Voice of Youth - Cultural relevance and the Church

Sydney
20 April 2003

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Voice of Youth - Cultural relevance and the Church

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Voice of Youth - Cultural relevance and the Church

By Anthony McCarthy

Carnivale Christi opens at the Seymour Theatre Centre, Sydney University, on Friday, May 2, with the premiere of The Jeweller’s Shop, a play by Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II).

The opening of the festival (now in its third year) leads us to reflect for a few moments on how well the Church engages with contemporary culture, particularly in the area of the arts.

The other day I noticed The Sydney Morning Herald contained a copy of the program of the Sydney Greek Festival organised by the Greek Orthodox Community of Sydney.

I did not go to any of their events, but it was still obvious - just through the program itself - that the Greek Orthodox community in Sydney is well organised, well financed and has something to celebrate. Regardless of my interest in Greek culture (their festival was a celebration of their culture, not their faith) they had proclaimed their presence within society.

The fact that the Catholic Church in Australia has few organised festivals speaks of a general lack of cultural relevance or presence.

Australians love big events - the Olympics is the obvious example - and whenever people can get together and celebrate what they stand for, regardless of what that thing might be, our modern society is usually supportive.

As long as it is positive and not critical of other groups, post-modern culture is happy to embrace virtually anything.

Probably the largest international Catholic event is World Youth Day, which - on each occasion it has been held - has won the hearts of the people and the imagination of the local media precisely because it is such a positive expression of faith.

But at a local level, certainly within Australia, there seems to be very few opportunities for celebrating our faith - through the arts or otherwise - and the festivals which do exist, like Christmas, Easter, St Valentine’s Day and St Patrick’s Day, have all been almost entirely secularised.

The Church has always recognised festivals and feast days as being wonderful opportunities to draw people to Christ but our major feast days are now only remnants from a Christian age.

Easter and Christmas are still well loved but the Church has an enormous task to ‘bring Christ back’ into these now materialistic festivals.

One of the principal motivations for Carnivale Christi in Sydney has always been to in some way Christianise Easter.

Every year we have the Easter Show and thousands of people go and its great fun, but it is a secular celebration and there is virtually no Christian message to it at all.

If as a Church we wish to engage contemporary culture we must be willing to create a positive presence ourselves.

This is not an easy task and requires time, energy and money.

But, unless we contribute to the cultural tapestry of our society, we have no grounds to comment on a decline.

Anthony McCarthy is the festival director of Carnivale Christi.