Archbishop of Sydney

Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference Mass

Mary MacKillop Chapel, North Sydney
Acts 20: 28-38; Jn 17:11-19

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
7/5/2008

Both these texts are interesting, providing much food for thought or meditation, but both are confrontational, reminding us of the struggles surrounding truth in the world.  While Paul in speaking to the community at Ephesus for the last time reminds us of the struggles that can sometimes convulse the Church with fierce wolves invading and even Christians from within the family speaking “with a travesty of truth on their lips”.

As a senior bishop I am increasingly aware of younger bishops joining us, from a later generation, who do not share the sensibilities of those of us who grew up before Vatican II and who then adopted Conciliar categories of thinking as students or young priests.

As zealous implementers of the Conciliar teachings we were urged to leave our ghettos, to dialogue rather than confront, and to emphasise what we share with others rather than what divides us.  Basically these changes are for the good provided we do not overestimate our cultural strengths or forget our identity.

But both these scriptural texts don’t fit too well with this adopted mind set, because Our Lord contrasts his followers with the world.  There is confrontation not dialogue.  More provocatively in this same chapter 17 Jesus even refuses to pray for the world, although He sends his disciples into it to work and preach.

Obviously there is no Manichean rejection of society generally, but a recognition that the Evil One is the prince or ruler of a whole section of society and history, a perspective which runs right through the New Testament, through Paul and James as well as John.

We know of this struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, Jerusalem and Babylon, the City of God and the City of Man.

While the lines of division are very clear sometimes, they are not necessarily static and are sometimes invisible, with evil powerfully at work in communities dedicated to God and goodness like the Church, and goodness emerging where evil holds sway, even in concentration camps.

Raiding parties for good and evil regularly venture into disputed territory, no man’s land and a percentage of people change from side to side.  We are also painfully aware of the struggles which take place in our own hearts.

In this rather difficult passage Our Lord prays to his Father that his followers will remain true to his name despite the fact that they have been sent into hostile territory, where the father of lies is at work.

Jesus’ followers might even be hated as Jesus himself was hated.  For these reasons it is mightily important that they remain consecrated in the truth, which is found in the Word of God.  The truth guarantees that they are true to their vocation and share in Christ’s joy rather than following the deceptions in faith and morals, the temptations or secular alternatives, the glamour of evil which is displayed in the world.  Christ’s followers have to remember that they do not belong to the world; that while they are in this hostile territory they do not belong there.  But their duty is to battle for God and goodness in this enemy territory, because Christ is not asking his Father to remove them, but to protect them from the evil one as they go about their work of evangelization.

How does this theological grid fit over our Australian society? An anecdote from the U.S.A. of forty years ago might be illuminating.

After Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon Johnson was determined to help improve the situation of the blacks and introduced his Great Society programme.  Senator Moynihan then predicted that the social gains from this programme would be cancelled by the ongoing social disintegration among the black community.  This proved to be true and it is interesting to note that family disintegration in the rest of American population is now more or less at the levels of black disintegration forty years ago.

Similar forces are at work here.  While we as Church have certainly contributed to our own predicament through mistaken policies, the greater damage is being done by forces largely beyond our control.

In many ways Australian society is wonderful because the market and especially our abundant natural resources have produced a prosperity and level of services never seen before.  Minorities too are better protected, at least in law and in theory.

But the market is hostile to the family and its individualism contributes to the hedonism, drug abuse and use of pornography which damage society.  Especially for young people it is more difficult to lead ordered personal lives, while the irreligious, who dominate our commentariat, are indifferent or hostile to religion in any form.  Many therefore, especially among the middle aged and young find it more difficult to believe, a development we see reflected in the increasing minority in the census who claim to belong to no religion.

Let us pray for wisdom and fidelity to the truth within the Church so that we can truly do Christ’s work in the society around us, where the father of lies is making it more difficult for children to be born, for lifelong marriages to flourish and for God to be acknowledged and worshipped.

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