Detailing anti-Christian and anti-life developments throughout the world, Perth Archbishop Barry Hickey uges Christians to be the leaven of public life. (The full text of the Archbishop’s address is found below).
By Peter Rosengren
Editor
By any standard, it was a sobering, if informal, talk given by Archbishop Barry Hickey to parishioners at Good Shepherd Parish in Kelmscott on the evening of November 8.
The occasion was a common meal organised by parish priest Fr Francis Sundararajan for parish volunteers in the parish hall at the conclusion of a three-day pastoral visit by the Archbishop.
While Archbishop Hickey began his comments setting out the parish as a school for growth in love of others and in faith, his comments quickly moved to the global dimensions of the rise of secularism and hostility to religious faith most, but not exclusively, visible in Europe.
On a recent visit to the continent on Church business he had encountered numerous reports of measures initiated by various national or pan-European governments.
The scale and extent of the growing hostility to marriage, the family, children and the Church had left him “shaken and a little stunned,” he told his audience at
the parish.
The Church, he said, confronts a crisis in Europe where hostility to the Catholic faith is growing.
At least one government has begun issuing guidelines for such unpalatable practices as parents sexually stimulating their children from the earliest age to determine whether they are ‘straight’ or ‘gay.’
For the time being, he said, such practices are still considered in Australia to constitute sexual abuse of children.
Recent decisions such as the one on crucifixes in Italian public schools indicated national sovereignty is now seriously under attack from larger political organisations such as the European Union.
Other measures include removing the rights of parents to be the educators of their children in such delicate and vital life matters as sex education.
While there are numerous public calls for action in areas from global warming to swine flu, the main problem, the breakdown of marriages and family life, is ignored almost everywhere, he said.
Among the measures needed now in Australia, it was critical for Christians, especially young people, to consider entering politics and public life to help rebuild a humane society, he said.
Taken from Archbishop Barry Hickey’s address:
While here in your parish of the Good Shepherd I have been talking about your particular mission. It is a noble one. It is to form a Christian community composed of followers of Jesus Christ. This community is built up by the desire of the Catholics in this area to come together to worship God, to know Jesus better and to live his way.
The parish is to draw them together as one family of brothers and sisters under the fatherhood of God. It does so under the spiritual leadership of your two priests. In this Year of the Priest I ask you to pray for them and support them as they give their lives to you as Good Shepherds, preachers of the Word and ministers of the Sacraments of Salvation.
The parish is at one and the same time a preparatory school and a finishing school.
It offers children and those new to the faith the elements of the Christian life and the experience of being united to Christ as members of his body. In this learning school the members of the parish look after each other to make sure no-one is without friends or loving brothers and sisters in whatever circumstances they find themselves.
It is also a finishing school. The parish prepares you to fulfil your vocation in the world, to develop the essential thinking and critique that MUST go on about the role of the Christian in the world today.
Here is the rub. What are the priorities of the committed Christian in today’s world? Christians are not only called to a personal life of holiness, they are also called to bring the world to Christ. The Church, through its members, is to be a leaven that penetrates the world with the presence and action of God.
If we watch the media we will be told our priorities – global warming, economic instability, the exhaustion of oil supplies, refugees, poverty, denial of human rights, AIDS and Swine Flu.
All of these are matters of great concern, but for me there is one massive problem which is more destructive of human dignity and health than all the others.
It is the instability and breakdown of family life. It goes with attacks on the family, the undermining of parental rights, and the work of international agencies and secular governments to hasten the disappearance of the Christian family and to take over the role of parents.
This is serious stuff, but I am not exaggerating. My recent trip to Europe left me a little stunned and shaken. Let me explain.
In Italy I attended a meeting of 72 Rectors of seminaries from around the world. Many came from Europe, Western and Eastern. They gave me an insight into problems within the Catholic Church and within society. At the end of the meeting I addressed the group. I said that I had read the report of the Synod of Bishops on the state of Europe some ten years ago. It contained many parallels with Australia when it spoke of secularism and the instability of family life. The report finished up on a positive note, but as far as I could see it did not say how bad things were, nor give any realistic proposals about how to combat these malign forces.
The Rectors told me some of the disturbing things that were happening in the Church. In some areas of France, Germany, Holland and Belgium parishes which had been under lay control because of the lack of priests simply refused to accept priests when they became available. They were not wanted except to consecrate hosts from time to time. Lay control had become entrenched and not even the Bishops knew what to do.
