Quest Exploring Faith in Action Issue 2

A U S T R A L I A D AY

E D I T I O N JANUARY 2015

In this issue...

Reflecting on Australia Day Pope Francis on inter-faith relations Things you can do

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Who do we think we are?

An Australia Day reflection

By Zac Alstin

I’ve never been a fan of Australia Day, and to be honest I’m not especially well assimilated to mainstream Australian culture. My family may have been here for generations, but for some reason I never grew up a part of footy culture or cricket culture, I never took to beach culture, drinking culture, or pub culture. I don’t feel much like an ‘Aussie’, and the word doesn’t even sound right when I say it. In that sense I have some empathy for new migrants, ethnic and religious groups who try to ‘fit in’; many of them doing a far better job of it than I ever have.

Australia Day is increasingly a key celebration of national pride and identity, an opportunity to promote a more united sense of what it means to be Australian. Yet as the supermarkets sell their flagemblazoned merchandise it is important to remember that in our multicultural society no exclusive or definitive image of Australian identity will ever satisfy. We must be mindful that this preoccupation has the potential to exclude. We should instead celebrate the values that Australians idealise: fairness, opportunity, that no-nonsense humility, and a straightforward inclusive spirit.

Yet in the wake of major events like the Sydney siege and the terrorist attacks in France, the continuing barrage of media linking terrorism with Islam has the potential to sow suspicion and doubt among even

the most generous and good-willed Australians, leaving many with concerns about the place of Islam in Australia’s social and cultural landscape.

Spontaneous expressions of solidarity such as the #illridewithyou movement are a sign that many of us are willing to push back against

ignorance and ‘guilt by association’.

This desire to resist divisive fear and intolerance is one of these more noble aspects of the Australian identity and one in which we can all take part. But surely we can do more to help resolve the tensions between

Edit or’s note I was sitting in a café in central Sydney on the morning of the 15th December, as news of the siege in the Lindt café emerged. Like all Australians, I was completely shocked.

I felt a sense of relief as I boarded the plane home to Melbourne that afternoon, but also a sense of empathy for the Muslim man who sat beside me. With the media awash with talk of terrorism and fears of a possible backlash against the Muslim community, I wished I could find the right words to say.

That night, on social media, I read of many young Australians who felt similarly. I applauded the girl who chose action over words with a heartfelt hug of a stranger – a tearful Muslim girl at a Sydney train station.

These events spawned the worldwide trending hashtag #illridewithyou, a simple, but strong statement of solidarity, prompting many Australians to do what Zac Alstin explains in this Australia Day edition of Quest, to get up close, to walk in the shoes of another, to properly understand.

“An attitude of openness in truth and in love must characterise the dialogue with the followers of nonChristian religions”, - Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium In the Gospel of Mark we see that Jesus is nearly always misunderstood by his contemporaries. “Who do people say that I am?” might well be the theme of Mark’s Gospel, as Jesus challenges his followers, disciples, and would-be opponents alike, in words and in action, to recognise who he is. The Catholic faith teaches that the very purpose of our lives is to know and love God. Yet few in the Gospel of Mark seem to really understand Christ.

Jesus, too, was once misunderstood, not only from the scribes, the Pharisees and Herodians, but also from his own disciples and family.

Jesus’ words have never been more instructive. “Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?” Mark 8:17-18.

The #illridewithyou phenomonen was more than just a symbolic gesture of goodwill. It was a statement of vision for the kind of Australia we want to live in: a just, tolerant and inclusive nation.

This Australia Day let us uphold that vision, by continuing to practice true understanding – the ability to ‘get up close’ and walk in somebody else’s shoes – just as Jesus taught us.

Regina Lane Publisher

In this the liturgical year of the Gospel of Mark, it’s worth reminding ourselves that

QUEST - JAN 2015 V2 © 2015

Muslim and non-Muslim Australians?

Understanding literally means ‘to stand in the midst of’. It implies intimacy or closeness with the object of our knowledge, as though knowing something requires getting up close to it. Unfortunately for most of us our understanding or knowledge of others can be quite limited. We may have our hearts in the right place, but when it comes to understanding other cultures and religions, we fall short.

