Not only am I not leaving the Catholic church, but I am redoubling my efforts to join with others in making the case for much needed reforms. At heart I believe it is an institution worth working within to improve because it does way more good than harm in Australian society. For me the church is both a community and a formal institution. The twin crises of child sexual abuse and leadership failure by covering it up have certainly shaken my faith in the formal institution part. But while that has been happening my spiritual and social life within the broader Catholic community has remained strong.
I think I’m loyal by instinct, not just in a church setting, and inclined to get involved in organisations for the long haul. The grass is always greener over the other side, but my instinct has always been to play with the cards you have been dealt and to try to make a positive contribution to society in that way. I realise that’s very prosaic, but it is part of my character.
To be a Catholic has various meanings for me, including sharing values and friendships with fellow Catholics. At the local and personal level that finds expression in various ways. Within a parish setting my wife Joan and I have been fortunate enough to find respectful and rewarding relations with numerous clergy and to share the admirable faith that shapes fellow Catholics to be community-minded and generous with their time to help others, especially the most vulnerable, through association with Vinnies, Caritas and other networks.
We’ve also been fortunate enough in recent times to share a monthly discussion group with fellow Catholics from different parishes. This social and intellectual network leads us to question our identity sometimes but also to learn more about both our faith and our church in a ‘warts and all’ way that can be inspiring but also challenging. Our involvement in the church reform group, Concerned Catholics Canberra Goulburn, grew out of this discussion group.
There is also a very lonely aspect to being Catholic. By and large our closest friends don’t share our faith and most of our extended family, with a few notable exceptions, have fallen away from their upbringing and made either a dramatic departure or slowly drifted away. I’m very conscious that younger family members don’t share our commitments and understand they have very cogent reasons why they shouldn’t. I’m sad that, like dying religious orders, many Catholic families are dying. We will probably be the last.
Catholic role models in academic life are few and far between too. Mainstream universities just don’t highlight personal faith. I’ve had some inspirations though, and it is always a thrill to come across in church fellow academics whose life and work I admire. I’ve also been involved with Catholic university colleges, seeing their struggles and successes in helping young students to lead more ethical lives.
Alongside my life within the Catholic community the institutional church has granted me opportunities to work alongside many wonderful people at the national board level, mainly in social justice areas. For 25 years now, in three different fields (social justice and human rights, social services and international aid and development) I’ve accepted these invitations enthusiastically and always been thrilled to be associated with their mission.
I’m now in a position where I’m wearing several different hats. It can be an uncomfortable position, but to my mind intellectually defensible. Nevertheless, I know it could eventually turn out either to be untenable or a complete dead end. If this happens I will either be invited to leave or will walk away, without regrets, not from Catholic life or the local church, but from active participation in the larger institutional church.
This means I’m continuing my work within the institutional church, even taking on new and more senior responsibilities in an official governance review, doing all I can to reform it from within by making it more inclusive, transparent and participatory. For me a non-hierarchical and less clerical church in which lay people, especially women, are treated as equals is non-negotiable.
This is a position adopted by Concerned Catholics Canberra Goulburn, though not without trepidation. We see ourselves as a ginger group within the church, making serious and time-consuming efforts to take advantage of opportunities like dialogue with bishops and make submissions to the Plenary Council 2020, and a lobby group from without trying to press the case in the general community, so shaping the official church indirectly.
Doing it this way has advantages because we can bring our church experiences to bear on all we do. The little power we have is given some extra leverage because we are speaking as insiders. We are, however, still in a position of great weakness. Many of us are doing so with considerable unease and in the likelihood of being greatly disappointed.
Speaking strictly for myself I am ‘having a crack’ in the great Australian tradition. I’m giving it a go. In doing so I have been greatly buoyed by the explicit and implicit support of so many friends and colleagues as well as complete strangers. I believe there is a greater hunger for church reform among many of my generation of Catholics than is widely recognised. But there is also a great tiredness in the face of past disappointments and what seem like insuperable odds. To many in church authority we are dispensable and surplus to requirements and they are not afraid to tell us that. But we will not be moved.
