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 ...
Changing Profile of the Australian Catholic Church
Post-War immigration has impacted upon mainstream Christianity and impacted upon it in unexpected ways.
It was Catholicism - now the nation's largest faith community - that was most affected. It will remain so for some considerable time. Its growth has been led by the Italians who arrived as the despised 'dagoes' in the 1950s whereas now they are doers achieving in most areas of Australian life (Cahill 2004, 2007); they have also remained remarkably loyal to their faith tradition, even if many can be described only as 'cultural Catholics'. But women from non-English-speaking backgrounds, especially Italian, are Catholicism's best Mass attendees. (Cahill 2007; Noseda 2006; Paganoni 2007).
Since World War II, refugees have been very much part of Australian Catholicism, fleeing from Nazism, totalitarian Communism, South American dictatorship, and, recently, Islamic fundamentalism.
They came firstly from central, eastern and south-eastern Europe immediately after the War, then from Hungary in 1956 and, later on, Czechoslovakia in 1968. In the early seventies, it was the Chileans and later other South and Central American groups; in the mid-seventies, it was the East Timorese quickly followed by the Lebanese and the Vietnamese, both impacted by the momentous events of 1975 in different parts of the world.
More recently, it has been those fleeing the Horn of Africa, the Sudan and other parts of Africa as well as another wave of refugees from the Balkans. Now it is Iraq.
The profile of the Australian Catholic Church, both in terms of its religious personnel and its population, is changing and changing quite quickly.
In 2006, there were 5.126 million Catholics, representing a rise of 6.86 per cent in actual numbers over the previous decade but a proportional decline of 1.09 per cent. Catholicism is growing, but not as fast as the whole population. This trend will continue for some time driven by the migration of Catholic minorities as we are seeing from Iraq, the Balkans, India (almost a quarter are Catholic), Sri Lanka as well as Indonesia and Malaysia.
The second point is this. Whilst the bishops may be patting themselves on the back that the number of Catholics continues to rise, in fact the Catholic population should be greater.
A recent USA study found that about 10 per cent of Catholics have left the Church. The Australian situation is probably no better and possibly worse. If we extrapolate, this suggests the current Catholic population should be about 5.64 million. As I move around the community, I am struck by the number of ex-Catholics who are now Buddhists.
Other points worth noting are:
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The waning of the Italian and other continental European pastorates. By 2026, the number of Italian-born will be well under 100,000. As the linguistic profile suggests with 90.64 per cent of Italian speakers still calling themselves Catholic, the allegiance of the second-generation Italo-Australian group is holding up reasonably well. This highlights the positive link between cultural maintenance and religious affiliation as the Greek Orthodox studies have shown and the worth of the considerable resources given to the Italian mission even if it produced few Italo-Australian religious. Other very loyal groups have been the Maltese and the Croatians
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The aging process is clearly hitting the European groups. The Poles are now at the peak of the aging process whilst the Italians will peak in five years' time. Several weeks ago, I had a glimpse of the future with the death from cancer of a close Italian family friend. The family's close friend, a retired Italian-speaking Australian parish priest, took ill and so the rosary service was taken by an Italian layman and the Mass next morning was celebrated in English by the curate, a Vietnamese order priest.
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The Filipinos are now the second largest CALD immigrant group, and will probably become the largest in 10-15 years' time. It is a profile heavily skewed towards the female because of the Filipino bride phenomenon (Cahill 1990) though this skewing is becoming less. The Filipino women are spread out right across the country except for small concentrations in the isolated mining areas.
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The Vietnamese Catholic presence will grow, albeit slowly. However, the Vietnamese impact upon Australian Catholicism will be massive because there are now about 150 Vietnamese priests together with other religious, all mostly on the youngish side. Already, thought is being given to the appointment of a Vietnamese bishop.
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As well as the Filipino and Vietnamese presences, there are also the growing Indian, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Malaysian and, particularly, South Korean presences.
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Catholicism has also been impacted by its Eastern Churches, including the Maronite Church as the largest, the Ukrainian Church and the Melkite Church, all with their own bishops, as well as priests and laity from other churches such as the Chaldean (mainly from Iraq), the Coptic (mainly from Egypt) and the Syro-Malabar (mainly from southern India). The Eastern Catholic presence, led by the older Ukrainians and Maronites, represents about 4 - 5 per cent of the Catholic population, and is rising. Again, this represents another aspect of the diversification process.
