A rainbow Church

How well do we meet its needs?

Weekly Catholic Mass attendance in Australia is in a healthier state than it might be due to the multicultural nature of the nation, according to the latest National Church Life Survey figures.

The National Church Life Survey, conducted in 2001, found that overseas-born Catholics make up one-third of Mass attendees yet they constitute less than one-quarter of all Australia's Catholics. Of Australia’s 5 million Catholics, 765,000 attend weekly Mass, and 252,450 of these attendees are people who were born overseas.

Interestingly, the 2001 survey also revealed that compared to other Christian denominations the Catholic Church has a higher proportion of people born in non-English speaking countries.

According to Bob Dixon, Director of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Projects Office, “Overseas-born Catholics are making a bigger contribution to Australia's Mass attendance than their proportion in the population would indicate.”

“The life of our parishes throughout Australia, particularly in the larger cities, is being enriched by the presence and involvement of so many people who have come to Australia from overseas,” he said.

Mr Dixon acknowledges that the Catholic Church in Australia has always been an immigrant Church, but in recent decades the cultural make-up of the Church has broadened. “Ireland, the source of so much of Australia’s Catholic culture, is no longer one of the main countries of birth for Australia’s Mass attenders,” Mr Dixon says in his book The Catholic Community in Australia.

Maltese-born Bishop Joseph Grech of Sandhurst Diocese in Victoria and Chairman of the Bishop’s Committee for Migrants and Refugees, is not surprised by the large number of overseas-born Catholics attending Mass in comparison to their Australian-born counterparts.

Bishop Grech explains that migrant Catholics “come from a very, very strong background, a background which is much more participatory. They participate in the life of the Church because it is part and parcel of their life.” He also attributes a stronger Mass affiliation to what he calls a great emphasis on “the heart element.”

“I find that religion can become too much of the mind … but basically our faith is a relationship, a relationship with this God who is passionately in love with us, and people who are born overseas, they really know what that means.”

Bishop Grech doesn’t like making distinctions between the percentages of those who were born overseas and those born in Australia. “We’re all part of one Church and we can learn from one another ... I believe the Australian Church has benefited from the way people born overseas celebrate their faith – their enthusiasm, their passion, their heart content.”

So how does the Catholic Church in Australia accommodate the pastoral needs of overseas-born Catholics? “We have come a long, long way but of course we still need to go really further,” says Bishop Grech.

He cites the range of languages in which Mass is regularly celebrated, suggesting a more culturally aware Church. “I think that is very important not because it’s the language, if you know what I mean, but with the language there is a whole culture there.”

In his book The Catholic Community in Australia, Bob Dixon reports, “Around Australia, Mass is celebrated in over 35 different languages every Sunday, and around one in every fifteen attenders celebrates Mass in a language other than English.”

Bishop Grech describes some of the ways that chaplains, parishes and Church personnel provide pastoral care and support for migrants and refugees through aged care facilities, hospital and home visitation, interpreting and mediation services, English language classes and social events.

But Bishop Grech admits, “it hasn’t sunk in yet that we are a multicultural Church.”He believes that parishes need to do more to include migrant Catholics. This is backed up by Bob Dixon who says that “dioceses and parishes must work hard to welcome new arrivals from overseas and to enable people of various ethnic groups to feel at home in parish life.”

Bishop Grech suggests, “if you’ve got a lot of migrants in your parish, how about trying to also choose and select and make sure that some representatives from those communities are also part of our pastoral parish councils?”

“I mean you go in parishes these days with a lot of migrants and … everybody on the parish pastoral council, they all have an Anglo-Celtic name.”

One of the big challenges for Bishop Grech is how to elicit leadership from overseas-born Catholics. “These people have got incredible qualities, they’ve got incredible giftedness and because they are not seen in front of many of our parishes and associations we are missing a lot; we are being impoverished by not trying to help them and give them opportunities to exercise their giftedness.”

He advises clergy and parish communities, “in anything that we organise let’s make sure that we try to form them [migrants] as leaders, not just in their own communities but for the whole Church, the whole parish.”

It will be interesting to see the outcome of the next National Church Life Survey which will occur in the second half of 2006, the same year as the Australian Census.

“We don't know what will happen in the years to come,” says Bob Dixon.

“Adult overseas-born attenders who have settled in to parish life here in Australia will probably continue to attend. Adolescents and children may continue to attend at a higher rate than their Australian-born counterparts, but some will probably stop attending after they leave home, particularly if they do not feel they need ongoing participation in the religious life of their ethnic community.”

Mr Dixon predicts that “Australian-born children of overseas-born attenders are likely to develop similar attendance patterns to other Australian-born Catholics as they grow up.”

To some extent the future is an unknown quantity. But given the ethnic diversity in Australian parishes it seems essential that Church leaders and communities develop the most appropriate models of pastoral and sacramental ministry for their multicultural communities.

This week (November 17 - 18) the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Migrants and Refugees is hosting a national conference in Sydney on the pastoral care of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. For information about the conference check out www.acmro.catholic.org.au