Paul Collins Reflects on WYD
By Paul Collins
July 31, 2008
You may be interested in this personal reflection I did for an Italian journalist working in Rome on World Youth Day, Sydney, July 2008.
I had a chance to observe the action very closely as I did 10 hours of live-to-air descriptions of three of the major events for SBS, one of our national radio networks here, as well as doing interviews for other commercial and public radio and TV stations. We covered the official arrival and welcome for Benedict XVI on the Thursday (a three hour broadcast), the Stations of the Cross around the city of Sydney (a three hour broadcast) and the papal Mass at Randwick Race course (a four hour broadcast). I also covered the actual arrival of the pope for SBS TV as he flew in by Alitalia at the Richmond Air Force base on the northern edge of Sydney on the previous Sunday
My feeling is that B16 did very well 'down under' and impressed the locals. People right across the spectrum from straight-out secularists to conservative Catholics really liked him. He had very positive media coverage. My assessment is that he won hearts, but perhaps not minds, because people saw a humble, prayerful man whose face conveys a human vulnerability which is particularly appealing.
My view is he is much better than his predecessor essentially because he doesn't think he's God, or the Messiah, or the King of the Catholic church or even the world - as did JPII, in my estimation - who seemed like a latter-day Innocent III without the great thirteenth century pope's sense of humour! In fact B16 utterly charmed us.
Part of the explanation has been that he is such an attractive contrast to Cardinal George Pell, arcbishop of Sydney. Pell - and Bishop Anthony Fisher, OP cut little ice with the media because of their domineering attitudes and rather ham-fisted responses to the sexual abuse crisis. A couple of cases blew up right before and during Papa Ratzi's visit and both Pell and Fisher handled them badly.
My sources tell me that B16 and Frederico Lombardi SJ, the papal media supremo, were determined to offer an apology as they had in the US and meet with some victims, but that Pell and Fisher dealt so mishandled the cases that blew up during the visit that the pope was left in a difficult position. However, he did go ahead with both the apology and the meeting with victims at a private Mass. Both were very well received by the mainstream media and most people, although some victims groups were justifiably critical.
We also got the usual Papa Ratzi reflections on 'secularization' and its evils, but Australians tend to take these kinds of comments with considerable skepticism. Actually, all of the evidence is that Aussies are a good bit more 'spiritual' than the Brits, French and Germans. Americans are seem more religious in a kind of 'churchy' sense, but there is probably a fair amount of superficiality in this. Here in Australia we live in a glorious landscape with much intact wilderness left, and even though we are very urban people, many do get out into the 'bush' (as we call the wider landscape) reasonably regularly. It palpitates with transcendence and lots of us are unconsciously influenced by that. But we are not very 'churchy' in the sense that we go to Mass regularly. We used to in past decades, but not now. About 13% of Catholics (we are 26.5% of the population) attend Mass regularly (i.e. more than once a month).
The visit clearly recognized the indigenous people and the opening Mass celebrated by Pell included Aboriginal elements. In the spectacular stations of the cross, which were done around the city of Sydney, gave the role of Simon of Cyrene role to a local Aboriginal man and many of the wailing women were Aborigines. The stations were brilliantly done; they were operatic in their proportions and were desiged and staged by an Italo-Australian Melbourne priest, Father Franco Cavara, formerly a stage designer for Opera Australia.
However, in the main papal Mass there was only one indigenous element: the gospel book was brought in by people from Samoa. It was very impressive. I noticed that while this was happening papal Master of Ceremonies, Msgr. Guido Marini in his lace surplice, was looking even more unhappy than he usually appeared! He has a sepulcral look as though he were a dead body that had just been embalmed by Tobin Brothers (well known Australian funderal directors). Bring back the handsome Archbishop Piero Marini (no relation)!!!
I was very happy that climate change and the message about the environment featured very prominently in the papal speeches. This is clearly important for B16 and while he stressed it the media here missed it, largely, I think, because they are not used to hearing the green message from the church. My wife and a group stood up for women's ordination even though the police tried to move them on. Another group organized 200 letters which were sent to B16 calling for the ordination of married men to solve the shortage of priests, the return to ministry of priests who left to marry, and for a recognition that women do 75% of all pastoral ministry in Australia as well as the question of the ordination of women. The group - Catholics for Ministry - is not optimistic that they will get a reply.
Then there was the final Mass at Randwick Race Course - one of the two most prestigious horse racing tracks in Australia. This is a vast area - probably about about 15 hectares in area - and about 5 kilometres from Downtown Sydney, so it was conveneint and easy for the pilgrims to walk there. In the end there were 215,000 pilgrims at the race course and another 195,000 in a nearby park watching on large TV screens. All up just over 400,000 attended the Mass.
At Randwick the pilgrims stood for three or more hours, were reverent throughout and very quiet. In fact, the behaviour of the young people throughout the event was extraordinary. There were no arrests of anyone associated with World Youth Day throughout the week and only one reported fight when a protestor threw a condom at a pilgrim. It just shows that when you get rid of drugs and alcohol you get better behaviour.
But the Mass itself was more a clerical-male-dominated concert than a spiritual experience. It was celebrated on a vast stage with hundreds of concelebrating cardinals (there were 26 cardinals in attendance), bishops (over 400) and clerics (over 4000) - all up about 4500 concelebrants. The young people hardly got a chance to participate or to get anywhere near the action. The only women who appeared anywhere in the vicinity of the altar were the women and girls who were confirmed by B16 after the sermon, and the soprano from Opera Australia who sang Mozart's Laudate Dominum after Communion. B16 used a lace alb whenever he celebrated Mass and Monsignor Guido Marini hovered around him looking very severe and distinctly uncomfortable. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State, seemed omnipresent - a bit like God, really!
The whole liturgy was a parade of male clericalism and patriarchy with the laity firmly excluded. No wonder women are alienated from all this clerical nonsense. Australians are particularly wedded to the reforms of the Mass from Vatican II and have no patience whatsoever with nineteenth century liturgical revivals. And that is what this Mass felt like: it seemed like a revival of the liturgy of the emasculated court of Pius IX.
All of this probably not only reflects B16 and his liturgical preferences, but also Cardinal George Pell. One of the events that particularly annoyed me was the Mass for priests and religious in Saint Mary's Basilica. I noticed on the TV that there seemed to be endless "real nuns" in habits everywhere, whereas I knew that the vast majority of religious women in Australia - the ones who do all the work - wear lay dress. I could not see one anywhere. I was leter informed that there were tickets for orders still wearing habits - most of them recent arrivals and, I discovered, some of them ring-ins from overseas who are not even resident in Australia - but that only one ticket each was made available to the traditional, larger orders like the Sisters of Charity (who came in 1839), the Mercies, the Josephites, the Good Samaritans, the Presentations and others, all of whom have carried the heat of the day in this country for more than a century. It was outrageous.
However, all up - a successful week of World Youth Day (a bit of a contradiction in terms). Lots of young people had lots of fun, learned something about their faith and had a positive experience of Catholicism which will stay with them for a long time. Possibly a miniscule number were deeply touched in a life-shanging sense. But the vast majority will return to their normal lives.
But the real question is whether anything substantial and basic in Australian Catholicsm will change as a result of WYD? The answer to that is - 'No, not really'! Paul Collins.
