It shouldn't surprise, given the 2021 census results concerning religion, those critical of Christianity and the Catholic Church have used the fall in numbers to suggest religion is moribund and no longer relevant to Australian society.

With newspaper headlines like "Abandoning God: Christianity plummets as ‘non-religious' surges in census" (Sydney Morning Herald), "Losing our religion as Christianity plummets" (The Age) and comments like "Australia's rapidly changing population is more godless (the Guardian) it would be easy to conclude religion is in its death throes.

In the same way the report of Mark Twain's death was premature (Twain replied "the report of my death was an exaggeration) it's also true that religion, Christianity and Catholicism, are still powerful and significant forces in Australian society.

While the numbers identifying as Christian have fallen significantly over time and now sits at 44 per cent, the reality is 60 per cent of older Australians still identify as Christian and it should not surprise, given the concerted public campaign telling Australians not to tick the religious box, numbers have fallen.

Leading up to and during the week of the census, groups like Humanists Australia and staunch Christian and anti-Pell critics including Tim Minchin, on television, radio and social networking sites, told young people, in particular, to tick no religion.

What critics ignore, as detailed in the recently released Christianity Matters In These Troubled Times, is Christianity underpins and nourishes Australia's political and legal systems, our way of life and much of Western civilisation's art, music, language and literature.

Concepts like the right to liberty and a commitment to social justice and the common good, as detailed in Larry Siedentop's Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, are derived from the New Testament and Jesus' admonition to "love thy neighbour as thyself".

As the Bible states "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus". To listen to Rachmaninov's Vespers, to admire the stained-glass windows of Chartres Cathedral or to contemplate Michelangelo's Pieta is to sense the divine and to soar with the angels.

Christian virtues and religion's ability to engender a sense of the spiritual and transcendent are vital for human flourishing. Also ignored by secular critics is without Christianity Australia's education, health, welfare, aged care, social welfare and charitable services would collapse.

Christian schools educate approximately 34 per cent of Australian students, charities like the Salvation Army and Vinnies serve countless thousands of the nation's most disadvantaged and Christian aged care and hospitals are an essential part of Australia's social fabric.

In emphasising what the census tells us about religious beliefs secular critics ignore what the 2021 snapshot tells us about Australian society more broadly.

Of particular concern is out of a population of just over 25.5 million there are 8 million Australians described as having a long-term health condition.

Top of the list, ahead of asthma and arthritis, is mental health where just over 2.2 million Australians describe themselves as suffering some form of anxiety and depression.

While Covid-19 may have contributed, to have so many, especially young people, at risk is an indictment of a society where so many lack resilience and the ability to find a more lasting and enriching sense of solace, strength and comfort.

While Christianity is not always a panacea to experiencing loss, fear and anxiety, as suggested by the Christian mystic St Teresa of Avila: "Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices".

Also of concern is the fact the number of single-parent families in Australia has reached one million with 75 per cent of single parents being women.

Common sense suggests, supported by research, two-parent families are one the foundation stones of a stable and flourishing society and the best place for children to be raised.

There's no doubt those professing to be Christian, since the time Jesus worked on this earth, have committed grievous and unforgivable sins, ranging from the corruption of medieval and Renaissance popes, pogroms against the Jews to paedophilia.

At the same time, there is much to acknowledge and praise about Christianity and to celebrate and defend.

The author of The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, when explaining the millions killed and starved under communism and fascism argues the reason is "Men have forgotten God. The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century".

While the numbers have diminished, religion is still a vital element in Australian society and the lives of the faithful and with God's grace, it will continue.

• Dr Kevin Donnelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University and the author of The Culture of Freedom.
• First published in The Catholic Weekly. Republished with permission.

Long gone are the days when the statue of David displayed in Melbourne's Myers emporium had to be covered with a fig leaf and where nudity in the musical Hair caused moral outrage.

The cultural revolution of the late 60s and early 70s heralded a sexual revolution epitomised by the slogan ‘make love, not war'. This was a time when the birth control pill radically changed sexual mores, the gay/lesbian pride movement became active and the traditional family was seen as inflexible and outdated.

We now live in a world where pornography of every description is available in a virtual world 24/7, where marriage no longer involves a man and a woman, where children are taught boys can be girls and girls can be boys and where explicit sex scenes on TV and in movies is commonplace.

"To overthrow capitalism and what he describes as "repressive morality" Reich, instead of focusing on the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, champions complete sexual empowerment and freedom."

While many see this age of sexual liberation and empowerment as beneficial and beyond reproach, the Italian philosopher and cultural critic Augusto Del Noce, in his essay ‘The Ascendance of Eroticism' published in 1970, describes what he terms eroticism as a dangerous and malignant disease infecting Western societies.

Del Noce traces today's sexual revolution to the publication in 1930 of Wilhelm Reich's The Sexual Revolution.

To overthrow capitalism and what he describes as "repressive morality" Reich, instead of focusing on the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, champions complete sexual empowerment and freedom.

