A national magazine booked an interview last Monday then cancelled a day later. They wanted to talk about World Catholic Youth Day but got bored just thinking about it.
TV show, Big Brother, is dumped. Catholics in the raw, via all the media, is in. The Beijing Games comes next. Mustn’t leave too big a gap between main events. The natives might get restless.
Got a surprise this week. Phone call early morning – “Is your church available this afternoon for 100 pilgrims? They want to ‘do’ Mass at the end of a hectic day of touring.”
OK, says I. They were two hours late. Four very big buses arrived at 6pm. A hundred, including three priests, piled into our 150 year old church.
These were the “neo-cats”, a recent development in Catholicism, well disciplined and behaved, heavily dependent on worship and morale sustaining singing and dancing.
We wouldn’t have thought at the start of the week that our parish church would be sought out a safe place by THREE separate groups of one of the world’s most militant catholic associations – the “neo-cats” (short for Neo-Catechumenal Way).
Two lots of 100 were from U.S.A. The third from Austria. Their organisers were caught short, apparently, so rang around hoping. I fell for a begging story, as usual.
Bus loads turned up. The Austrians had been in the air for 2 days. This was their first experience of Australian hospitality. They liked it, especially since my offsider, Martin, spoke German!
I can see how this mob’s admired and feared. They’re charismatic, religiously well educated and always on the lookout for converts.
Not converts to wishy washy Catholicism as practised here and in most other parishes – wishy washy as far as these zealots are concerned, anyway – but converts to the NEOWAY.
It must be daunting for anyone born or recruited into the NEOWAY if that person wants to leave the community. That’s a story yet to be told by investigator Safran on Triple J.
I realise, now, after this week’s dose of the NeoWay, that the groups’ enthusiasm is seductive to a bunch of parishioners, but could be fatal to the bored and boring survival of a local church doing its best to be the heart and soul of the neighbourhood, not just an “Amway” or “Hillsong”, “in house” self-indulgence.
Ask a cabbie about a town. I asked the bus drivers about these tourists/pilgrims. “Good value” said they. Good enough, I say. Glad they’re gone, though. Could be catching!
Bit uneasy about showing off all the “goodies”, accumulated by catholics across all ages and cultures, in the Sydney Expo – giant cross, clerics in roman and germanic western European dressage, stations of the cross scattered around the CBD.
This is like “speaking in tongues” in public. “Don’t do it”, said our Paul, 2000 years ago, “unless you supply a skilled interpreter”. Otherwise the public will be perplexed, then afraid, even hostile. Practise your devotions in private. Go public with your good works for the outsider.
Congratulations to the organisers of the biggest show on earth – seriously. Now let’s flatten the model and give equal resources to the myriads of little churches carrying the torch for best practice Catholicism not only best believed.
By the way, I’ve solved the Pope’s “red shoes” puzzle. B16’s in Sydney, isn’t he? Sydney’s home of the Swans F.C. B16’s just gotta wear Swans colours – red and white!
R.J.M.
