In last week’s TMC newsletter, we recalled the voice of the philosopher Archbishop Eric D’Arcy and B.A. Santamaria in calling for an authentic “renaissance” in school-based Catholic education and particularly in religious education.
We also acknowledged in that newsletter that the grounds for forming the Thomas More Centre in 1989 were in part a response to the overwhelming evidence that Catholic school leavers, baptised professionals and numerous adults at that time – once at home in Catholic parish life – were rapidly drifting into an indifferent or even hostile absence from the faith of their parents.
The TMC recognised that education needed to be a “lifelong” formation, one in which the Centre itself worked to provide educational resources to both Catholics and others of goodwill and shared Christian faith.
These resources took many forms: leaflets, summer schools and other events aimed to revive and enliven both cultural awareness and catechetical knowledge.
As I wrote last year, the early years of the TMC from 1989 quickly “provided a sort of providential oasis for young people to be formed in mind and heart, to ‘sit at the feet’ of some extraordinary leaders and thinkers, and to find friends and mentors who enriched and challenged them to become ‘a new Christian force to challenge the prevailing philosophies’ and attitudes of the time (TMC Newsletter 1:1 1989)”.
TMC promoted Christian engagement in the world of ethics, business, politics and other fields as a development from its roots in the Catholic social studies movement from earlier in the century and from the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on the lay vocation.
The Council’s decree Apostolicam Actuositatem on the lay apostolate, promulgated by Pope St Paul VI in 1965, outlines a path for Christian education and formation which starts in childhood with parental teaching and example, and is supported and deepened by truly Catholic schools and continues on in the wider “apostolate” of what Pope Benedict XVI would expand with the notion of the “co-responsibility” of the laity for the mission of the Church.
The document writes at paragraphs 29 and 30 of the lay responsibility to engage in lifelong formation, initiated by those “in the world” for the apostolate in “the ruck”:
“Since formation for the apostolate cannot consist in merely theoretical instruction, from the beginning of their formation the laity should gradually and prudently learn how to view, judge and do all things in the light of faith as well as to develop and improve themselves along with others through doing, thereby entering into active service to the Church.”
To do that, the TMC has to know with clarity what the situation is today for those needing formation.
Over the last five years one Perth-based researcher, academic, lecturer, writer and historian Dr Philippa Martyr has provided Catholics, sociologists and other believers with a treasure trove of data sets and insights that will assist us.
Philippa has performed the challenging but invaluable feat of gathering data about many aspects of Church belief and practice, providing qualitative and quantitative research using her own original research correlated to valuable historical data collection such as Mass attendance records.
There is no one looking at the available data about Australian Catholic practice as she is. Somehow her characteristic gritty chutzpah, and sardonic but never uncharitable humour and her hopeful realism, help some of the bitter results to go down more readily.
For instance, we learn that there are only about 400,000 Catholics attending Mass/Divine Liturgy each week, which is a long way short of the national census figure of self-described Catholics who in the 2021 census were a declining but still large 19.9 per cent or 5,075,907 of the population.
You can listen to or watch the lively, often funny but informative interview with Dr Martyr about her research and her 2025 book based on this research, Witness: The Future Catholic Church in Australia (Connor Court 2025), with TMC YouTube host Mark Makowiecki here.
Dr Martyr is also an External Affiliate of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame Australia and St Mary’s University, Twickenham in the United Kingdom. She acknowledges the assistance and inspiration of St Mary’s researcher Dr Stephen Bullivant.
Dr Bullivant has produced some very important studies including Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) and other very important work such as Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).
Like Dr Bullivant, Dr Martyr has put her finger on some key points not only about the entire life of the Church but also by examining the “organisational” evidence relating to education, which should inform any attempts at educational “renaissance”:
- Ruthless realism: Some Catholic educational institutions need to be audited and even separated from the living Church. Many seem to inoculate the baptised and in some cases are actively detrimental to sacramental understanding, practice and respect – because they are “functionally secular”. This is suggested with the Witness’ findings that people who have lifelong education in what Philippa calls “Catholic origin” schools are statistically less likely to hold to the faith or practice it than others who have received other forms of education: homeschooling, independent or other Christian schools;
- It’s back to imaginative basics: As the Second Vatican Council recognised, Catholic schools need not more proceduralism but a recovered missionary and evangelical ethos and presence – young people do not relate to nor are they interested, says Philippa, in “cocktail lounge” tribal Catholicism;
- It’s personal: Philippa encourages young people and their elders to take ownership of new educational models which respect traditional sacramental, symbolic and devotional practices. She also warns: “The best way to convince someone of the truths of the faith is not to nag them or try to terrify them … but instead you need to expose them to the possibilities of a Catholic life well lived, mainly by living that life yourself.”
TMC is grateful for these and other flags. They are going into our plans for our next stages of development.
Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre
