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MASS GATHERING: More than 140,000 pilgrims meet on the shores on Sydney Harbour for a World Youth Day mass (PHOTO: Ramon Williams/Worldwide Photos * WAYNE BRIGHTON is a lay assistant at St John's Glebe, Sydney, and is a co-convener for CONVERSE, an interdenominational network for the Emerging Church. ENTHUSIASTIC: Young Catholic pilgrims from the US gather in Sydney for the World Youth Day celebrations. (PHOTO: Ramon Williams/Worldwide Photos)

WAYNE BRIGHTON* admits to being jealous of World Youth Day

It's time to come out of the closet and confess. As an Anglican, I'm jealous of World Youth Day (WYD08).
I'm jealous that the nation's attention will be focused on the Roman Catholic Church and its message to Australia. Nevertheless, as my neighbours ask me for my thoughts about WYD 08, it's a great opportunity to talk about Jesus.
I'm jealous that thousands of Catholic pilgrims from around the world will converge in Sydney for a week of celebration and prayer.
Anglicans usually get together only to fight each other at Synod.
I'm jealous that the Catholic Church too can claim over 1 in 4 Australians as part of the family, the majority of whom are still on the fruitful side of menopause.
If WYD08 is their effort to wake up the 85% of Catholics who don't go to Mass, maybe Anglicans could respond more imaginatively to the 95% of Anglicans who don't bother.
I'm jealous that the Catholic Church had over $80 million to spend on this event and that they successfully persuaded the state government to spend a similar amount.
The only comparable Protestant event ever to be held in Sydney was Billy Graham's visit in 1959, something that is a distant memory at best.
Catholics really understand that conversion is a group thing.
Mass doesn't get any more massive than the feast at Randwick racecourse where over 400,000 are expected to dine from the Lord's Table.
If the 'gospel' was once the party associated with an emperor's victory then this event shows that partying is the Christian life lived par excellence.
Critics like Paul Collins might point out that a big glitzy event is no substitute for the patient pastoral reforms required of this venerable body. After all, Billy the lawyer from the hit musical Chicago once sang, "razzle dazzle 'em / and they'll never catch wise."
A week spent on the Papal mountaintop will revert to the valley of local parish life, the dark topography well explained by the National Church Life Survey.
WYD08 will not solve the problems of the Catholic Church.
Since John Paul II launched the first festivity in 1984, several events have come and gone.
Nevertheless, by igniting the passion and the imagination of a new generation to Christ, the Catholic Church stands a good chance of discovering its future.
I hope that Anglicans can respond positively and graciously to Catholicism's biggest event, if only by keeping Article 19 in perspective.
I can only hope we will applaud the Vicar of Christ if he can make the mysterious nature of God's kingdom understandable to all. Gen Y's Australian dream should be larger than watching videos and having sex. Wholeness, vitality and justice are gospel matters worth dreaming about today.
If 'B16', as the Italians have affectionately dubbed him, can help Australians realise that God is profoundly interested in the common good and committed to the welcome and inclusion of despised minorities, Anglicans should rejoice.
It might help us to appreciate the gift of Synods to our life together.
If God's shepherd can help some Australians realise that a self-interested lifestyle is not only unhealthy, it is fundamentally distortive of body, mind and spirit, we should congratulate him.
There is something askew with a way of life that rests passively on the exploitation of creation while passing the costs on to others.
It's a pity that Anglicans prefer to meet on a limited, representative basis. Such meetings are prone to sectional interests and their clerical advocates. Such meetings make it easy for small groups to hold the quiet majority hostage as each loudly proclaims their own faithfulness against the faithlessness of their opponents.
Is it any wonder that such efforts only rally the committed and recruit the belligerent? If global Anglicans spent more time celebrating God's marvelous work maybe the emptiness of such self-styled defenders of 'authentic Anglicanism' would be recognised for who they are.
Perhaps the only way for the Anglican Communion to find a new future is to experience some unity, not more instruments.
The only effective road is to meet together in celebration of God with all our differences and diversity instead of taking the usual doctrinal and legal blind alleys.
Meanwhile, I'll welcome the pilgrims who come in Christ's name and dream about what might be.

* WAYNE BRIGHTON is a lay assistant at St John's Glebe, Sydney, and is a co-convener for CONVERSE, an interdenominational network for the Emerging Church.

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