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The resettlement of Catholic immigrant and refugee groups into regional and rural Australia is having and will have an impact upon the Church's mission though its dimensions are unclear. The South Africans, of whom only 15.4 per cent are Catholic, are part of this. In Victoria, for example, the presence of African refugees from the Sudan, Congo and Togo is impacting upon some areas such as Ballarat, Castlemaine, Colac, Shepparton, Swan Hill and Warrnambool. The local church is being called upon to play a positive role in their integration and in mitigating any negative affects such as racism and employment discrimination.
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Of the Chinese language speakers, only 8.56 per cent are Catholic, by far the lowest of the major language groups. The Chinese apostolate represents a great opportunity as the Chinese are naturally religious yet there exists a spiritual vacuum, especially amongst those from the mainland.
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In terms of the states and the two territories, NSW and Queensland are the most religious States in Australia with South Australia and the ACT the least. NSW, the ACT and Victoria, each with a high migrant population, are the most Catholic. Over the last decade, unlike any other state or territory, the island state had negative growth. It is well down the track of becoming the Church's Australian basketcase. This is because Tasmania takes comparatively fewer immigrants and there are fewer priests, all now aging. If ever there is a case for married clergy, Tasmania is it.
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The face of the Australian Church is also being changed through the importation of overseas clergy and other religious. The employment agreement the Church has with the Government allows in up to about 160 religious personnel annually. The results of this innovation are already ambivalent. The ethical questions remain in transferring priests from mission countries, but they are enriching if they are seen primarily as assets. But their migration is but one element of the scouring of the world by developed nations such as Australian and Canada for skilled professional and paraprofessional workers. The bishops are looking at better ways to acculturate them into the Australian mission with better targeted induction programs. Professor Gary Bouma and his Monash team have successfully conducted several pilot induction programs using a multifaith approach.
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Catholic schools are also reflecting these immigration trends though unfortunately the richest and the poorest of Catholic families are no longer sending their children to Catholic schools. The poorest because of the fees, even though the fees are moderate, and the richest because of the average academic performance of Catholic schools. Catholic schools are generally perceived as good, if not very good, schools. The Year 12 results have suggested in the past that students in Catholic schools generally perform on average according to their ability with girls performing slightly above their ability and vice versa for the Catholic male graduates. But they are not perceived as excellent schools.Fifty-two per cent of Catholic primary and secondary schools students are attending Catholic schools, and this statistic has been relatively stationary for several decades. However, a more interesting statistic comes from NSW. The June 2005 report of the NSW Catholic Education Commission found that in 2004 16 per cent of children in Catholic primary schools in NSW were from non-Catholic families whilst the equivalent figure at secondary level was 21 per cent. It also found that in comparing the figures of 1988 and 2004 there were 1100 fewer Catholic students in NSW Catholic schools but 24,000 more non-Catholic students in 2004.
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Catholic religious orders are in decline as we can see by reading the death notices of our major newspapers. The future is only with those orders which have gone offshore to internationalize their recruitment strategies and those who have positioned their charism to be at the cutting edge. For example, no religious order has been specifically founded to work in refugee camps. There is the borders apostolate, there is the internet apostolate; there is the international student apostolate; there is the interfaith apostolate.
Hence, the Catholic Church ... in Australia is probably the most multicultural in the Catholic world. The overall profile of the Catholic Church in Australia has been one of increasing diversification, including in its priests and religious, and dispersion of immigrants much more widely. As well, overseas priests are being imported to fill the many parish gaps in both metropolitan and rural Australia.
The Catholic Church of the future will be a very different and much more culturally diverse entity than its Irish background history would have presaged. The future of the Australian Church is as an immigrant Church with an Anglo-Irish remnant.
references:
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. (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)
Noseda, M. (2006), Belonging: the case of immigrants and the Australian Catholic Church. Ph. D. thesis, School of Arts and Sciences, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne.
Paganoni, A. (ed.) (2007) Pastoral Care of Italians in Australia: Memory and Prophecy (Connor Court Publishing, Victoria)
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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