ACCORDING TO PATRICK DUNN, the Catholic Bishop of Auckland, his church is haemorrhaging “New Zealand-born” and “New Zealand-bred” followers. He calls this Pakeha turning away from the church “Kiwi Drift”. Its effects, says the Bishop, have been masked by the recent influx of thousands of Catholic migrants.
As the Bishop explains in the latest issue of NZ Catholic: “We’re not sort of aware of this because many of our churches are packed. But when you look around, where are the Kiwis?”
It’s a peculiar position for a Christian leader to maintain. Theologically speaking, there should be no distinction made between native-born Kiwis and their migrant brothers and sisters. They are all God’s children; all equal in his eyes.
To be fair, the Bishop is at pains to acknowledge this; reminding his flock that: “New Zealand is not Europe. We are so mixed. We’ve got the influence of Oceania and Asia. It’s a beautiful mix.”
Even so, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that, for the New Zealand Catholic hierarchy, it was a very different (and better?) church when the faces uplifted to receive the Host were overwhelmingly “Kiwi” – and white.
The Bishop looks back with obvious approval to the fourth century, when Rome’s emperor unilaterally adhered the Christian Church to the Imperial State:
“The rise of Christianity came about with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in AD313, when government, culture and the Gospel came together.”
That is certainly one way of putting it. Another is to observe that a state religion, advanced by military conquest, reinforced by secular law, hostile to all “heresies” and enjoying a monopoly over formal education and elite cultural expression, is certainly something to be held closely when bestowed, and lamented bitterly if lost.
That loss, or, in the Bishop’s words, “the disengagement of the Gospel and culture” has been happening for a while. “Religion and culture have been coming apart in the past 200 years”, opines the NZ Catholic, but the most decisive rupture came just 50 years ago.
“In the 1960s,” says the Bishop, “society changed. Television, student revolt, sexual revolution, drugs. The whole change just became rapid and they [Gospel and culture] disentangled.”
The Christian message is now just one path, among many, toward that personal awakening to the holy which, stripped of its encumbering institutional costumery, has always been the objective of humanity’s religious seekers.
Intellectually, the Bishop grasps this: “We are all familiar with people saying I’m a spiritual person, but I’m not religious. Religion is associated with hypocrisy, homophobia, abuse, terrorism in the case of Isis. Whereas spirituality is associated with the inner self, nature, appreciation for nature, environment, appreciation of culture.”
Quite.
More, perhaps, than the rest of his church, Pope Francis I understands the extent to which this shift away from the broad institutional roads of the past, towards the narrow personal paths of the present, is redefining the spiritual life of twenty-first century men and women. As he expresses it: “This is not an era of change, but the change of an era.”
Is the Catholic Church equal to Pope Francis’ challenge? The Bishop’s talk of “Kiwi Drift” suggests not. It betrays a deep sense of unease that Catholicism, held back by a toxic mixture of historical malfeasance and perversion; doctrinal conservativism; and the exuberant credulity of its under-educated, increasingly Third World laity; may not be able to make the transition from the old era to the new.
There is a large measure of irony in the Bishop’s predicament. His nostalgia for the old, homogeneous and deeply conservative culture of pre-1960s New Zealand, in which people’s faith in society’s core institutions was strong, makes it much more difficult for him to look forward to a rebirth of the non-hierarchical, theologically anarchic and inclusive faith communities with which the Christian story began.
In this, the most secular civilisation in human history, when the only knowledge not instantly available to us is the knowledge gleaned from spiritual journeying; the turning away is also the drift towards.
The modern world with its explosion of knowledge and science has discredited Christian dogma. An understanding of patriarchy has discredited the father god belief. That we now know belatedly we depend utterly on the Gaian web of all to support our life has discredited the dogma that the natural world is irrelevant. Also Catholicism historically seems to always identify with the prevailing government, though not always.
The church seems hidebound in the past: the nicene creed and is unable to reform and change its vision.
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This shows the depth of his problem;
“The rise of Christianity came about with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in AD313, when government, culture and the Gospel came together.”
I’m no bible scholar but I’m pretty confident the rise of Christianity came about with the birth of Christ.
Despite being the faith of an oppressed people Christianity grew from nothing to the point where the Emporer was forced to co-opt the religion for his own power. in 313.
I suspect real Christianity actually died when “governent and the gospel came together” and we’ve been left with the religious facade ever since. Certainly God seems to leave the building every time people get too organised – as is the case for secular activities as well; too much organistion always seems to kill the spirit.
Anyway the good Bishop is an establishment creature and like all establishment types his first loyalty is to existing power structures – hence his disquiet at the increasing irrelevance of old fashioned ogranised religion.
Good answer although I would suspect Christianity started after the death of Christ. The reformers made the point that the roman church was responsible for introducing many false doctrines & killing faithful believers when it had control of the state.
Silly old rascist toss pottery from Dunn. Best ignored.
“..Religion is associated with hypocrisy, homophobia, abuse, terrorism in the case of Isis…”
Well buggar me days.
Gobsmacked I am.
If he wants New Zealanders to not leave the fray, perhaps he could offer those in need one of the Catholic Church’s houses.
Perhaps he could get all the priests in their 2 or 3 bedroom (cook and cleaner provided) house to all live together.
Thirteen priests in one house. It’s quite do-able.
Prudence: “Perhaps he could get all the priests in their 2 or 3 bedroom (cook and cleaner provided) house to all live together.
Thirteen priests in one house.”
Ha! This reminds me of a relative’s (Catholic) funeral about 10 years ago. I was there with another relative. There were also about 6 priests in their ceremonial clobber in attendance. I whispered to said relative that maybe that was as many priests as there were in the lower North Island? His response: probably as many as there are in the whole of NZ! We subsided into suppressed laughter, while those priests stared at us unsmilingly.
