What would reconciliation in the Church look like?

An inspirational article outlining a constructive path to follow for recognizing past ignorance, prejudice and injustice and steps for moving forward, faith based.

It seems to me ludicrous that our Loving Creator should wait for eons to reveal itself to a small group of individuals in one specific place. Although these revelations are now an integral part of my relationship with the Ultimate Being as passed down to me by my family and the communities I grew up in, I can no longer believe that this is the exclusive way that Presence can become part of any one human's life. When I reflect that, following only moderate studies in indigenous life, I am aware that pre 1788 there is very little evidence of tribal conflict in the lands of the Rainbow Serpent. Perhaps here was the Garden of Eden that so many were banished from.

Kia ora The article on Reconciliation talks about Indigenous Issues. It make no mention of the Doctrine of discovery. It makes now mention of all the Papal Bulls that underpin the Doctrine of discovery. It makes no mention of the request by Indigenous People to have all the Papal Bulls annulled. It makes no mention how various Popes endorsed Colonisation, Imperialism and Genocide. It makes no mention of Terra Nullius which destroyed Indigenous in Australia. It reads like some commentary on Auschwitz which ignores the ovens, Nga mihi Na Papa Rawiri David Tolich Ta maki makau rau Aotearoa Tarara Kaikeri kapia. Liberation Theologian +64 27 503 9813 dtolich@xtra.co.nz

I was able to identify completely with the attachment to land as expressed here and I have no claims to Aboriginality, being born in Australia with 75% Irish and 25% German heritage. Does that mean I am no different from an Aborigine when it comes to an appreciation of God and His creation and vice versa? I found the same attachment to the wonder of the created land when living in England. Attachment to land seems to me to indicate an appreciation of the wonder of creation and has nothing to do with race but everything to do with being part of God's creation. Surely that has to be the underlying fact of European or Aztec or Aboriginal or any other race's spirituality. It already unites us as human beings equal in the creator's eyes rather than divides us and does not require our self made constructs for justification.

I came to these shores involuntarily with my parents at age 10. I have no Australian ancestors of any shape or hue. What is beginning to p--s me oft mightily is that many social issues, like Multiculturalism and Reconciliation, are now seen primarily as issues of race. Someone who 'belongs to country' in Australia obviously has an ethno-racial heritage I do not share. These days genuine Aboriginal people of very clear and verifiable ancestry and kinship are getting mightily pist off with bogus claims of Aboriginality. Bruce Pascoe is a lightning rod of this. When Michael Mansell and Warren Mundine question his Aboriginality and several other experts, indigenous and not, question his scholarship, I don't know how the bugger can sleep at night. He's the Aboriginal Helen Demidenko IMHO. I've enjoyed NAIDOC week, but please, SBS no more winsome Jack Charles. You've overdone it. Great bloke, but I can't take anymore! Aagh! The hiearchy of the Australian Catholic Church need to get on their grubby knees and beg forgiveness of ATSI people; gays; people incarcerated in those dreadful Magdalen homes; all the children and adults raped and brutalised. It's going to be a long penance, but they won't do it. They're lost. Utterly lost and clueless. The Vatican needs toget rid of them.

I must confess I have not been as deeply moved as I was tonight when I watched 'Compass' on the ABC this night a short while ago. It was about Janet Obogooma and her return to the (then) Presbyterian, now Uniting Church, mission where she was brought up, with her family thankfully, but not in her 'country'. It was about the coming together of Christianity and Aboriginal spirituality in one woman, with the approval and support of her Church. It was mindblowing.

Since experience of God's presence through the wonders and beauties of created nature is consistent with one means of appreciating God for all peoples, and affirmed as such by the Church, it might be helpful if NATSICC were to be more specific in its call for the Church to come to grips with its "ongoing Eurocentric worldview."

