“The Church herself in Australia will not be fully the Church that Jesus wants her to be until you have made your contribution to her life and until that contribution has been joyfully received by others.”
These were the words of Pope John Paul II during his momentous address to the Aboriginal people of Australia in 1986. But, almost 30 years later, the Australian Church is arguably yet to become “the Church that Jesus wants her to be”.
The number of practising Aboriginal Catholics in Australia is declining, and the gap between the Church and the Indigenous community is widening, according to one of the nation’s most respected Aboriginal leaders.
Robert Isaacs is an Aboriginal Elder from the Bibilmum Noongar language group of South Western Australia, who has a long history of community involvement throughout WA.
He is also one of the few practising Aboriginal Catholics, having served as an acolyte at St Jude’s Parish in Langford for more than 30 years.
Mr Isaacs is passionate about improving several aspects of the lives of the country’s Aboriginal population, including their involvement with the Catholic Church and bringing them back to their faith.
“In our parish, my wife and I are the only Aboriginal people who go to Mass there, and yet there’s a lot of Aboriginal people living in the city of Gosnells and Langford,” he says. “I know that they are Catholics but I don’t know why they don’t go to church.”
Almost 27 per cent of the State’s Aboriginal population is Catholic, according to the 2011 census, a figure which is higher than the percentage of Catholics in WA as a whole.
There are almost 19,000 Aboriginal Catholics in WA, and more than 124,000 throughout the country.
One thing that would bring Aboriginal people back to the Church, according to Mr Isaacs, is the visible presence of Aboriginal leaders. There are no Aboriginal Catholic priests or seminarians in Australia.
“[The Church] can encourage recruitment of Aboriginal people into its ministry to become priests, nuns and deacons,” he says. “I don’t think it’s been thoroughly progressed for many years… it seems to have gone at a slow place.”
Mr Isaacs says there are a large number of Aboriginal people who were instructed in the Catholic faith through their education at various Catholic boarding schools, but who have since stopped attending Mass.
Nevertheless, he is optimistic that things can change for the better.
“There’s a lot of Aboriginal people who want to come back to the Church but they want to see leaders here in the Church,” he says. “Aboriginal people can be leaders if they are given the leadership by the Church to become a Catholic priest or a nun.”
Although the lack of Aboriginal religious in Australia concerns him, Mr Isaacs is immensely grateful for the work the Catholic Church has done with Aboriginal communities over many years.
He recently met with Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB to thank the Church in WA for the support it has given to the Aboriginal community, particularly in regard to education and the handing over of buildings and land to the traditional owners.
Earlier this year, the entire complex of Clontarf Aboriginal College, which was built in 1901 as an orphanage run by the Christian Brothers, was handed back to the Aboriginal community.
“We did it right and now Aboriginal people are satisfied and happy,” Mr Isaacs says.
“When I went there in the 1950s for my education and schooling, there was never any recognition by churches or governments of the day about the history of the traditional owners for country, as I call it.”
Mr Isaacs, who was the chairman of the school’s board of management for 16 years, says the handover was a significant occasion. “The Christian Brothers have shown leadership and foresight in handing the land back to the original inhabitants of this country,” he says.
“Clontarf has given Aboriginal people opportunities for education and training, and a start at life.”
With the first establishment of the Catholic Church in WA in the late 19th century, several missions were set up in remote parts of the State to assist Aboriginal communities. These included missions in the Kimberley, Broome and Kunnanurra.
“The Pallotine Order has played a very significant role in the Kimberley, bringing young boys and girls down from the Kimberley to further their education and their religion,” Mr Isaacs says.
“We’ve had the Christian Brothers, we’ve had the Catholic nuns, we’ve had the Marist Brothers, we’ve had so many orders that have been a major player in getting young Aboriginal males and females into our major schools.”
Mr Isaacs, who was raised at St Joseph’s Orphanage and Casteldare Boys Home before attending Clontarf, said his own education experience had been overwhelmingly positive.
“I got a good education by the Christian Brothers,” he says. “I’m very thankful for the Catholic education I got; without that I don’t think I would be in the senior positions that I hold in my community today.
“I’m very thankful for the Church; it played a significant role in my life, and in my wife’s life… If I wasn’t brought up within the Catholic system I don’t know where I’d be today.
“The Catholic Church has given me the gift of faith, and Clontarf gave that to me, and being a person from the stolen generation, it put me in good stead through all my public life.”
Even today, decades on from the height of Aboriginal Catholic education, Mr Isaacs believes the Catholic school system is still playing a pivotal role.
“There’s a lot of Aboriginal people now going to the private sector of education, which links them into the Church, I know that’s happening right across WA,” he says.
“The more Aboriginal people who go to the private sector, which is Catholic education, then I think it will start something to get them back into church, I’ve seen it happen.”
One of the reasons why combining Catholicism, through education, with the Aboriginal culture can work is because the two are complementary, Mr Isaacs says.
“[Aboriginal people] are very spiritual,” he says.
“A lot of Aboriginal people have their own ways of healing and spiritual ways when they’re talking to God.”
Catholic Aboriginal Ministry, which was established in Perth in 1977 by Fr Bryan Tiernan, perhaps best exemplifies the successful merging of Aboriginal culture with Catholicism.
“We sing the Our Father in the Noongar language, and Aboriginal people are given a very significant role in NAIDOC week of course, being part of the celebration of the Eucharist, and I’d like to see that continue,” Mr Isaacs says.
“When Fr Tiernan set it up and ran it, it was really at its high peak, doing great things with the community.
“They focused mainly on the fringe dwellers who were living in the bush out there in Lockridge, in the camps and that sort of thing.”
But in recent times the Ministry has struggled for numbers, a sign that urgent change is needed in the approach, according to Mr Isaacs.
“You need to go to the homes first, not just to a community,” he says.
“If you go one-on-one and do visits to homes – it’s called a grapevine in the Aboriginal community – word spreads that there’s someone who’s leading the way to get the people back to church and that could be a stepping stone.”
Leadership roles are another key factor in both the Church and society for the Aboriginal community to “have a voice”.
“I don’t know whether the priests right throughout the Archdiocese would even know how to contact an Aboriginal person, they’ve probably never worked with one or seen one in their life,” Mr Isaacs says.
“That can easily be addressed, but only when we get Aboriginal people up there as priests, deacons and acolytes, then I think you’ll see a change in this area.”
The Catholic Church, both in Australia and Perth, could also benefit from getting out into the community more.
“Here, in Perth, they want to sit around board tables and that sort of thing,” Mr Isaacs explains. “When Aboriginal people want to discuss business, they sit on the turf, on the ground in the bush, especially in the remote areas.
“Aboriginal people want to be a part of the Church, they see the Church as a guide and as a leader.”
“If [Archbishop Costelloe] wants guidance and support he’ll get it from the Aboriginal community.”
The Aboriginal community has derived a great deal from the Church in Australia for which it’s thankful, and Mr Isaacs says Aboriginal Catholics would cherish the opportunity to contribute to the Church.
The Church must “open up”, he says, to be able to bring more and more people “through the door”.
“Once that’s there, I think the Aboriginal community will benefit quite a bit.”