April 09, 2007ONE of the princes of the Catholic Church took to his pulpit yesterday to rebuke the nay-sayers and assert that a religious revival was taking place among the nation's youth.
Cardinal George Pell (pic'd here), Sydney's Archbishop, told a packed Easter mass at St Mary's Cathedral that Australia was not as irreligious as some believed.
If India was the world's most religious society and Sweden the least, he argued, Australia was "somewhere in the middle, closer to Sweden, but not nearly as close as much public discussion would suggest".
Stirred by reports questioning the church's future, the cardinal said: "Some of the diagnoses are spectacularly wrong. We are not living in any situation approaching the worst of times. There is today an openness to the gospel which was not there even 25 years ago in Australia."
Responding to Melbourne sociologist John Carroll's view that the church was "paralysed with worry" about empty cathedrals, Dr Pell said: "I wonder how long it is since he visited a Catholic church on a feast day."
Cardinal Pell argued there was a revival of religious interest among many young people who "are drawing the unsurprising conclusion that money, materialism and self-seeking don't bring meaning or peace of mind".
"What is surprising about teenagers today is not the percentage who are hostile to institutions but the larger percentage who will listen to the Christian message spoken from any agency with conviction and sympathy."
Cardinal Pell is well known for his rapport with young people and was the driving force behind Sydney's successful bid for Catholicism's largest youth festival, World Youth Day, to be held in 2008 and attended by Pope Benedict XVI.
During Easter other Christian leaders pointed to concrete advances in keeping with the themes of peace and love.
They included two in Sydney: the Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen used the 200th anniversary of the abolition of transatlantic slavery to urge support for those fighting modern slavery and Wesley Mission's Keith Garner said it was the "risen Lord" who had "motivated abolitionists then -- and also people today - to put a high value on human life".
Uniting Church president Rev Gregor Henderson pointed to Democratic Unionist party leader Ian Paisley's and Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams' recent commitment to joint government of Northern Ireland as a miracle.
The Anglican church's primate, Brisbane Archbishop Phillip Aspinall said Jesus's example of forgiveness showed the way for a world caught in a cycle of violence and retribution.
"In our own generation we've seen a nation reborn by the power of forgiveness," Dr Aspinall said.
"The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa allowed the nation as a whole to take the grief and pain of years of injustice and innocent suffering and violence into itself.
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