pathways, DECEMBER 2008
An issue whose time has come - multiculturalism in the Australian Catholic Church - was broken open for more than 100 leaders of religious congregations when they gathered in Melbourne earlier this year for Catholic Religious Australia's national assembly. So they might have a better, more factual understanding of what for many was only a vague hunch, Australia's leading Catholic voice on multiculturalism,
PROFESSOR DESMOND CAHILL, from Melbourne, presented the leaders with a detailed look at Australia's multicultural Church in a globalizing multi-faith world.
In absorbing presentations, he left no-one in any doubt that the face of Australia is changing as globalisation takes hold, leaving the Church in unchartered waters that must be journeyed across. He contends that the Australian Catholic Church is the most multicultural Catholic Church in the world and suggests that its future will be as an immigrant Church with an Anglo-Irish remnant.
Due to the length, detail and importance of Professor Cahill's address, pathways will present the material in the segments over several editions.
In this segment, Prof. Cahill considers the ...
Struggling Australian Parish
The Australian parish is currently struggling.
The drift away from the Church began in the 1960s which in a sense was the Golden Age of Australian Catholicism, but it especially occurred as a consequence of the birth control decision which had almost zero credibility among the Catholic baby-boomers. The drift was compounded by the forces of secularisation, post-modernity and straightout consumerism. And then further compounded by the sexual corruption issue. The result is that now we have greying parishes.
How much do Catholics feel that they are part of the Australian Catholic Church and their parish?
In the massive 2001 National Church Life Survey, which surveyed 86,368 Mass attenders, the Noseda analysis found that the majority of Australian-born Mass attenders are over 60 while for the overseas-born Mass attenders the majority were aged between 40 and 59. The analysis also showed that Catholics born overseas are better Sunday Mass attenders than Catholics born in Australia by a factor of 21 per cent. They are, on average, even allowing for age, better educated than Catholics born in Australia.
Catholic women (61 per cent) are better Mass attenders than Catholic men (39 per cent) though the best attenders are Catholic women born overseas.
The 2006 survey, still being analysed, confirms these results. Now at 14 per cent each week, Sunday Mass attendance is declining and probably will eventually plateau at about 10 per cent.
Overseas-born Mass attenders were more likely to believe that God is more important than most other things in life and have less difficulty in accepting Church authority. Close to two-thirds of Catholics born overseas (62.5 per cent) engage in private devotional acts more than once a week compared to half (49.8 per cent) of the Australian-born Catholics.
In overall terms, immigrant Catholics have a stronger sense of 'belonging' to the Church and to the parish. Belonging to the Australian Church provides a familiar place of security in a different and sometimes threatening host country. The immigrants expressed greater satisfaction with their faith life and they hold more orthodox Catholic beliefs.
The study concluded that Eucharistic celebrations in their own language enhances immigrant participation as do culturally inclusive parish activities.
The overall evidence, including from Greek Orthodox studies, suggests that national or ethnic parishes provide a stronger support for faith commitment than the geographical parish.
However, the study unearthed a concern that the sons and daughters of immigrant Catholics have a lesser feeling of participation and sense of belonging than their parents. This is a worry because their sense of Catholic belonging should be emanating not only from their parish, ethnic or geographical, but also from their Catholic school.
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What does all this mean for the Church and its religious leaders as we head into an unpredictable future?
The Australian Catholic Church is at the crossroads.
Retreating into a Tridentine restorationist past is an option but it will end in failure in a mobile, networked, diasporic, multifaith and multipolared world. Historically the Church in Australia has been united by a series of grievances built around its Irish-Rome core.
I want to focus the rest of this address around four major challenges:
1. The Leadership Challenge
2. The Diversity Challenge
3. The Community Challenge
4. The Interfaith Challenge
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Educated in Melbourne and Rome, Des Cahill is Professor of Intercultural Studies at RMIT University and has been one of Australia's leading researchers in the areas of immigrant, cross-cultural, interfaith and international studies for almost three decades. His many publications and research projects have focussed on immigrant and multicultural education, ethnic minority youth, immigrant settlement, ethnic community development, intermarriage and, more recently, religion and globalization.Since the events of September 11, 2001, he has played a major role in researching and bringing together the various faith communities in Australia and across the world through his research and community activities. With Gary Bouma, he was commissioned by the Australian Government after S11 to examine its implications in Religion, Cultural Diversity and Safeguarding Australia (2004) and to prepare the resource book, Constructing a Local Multifaith Network (2004).
Since 2001, he has chaired the Australian chapter of the World Conference of Religions for Peace (WCRP), and represents Australia on the executive committee of the Asian Conference of Religion and Peace. He was the leader of the City of Melbourne's successful bid to stage the Parliament of the World's Religions in December 2009.
Cahill, D. (1990) Intermarriage in International Contexts: A Study of Filipino Women Married to Australian, Japanese and Swiss Men (SMC Center, Manila)
Cahill, D. (2004) Missionaries on the Move: A Pastoral Study of the Scalabrinians in Australia and Asia 1952 - 2002 (CMS, New York)
Cahill, D. (2005) The conundrum of globalization. Australian Mosaic 12, 4, 6 - 11.
Cahill, D. (2007) From dagoes to doers: accommodating Australia's Italian migrants by church and state. In A. Paganoni (ed.) Pastoral Care of Italians in Australia: Memory and Prophecy (Connor Court Publishing, Victoria)
Cahill, D., Bouma, G., Dellal, H. & Leahy, M. (2004) Religion, Cultural Diversity and Safeguarding Australia (DIMIA with the Australian Multicultural Foundation, Canberra), also available on the AMF website in the research folder.
Background reading:
GRACED BY MIGRATION: Implementing a national strategy in pastoral care for a multi-cultural Australian Church (2007)
COMMENT AND EXPERIENCES ARE WELCOME.
or if you have an experience of our multi-cultural Australian Church you would like to share, please contact Penny.
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