Let me throw down another gauntlet this week. I’ve written a book, and it’s about to be published.
It’s called Witness: The future Catholic Church in Australia.
I think you’ll enjoy it, because it’s all about YOU. Yes, you—the person reading this column.
Since I started writing for The Catholic Weekly back in 2019, I’ve had emails from more than 70 people, as well as lots of Facebook feedback.
This makes me so happy, because it’s like having a conversation about the church with people who I would never have met otherwise.
It also made me realise that I’ve been chatting to Catholics—and listening and reading about them—for about 35 years now.
I started writing about the church back in the 1990s in Fidelity magazine. I also wrote a bit for AD2000.
I even had an article in Oriens once about the traditional Latin Mass.
I’ve also travelled around Australia and the world, either for work, or to give talks, or to catch up with friends. And wherever I went, I went to Mass and met my fellow Catholics.
Over time I’ve spoken to, argued with, and corresponded with pretty much every kind of Mass-going Catholic you can think of.
I think I’ve met the full spectrum, from radical liberal to radical traditionalist. They’ve been single, married, same-sex attracted, lay, ordained, consecrated, young and old.
They come from right here, and also from all over the world, and work in every imaginable industry.
They’ve all had a lot to share about what it’s really like to be a Mass-going Catholic in Australia today.
So when Professor Stephen Bullivant and I came to do the Catholics in Australia survey in 2022, I was delighted at the data that came rolling in.
It drove me to find a lot of other data about the church that was published but sometimes hard to find.
This was stuff like data on baptisms, marriages, and First Holy Communions.
With you good people chatting to me—and with a host of supportive fellow Catholics in odd places—I thought I’d write a book about it all.
I got excited because I could see the possible shape of the future church in Australia beginning to emerge in the data I’d collected and analysed.
It’s in the Mass-going population aged around 40 years or under. That’s the future, right there.
We had data from a good-sized group of these people in the Catholics in Australia survey, and that was like gold.
I also approached people across Australia who I knew went to Mass regularly, and I asked them to help me answer four questions:
What are the toughest challenges facing you today as a Catholic in Australia?
What are the best things—the stuff that’s going right—for you today in the church?
What do you think the church in Australia will look like in the next 30 years?
And finally, what changes would you like to see happen in the church in Australia in the next 30 years?
I had a lovely group of people respond to this and share with me very generously, and so you’ll meet them as well if you read the book.
The book starts by mapping the weeds and wheat in terms of Mass attendance—which is a very important number when you’re looking at the future of the church.
Then we look at the modern Catholic family in Australia. What’s going on there?
Then we move out from the family to the modern Catholic parish in Australia. What’s going on there?
Then there’s a chapter on our clergy, and one on our religious communities.
I think Chapter 6 is the scariest, because that’s on our Catholic schools, health care, and charities.
You’ll have to read it and tell me if you think it’s scary too. It’s meant to be.
I also thought about adding a car chase at the end with a view to the future screen rights but decided against it.
Instead, I’ve tried to give any young-ish Catholic a blueprint for how to pull the future church together in Australia so that it can survive and thrive.
Plus, I think you will love the cover photo by The Catholic Weekly’s own Giovanni Portelli—and you might even be in it!
If you’ve been reading my column for any length of time, you’ll definitely enjoy this book—or at least some of it.
Let me know how you get on with it.
Pre-orders at Connor Court Publishing.