Archbishop of Sydney

Changing Alliances - Religion in Australia Today

Halifax-Portal Lecture

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
14 May 2002

One of the best religious developments in Australia during the last half of the twentieth century is the growth of ecumenism, a growth in love, knowledge and co-operation between the Christian Churches. Ecumenism has now become so widely accepted and taken for granted that younger Christians a people born after the 1960s a with their generally poor knowledge of history are sometimes surprised to learn that dialogue and co-operation between the different Christian denominations, between Catholics and Protestants, between the Orthodox and Catholics is a relatively recent phenomenon, the exception rather than the rule in the history of post-Reformation Christianity, and indeed for most of the time since the 1054 rupture between Rome and Constantinople.

One has only to recall the sacking of the Christian Orthodox capital, Constantinople, in 1204 by the Crusaders of the Christian West, an event still remembered in Greece just as Cromwell is remembered in Catholic Ireland, to begin to understand the perduring antagonisms that surface occasionally even today in the theological dialogues between Rome and Orthodox Christianity.

The weekend news reports told us of the latest riots in Northern Ireland between Protestants and Catholics. Indeed part of the Australian achievement is that we are so different from Northern Ireland.

No one pretends that there have not been significant divisions among Christians in Australia, but sectarian violence has been rare here. Unlike the United States of America, no Catholic Church in Australia has even been burnt by a mob. We are so used to denominational peace that it seems unnecessary, perhaps a little indecent, to boast of this happy state of affairs. But tensions long endured.

Two small examples are indicative. The introduction of free, compulsory and secular education in the Australian colonies in the 1870s, removing money from Church schools, was brilliantly exploited by Henry Parkes. It was connected with a fear of Irish excesses; for Parkes the Irish were "jabbering baboons", a disruptive, alien, priest-ridden tribe arriving in excessive numbers.

A more recent incident exemplifies attitudes on the other side of the tracks. In 1984 I was in charge of a wonderful Irish-Australian parish in western Victoria, where the Catholic majority lived in prefect harmony with their non-Catholic neighbours, even if there was not always perfect peace between the different constituent villages of the parish.

That year saw the first ever ecumenical service, held in the Anglican Church, which was extremely well attended by both sides. One of the Catholic men mentioned to me that he had been to this Anglican Church only once before, as a child to stone its roof.

These examples serve to remind us of how far we have come and how much has been achieved. Although it is impossible to imagine an about-turn away from ecumenism they also serve as a caution against taking this achievement too much for granted.

Periods of decline and renewal alternate in Christian history, but it is a strange coincidence or quirk of history that early precursors of both the Reformation and ecumenism came from the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia. John Huss (1372-1415) generated a movement for radical Church reform which anticipated some of the main thrusts of the Reformation to break upon Europe a century later. Although the Hussites were suppressed a after a struggle a his teachings continued to be followed by the Bohemian Brethren (later called the Moravian Brethren), and this group in turn produced one of the first significant ecumenists in the person of Johannes Amos Comenius (1592-1670). Comenius worked and taught for fifty years from 1620 and held to the somewhat idealistic hope that education might provide the means for reconciling the divided Protestant denominations; a Utopian Church united by Christian love, the "unum necessarium".

At this time there were other figures from different quarters who worked a or at least expressed sympathy for a the restoration of Christian unity, but the period between the 16th to the 19th century in Europe is notable because those working for Christian unity were such a small minority. The brilliant Orthodox theologian Cyril Lucar, who was made Patriarch of Alexandria in 1601, and in 1620 Patriarch of Constantinople, had a vernacular translation of the bible prepared for his people and actively cultivated friendly relations with the Protestant communities. He was particularly influenced by Calvinism, which he believed would purify Orthodox faith and life. Unfortunately his hatred of the Catholic Church ran deep. He was accused of inciting the Cossacks against his Turkish masters and was executed on the orders of Sultan Murad in 1638.

