Cathblog - Some Really Good News for the Church

By Christine Hogan
The CathNews
May 10, 2012

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=31308

During the recent Australian Catholic Media Congress, I had a conversation in three parts with another delegate. He obviously felt deeply about the stories which reflect negatively on the Church, which can make it harder for priests and religious to operate in their ministries. He shared something of that feeling with me.

The clerical sexual abuse scandal, and its coverage on CathNews, really affected him, and I hope I was sympathetic to his concerns. He wanted to hear the good news about the Church, and what the people who work for the Church, who fills its pews, and who sustain and are sustained by it, are doing.

I did my best to point out that those stories are featured on CathNews: the lives of devoted men and women religious and others celebrated in the Obituaries; ordinary people Living Catholic in their everyday lives... both of those sections can be found every week on CathNews Perspectives.

The Editor-in-Chief is always on the lookout for a good news story so our readers can apply the 60 Minutes formula – from the particular, draw the general.

One person helping out at St Vincent de Paul? There are nearly 31,000 people volunteering for the organisation around the country.

The E-i-C adds many stories like that (in our daily bulletin on Tuesday, find surfer Mark Richards talking about his Catholic school days up in the Hunter). These are stories which encourage the people in the Church when there is so much discouraging news.

One negative story was that of the former priest at the Church of St Padre Pio, in Western Sydney, Kevin Lee. He broke his vow of celibacy in a most public fashion, distressing for his former parishioners. Last night saw Today Tonight’s crew visiting Lee in the Philippines, so the Church can expect another battering of bad publicity triggered by his behaviour.

Too often mainstream news about the Church ranges from unfortunate to bad to tragic. But in an effort to counter what seems relentless negativity, Fr Richard Leonard SJ, Director of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting, has collected a sheet of facts which indicate the reality of what the Church does today. (Please note that these figures were the most precise Richard could amass in 2011, and if you have an update on them, please send them to me and I will on pass them to him.)

Let’s start with schools. Some 713,000 children are being educated in Catholic schools. There are 1710 schools, including 1239 primary schools, 350 secondary, 95 combined primary and secondary, and 17 special schools. There are 82,000 staff members in those schools. That number includes nearly 56,000 lay teachers and specialist staff, around 26,000 general staff, and 365 religious.

The Australian Catholic University is the fastest growing truly national university. It now has around 23,000 students on its campuses – an increase of 42 per cent during the previous three years – and produces the largest number of teaching and nursing graduates in Australia.

The University of Notre Dame Australia, with campuses from Sydney to Broome, won a recent Kullari NAIDOC Award for the most successful university in indigenous graduations.

The Catholic Church is the largest provider of welfare, after the Federal Government. There are 63 member organisations, 6500 employees, providing 550 different services, and they cared for around 1.1 million clients in 2010. SVDP is the largest and most extensive volunteer welfare network in the country, with more than 18,000 members and those 30,000 volunteers.

Twelve per cent of all hospital beds in Australia are ‘Catholic’. There are 66 hospitals with 9,500 beds, comprising 19 public hospitals (3,100 beds), and 4700 private hospitals (6,400 beds). The Catholic Church offers nearly 23,000 aged care beds, there are nearly 6000 independent and retirement living units and serviced apartments, and eight dedicated hospices with palliative care services.

But wait, there’s more....

Caritas Australia raised more than $43 million for the poor and disadvantaged at home and abroad in 2010; the organisation also spent the least on admin costs of all Australian aid agencies. Catholic Mission, which had the second lower admin spent, raised $18 million.

There are 1321 parishes around the country; 29 of them are Eastern rite. There are 5.2 million self-identified Catholics in the country, of whom 624,000 (12 per cent) go to church every week. (According to Richard, this number would fill the temple of another ‘religion’, the MCG, seven times every Sunday). Of the mass-goers, some 95,000 are aged 13-18.

The most recent Catholic Directory lists 5327 women religious in Australia, as well as 1917 diocesan priests, 1153 religious priests, 918 brothers and 118 deacons.

Australian Catholics, now 16 years old, sells 200,000 copies five times a year nationwide. CathNews, with more than a quarter of a million visitors to our website a month, is the most visited, faith-based website in the country.

That is quite a lot to take in, really. But what these figures indicate is that there are thousands upon thousands of dedicated men and women, clerical, religious, and lay, who rise above the negative publicity. They work tirelessly for the greater glory of God and to support, enrich, care for, guide, nurse, educate, minister to, and love us all.

They deserve medals. But maybe we should just start by acknowledging them and their efforts. Will you write to me and tell me about some of those people serve silently and generously every day? If you do, we might be able to get some of those personal stories into the mainstream media and start to make known the reality of what the Church does quietly and with humility outside those scandalous and salacious, distressing and damaging headlines.