WYD sounds wake-up call to Australia

Pope Benedict calls for a spiritual, social change in secular society

- CNS photo/Mick Tsikas The cheering faith of WYD pilgrims shook Australia's secular status quo

By ANTHONY BARICH
Catholic News Service
Sydney, Australia

In what is often seen as one of the most intensely secular nations in the world, Australia received a wake-up call: the faith of the Church on public display over the weeklong celebrations of World Youth Day.

For young Catholics used to feeling like the only young person in the local parish, the sight of an estimated 300,000 pilgrims from around the nation and overseas may well have provided a much-needed shot in the arm.

Prominent Australian theologian Tracey Rowland, dean of studies at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne, said the World Youth Day activities and the visit of Pope Benedict would not fix Australia overnight.

Generation Y

"But Pope Benedict's weeklong 'Christianity 101' intensive course for a couple of hundred thousand Australian pilgrims will certainly improve the situation, especially for Generation Y," she said, referring to the young people.

Rowland noted that for many young pilgrims, World Youth Day was their first experience of solemn liturgy, adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, receiving catechesis with deep intellectual and spiritual content, and meeting numerous other young people not embarrassed to be identified as Catholics.

The pope's homilies were deeply Christocentric, and in the closing Mass he explained the meaning of the Angelus - which he recited in Latin - as God's marriage proposal to humanity, accepted on people's behalf by Mary.

"No one could go away from Sydney thinking that it is possible to compartmentalize the faith or reduce it to a few rules and regulations and Sunday observances," Rowland said.

Papal blueprint

Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Fisher, chief organizer of World Youth Day, said that in his series of homilies during the weeklong event, the pope gave young Australian Catholics a blueprint of how to change the social and spiritual fabric of the country that the pope dubbed the "Great South Land of the Holy Spirit."

Bishop Anthony Fisher

"He's provided us with a program for the spiritual and social renewal of our country and has offered young people the encouragement and inspiration to do that," Fisher said.

"We would hope that there's going to be a new life and energy in every corner of the Church, especially youth ministry, which will obviously be bigger and better as a result of World Youth Day."

Secularized Australia

Fisher acknowledged Pope Benedict's concern for how deeply secularization has set into Australia.

"When (the pope) is talking about things like apathy and relativism, they're commonplace in the Western world, but certainly I think he had Australia in mind, " Fisher said.

"People are at times apathetic about key issues in the world, and Australians in particular are very comfortable - we've got a pretty good life.

"But the risk is that if we don't then ask the bigger questions . . . what it's all for, and what about the poor people of the world who don't have the affluence we have, even in our own community?"

The challenge was clearly set out by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, who told more than 1,000 youths at a Theology on Tap session about the futility of living a double life - going to Mass on Sunday but not giving public witness to the faith.

"We can't live a halfway Christianity," he said. "Every double life will inevitably self-destruct. Being a Christian is who you are - period.

"And being a Christian means your life has a mission. It means striving every day to become more like Jesus in your thoughts and actions."

Listen for God's whisper

World Youth Day has been the seed of many vocations, be it to married, religious or single life. Amid the hype and noise of the multicultural week, bishops and lay leaders alike warned pilgrims that unless they took time for silent meditation and prayer, the fruits of World Youth Day might be lost.

Fisher said he felt optimistic after World Youth Day.

"We often talk of Australia being a secular country, as if the view that religion has to be privatized or abolished has won," he said.

"We know in fact that most people still say, when asked, that they believe in God and they pray sometimes and say they are Christians. So Australia isn't as agnostic as it's portrayed," he said.

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