John Durie, a contemporary of Comenius, was a Scots Presbyterian minister who became an Anglican minister in 1634 and travelled back and forth across Europe trying to re-unite Lutherans and Calvinists. The Lutherans in particular were hostile. Another contemporary was George Calixtus, a German Protestant theologian (1586-1656), one of the first to aspire to uniting not only the Protestant denominations but also the Catholics on the basis of the scriptures, the Apostles' Creed, and the faith of the first five centuries. He was not successful.

It was not really until the nineteenth century however that ecumenism began to acquire some momentum. The British and Foreign Bible Society which was founded in 1804 brought Protestants and Anglicans together to translate and distribute the bible. In 1844 and 1855 respectively, two more important ecumenical organizations were established, the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association. Perhaps the most important development was the founding in 1846 of the Evangelical Alliance, which encouraged Protestant groups to pray and work together to advance unity, education and human rights; and to "concentrate the strength of enlightened Protestantism against the encroachments of Popery and Puseyism." The Evangelical Bund in Germany (established in 1886) had similar ecumenical (and anti-Catholic) objectives. In 1895 the American Methodist minister John Raleigh Mott founded the World Student Christian Association, which also encouraged students to take a leading role in bringing about Christian unity. Mott would go on to play an important part in the major developments in ecumenism in the twentieth century.

In 1910 the Edinburgh Missionary Conference was held, and it was with this meeting that international ecumenical co-operation took on a new dimension and energy. The Edinburgh Conference gave rise to the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work, which was established in 1925 to study the application of Christian teaching to social, economic and political issues. This was followed in 1927 by the establishment of the World Conference on Faith and Order, which focussed on theological issues. Further conferences and discussions brought these two bodies together as the World Council of Churches, which was formally established in 1948 after the years of delay caused by World War Two.

To this point in history, the ecumenical movement had largely been a Protestant affair, although support from the Orthodox churches became important from the 1920s and several branches of Orthodoxy were founding members of the World Council of Churches. By the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), nearly all the Orthodox Churches had joined and accredited observers from the Catholic Church were attending WCC Assemblies. The Catholic approach to inter-Christian dialogue and co-operation was revolutionized with the Vatican Council's decree on ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio (1964). Following this decree, regular consultations were established with the Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and many of the Reformed churches, and the Catholic Church became a full member of the World Council of Churches' Faith and Order Commission (1968). Initially to facilitate the attendance of non-Catholic churches as observers at the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII established the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity in 1961. The Secretariat played an important part in the preparation of the Council's decrees touching on inter-Church relations and became a permanent dicastery (or department) of the Holy See in 1966. In 1988 Pope John Paul II elevated its status and renamed it the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church's openness to ecumenism was one of the great blessings and achievements of the Second Vatican Council, one for which I am personally very thankful. It has brought new energy not only to the Catholic Church but also to the ecumenical movement as a whole.

If we were to plot the historical relationship between the different Christian communities along an axis, at one end you would have the open conflict which typified the Reformation. Moving along from this we next come to the competition that characterized relations between the churches from the end of the wars of religion (and Thirty Years War) in the seventeenth century until the nineteenth century. From that point competition begins to give way firstly to co-existence and then to increasing areas of co-operation between a larger and larger number of churches. With the establishment of the World Council of Churches and the Second Vatican Council we move to a new phase characterized by an almost universal commitment to ecumenism, although this ecumenism can be very differently defined. Beyond this lies the ultimate goal of restored communion. There is no doubt that enormous progress has been made, especially in the last fifty years. The movement from conflict to competition, co-existence, co-operation and commitment has been a long and difficult journey. I certainly would not want us to slip back to an earlier point along this path. But a new type of journey remains before us.

Twenty years ago I had thought that church unity might have been possible, not through the development of one broad church, but through the birth of two groupings: a) a Catholic, Orthodox, High Church Anglican union and b) a coalition of most of the Protestant churches. The successful formation of the Uniting Church here in Australia in 1977 from the Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregationalist churches was one example behind this mistaken surmise. Even then though, I acknowledged that most Christians would have been terrified if they had thought these broader possibilities were imminent.

Increasingly I have come to suspect that the goal of final communion between all the Christian denominations will only be achieved at the parousia, when Christ returns in glory.