One Diocese refused to accept a conservative Bishop appointed by Rome and barred him from his Cathedral. Rome had finally to make other arrangements.
In another Diocese many of the priests in parishes had wives and families. Their people saw nothing wrong in this. Again, the Bishop was powerless to do anything.
Vocal and active groups were lobbying to change the Church’s doctrines on homosexuality, gay marriages, contraception, divorce and remarriage, abortion and, of course, Church authority structures. Little was being done to silence them.
Other disturbing trends were identified in national policies. Governments and international organisations were imposing a completely secular agenda on countries with some success.
Recently the European Court of Human Rights found that crucifixes in Italian schools constituted a violation of secular and religious freedom.
It is clear this is a preparatory step to their actual banning, probably across all of Europe. How is it that an external power can control the affairs of a nation? This gives us a word of warning about ceding to the UN or other world bodies our independence in legislation and policy.
UNESCO, set up to advance education and culture, has drawn up guidelines for countries on sex education in order to combat HIV infections.
These Guidelines endorse masturbation and homosexual activity. They recommend that teachers begin discussions on masturbation for children aged five to eight, becoming more explicit for nine to twelve year olds. This also includes condom use and legal abortion.
If the powers of the UN over national curricula become stronger, will Australia fall in line?
In one country the State Health programs suggest that parents sexually stimulate their children to discover whether they are straight or gay. This would be considered child abuse here.
I can still remember vividly a Missionary of Charity in Finland telling me of the aim of the Government to take sex education away from parents. These educators go to schools with the full secular agenda of sexuality. Among other things they advocate passionately that girls should be sexually active as soon as they reach puberty or they will grow up with mental health and psychological problems and have hang-ups about sex for life.
The problem here is not just the appalling agenda, but the attempt of governments to impose this on children against the parents’ wishes and even take over from them their primary role of education.
Unfortunately they have some justification for what they do as the numbers of people who marry is very low, cohabitation rapidly becoming the norm. ‘Mum and Dad’ is a fading reality.
Who can say that Australian governments will not follow suit?
How do we prevent or overcome this? We might call on the voice of the people to protest but there is no guarantee that these voices will be heard.
If parishes are finishing schools for the development of faith and vocation, we want more people with an interest in public life to stand for parliament. Voting in controversial legislation only takes a majority of parliamentarians to pass it. Recent atrocious laws about abortion and embryonic stem cell research only passed by one or two votes. Will the same happen with euthanasia, assisted suicide and cloning? Why wouldn’t it? If we do not encourage people with strong Christian values about life, marriage and family to enter parliament, nothing will change.
The Church cannot be involved in politics but it can encourage Catholics and other Christian people to enter parliament, bringing with them their own personal convictions formed by their Church upbringing. Is anyone listening? I sincerely hope so. How can we protect newly weds from the dangers to their future family and their relationships in a society that is increasingly devaluing marriage, accepting cohabitation as the norm and promoting contraception to limit the number of children as a threat to the environment?
This, too, is part of the vocation of the Church which includes me, the priests and, most of all, you. We must value marriage, promote Christian marriage and nurture those marriages in our faith communities and parishes.
Faces Europe’s increasingly anti-Christian politicians want to forget
When German troops moved into Austria in 1938, Jägerstätter was the only person in the village to vote against the Anschluss. He remained openly anti-Nazi, and publicly declared he would not fight in the war.
After many delays, Jägerstätter was called to active duty in February 1943. By this time, he had three daughters with his wife, the eldest not quite six. He maintained his position against fighting for the Third Reich, and was imprisoned, first at Linz, then at Berlin.
After a military trial, he was sentenced to death and subsequently executed by guillotine on August 9, 1943, aged 36. He was beatified by Pope Benedict in June 2007.
Like the White Rose’s other members, her firm Christian belief in God and in every human being’s essential dignity formed her basis for resisting Nazi ideology. A Lutheran, she was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans. As a result, they were both executed by guillotine.
In the People’s Court before Judge Roland Freisler on February 21, 1943, Scholl was recorded as saying “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just do not dare express themselves as we did.”
On February 22, 1943, Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans and their friend Christoph Probst were found guilty of treason and condemned to death. They were all beheaded by executioner Johann Reichhart in Munich’s Stadelheim Prison only a few hours later at 5pm. The execution was supervised by Dr Walter Roemer, the enforcement chief of the Munich district court. Prison officials, in later describing the scene, emphasised the courage with which she walked to her execution. Her last words were “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”