I think 'we' in Australian Latin Rite Catholicism have, in the past, tended to take a very Western, specifically dated 'Irish' view of religion, a view which no longer exists in Ireland, a thoroughly delightful place bar the endless rain. The immigration of many non-Western Eastern Rite Catholics, including the Mar Thoma Syrian Christians from Kerala, has changed the Catholic demographic forever and for the good IMHO, John RD. Kerala Christians are not white and have a very Indian culture, yet Christianity is deeply integrated here and they are fully competent and successful wherever they go, including in the West. Perhaps this is the way for ATSI Catholics?

One of the problems that the church has to face is its paternalism and the entrenched belief that it can rule imperiously from its rich fortress in Rome, defended by its mercenary Swiss guards. "By the 8th century the Roman cardinals constituted a privileged class among the Roman clergy. They took part in the administration of the church of Rome and in the papal liturgy. By decree of a synod of 769, only a cardinal was eligible to become pope. In 1059, during the pontificate of Nicholas II (1059–61), cardinals were given the right to elect the pope. For a time this power was assigned exclusively to the cardinal bishops, but the third Lateran Council (1179) gave back the right to the whole body of cardinals. The cardinals were granted the privilege of wearing the red hat by Innocent IV (1243–54) in 1244 or 1245; it has since become their symbol." Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica. So given that Rome has 26 Cardinals (originally there were 7 representing the 7 precincts of the city) and Australia has one retired absentee living in a luxurious Vatican apartment, the chances of the enclave uttering anything meaningful about NAIDOC week are Buckleys and none. Perhaps the Aboriginal elders should issue an Indigenous bull excommunicating the Vatican from its Christian beliefs or the Dreamtime and eschew the platitudes that issue from that benighted place once and for all.

The Church of my childhood in Australia was certainly strong in its cultural and Irish influence, Edward; and though not raised in Melbourne, I was well aware of Archbishop Daniel Mannix. However, Catholics like me, schooled by nuns and priests - a number directly from Ireland - were also made aware of the fact that the story of Christ and his Gospel reached well beyond Eire and Australia into many vastly different countries and cultures, including India; and that the sacraments, especially the Mass, were unifying realities and signs identifiable across national and cultural differences - of which I'm grateful to have seen something first-hand in adult life. The process of "inculturation" is, of its nature, one requiring careful discernment and one in which the Apostolic See, I believe, necessarily has a critical role in ensuring the authentic transmission of Christ's universal message and the unity of the faithful in Christ. Kerala Catholics I know (proudly "St Thomas Christians") possess a strong sense of the Apostolic Tradition and are actively engaged, along with Sudanese, Korean, Sri Lankan, Vietnamese and Chinese in our parish life.

Ancestrally my family were Anglican on both sides and originally from the West Country, John RD. I do have some Irish ancestry, but it is not the major part. After five generations of service in India, starting off in the East India Company's Army, we were certainly imbued with loyalty to Britain. A relative won the Victoria Cross in Burma serving in a Gurkha regiment in WW 2 and is buried in a British military graveyard there. I am immensely proud of that. Coming out to Melbourne in the late 1950s in my 10th year, having been used to the immense sensitivity and extreme kindness of the Catholic clergy: Indian, English, Spanish and Belgian and lovely nuns and having gone to the very pukka Cathedral School (Anglican) with Salman Rushdie and a real multicultural assortment, I was startled and at times horrified with the outdated shillelagh style Catholicism enforced by often tired, embittered priests, nuns and brothers. Everyone suffered. Mannix had long passed his prime. There were stirrings, a sort of premonition of Vatican 2. Some of the Jesuits at Xavier were different and nurturing. I remember an Old Xavier reunion in Brisbane years ago. One great old guy - probably gone now - said he thought he was being brought up an Australian Catholic, but he was being brought up an Irish Catholic. Mannix should have resigned and let the estimable Justin Symonds, born in Australia to Irish parents and educated at Sydney High School, take over. What a relatively long and wonderful archiepiscopate that would have been! As it was Mannix held on till death with a vicelike grip and Symonds was very ill whilst archbishop. The Catholic Church is international. We need more bishops from diverse backgrounds like the Bishop of Parramatta to represent the fulness and richness of the Australian Church.