Brisbane Archbishop Shane Mackinlay sees the Holy Spirit moving in inspiring and encouraging ways across southeast Queensland as he marks his first year since his installation at St Stephen’s Cathedral on September 11. Source: The Catholic Leader.
The Church in Brisbane was “very healthy”, he said. He said the agencies, parishes and ministries were full of highly-engaged people, which was not something “arising out of enthusiasm in recent times” but were the fruits of “roots that go back decades”.
Archbishop Mackinlay took up his crozier in Brisbane during a period of sustained growth.
In every corner of the archdiocese, he said, there was an increase in people enquiring about “what it is to be Catholic” and “part of the faith community”. He saw that as a call to “continue and renew” investment in formation and resourcing of people in parishes to welcome and accompany newcomers.
He pointed to the latest local Mass count figures that showed a year-on-year increase of five per cent, the fourth year-on-year increase in a row.
Brisbane’s local increases were part of a global story for the Church, which included renewed interest from Gen Z who were exploring Christianity in unexpectedly high numbers – to the bewilderment of experts and pundits.
Archbishop Mackinlay said he would love to have a “simple answer” to explain the numbers because then “we could roll that out as a program”.
“This is not a strategy that’s working; this is the Holy Spirit, and we need to develop strategies to respond to it, welcome it, and encourage it,” he said.
He was careful not to overstate the situation, remaining “mindful that the broader context in the community at large is a story of secularism and of disinterest or sometimes even suspicion or hostility” to Christianity.
“There are certainly some good things and that’s great, but there’s lots of challenging parts of our experience too,” he said.
Traveling Brisbane’s parishes, Archbishop Mackinlay said the parish experience varied.
“We have parishes in places where there’s an aging demographic and a limited range of people to be engaged and then we’ve got parishes that are in thriving, new, developing areas, with younger families and active participation by cultural communities,” he said.
He said there was not and “should not be a standard model” of what a parish looked like.
“It’s very healthy for there to be diversity and for different parishes to have particular, distinctive characteristics,” he said.
He encouraged parishes to “lean into” what makes them unique as faith communities.
FULL STORY
One year in, Archbishop Mackinlay unpacks Brisbane’s parish life, church growth and what’s next (By Joe Higgins, The Catholic Leader)