Such a recognition should spur us to maintain and deepen our joint prayer, dialogue and common works and could prompt us to discern what are the best ways to expend our ecumenical energies to promote better "the coming of the Kingdom". To that end we should return to identifying some of the forces at work.

In almost every Christian denomination there is a group of deeply committed people who work tirelessly for ecumenism and consider it one of the first priorities. But beyond these enthusiasts the temperature on ecumenism varies from church to church, and within churches. It also varies from place to place, depending on how busy people are, on how much time they are able to commit even to parish life in general. It is true that in many small rural centres Christian co-operation is deep and regular with frequent ecumenical worship together on Sundays. But in this situation the driving force has often been the need to survive, the need to keep Christian life and worship going in the local area.

No movement thrives or declines outside of a particular context and this is true of ecumenism in Australia.

Probably the most important development in Australian religious life in the last forty or fifty years is the increase in the percentage of people who declare themselves as having no religion; from .81% in 1966 to 16.9% in 1996, with a further increase likely to be apparent from the 2001 census.

This is generally taken as another example of secularisation at work in the Western world, although the exodus from religion varies strongly from country to country and indeed from denomination to denomination. I also suspect that few of these lapsing into irreligion will become radically secularist, but will be more likely to become superstitious, open to exotic religious, politico-religious or even sporting substitutes; whatever will prove attractive in this vacuum.

However this religious decline, the rise of religious indifferentism, is unlikely to help ecumenism. Sometimes in fact the last part of the religious package to disappear from a person's heart is antagonism to other Christian denominations!

A cynic might be tempted to define ecumenism as the gathering together of declining Christian churches for mutual comfort in the face of advancing irreligion. All ecumenical efforts should be consciously directed towards avoiding such a defect, so that mission is always one essential dimension of ecumenism.

Ecumenism should also be distinguished from the increased traffic between Christian denominations; a development facilitated by a supermarket mentality to religion and spirituality replacing the older denominational loyalties. The impact of individualism has also been important here, with people more willing to walk away from a church if they do not like the message or the minister, rather than accommodate themselves to these challenges for the sake of faith or church membership. Combined with this there is often a profound ignorance or indifference to matters of belief or church order, an insufficient basis to produce anything more than maintaining the present level of co-operation and commitment to Christianity in some form or other.

We must continue work to avoid any return to the sectarian mentality of the past. I repeat that. The bitter hostility between denominations, and even the petty insults and slights that used to accompany them, were a scandal for all followers of Christ, a counter-witness to non-Christians and a formidable barrier to the spread of the gospel; much more so than the more easy-going attitude of tolerance with its genuine friendliness and hospitality we have today. But my impression is that most practising Christians are not driven to go much beyond this. Ecumenism is not a high priority and while a few Christians might be more and more used to praying and doing things together, this is not a sufficient basis for unity. Indifference to ecumenism can only produce an ecumenism of indifference. It cannot produce communion.

More fundamental than these factors are important differences between the churches on crucial matters of theology, vitally important issues of truth for all the participants. This was one crucial point in Archbishop Peter Jensen's talk last week on "Speaking the Truth in Love" and I agree wholeheartedly. Is accepting the divinity of Christ, the only Son of God, a requirement for Church membership? Understandings of the nature, structure and role of the church (ecclesiology), the nature of ministry, the meaning (and number) of the sacraments, in particular Eucharist, vary enormously from church to church and within churches. Differences are also emerging more clearly on matters of personal morality, touching issues of life, marriage and family and sexuality. 1999 saw an important agreement between Catholics and Lutherans on the doctrine of justification and we have a series of interesting and inventive documents from ARCIC (Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission). But welcome as these and other similar agreements are, they might even be outweighed by new difficulties.

None of this is new or unknown. What we need urgently is not an overarching basis for communion (attempts to find this in some sort of lowest common denominator will only end up producing a new denomination), but a means of re-focussing and re-energizing at least some areas of ecumenical co-operation. It would be wonderful to raise the priority and visibility of ecumenism with ordinary believers and put it on a sounder basis than the occasional prayer service and cup of tea. Can ecumenism be taken to the next stage, given a new momentum? Could we even get young people involved?