Nowadays, my view of the church is that it will continue to cleave to its conservative and reactionary doctrines, and those prepared to put up with that sort of nonsense can continue to go to church. People who don’t agree with the church should decamp: the church is not for you. Don’t expect the church to change: it won’t happen.
I’d add further that no women with any self-respect should continue to be Catholics.
[Merrial/D’esterre, please use only one pseudonym in future. – ScarletMod]
I didn’t mean to suggest that there are only 13 priests in the country, more that, in Auckland, there are quite a few households of 13, and they ‘manage’. They have to.
The marriage of church and state seemed to be a problem for the West. The eastern orthodox churches did not seem to have this problem, though of course these had to contend with the rise of Islam.
“…the exuberant credulity of its under-educated, increasingly Third World laity…” People from what used to be called the third world are often very well educated, and you could equally say, from a different perspective, “being relatively new to western values, they have yet to display the symptoms of uprootedness.”
I do not want to suggest a return to the past, but I do want to draw attention to something that I think is lost to us where formal religion is replaced by a more whimsical spirituality: it is the sense of an overarching authority to which all are answerable, including the most high-ranking. Think of Antigone arguing that the authority under which she sought to bury her brother was higher than the earthly authority of Creon, who had insisted he was a traitor and should be deprived of a formal burial. An argument along these lines was also used by the Plowshears group to justify their attack on the spy base. Think also of William Wallace retreating to an monastery for the last 10 years of his life, to expiate the blood that was on his hands. There are currently politicians around who are proud of the blood on their hands – to them it shows they are unafraid of taking the tough decisions rather than that they are sinners before anyone or anything. The value of an authority that transcends all, such that it can give substance to a modest person’s claim and call a high-ranking individual to account cannot wholly be replaced by an indeterminate and individualised spirituality.
William Wallace didn’t retreat to a monastery for ten years. He was hung drawn and quartered by Edward 1 in 1305 . 8 years after the battle of Stirling Bridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace
I ‘ve visited the Wallace Monument and no information on hm ever having lived in a monastery was claimed by the guides of the extensive information available there.
Hi Shona, I was sure I read that he did, but I may have got my wires crossed with someone else – I will check today.
When I wrote what I did about Wallace, I was going by my memory of a TV series on Scottish history, in which it was claimed that Wallace went to a monastery in the years before his capture by the English. Not everyone thinks that though, some think he was in France during that time. And whatever he was doing it must have been for less than 10 years, so my memory failed me there. However, what I was reaching for in my use of that example was a powerful leader who was capable of seriously repenting, and such leaders have certainly existed.
Sorry Patrick. The sheep are waking up and becoming enlightened human beings. We can talk directly to our Creator. Time for the middlemen to take off the fancy dress, sell up and distribute the wealth back from whence it came.
Perhaps it is because the Kiwis have had time to think, look and listen and then decide that we can talk to our Creator directly and no longer have a need for the fancy dressed middleman. Perhaps the newcomers will decide the same thing. Sorry Patrick. Curtain is coming down on the huff, puff, and corruption of the Vatican and its outposts.
Perhaps its the internet phenomena, pedophiles got a new play ground, dont need the church anymore.
The Catholic Church has been over time an insidious patriarchal power structure – and has successfully used ‘religion’ to this end; through its various strategies to integrate and at times be the dominant influence in society.
Enlightenment has steadily reduced its influence in the educated relatively wealthy west.
What average ‘kiwi’ in their right mind these days would seek the Catholic church’s ‘guidance’ on marriage, sexuality and family life; core facets of life itself? Very few if any i’d say. The churches priests have never lived such a life and their credibility in any event has been shot by the dysfunctional sexual behaviour of many of these same priests.
Time for the Catholic Church to put up its shutters and retreat from the scene
I am a 50 year old woman who went through an horrific divorce 12 months ago. I paid numerous professionals from lawyers to counsellors to mediators to assist me through the drama, they were HOPELESS, damaging even and a complete waste of my hard earned money. I chanced upon a Catholic priest who I would speak to each week in an open confessional and he helped me through the pain and anger masterfully with such emotional intelligence and wisdom. One doesn’t need to be married to understand how difficult human relationships can be.
I am a 50 year old woman in my “right mind” who went through an horrific divorce 12 months ago. I paid numerous professionals from lawyers to counsellors to mediators to assist me through the drama, they were HOPELESS, damaging even and a complete waste of my hard earned money. I chanced upon a Catholic priest who I would speak to each week in an open confessional and he helped me through the pain and anger masterfully with such emotional intelligence and wisdom. One doesn’t need to be married to understand how difficult human relationships can be.
And having been sexually abused as a child by a Mormon priest/elder I can safely say “dysfunctional sexual behaviour” is not just a Catholic problem it’s a huMAN problem !!!!
Chris,
You make make many good points but I think you have misread Bishop Pat on two points:
1. The “kiwi drift” is not a racial issue but a worldwide trend in the developed and increasingly secular West. The NZ Catholic Bishops certainly do not think that the Church was better when NZ Catholics were whiter.
2. I expect the Bishop shares your views on the dangers of Christianity as Imperial Roman State Religion. His point is that Christianity became the social norm with Emperor Constantine in 313AD and we are know (thankfully) far removed from that.
You make an excellent point that the turning away is also the drift towards.
Thanks for your work to help build a better and more socially just world; one of the central aims of Christianity. It is worth remembering that the founders of the New Zealand Labour Movement were predominantly Christian, and they saw their work in the first Labour Government as applied Christianity.
Warm regards
Chris Sullivan
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