Ejecución de contratos

By the 1980s changes were occurring in Church attitudes towards migrants and refugees. Hally puts forward four broad reasons for these changes.614 The first relates to changes in the wider Australian society and government; for example, in 1973 the Australian federal government dropped its previous “White Australia” immigration policy. The second reflects the impact on national churches of the Second Vatican Council “which symbolised the reality of a world church no longer demographically European [and which] was primarily pastoral rather than doctrinal.”615 A third factor was the increasing importance of the “grass-roots” influences of ‘local’ churches vis a vis official hierarchical influence.616 A related development was the significant growth of the Orthodox Churches as a result of post-war migration. Finally, Hally notes the influence of the revival of ethnic cultures in reaction to five centuries of European economic and cultural neo-colonialism endured by Third World peoples. Such a revival was manifested in the heightened sense of ethnic identity of migrants and refugees entering Australia

613 _{Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus, 3.} 614

Hally, “Inculturation and Poly-Ethnicity”, 28-29.

615

Ibid., 29.

especially from the mid-1970s onwards617; immigrants who were increasingly representative of non-European ethnicities and cultures.

Studies like those of Hally, Lewins, Frank Mecham, O’Leary, and J.J. Smolicz provide excellent critical descriptions of national episcopal attitudes and policies toward migrants and refugees from the early post-war years up to the c.1980s.618 What they demonstrate is that in the pre-1980s period the emphasis was on migrant assimilation into both Australian society and church. Thus, instead of the development of special national parishes or “missions with the care of souls”, as was recommended by Exsul Familia, migrants were expected to integrate into the existing territorial parishes. The only exceptions to this were some de facto national parishes serviced by priests of particular religious congregations like the Scalabrinians or else the Eastern-rite and Orthodox parishes. Similarly migrant chaplains were not given the same canonical status as parish priests but were expected to cooperate with the parish priest to whom ultimately the care of all souls in a particular territorial area was entrusted.619 This was to lead to conflict which is still having its ramifications in the Australian Church today.

Like its priests and bishops, the Catholic laity also expected cultural homogeneity and expressed antagonism towards the provision of special foreign language masses for migrants as well as to migrants seen to neglect their perceived financial responsibilities

617 _{Idem. Such a development also related to the cessation of the White Australia Policy.}

618 _{See Halley, Migrants and the Australian Church; Lewins, The Myth of the Universal Church and The} Australian Catholic Church and the Migrant (La Trobe [University],Vic.: Sociology Papers, February,

1976); O’Leary, “Legislation on Migrant Care”; and Smolicz, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism in the

Australian Catholic Church (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1988). 619 _{Mecham, The Church and Migrants, 87.}

towards the territorial parish. In areas where there was a large migrant population such was the limited interaction between Australian and immigrant parishioners that Lewins refers to the existence of “two parishes” within one parish.620 Migrants themselves, particularly migrant women, experienced feelings of antagonism and isolation621 and memoirs of individual migrants pertaining to this early period speak of the Church in Australia as “not having come across as a caring and understanding body”.622 Scalabrinian priest, Fr Adrian Pittarello, describes as situation in which Italian migrants saw themselves as being additions to the Church, rather than being part of it; a Church which was still largely shaped by an Irish mould.623 In this they were typical of other non-English speaking migrants.

Moreover, bodies and offices established from the late 1940s by the ACBC, like the Federal Catholic Immigration Commission, the Diocesan Migration Commission, the National Director and the diocesan immigration offices established in four Australian capitals – Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, were concerned more with the technical aspects of migrant integration into Australian society rather than migrant needs and concerns.624 Similarly, documents such as the three Social Justice statements produced in the 1950s on the theme of migration and the Immigration Sunday statements disseminated from the same period onwards “quite openly gave their assent to the wider

620 _{Lewins, The Myth of the Universal Church, 92.} 621

Ibid., 94.

622 _{G.O. Vrielink, “Pastoral Problems and pastoral Care: A Migrant Perspective”, CIRC Papers, 20, 1980,}

cited in Smolicz, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism in the Australian Catholic Church, 15.

623 _{Pittarello, “Migrants and the Catholic Church in Australia”, Australasian Catholic Record, 65, 2 (1988),}

141-158.

624

Halley, Migrants and the Australian Church, 23, does note, however, that each of the diocesan offices did have different emphases and were responsible to their local bishop.

societal vision of Australia as a monocultural society.”625 Overall, Hally would seem to be correct when he speaks of two factors motivating Church migrant policies in the years up to the late 1970s; one being that of Christian charity and the other that of looking after Australia’s national interests.626

Related to the broad reasons behind changing attitudes which Hally enumerates627, there was a noticeable policy shift by the 1980s and 1990s which reflected the Church’s changed awareness of the growing cultural and religious pluralism in Australia. Such a policy shift was exemplified by the ACBC’s consolidation of the previous Immigration offices into the ACMRO (1995) which was given prime responsibility for forming Catholic Church policy in Australia for the pastoral care of migrants and refugees and for overseeing the work of especially migrant chaplains and, to a lesser extent, that of diocesan migrant centres.628 Clearly by 1989 there was a realization that “pressure- cooker” assimilation techniques [had] failed to obliterate the desire of [immigrants] to live according to their cultural traditions”; instead, increasingly, there was an awareness

625 _{Smolicz, Ethnicity and Multicutluralism in the Australian Catholic Church, 14. The titles of the Social}

Justice statements were “The Future of Australia” (1951), “Land Without People” (1953) and “Australia’s Bold Adventure”, ironically subtitled “Pastoral Statement on Migration” (1957).

626

Hally, Migrants and the Australian Church, 29. In this context it is interesting that both Tomasi, “Migration and Catholicism in a Global Context”, 2, and Carmen Lussi, “Human Mobility as a Theological Consideration”, 49, Migration in a Global World, speak of charity in relation to the Church’s activities on behalf of migrants and refugees. Lussi refers to it as an “assistential practice and outlook” which she argues, together with a “pauperistic concept of the migrant”, characterized almost two centuries of Church outlook and “left little room for enrichment of or effective integration of the church community as a whole.”

627

See earlier, 157.

628 _{www.acmro.catholic.org.au/role.htm. The five-pronged mandate of the Office involves advising and}

serving the ACBC, acting as an official Church voice on issues relating to migrants and refugees, acting as a channel of communication between diocesan offices and the Conference, providing a mechanism for effective consultation and coordination between Catholic bodies and other groups involved in migrant and refugee action, and making appropriate representation to Government and other bodies on matters relating to migrants and refugees.

that “a culturally plural heritage [was] a positive feature of the Catholic Church” in Australia.629

Contemporary Australian Episcopal Advocacy on Behalf of Migrants