influence public or parliamentary opinion. Another story comes from Western Australia where Archbishop Barry Hickey's Sunday night 30 second "chats to the faithful" on television have now led to trouble and he has launched a defamation action against the West Australian newspaper and its editor. I would also draw to your attention a wonderful post by NSW priest, Fr Peter Dresser, which is a priestly "from-the-heart and brutally honest" exploration of the difficulties facing the Church in many parts of this nation.

Listen, folks! We have a problem. The Catholic Church has a problem. Sadly the likes of Peter Dresser are not listened to by those in authority. This latest carry on over the canonisation of Pope Pius XII illustrates the problem (Don't miss the strings in the forum about that including the commentaries that our own newly published historian, Paul O'Shea, has been writing from his trip to New York.) As I was saying to Amanda a little while ago when we were discussing all these things: we have a Church at the moment which is a bit like a school where the principal and the teachers are only interested in communicating with "the teachers' pets" and the entire rest of the school population are treated as imbeciles, drongos and ne'er-do-wells. If the principal and teachers carry on like that for long enough they will eventually have few enrolments if they haven't had a student uprising to deal with before it got to that point. The institution is not going to solve its problems by only recruiting from "the teachers' pet" sector of the population. Once upon a time the Church picked new priests and community leaders from "the best and brightest" in the crop. Today it seems to be recruiting from down the "nutters and teachers' pets" end of the school population spectrums. There's no future for a Church that is doing that except "more of the same — more decline into total irrelevance as a force for good in society".

The future, dear people, is up to you and me: The boys at the top of the tree are increasingly only endeavouring to surround themselves with the equivalent of teacher's pets who are only capable of telling them what a good job they're doing and what fine fellows they are. This is the stuff we learned even before we went to school. It's the fable of the Emperor and his new clothes.

If you still believe in Jesus Christ. If you still believe Jesus has something to offer the world — or your family, or your children and grandchildren — YOU have to do something. Could I quietly suggest: you need to start saying something. You need to start expressing your feelings. If you are a bishop or a priest and you happen to have the ear of someone in Rome you have to learn to look them in the eye and say to them firmly: "the formula isn't working! The people have stopped listening! We need to change the approach!" Initially they won't listen. They might even try and put you "out to pasture". Some of us in this place have experienced that. Let us assure you there is grass "on the other side of the fence — God will protect you". Hold your nerve. Don't get angry and just keep repeating the mantra. If you are "an ordinary pew sitter": say these things to your priest, your bishop when he visits, and share your feelings with your neighbours.

You might also take a leaf out of the books written by Paul and Barnabas. They're the subject of Dr Ian Elmer's fascinating series today. They kept "looking the authorities of their time in the eye and telling it as it is". The result was a Church that burst out of the confines of its "Jewish-Christian" origins and started to bring "the Good News" to the whole world …… yes, even us heretics, pagans and Gentiles! <Link to Ian's commentary>

House Churches: what are they? Dr Charles Kelliher, one of our readers in the United States was taken with Francis Brown's commentary last week and sent in this short essay he's recently written regarding the House Churches. Given the challenge posed by dwindling vocations around the world, Dr Kelliher, suggests we might move back to a model like this. Like a growing number of people who are seriously considering the challenges facing the Church today he also suggests the idea has merit from other points of view… <more>

Lessons from St Francis... Last Saturday our occasional lead commentator, Fr Dan Donovan, was to be found blessing the animals at the festival held in the plaza outside St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney for World Animal Day. He sent this commentary in yesterday as a post-event reflection. <more>

An intriguing Catholic Education Office appointment — Editorial Comment: Provocative priest and writer, Fr Eric Hodgens, is again stirring the possum in Melbourne and calling for greater accountability from the Church leadership in Church administration. In 2006 he caused headlines questioning the appointment of a former politician to a leadership position in the Catholic Education Office seemingly without widespread consultation of stakeholders in Catholic Education. In this article recently published on his website, Fr Hodgens, queries the wisdom in the appointment of a lawyer seemingly without significant educational experience to the position of Deputy Director of Catholic Education. We publish this article on Catholica out of our commitment to generate greater scrutiny of how our Church is administered. We do receive feedback here at Catholica which strongly suggests the views expressed by Fr Hodgens do echo a larger and significant groundswell of demoralisation amongst the now large, professionally employed sectors of the Catholic Church in some dioceses in this country who are under considerable constraint and fear for their ongoing employment to not express their views publicly on aspects of how their Church is administered. The demoralisation is not uniform. Many leaders seem to have good relationships with their professional workforces and morale is healthy given all the other pressures the Church is under today in Western nations like ours. <more>

The Abyss… This is a great essay from Dr Kania, perhaps too short as there is much more to be explored under this topic. He originally entitled his essay "The Abyss". What he's exploring are the complexities of having the courage to ask difficult questions or support unpopular causes and how we discern when to stand up for our beliefs and principles. Being Christian is not simply about trying to demonstrate how "different" we are to everyone else in society. The "mark" of Christ is not our unpopularity. It is our capacity to discern the moral good in the complex dilemmas of life and, when necessary, to stand up for that good not because it brings approbrium on ourselves but because that good is worth standing up for sometimes at great cost. This is a highly relevant issue today in, for example, the ways in which we discern to stand up for various principles in public life such as ethical issues like abortion, or capital punishment, or social justice issues. <more>

8.5: The incarnation and birth narratives… Lock up your daughters, manacle your sons, and keep this episode of Tom Lee's commentary well out of their sight. Today Tom explores the foundational stories concerning the incarnation and birth of Jesus. Are these stories literally true? Or were they borrowed and adapted from similar foundational stories that had been used in other religions before Christianity? Where does the real truth in these matters reside? <more>

Station stop "Confirmation — Part II" In this second part of his commentary on Confirmation Tom McMahon relates a series of personal experiences from his time in parish ministry that led to disillusion. We invite readers with experience preparing young people for confirmation today, and parents and grandparents, to share your perspectives on the continuing relevance of this Sacrament today. Do you agree with Tom or do you have a different perspective to offer? <more>

Best wishes for a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life or in our world!

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher