The Christmas puddings have arrived in the shops. In fact, the mince pies have been available since July. People concern themselves terribly about anthropogenic climate change, but Catholics have been living with liturgical climate change for decades. Christmas now begins in the middle of the year, and Lent begins on Boxing Day.
I know that in our vibrant and welcoming church, there’s considerable latitude about the right time to consume hot cross buns.
There are lax modernists who start eating them as soon as they appear in the shops, while strict purists reserve them for Good Friday only. But what’s the official line on the Christmas pudding? Can we eat it now and still show our faces at Sunday Mass?
All of this led me to think about the slow de-Christianisation of Australia over my lifetime.
When I was a kid, the basics of Christianity were still assumed and factored into our laws on working, shopping, eating, and drinking. Not anymore. Some changes feel harder than others – like the decision to hold major entertainment and sporting events on Good Friday. I really felt that one.
Can we do anything about this? Is this a hill on which you’d be prepared to die? I suspect not. Does that make you a bad Catholic? I don’t think so. I know some readers would disagree, because they’re keen on Catholics being at the forefront of social action.
Having never met me, they’d be quick to denounce me as one of the lazy ones who just prays about things when they should be out marching against them.
It’s hard to accept that the number of committed Catholics in Australia has fallen drastically. It’s equally hard to accept that our church has been publicly disgraced, and with just cause.
We don’t have the social and political clout that we used to have. But here’s a hard question for you: Did we make the best use of that clout when we had it?
How would Australian society look now if we as a church had gone in hard in support of tax breaks for larger families back in the 1970s?
What if we’d set up fully church-funded, well-staffed pregnancy centres providing wrap-around care for women and couples who were considering abortions? What if we’d extended that church-funded care beyond birth to low-cost childcare, play groups, and other social supports for struggling parents?
I know hindsight is 20/20, but I do think it’s also worth doing a bit of soul searching about this and looking at our church’s current social and political priorities. Perhaps the great weakening of the church in Australia is a case of having talents taken off you when they’re not used for God’s purposes (Matt 25:29).
So is it too late to change? I think we must start by facing reality: Australia is authentically secularised and what’s worse, partly immunised now against Christianity.
There are signs of hope in the increasing numbers of people attending our Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA courses). But what are we going to offer them?
Will we offer them the burning love of God as a risk-free affirmation of their already comfortable middle-class lives? Or are we prepared to tell them some uncomfortable truths about the world around them to help make them ready for their real lives in Christ?
Can we encourage less financial and moral reliance on the state in Australia – always a risky partnership – and more voluntary activities and small, local charities?
Benedict XVI said more than once that the future church would be different – smaller and with fewer social privileges. But he also predicted that, “a great power will flow from a more spiritualised and simplified church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty.
“Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.”
This is a future church worth belonging to, and well worth discovering for yourselves as well. I’m pretty sure Christmas pudding consumption is one of those areas where an informed conscience can help to determine a correct moral decision.
But I do think it’s also worth looking at where we might have gotten it wrong in our attempts to witness to an increasingly secular and materialist society.
If we can figure that out, then I think we can start getting it right in the future.
