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Simon Castles "Why I Won't Be in Church on Sunday" The Age March 20, 2000 "That's me in the corner, I was baptised, received my first holy communion and went to Mass every Sunday of my childhood. Then - like apparently many of my generation - I lapsed in my church-going. A new study from Sydney's Macquarie University has found that Generation X - of which, at 29 years old, I am something of an average member - has abandoned the nation's churches. The study, by Dr Ruth Powell, found that over the past 30 or so years, there has been a huge decline in the number of young church-goers. The reasons for this are no doubt many and varied. Indeed, personal beliefs and faiths being what they are, it would be insensitive and foolish to generalise. So I can only offer some of my own reasons for walking out the back door of my local church and never looking back. To begin with, I have gradually developed a distrust of authority figures. Day in, day out, from the age I began to take notice, stories of people in authority betraying the trust of those in their care have chipped relentlessly away at my own trust. Politicians, lawyers, business leaders - all have been guilty of community betrayals of one sort or another. But it is priests guilty of sexual abuse whose actions I find the most hypocritical and, dare I say it, the most sinful. They took the inherent faith and trust of children - children who in their natural confusion believed priests were somehow related to, or friends with, Jesus in Heaven - and shattered this innocence forever. Unfortunately, I now eye all priests suspiciously. And while there are no doubt many good and decent men among those who don the dog-collar, their decision to join an institution which in my opinion hasn't done nearly enough to address its own significant flaws, taints them in my eyes. My suspicion of priests is further heightened by the vow of celibacy they must take. I have absolutely no interest in sitting passively for an hour on a Sunday morning listening to some bloke on a pulpit who I know is in constant denial of his own natural sexual instincts and desires. And that these men - cloistered away with other single, frustrated men - believe they are in a position to offer marriage counselling and family planning advice to the community, to me frankly borders on the ludicrous. But it is not only ludicrous, it's also incredibly sexist. And sexism is at the heart of why I cannot see myself - for reasons other than a friend's wedding or funeral - ever stepping into a church again. The big civil rights marches of 1968, which undeniably changed the Western world forever, took place several years before I was born. The inalienable rights of women and homosexuals, in other words, were not concepts I had to adapt to and begrudgingly accept as a grown man, after a lifetime of having everything my own way. Rather, they were concepts I grew up with and accepted as normal and everyday. This is not to say the battle for the rights of women and gays was won before I was born; far from it. Indeed, the fight continues to this day. But it is a fight I have always felt inextricably involved with, despite the fact that I am neither a homosexual nor a woman. So while I am sure I have been guilty of sexist and homophobic behaviour at different times in my life, I have strived - and will continue to strive - to reject outright any organisation, institution or set of beliefs which openly discriminates against anyone for any reason. And there's no two-ways about it, the Catholic Church does discriminate against women and gays. To put it another way, I wouldn't accept being part of a school, a university, a club, or a workplace that treats women and gays as second-class citizens, so why would I be part of a church that does? Defenders of the church will say I am being self-centred, and that I am a typical product of decades of "me generation" mentality. They will say that the church can't be changed to suit the individual wishes of every parishioner. Fine. But just don't expect to see me in the pews this Sunday, or any Sunday in the foreseeable future. Because I won't be part of an institution that asks me to leave my core beliefs and values at the door
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