from the CRA President: Painting a religious picture

 

pathways, August 2009

 

 

 

This will be an unique opportunity for us to capture the shape, the image and the story of religious life as it is lived at the beginning of the 21st century.

 

Each congregation has been sent the document "Survey of Religious Life in Australia 2009" which is also available on line.  I appeal to every leader of a religious congregation in Australia - regardless of the size of your congregation - to take the time to fill it in so that we can ascertain as accurately as possible the number of religious and the extent of the contributions they make to Australian life.

 

The CRA National Council has commissioned this work because we believe it is an important and necessary area of research. It is a central area of Australian Church life that is still unknown in detail. About the only resource we have at the moment is the Catholic Directory. This research will fill out the national picture of the Church.

 

There is ample research information about many aspects of Australian Catholics and the Catholic Church in Australia : the Catholic population, Mass-attendees and non-attendees, parishes, young adults and so forth. But there is no recent research into Religious life. The last Australian study was done in 1976 by Carmel Leavy OP.  Since then, we have lived through extraordinary and radical societal and church change.

 

This survey will help CRA know its membership, whom we are serving, what today's apostolates are, where the new trends are and where are the gaps. Information on data such as numbers, ages and vocations will give us an idea of the future of Religious life in Australia.

 

It will help us in our decision making. So often when questions come up in the Council we just don't know the dimensions of the issue we are discussing.

 

It will also facilitate cooperation and collaboration. We could learn of initiatives being taken in setting up new legal entities, developing new structures, developing ways to enable people to be formally involved in our life and charism.

 

Finally it will give us and possible writers and researchers a glimpse into the contribution Religious are making to the life of the Australian Church and society.

 

The idea for such a survey was noted at the 2008 Assembly by the then CRA-President Mark Raper SJ.  Since then Noel Connolly SSC, in particular,  and the CRA National Council have worked hard on bringing the idea to fruition.  Noel has worked on numerous drafts with Bob Dixon from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference Pastoral Projects Office (PPO) in devising this questionnaire.  The PPO has developed considerable expertise in survey research since it was established in 1996.

 

The survey was piloted with eight congregations of various sizes before being distributed.

 

Many congregational leaders have already returned the completed survey.  I plead with those of you still to do so to tackle these pages of questions.

 

Although I encourage you to complete the survey on line - this helps with the collating but is not mandatory - experience shows that you need to do a rough draft on paper before attempting the online version.  Should you know a leader who is not a CRA member, please pass on a copy of the survey as we want it to be as encompassing as possible.

 

We wish to present the broadest possible story of religious life, to capture this moment of great change, transition and mission that we all sense and know instinctively is happening here in this country.  It is imperative that all religious are part of this picture.

 

The surveys need to be completed by Friday, September 25.  This closing date will not be extended.