Why I'm still a Catholic

Why am I still a Catholic? How should I answer this important question? In truth, sometimes I'm not sure why.

Yet I know the Church frames my identity, as basic as that. It's the source of consolation without peer. I can't slough it off: it's too embedded in the way I see the world and myself. I take it for granted in some respects, one of the products of being formed in post-WW2 Australian Catholicism, with its strong Irish inheritance.

It has been one of the most rewarding venues of growth and stimulation of any in my life. I believe that if you do hang in there, Christ's great offering from St Matthew's gospel comes true, in ways impossible to imagine: 'I have come to give you life and give it in abundance.' Abundant life: such a precious booty, not available at will.

So no, I'm not about to step aside from this easily.

But the unfolding headlines of late, together with what I've forced myself to look at square in the face, have tested these verities.

Maybe I've been through something of an epiphany, that wonderful biblical word from catechism classes which I once barely grasped. I think that deep down, I've come to believe that the world beyond the institutional church is kinder, gentler, full of more conscientious ethics, values and care for others, than the institutional Church.

That is, the much-criticised secular world in which lay people explicitly live is probably more functional and more ready to conscience-examine than the institutional Church. What an extraordinary thing! This was something of an epic realisation for me which again prompted further reflection: why then am I still a Catholic?

I suspect Vatican II's central idea of a Pilgrim Church definitely influenced my thinking as a young 20-something believer. It raised my expectations. It stretched my idea of faith. But it was a slow-burn, nothing hasty. Only gradually did my Catholic identity shift.

Despite remaining a pretty faithful adherent overall, I've sought out broader Church experiences via groups likeCatalyst For Renewal, by the occasional retreat, by good reading includingThe London Tabletand by participating in Ignatian reading groups, up to the present day.

So, without the sense that the ordained officials of the Church had so powerfully lost their way, would I be speaking to you like this today, with any ambivalence? If I hadn't drawn the awful conclusion that key parts of the institutional Church essentially ditched the role of Good Shepherd; if they hadn't decided that the priestly caste had to be protected above all, rather than the most vulnerable, would I be feeling like this?

I doubt it. I would much prefer not to be suffering any collateral shame, as I do feel with these constantly emerging stories.

But even a pretty compliant person like me would feel foolish at best and cowardly at worst if I didn't have the guts to look this crisis in the eye and see devastating dysfunction at a systemic not individual level, in an institution so close to my own values-centre. It demands my own self-audit. I must say, surely: what next? Or do I simply retreat into something small and extremely private, in the comfort of people who feel exactly as I do?

Until now, I've seen my duty and vocation as pursuing my personal journey, always guided by the wonders of our great tradition, knowing how much it could both humble and stretch me. I have tried to introduce my children to a Pilgrim Church's offerings (though I am not sure how successful I've been ... as oneEureka Streetcorrespondent replied to an Andrew Hamilton article recently 'they don't want our Catholicity').

And I would have been alive to requests from ordained ministers and religious to serve the Church. I would have happily left the bulk of it to them: the job of ritual, of teaching and administration and I would have respected them for fulfilling that role.

Whereas now I feel naïve and, yes, angry. I am struck by some unpalatable truths about some key Church officials' priorities ... amid them warning about the perils of the secular world!

So why do I still bother? Partly because I'd feel so much poorer without my faith. It anchors me. It introduces me to the whole notion of a journey in life, such an inviting metaphor.

It brings a great capacity for rapture, beauty, sensuality, joy, alongside the capacity for acute vices because emotion is not mortgaged in the scheme of offerings made to us, that's the majesty of it all. Risks are invited within our faith. 'Ours is a faith of possibilities' was a wonderful phrase included in a Redemptorist pamphlet distributed in my home parish in South Perth back in the 1970s. It influenced me to my core, then and now.

So, I treasure the sheer tradition of our faith. I seek it out. It helps me fulfil the natural human urge to make meaning; as the British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks insists: 'We are meaning-seeking animals.'

My conviction is that our children and grandchildren will be immensely the poorer for not growing up with a Catholic sensibility, without access to the rich armoury of belief, consolation, glimpse of the divine, the whole notion of commitments, of artistry, of abundant life.

So somehow, we, lay people especially, have to ask ourselves some big questions. How much are we prepared to commit ourselves to refreshing this Church of ours? How much do we value it in our lives? How much have we sought to replace it with other elements (because meaning is offered in various parts of our society — it's a more contested space than before)?

How much have we dodged evaluating its impact on ours and on community lives? How much have we left it to the officials; abandoned them and left them unreformed, when all about us we're experiencing considerable institutional reform in our daily working lives? I've been through about three big restructures in my media life and more could be coming. This rarely proceeds at a pace that we choose. It dislocates, often profoundly.

Did we seriously delude ourselves that the Church could escape all that? One can rarely prophecy the exact manner of acute challenge. Otherwise it wouldn't be a crisis, just a big problem. But truly to see the Church 'crucified' on the cross of something as awful as sexual abuse and cover-up, is very hard to bear. Who would have thought this would be the vector? But it is.

In the words of respected Vatican reporter John Allen, from his bookThe Future Church: 'The real question ... is not whether the bishops are up to the challenges of the 21st century. The question is whether the rest of us are?'

Again, why do I bother? Because somehow I can't just stand back from it all. I'm not sure what is asked of us individually. I don't even know my talents for any new roles.

But then again, I am haunted by a bold statement from St Edmund Campion, before returning from safe France to England in Elizabethan times, and to almost certain martyrdom: 'The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun, it is of God, it cannot be withstood: so the faith was planted; so it must be restored.'

The setting may be different. But some of his courage and surrender rings a bell. How many of us are up to it?