Archbishop of Sydney

Feast of the Holy Innocents

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
28/12/2004

Tonight we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Innocents with a renewed enthusiasm as we rededicate ourselves to the long term task of explaining the culture of life more effectively to our fellow Australians.

 Years of experience tell us that this will be difficult, that we can expect no quick and radical change in public opinion.  But the omens are better than they have been for some years and the resurgence of Christian influence in public life in the U.S.A has forced even some of our most secular commentators to notice and lament what is happening there.  The question for us is whether something similar can occur here.

 Tonight’s gospel highlights the struggle and recurrent violence that have accompanied Christ and his message from the beginning.  The brutal tyranny of Herod, determined to erase even the slight prospect of some long-term threat to his rule, by killing every young baby boy in Bethlehem, without any gesture towards justice, points out the contrast with our own age.  We do have the rule of law, prosperity, educational and health standards, a standard of living, travel and communications never attained, and never dreamt of, by most other generations.  We are truly blessed.  Herod could never have attempted, much less succeeded in executing those murders of the innocents in our society.

This is not to claim that there are no recurrent sores in Australian society e.g. our inability to improve substantially the situation of our aborigines; the forgotten few hundred refugees still in that awful camp at Baxter.  But the largest blot, the darkest shadow on Australian life (for many years) went almost completely unmentioned and that is the tragedy of about 100,000 young Australians being aborted each year.

We do not stand in condemnation.  We pray for all those involved in this drastic loss of life.  One writer urged me before tonight’s Mass to pray especially for the mothers involved, and the fathers, because their dead children are certainly in God’s care, in some way or other.

While we do need to remind ourselves of the importance of this struggle, and of the need for more dedicated pro-life activists, the major focus of our work must be on public opinion; on the love and happiness, educating and illuminating, changing the mind-set of large mass of people who refrain from thinking much about this problem, many of whom do not even want to think about abortion as the destruction of human.

We know public opinion is uneasy about the huge number of Australian abortions.  We need to offer options so that this number can be reduced progressively.

As a contribution from the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney I would like tonight to announce the creation of the Centacare Pregnancy Support Program.

Some time ago I asked Centacare, our Catholic Welfare Agency, to develop this program to provide support to pregnant women who are contemplating abortion.  It will be available not only to women but to their partners and families.  A program of this kind can offer assistance to all women, including those who feel that they have no one to turn to for assistance; women of any religion and no religion.

Through the program, expectant mothers and, if required, their families will be provided with social, emotional and practical support to enable them to continue with their pregnancy to full term.

Women need real alternatives to abortion, and while the Catholic Church provides many family services, this new Pregnancy Support Program is targeted to meet the specific needs of women contemplating abortion.  It is a pro-woman, as well as a pro-child initiative.

As a Catholic community we want to respond even more effectively to the needs of women facing an unexpected or difficult pregnancy by providing them with life affirming options.

This will be a professional counselling and support service to women and their partners and families, as well as a referral service for accommodation and appropriate ongoing support services.  Obviously spiritual help will be offered if it is requested.

Centacare’s program will be available to women and their families in Sydney.  Similar church-based programs exist in New Zealand and Scotland.  The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference is considering ways and means to offer wider support to pregnant women across Australia.

This Centacare Pregnancy Support Program will be available from Tuesday 4 January 2005 on (02) 9390 5366.

Of course the Feast of the Holy Innocents and the struggle for life involve much more than concern for the unborn.  The Church’s record over the centuries demonstrates this concern for the living at every stage of life.

The fact today is that people are living longer and longer lives.  When joined to the diminishing number of births this has provoked a new world-wide situation, which is only now coming to the public’s notice and will certainly provoke another reassessment, another change in public opinion, in the judgements of common sense.  We are now facing the challenge of world-wide population decline.

For five or six years scholarly articles have been warning of population decline in many parts of the Western world.

This sounded strange as we had been threatened for decades with overpopulation and a shortage of food and resources (which has not occurred).

Public awareness is now changing, coming to grips with the fact that no Western country, including Australia, is producing enough babies to keep the population stable.  The American magazine Newsweek’s September cover read “Baby Bust: The problem isn’t having too many people but having too few.”  The penny has dropped; for some.

Fertility rates world-wide have halved since 1972 and are still falling faster than ever.  Depopulation has already begun in some places and will get worse.  Everything will be changed most of it not for the better.

Russia is already down by 750,000 people each year.  Western Europe could be losing 3 million a year in population by 2050, with Germany alone minus 15 million in the next forty years, equal to the population of East Germany.  For some time we have known that Japan will lose 30 million of its 127 million in the next four decades.

What is new, to me at least, is that this decline will eventually be led by the developing nations even more than the First World.  China is a spectacular example, as its population will age in one generation as much as Europe’s did in 100 years.  Countries that are not yet rich will also have to cope with depopulation.

Population collapse reverses the ratio of working tax-payers to elderly dependents.  Already the Chinese one child policy has provoked a dramatic imbalance in the sexes with 17% more men.  By mid-century China could lose 20 to 30 percent of population each generation.  As only one quarter are covered by old age pensions, China will have the 1-2-4 problem, where the single child might be responsible for 2 parents and four grandparents.

In Australia we might escape the worst of this if we can maintain or improve our birth rate of 1.7 children per woman.  But the challenge remains.

Tonight is only a beginning.  I thank you for your presence and, more importantly, for your heroic work over the years in the defence of life.

We need new ideas and extra people.  One measuring point will be next year’s Mass.  May we all be here with many new faces.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.