We don’t always get close enough to see what is really going on.

Understanding is, after all, an effort, a discipline and a responsibility.

We have a responsibility to be conversant not only in the principles and practices of our own faith, but in the faiths of others with whom we share this great country. Especially when faith becomes the focal point of prejudice, debate and division.

Pope Francis set a dramatic example for us in the first Holy Thursday of his papacy, when he washed the feet of a Muslim girl. This simple act

illustrated a central theme of Francis’ pontificate: our duty to “proclaim the Gospel without excluding anyone” and to “appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet”. We could remain safe and comfortable in the certitude of an exclusive ‘us and them’ attitude to our Islamic neighbours, but under Pope Francis, the Church is calling us to exhibit through our words and actions both the conviction of our own faith and a willingness to understand the faith of others, in a spirit of openness that only truth and love can guarantee.

As Australians, this means having both the knowledge and the courage to speak in defense of our Islamic neighbours. It means invoking those higher values we seek as a nation.

It means, on Australia Day above all, to have confidence in the changing shape of our nation, and the goodwill of those who love to call it home.

I

t may be hard for us to imagine, but up until the 1960s Australian Catholics faced significant social, political, and employment discrimination, relying on organisations like the Knights of the Southern Cross to redress the problem of antiCatholic discrimination. In an era where job advertisements could openly state ‘Catholics need not apply’, one member of the Knights recounted to me how his father had lost his job in a bakery when the owner discovered he was a Catholic, leaving the family destitute.

If we were more conscious of the suspicion with which Catholics and Protestants once viewed one another in this country, we might be more sensitive to similar suspicions levelled at our Muslim compatriots. If we understood how our own ancestors struggled to ‘fit in’ as Australians we might have more confidence that the vast majority of Muslims in this country will in time be as much a part of Australia as every other group whose presence has reshaped our cultural landscape in myriad ways.

Mark 8:17-18 Do you still not perceive or understand?

Are your hearts hardened?

Do you have eyes, and fail to see?

Do you have ears, and fail to hear?

“We are called to respect the religion of the other, its teachings, its symbols, its values.

We have to bring up our young people to think and speak respectfully of other religions and their followers. We all know that mutual respect is fundamental in any human relationship.”

- Pope Francis

• Investigate your own heritage. Look at the cultural and religious conflicts within and around your family tree.

• • • •

What challenges and conflicts did your ancestors face in the process of migration, or in their countries of origin?

How did they survive those challenges?

Read some basic resources on Islam. Look at the different sects, schools of thought, and movements within Islam, and what differentiates them. (See further reading below) Compare these to the differences between Christian denominations.

Take the opportunity to contact and visit a local mosque. Try to find out where the mosque and its congregation are situated in the broader context of Islam, and how your hosts view the divisions and distinctions between different groups.

Consider how Catholic teaching might respond to the differences and points of view put forward by the various Islamic sects, and how the Church responds now to divisions between different Christian denominations.

Do your part to inform the public debate and counter ignorant and prejudicial opinions. The most common expressions of prejudice are typically ignorant about their targets. People routinely make sweeping

generalisations about Islam and Christianity that can be readily challenged with even the most basic level of research and understanding. We don’t have to be heroes or vigilantes against prejudice; merely responding to an unfair generalisation with a question such as “Which branch of Islam are you referring to?” or “What Christian denomination do you mean?” can be enough to reveal the speaker’s ignorance without exacerbating the conflict.

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Author: Zac Alstin is a

freelance writer and PhD student in Philosophy of Religion who lives in Adelaide. He blogs at zacalstin.com.

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Further Reading:

Muslims Ask, Christians Answer, Christian W. Troll, New City Press, ISBN 9781565484306 God, Yahweh, Allah, Katia Mrowiec, Novalis, ISBN 9782896466221 Stepping Stones to Other Religions, Dermot A. Lane, Veritas, ISBN 9781847303349

Quest is a digital series produced ten times per year, to help parishes and schools explore contemporary questions and challenges in the context of scripture. This material is copyright, but we encourage subscribers to distribute widely across both your parish and school communities.

ISSN No: 2204-2660 JAN 2015 V2 © Garratt Publishing 2015