from the CRA President: Important days

 

 

 

This year's CRA National Assembly from June 30 to July 3 at Newman College in Melbourne will deal with multicultural diversity in our Church.  We look forward to  welcoming you there.

 

The Australian Church, like our society, is increasingly multicultural.  Religious life is also changing as foreign sisters, brothers and priests join our communities both  to study and to serve in the Australian Church.  This has important implications for how leadership and planning are exercised among us, for how community is lived and for how worship is expressed.

 

A background paper on this topic prepared by the Bishops' Commission for Pastoral Life, Graced by Migration: implementing a national vision in pastoral care for a multicultural Church, can be accessed on the web at www.acmro.catholic.org.au and lick on the name of the document.

 

 

 

Many of today's religious orders had their rise in the 19th Century.

 

In response to the new poverty consequent on the Industrial Revolution, prophetic figures like Catherine McAuley, Mary Aikenhead and Edmund Rice began to help the poor as laypersons, and then formed the Mercy Sisters, the Sisters of Charity and the Christian Brothers in order to continue this heroic service. Another contemporary, Frederick Ozanam, founded the lay movement, the St Vincent de Paul Society.

 

It was at the same time that Karl Marx released his Communist Manifesto, Charles Dickens was writing Bleak House and Hard Times, and Victor Hugo completing Les Miserables.

 

These congregations gave great service to the Australian Catholic community.

 

Although the orders still own or influence many health care, social service and educational institutions, these enterprises today are supported in large part by the government and administered by lay persons. The sisters and brothers, meanwhile, have moved to the edge, offering more prophetic service.

 

Something different is happening in our Church at the moment, particularly with the surge in lay involvement and lay leadership.

 

There was a time when our first contact with the faith was largely mediated through religious sisters and brothers in our Catholic schools. Now the call to holiness, to witness and to communion is being mediated to others also by lay persons.

 

This is not simply an organisational adjustment because of lack of sufficient ordained ministers, a fall back position to fill in the numbers.  Nor is it simply a sociological development consequent on the democratic movements in our broader culture.

 

One of the prophetic roles of religious congregations is precisely to encourage and support this transition to lay participation in ministry.

 

A great challenge for religious during this transition is to ensure that the institutions they set up retain their Catholic identity and remain 'on mission'.  Religious must still deal with the cutting edge realities of health care, social services and education.  But the policies that they help enunciate have far ranging impact on large scale institutions and even on government policies.

 

CRA supports Australian religious as they face these questions.

 

At our forthcoming National Assembly, our CRA representatives on national Catholic agencies will report on their efforts in dealing with changing government approaches to communications, education, health care and social services.

 

 

 

The most ambitious event in the history of our Australian Catholic Church will take place during July 2008.

 

World Youth Day (WYD) is focused on confirming the faith experience of young people.  Many religious congregations, especially those with international networks, have invested heavily in this opportunity and will run complementary programmes.

 

Many other religious join in the activities of dioceses and schools.

 

Across the country countless leaders have been formed and prepared for ongoing roles in young adult ministry.

 

We pray earnestly for the success of these ventures.