Before returning to these themes let me mention a couple of other important pressures or tensions which affect Christian life and Christian cooperation.

One such tension runs through every Christian community, although these contrary and sometimes conflicting forces are felt in very different ways.

The two principal thrusts underlying the developments of the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council were aggiornamento, an Italian word for bringing Church life up to date, making the church relevant rather than old fashioned. The second principle was a return to the primary Christian sources to ensure that church life was purified to follow the gospel teachings of Christ Our Lord as closely as possible.

The possibility of conflict between these two ambitions is obvious. As a young altar server exclaimed to me when I said that we should follow Christ's teaching, "a lot of things have changed since those days".

One obvious benefit of ecumenical dialogue is that churches which are very different sociologically as well as theologically come together for discussion and dialogue. This advantage should not be discounted too readily in maintaining and developing friendship and cooperation.

The board spectrum of Christian believers and world wide communions like the Anglican and Catholic Churches exhibit many brands of piety, politics and churchmanship. This broadens the appeal of Christian faith.

But one useful way of distinguishing various approaches is to differentiate between liberal Christians, who emphasise adaptation and Bible Christians, a term I prefer to that of conservative or orthodox Christians.

The term "Bible Christian" is not synonymous with fundamentalists or literalists, who give scant recognition to the power of reason and the science of theology. I would argue that bible Christians are committed to tradition, the living faith of the dead, but not necessarily to a more rigid traditionalism, a dead faith of the living.

Opinions vary of course on which of these approaches is closest to the mind of Christ, as they vary on which of these approaches is more likely to win converts and maintain membership in the future.

In a sermon at Old St. Patrick's Church in Chicago on January 17th 1998, Cardinal Francis George Claimed that "liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project." I believe there is sociological evidence for such a claim among Australian Catholics and possibly even more widely among Australian Christians. But my concerns on this point tonight concentrate on Catholics.

There was a considerable reaction to Cardinal George's almost throwaway line, so that more than 300 people attended a seminar sponsored by Commonweal, a liberal Catholic magazine, at Loyola University, Chicago on October 6th 1999.

Neither of the two main speakers flatly contradicted the offending thesis, although one of the three respondents claimed that liberal Catholicism was in a crisis, but everywhere (in the U.S.A.) triumphant.

Cardinal George preferred to distinguish liberals from conservatives, noting the complications that come from also using these terms in areas like politics, economics and psychology. Moreover an individual might be seen to fall into different categories in different areas of life and knowledge. Pope John Paul II is often accused of this.

Common to both sides on this occasion was a humanist respect for reason, the conviction that a well ordered universe has an intrinsic intelligibility.

The crux of Cardinal George's position ran as follows: "Behind the crisis of visible authority or governance in a liberal church lies a crisis of truth. In a popular liberal society, freedom is the primary value and the government is not supposed to tell its citizens how to think. The cultural fault line lies in a willingness to sacrifice even the gospel truth in order to safeguard personal freedom construed as truth."

He continued; "All this is not only a dead end, it is a betrayal of the Lord, no matter the good intention of those espousing these convictions. The call to personal conversion, which is at the heart of the gospel, has been smothered by a pillow of accommodation." The Church cannot reduce the gospel to what the culture will bear.

Peter Steinfels, the religion writer of the New York Times and former editor of Commonweal, tacitly conceded the failure of liberal Catholicism among young Americans, distinguishing this from "the Catholic Left", an offspring of liberal Catholicism, rooted in the confrontationist styles of the 1960s.

For him the Catholic Left was defined by positions on womens' ordination, clerical celibacy, homosexuality and abortion, rarely focusing on issues of general culture, international affairs, race or economics. Some would lapse into explicitly post-Christian positions, rejecting the very idea of a male Saviour.

Steinfels believes it is a duty of Catholic liberalism to call the Catholic Left to account, and that Catholic liberalism is essential to the flourishing of the Church.

Let me now come closer to home, closer to defining useful avenues for Christian cooperation by touching once again on Archbishop Jensen's important Halifax-Portal lecture of last week.

