The Catholic Church in Australia is undergoing a massive transformation of its parish life through closures, amalgamations, new mission structures, and the injection of new immigrant communities. The general trend, measured by falling church attendance, dying religious orders, and lack of priestly vocations is one of decline, though with some green shoots.
Now is the time to reflect on our parish histories as we take stock. We put our current dilemmas in context by measuring them against not just those periods of growth, but the long-term struggles of the church to first survive and then eventually prosper.
Parish and diocesan histories are a good way of taking off our blinkers and should be encouraged. One impressive recent example is Under the Pines: A History of Saint Gregory’s Catholic Parish Queanbeyan NSW. Edited by Margaret Carmody, drawing on many other contributors, it is an elaborate coffee table-style history of one of Australia’s oldest parishes. While other parishes may not be able to match such a massive and lavishly illustrated history, they can still learn from its construction and presentation.
According to its own account on the cover, the parish overcame many challenges to build a successful community, bound together in part by a spirit exemplified by the provision of pine trees surrounding parish churches to encourage gatherings after Sunday Mass.
The striking cover states:
When Catholics came to Queanbeyan, they discovered the power of their faith and they teamed together to create a community under pine trees, despite the challenges of government, climate, distance and poverty.
The Queanbeyan Mission dated back to 1838 and St Gregory’s Church, designed by the famous British architect Augustus Pugin, to 1850. The community was originally of Irish extraction and reflected Irish culture, but there have been many developments. One of the themes of the history is continuity. Catholics were a distinctive people, not least in our Latin Masses, processions and rituals. Our consecrated burial grounds were separate from the rest of the community. So were our separate schools. For much of our history, parish fundraising has been an essential activity. Some things haven’t changed much in day-to-day parish life as shown in the contents of past parish newsletters.
But some things did change. Churches and schools changed locations to address demographic developments. Most of the rural churches struggled or closed. Religious orders, the Good Samaritan Sisters and the Marist Brothers among others, came and went according to need, to be replaced by lay teachers. Attitudes of parishioners also changed. New arrivals brought new practices. One example came with post-war ‘New Australians’ who had different expectations of Catholic schools and favoured less regular Mass attendance.
This parish is rightly proud of its history, and there is much of which to be proud. This story contains many determined, visionary priests, hard-working and pragmatic, and many more lay women and men for whom parish volunteering framed their life. For all our separateness, Catholics were ‘people for others’. This history shows the parish embedded in the Queanbeyan regional community. The range of ministries, traditional and modern, is immense. One of the parish priests, Fr Griffin, urged the local branch of the Australian Holy Catholic Guild, in 1927, to be ‘Actively Australian and actively Catholic’. That balance is sometimes hard to find in modern times, but this parish continues to do so – from World Youth Day to the Indigenous community. The Missionaries of Charity Sisters now minister in Queanbeyan and so does HOME in Queanbeyan providing non-institutional care for homeless people suffering mental illness.
There are also seeds for reflection in this book. Whether Catholics are planning revival, managing decline, or seeking reform, remember that we have met many challenges and conflicting priorities-financial, organisational, and missionary. Our trajectory has not been linear, though, and the future may test our creativity and openness to new ideas.
John Warhurst is Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Australian National University.
Under the Pines: A History of Saint Gregory’s Catholic Parish Queanbeyan NSW. Margaret Carmody (ed). AVAILABLE FROM: