Last week, I had the immense privilege of addressing the wonderful Fidelis event run by Sydney Catholic Youth on the topic, “Religious Freedom: Fight or Flight?”
The purpose of the talk was to speak into the increasing feeling amongst young Catholics that in order to raise their children in the faith, they will need to move out of the city and into regional parts of the state where the anti-religious sentiment is not so strong.
I was both surprised and saddened that Catholics in their 20s, who are just starting their adult lives, are already sensing that Sydney might not be as open to young people who sincerely care about their faith as it once might have been. It is a different type of loss of innocence than we usually speak of, to be sure, but it is no less upsetting.
At the opening of my address, I ran through some of the key attacks on religious freedoms we have seen in recent years. While going through the litany of anti-faith, anti-life and anti-family laws passed in the last several years, there was one line that garnered a particularly strong reaction. I said: “The abuse crisis and the Royal Commission led to the removal of legal protections for the seal of confession, with priests in most states and territories now facing prison time for upholding the sacramental seal.”
I have given this spiel so often that I have become quite desensitised by it. I was not prepared for the shock value it would have for these young adults. I figured they knew about the confessional seal laws, but it was clear they are at an age where the whole discussion over the seal had passed them by. They were unaware that NSW is the only state that provides some protection for the confessional seal. Many of these young people would have been in their early teens when publicity around the abuse crisis and the Royal Commission was at its peak.
They were too young to have been watching or reading the news to know much of the political and legal fallout, and were visibly troubled that laws like this existed. When it came time for the post-talk Q&A, the topic dominated the questions from the floor.
I was very grateful to have Fr Ronnie Maree, parish priest of St Anthony of Padua, Austral and all-round rock star there with me for Q&A, because he was able to assure the young people that priests would prefer to go to prison and even to their death than to reveal what was told to them in the sacrament of confession. He told them that this was one issue that united all priests, young and old and from every point across the theological spectrum. Again, this is something that I have heard so often that it has become something to which I have been desensitised, but for the young adults listening, it was both comforting and inspiring.
The encouraging thing for me was that it was clear that, of all the religious freedom issues we spoke about on the night, these young people were most animated about the one that would encroach upon sacramental life.
They grieve abortion and euthanasia and are aware that they will need to be part of the rebuilding of a culture of life and love in this country.
They don’t like it, but they are prepared for the interference of the State with schools, hospitals, aged care facilities and welfare services, as well as recurring threats to our funding and charitable status. They have read the prophetic words of Pope Benedict XVI, who spoke of a church that “will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning,” one that would “no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity” and are up for the challenge.
But it seemed to me, from the stage at Fidelis, that State interference with the sacraments is a bridge too far; an issue that will get them marching in the streets to defend. It was beautiful to see.