Soon after I came to Sydney twelve months ago, Dr. Peter Jensen became Anglican Archbishop. There were varying surmises about what these two conservative Archbishops might get up to. Would they clash or cooperate? I admire Archbishop Jensen greatly, share many of his priorities, but not all his theology. I hope and expect that we will continue to cooperate in the future. It is still early days. There has been no revolution, only an occasional flurry of outrage from the secular press. Theocracy has not come to "Sin City", nor is it likely. What should be possible is to broaden public understanding that the tag "Sin City" is a wonderful example of neo-pagan spin; an attribution to our whole vast metropolis of the characteristics of a small powerful minority.

For the media, part of the novelty about the appointments of Jensen and Pell was the prospect of an alliance between evangelical Anglicans and mainline Catholics. In one respect this novelty was overstated, because historically none of the many Sydney Archbishops in either denomination have been liberals. What was new, however, at least on the media's part, was a dawning appreciation of the possibilities for ecumenical cooperation between sections of the Christian world who traditionally had been suspicious of one another, when they were not hostile.

As a preliminary to explaining my agreement with Archbishop Jensen's basic gospel priorities, I should explain that I do not share his radical pessimism about the demise of Christian influence in Australian public life. Christian influence is real, if often understated, because Australian public opinion reflects many basic Christian values in areas ranging from social justice (our right to a fair go) to support for family life as an ideal and norm, despite its battering. I do not believe the Christian loss of confidence in the truths for which we should stand is as pervasive as he fears. But he is right that too many of us have lapsed into public silence.

I have already commended Archbishop Jensen's commitment to speak the truth in love. This runs in parallel with Cardinal George's refusal to sacrifice gospel truth, is the only way forward for useful ecumenism and the only approach likely to bear fruit in a society where media and entertainment are often deeply hostile to Christian moral teachings on life, family and sexuality.

If an increasing number of Christians were to oppose publicly New Testament teaching in these areas it would have unfortunate consequences for ecumenical cooperation.

Together Christian ecumenists should work to bolster our people's confidence in Christian teaching, the need for conversion and salvation, and to retain and indeed strengthen the Christian inspiration of our communities and institutions. None of this will be easy or attainable in the short term.

I welcome too the archbishop's ambition to get God into the newspapers and even the television.

While accepting that the primary Christian call is to personal conversion and that our "priority lies with the word of God", I still remain optimistic about Christian cooperation for specific purposes in public life.

Since my teenage years I have been a participant and admirer of the Catholic Social Justice tradition, and many Christians from different communities have battled usefully against unemployment, abortion, gambling; struggled for wage justice, family life, decent conditions for refugees, improved race relations etc. The Catholic Church is preparing to do more in the field of ecology.

It is true that Christians sometimes argue these causes too much along secular premises, because the media in particular need to be reminded that 70% of Australians call themselves Christians.

There is a fascinating contrast here between public discourse in Australia and the United States, where God is rarely acknowledged publicly in our country and where nearly everyone, especially those up to no good, feel obliged to acknowledge God publicly in the U.S.A.

In many areas ad hoc cooperation between Christians from different churches is taking place on vexed social issues. This should be encouraged, even as we recognize that there is a much wider range of legitimate differences for Christians on social and political problems than on the personal call of Christ to faith and conversion. Our Lord was not a politican or a social engineer. He called us to repent and believe, and our answer has consequences for eternity.

Christ calls all Christians in the many different denominations to follow His truth, to teach it consistently and courteously, and to cooperate together when this is possible.

Nor should Christians only be concerned with one another, but regularly dialoguing, perhaps debating, with the secularist alternatives.

The Second Vatican council called Catholics to a dialogue with modernity. Both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II have deepened and expanded this dialogue, this programme of critical engagement. There has been no return to the hostility to modernity of the nineteenth century Popes before Leo XIII, which was not typical of most Papal history.

Christians together, struggling along confidently and staunchly in our wonderful but deeply flawed Australian society, need not only faith and love, but a capacity for self-criticism, enquiry and research, and the spirit of dialogue.

To the extent that we accept these perspectives every one of us is something of a Christian liberal!