Catholic school popularity ‘a two-edged sword’

Sydney
18 May 2003

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Catholic school popularity ‘a two-edged sword’

By Chris Lindsay

The increasing number of non-Catholics who want to attend Catholic schools is a two-edged sword, says the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr George Pell.

He told a meeting of school principals in the archdiocese: “On one side, it provides us with an opportunity for evangelisation; an opportunity to explain the beauties of Christ to these youngsters.

“However, for those who aren’t Catholics, there is a radical difference between those who come from a practising Christian background (overwhelmingly, they will make the religious task in our schools easier) and the many neo-pagans who want to come to our schools.

“A significant number of these students in our schools would make it much harder to get our religious message across.”

Dr Pell said about 14 per cent of students in Catholic schools are non-Catholic “and the pressure for that percentage to increase is growing”.

Schools are now the main missionary arm of the Church, he said.

“You can be absolutely certain that you and your teachers are now the face of the Church to many youngsters who don’t regularly go to Mass - who are not fanatically devoted to the 52-Sundays-of-the-year religious observance,” Dr Pell said.

“Their memory of Church in adult life will come mainly from their experiences in Catholic schools.

“That’s doubly true, of course, for new immigrants … if they choose to come to Catholic schools, their first experiences there are enormously important.”

He said the biggest change religiously in the past 50 years in Australia was the rise in the percentage of people who say they have no religion. “It has gone from about one per cent 40 or 50 years ago to about 16 or 17 per cent now,” he said.

“But what was really interesting in the 2001 Census was the number of people who said that they have no religion dropped slightly. I had anticipated that the number of people who describe themselves as irreligious would continue to rise.

“So the rise of the irreligious ‘party’ is reflected in our schools and to some extent in those who want to teach in our Catholic schools.

“Another significant factor is the decline in church-going and the decline in religious practice, of which we are all very much aware.

“This means that the old Catholic-Protestant tension is dead - maybe not entirely, but it should be dead. It is quite irrelevant, it’s wrong in principle and wrong politically.

“The significant tension in our society is between those of a theistic or Judeo-Christian point of view, and those who don’t have any religion at all.

“I think it’s more necessary than ever to encourage young people to conversion - as it was called in old-fashioned religious terminology.

“Even youngsters growing up in Catholic families need some sort of conversion for them to stay with the faith.

“The old sociological forces (parish, school, and family) that were to some extent still intact when I was growing up, would carry you along more easily in a certain direction.

“Nowadays, even with children from practising families, it’s the fashion for them to want to stop worshipping regularly before the end of secondary school.

“And that’s one reason why I encourage the new communities - the whole range of them - because often they encourage young people to come back or to continue on a Christian path.

“As I go around the schools, I will often tell the youngsters that God loves them. I say there is only one true God, and God loves us.

“Once they’ve got that, they have the basis on which to build everything else religiously.

“But … we need to tell them Christ is the son of God and Christ died to redeem us.

“There are many flaws in our society - suffering, violence, family breakdown, alcoholism, and sickness. We have to acknowledge these, and at the same time acknowledge that it’s Christ the Redeemer who offers us the means and the truth to confront these difficulties.

“Every one of us is called to repentance. There is no advantage to Christianity in defining sins out of existence. The love of God means that our sins can be forgiven, no matter how terrible they might be.

“The pagan world doesn’t know about that. It knows about justice, it knows about revenge; but it doesn’t know about forgiveness.

“I am sure the message of forgiveness continues to be eminently marketable with our youngsters. They need to know those basic truths - that Christ has died, Christ has risen and Christ will come again.”