national assembly: Cahill introduction

 

 

 

In 1994, as part of a European Commission delegation on migration, I was in St. Petersburg during the time of Yeltsin when Russia was at its lowest ebb. It had just lost its empire; there was much visible poverty; men were lying around the streets, drinking great quantities of vodka; the birth rate was beginning its slow decline to become the lowest in the world; and the young women were fleeing to find husbands in the West. We were briefed by academics from the St. Petersburg University, and they candidly told us then "Russia does not know where it is going". And I think this is largely true of today's Roman Catholic Church with its strange concoction of Vatican II implementation and Tridentine restorationism. A new Church is struggling to be born but we see its outline only dimly.

 

We are on the eve of the World Youth Day event when the global eye will be focussed directly upon Australia. Led by Pope Benedict XIV, the Catholic youth of Australia, in partnership with their peers from around the world, will reflect on their Catholic faith, its roots in history and its future in a rapidly changing world. It will be an unparalleled opportunity to reinforce and expand the Catholic identity of the Church's young people and deepen their faith but it is problematic how successful it will be in bringing them back to Sunday Mass. In February 1973 at the International Eucharistic Congress in Melbourne, 100,000 Catholics filled the MCG but, in retrospect, what was its long-term impact?

 

This time the Church will be struggling to fill the Telstra Dome with its 55,000 seats. Moreover, if the numbers coming do not live up to expectations with 250,000 coming from overseas, it may be a comment on the price of airfares, but it will be an indication that the universal Church has failed the Australian Church in not sending its Catholic sons and daughters from around the world.

 

Next year, on 3rd - 9th December 2009, the global religious eye will again be upon Australia with the Parliament of the World's Religions, the world's largest multifaith gathering, to be held in Melbourne when the Australian Catholic community will have the opportunity to reflect on their faith in a multifaith context and on their relationships with other faith communities with up to 8,000 participants. It will take place in Melbourne's Convention Centre, expected to be completed early in 2009. In union with the other faith communities, it will be an opportunity to showcase Australia's interreligious harmony, as well as to showcase Catholicism itself and also for religious orders to showcase themselves and their activities with an exhibition or during one of the 510 seminar slots. The Parliament will be preceded in 2008 and 2009 by multifaith events in 40 - 50 cities around the globe in which the focus will be towards the week-long Melbourne event.

 

All these are reminders that religion remains at world centre stage; that, in the seven years since S11, we still can no longer look at skyscrapers in quite the same way - they are symbols of the risk and unpredictability of the future, the limited controllability that we now have.  There is little doubt that a terrorist attack on Australian soil is possible. Soon after the first Bali bombing, on Al-Jazeera television, Osama bin Laden explicitly referred to Australia. "Australia was warned about its participation in Afghanistan and its ignoble contribution to the separation of East Timor. It ignored this warning until it was awakened by the echoes of explosions in Bali. As you assassinate, so will you be assassinated. And as you bomb, so will you be bombed" (Cahill, Bouma, Dellal & Leahy 2004; Cahill 2005)).

 

We are thus witnessing across the world a religious resurgence that is characterised in the view of Professor Gary Bouma, our leading religious sociologist, by revitalization, fundamentalization and radicalization. Religious extremist elements have emerged in all the major world faiths, including Catholicism. The terrorist attacks and subsequent events have brought home to us that religion, whether transcendent religion or religion corrupted for political purposes, will not drift away into a privatised world. The anti-religion ideologies of socialistic Communism and totalitarian Nazism have been consigned to the dustbin of history though Marx himself retains his attraction. Secularist humanism and neo-liberalism are on the wane. In fact, one of the major features of the twentieth century was the enduring stability of religion and its institutions. All the predictions by such varied individuals as Nietzsche, H.G. Wells, Lenin, Bertrand Russell and Arthur Clarke that religion would die have proved wrong.

 

Across the world, religious leaders, including the leaders of religious orders, are today under greater scrutiny and accountability. The sexual abuse debacle has made sure of that for Catholicism as terrorism has for Islamic leaders. As well, we are seeing a broadening and deepening of religious leadership. For example, in the diocese of Ballarat, there are about twelve parishes, often in smallish country towns, where the senior Catholic official is either the pastoral co-ordinator or the Catholic school principal. This is raising interesting industrial issues. But it also highlights the point that change in the Catholic Church will not come from above. Change will have to come from below.

 

In today's address, I want to speak to you as religious leaders about our multicultural Church in a globalizing multifaith world. A multicultural policy fundamentally is about commitment to the core beliefs of an institution whose members are drawn from a range of culturally diverse backgrounds, about equality of opportunity and participation in the affairs of the institution, about the management of diversity in the survival and development of the institution and in the development of the skills to achieve diversity and integrate diversity into current structures.