Central to Reich's thesis, Del Noce writes, is the belief "the core element of life will be sexual happiness" and "the achievement of sexual happiness would lead to the extinction of the authoritarian spirit and to a form of internationalism free from all compromises".

Reich argues religious teachings about the sanctity of marriage and the importance of monogamy reinforce capitalist domination.

As a result, Del Noce warns "the idea of indissoluble marriage and other ideas related to it (modesty, purity, continence)" no longer apply. Proving how prescient he was, Del Noce also notes, given the impact of Reich's book and the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s,

"It is clear that what today is called the left fights less and less in terms of class warfare, and more and more in terms of ‘warfare against repression'".

The lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, intersex, queer, plus rainbow alliance (LGBTIQ+) best illustrates how successful the neo-Marxist inspired cultural-left has been in its fight against what is condemned as the repressive morality associated with Western civilisation and Christianity.

"The Canadian gender activist Cristian Scarlett Milloy argues ‘With infant gender assignment, in a single moment your baby's life is instantly and brutally reduced from such infinite potentials down to one concrete set of expectations and stereotypes …'"

The so-called Safe Schools gender fluidity program, funded by Liberal and Labor governments, tells students there is nothing preferable or beneficial about the love between a woman and a man. Such a relationship is condemned as hetero-normative and guilty of cis-genderism.

While the overwhelming majority of babies are either female or male with XX or XY chromosomes respectively, hospitals are now ‘assigning' a gender on the basis that babies must not be stigmatised by labelling them as boys or girls.

The Canadian gender activist Cristian Scarlett Milloy argues "With infant gender assignment, in a single moment your baby's life is instantly and brutally reduced from such infinite potentials down to one concrete set of expectations and stereotypes, and any behavioural deviation from that will be severely punished …"

In Tasmania, it is now possible to change one's birth certificate to identify as non-binary, indeterminate or other (including but not restricted to transgender, transsexual, bigender or agender).

In a recent article in The Age newspaper, the journalist Madonna King praises schools and students for championing LGBTIQ+ rights.

Examples include wearing non-binary ‘they' badges, setting up a non-binary ‘safe space', not telling parents their child wants to transition and girls wearing pants so as not to be seen as female.

A second article in the same paper by Farrah Tomazin praises a boy who transitions to being a girl and his role in changing the law to make it easier for teenagers to take puberty blockers. The author also praises the Victorian government for banning gay conversion therapy.

"As argued by Del Noce, radical, neo-Marxist inspired eroticism and gender ideology represents an attempt to destroy human sexuality and the family."

Not surprisingly, in the UK, America and Australia programs like Safe Schools and the campaign to normalise LGBTIQ+ ideology, there has been an upsurge in gender dysphoria, especially among girls, with clinics recording ever-increasing numbers.

As argued by Del Noce, radical, neo-Marxist inspired eroticism and gender ideology represent an attempt to destroy human sexuality and the family. Ignored, as argued by Pope Francis, is radical gender ideology, especially transgenderism, which is against the natural order and God's plan.

Francis argues: "when the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God".

• Dr Kevin Donnelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University and the author of The Culture of Freedom.
• First published in Catholic Weekly. Republished with permission

The recommendation to open meetings with ‘Welcome to Country' is contained in proposals to the Church's Plenary Council. The proposal will be voted on at an assembly of bishops and others later this year.

The draft document, which will be controversial among many Mass-goers, aligns with parts of the Greens/Teals agenda.

The document, given to The Australian, will be circulated within the church hierarchy on Monday.

It was written by theologian Dr Elissa Roper, a specialist in Synodality, and others, as part of a two-year consultation process involving two Plenary Council assemblies and widespread consultation across the church.

The process drew 17,457 submissions from individuals and groups representing more than 222,000 people.

As part of the process, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council (NATSICC) made a submission "in the hope that the Catholic Church in Australia will more resemble the Church that Jesus Christ wants her to be in relation to Australia's First Peoples".

NATSICC recommended that "the traditional custodians of the land on which the church, school, parish or organisation stands be acknowledged in a prominent and appropriate manner. Verbal acknowledgment prior to meetings and Mass is also encouraged''.

The overall proposal urges the Plenary Council to joyfully accept NATSICC's recommendations.

The Plenary Council it says should say "sorry to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in and beyond the Church for the part played by the church in the harms they have suffered'' and commit "to continuing to work towards recognition and reconciliation''.

It said that, in Australia, the Catholic Church had been caught up in Indigenous People's history of dispossession, Stolen Generations and the undermining of language, culture and racism.

However, Australian Catholic University's Dr Kevin Donnelly says he can see "no real reason" for a recommendation for the Catholic Mass to begin with a ‘Welcome to Country' ceremony.

"I'd say it's time for people of good faith to focus on the issues that really matter, not to virtue signal (sic), not to have that sort of moral superiority," Dr Donnelly told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

"That they actually focus on the real issue here, as Jacinta Price argues ... as to what we can do in a practical, realistic way."

Sources

The Australian

Sky News