John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University and Chair of Concerned Catholics Canberra Goulburn
John Warhurst AO is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University, and was the Moderator for Massimo Faggioli’s talk. He is chair of Concerned Catholics Canberra Goulburn and a member of the Plenary Council, and a regular columnist with the Canberra Times and Eureka Street.
Comments
9 responses to “JOHN WARHURST. Why I am not leaving the Catholic Church”
John Warhurst has said in Pearls and Irritations that he is not leaving the Catholic Church Nor should he. He says he is doing “all that he can to reform from within” Such reform deserves our support . But what is that support? It is, I strongly believe, to insist that the clergy to revert to the teachings of Jesus Christ. To the Parable of the Good Samaritan,or the the Sermon on the Mount, teachings that his late revered Cardinal pell denied with great arrogance . Remember? ” Help those in need of help” ,Like gays, like the children world wide who marched against climate deniers.
John – you so reflect my personal temperament!
Mate – there’s just one – but HUGE – omission in your article.
It’s so simple.
A rapidly shrinking percentage of people believe in your primary belief – that there is an omniscient and omnipotent God.
That statement is – far and away – the biggest single cause of detachment and divorce of previous and even intending adherents.
Thank you John for the clarity in which you have stated your convictions. As the credibility of the some of the dominant authoritative voices of those in the Church hierarchy is being diminished, there is a new moment and a space for the expression of new voices. I hear these as ones much more connected to the authenticity of their own experiences and the true place of faith and the transcendent in their lives. As I read your article I was glad that a man of your standing and academic credibility has taken this opportunity. I sense a new freedom emerging. I am one who feels quietly hopeful regarding the Plenary Council 2020 that it will lead us forward into building the new while reclaiming and restoring the beauty of so many aspects of our rich Christian heritage especially our mystical tradition.
the Church is not the hierarchy and clericalism – it is the belief and faithfulness of the laity. So where do I go without the basics that we believe in. The time has come for the total rejection of “THE PRAY, PAY AND OBEY” mentality we all must force the institutional structures to recognise this and make the changes.
The Church has surveyed far worse crisis then this – just read the relevant section of Barbara Tuchman’s “MARCH OF FOLLY”
John,
I admire your earnest belief that the Catholic Church can be reformed, however I am not as confident as you are that this can be done, merely from inside the institutional church. I left the Catholic church not in spirit, but in physical presence well before the Pell tragedy and it allowed me the time and space to look at religion and spirituality from a broader perspective. If people ask me now am I Christian I say yes and I tell them I am a recovering Catholic, and a person who finds organised religion in general a spiritually limiting and mind numbing experience.
I know that there are more good women and men working inside the Catholic church than those who are merely concerned about pomp, power and prestige, but I find the bureaucratic structures and the Vatican shenanigans far beyond credible belief and gospel values.
And – a postscript – there are signs of life even among the hierarchy. Today’s CathNews has a report on Bishop Paul Bird of Ballarat and his plan to change the governance of the Catholic schools of Ballarat. There seems a real understanding of the value of divesting some of the power of the clergy in favour of real power in the education sector. Also, it will lessen the enormous burden of administration that the average parish priest has to undertake in active governance of the schools. I hope this gives priests the time and energy to do better what they were ordained to do – and that I believe they yearn to do. I don’t like to approve of bishops at the moment – but – nice one, Paul. Mind how you go…
I’m with you, John. I won’t leave the Church because, realistically, I can’t. Despite all the many faults, failings and outright sins of the Church in its present hierarchical form, the everyday practice of the vast majority of believing Catholics is what supports and impels me in my own daily life. It’s flawed – but it’s better than anything that might be in second place. Despite the current excitement of the media – the Catholic Church is reeling! – most ordinary Catholics I know are not reeling. We’re sad and angry, but we have been for many years. Now we’re getting on with what we do, playing the cards we’ve been dealt, as you say.. We may be unfaithful, but the Holy Spirit remains and remains, no matter how uncomfortable that Spirit makes us!
John, I join with you and Clare, renewal of the church according to the Gospels is what we should seek.
John, you have many spiritual companions in renewing the church
according to the Gospels. We can do it.