18 28, June, 2020 C omment catholicweekly.com.au with nowhere to go – no ac- commodation, no money, no friends or family to call on. It was then that she found Vin- nies. “If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here,” Gail told our Vinnies CEO Sleepout host, Dr Andrew Rochford. Beyond just having a safe place to stay, Gail said it made all the difference to be able Despite COVID, Sleepout a huge success L ast Thursday, the St Vincent de Paul So- ciety held our 15th annual Vinnies CEO Sleepout across Australia. It was unlike any that had come before. Rather than bed- ding down for the night in big locations like White Bay Cruise Terminal in Sydney, Cbus Stadium on the Gold Coast, or the SouthMelbourne Market, business and commu- nity leaders slept in their own backyards, in their cars or on their couches. Vinnies NSW executives spent the night in the carpark of Sydney’s Mat- thew Talbot Hostel. The reimagined event – and the incredible result of over $5.5 million – proved that times of crisis can bring out the best in us. Despite recent warnings that the charity sector is head- ed off a cliff due to COVID-19, the Vinnies CEO Sleepout raised well over double our fundraising goal. The extent of people’s generosity was be- yond our wildest expectations. So, too, was the level of par- ticipation. We were worried that CEOs would sit out this year’s sleepout, deterred by the lack of a physical event to attend. Howwrong we were – an amazing 1,550 participants registered and told us how glad they were to shine a light on the ‘hidden homeless’ who couch-surf and sleep in cars. During an online broad- cast live-streamed across the country, we heard the story of Gail, who left an abusive mar- riage after 35 years to find her- self utterly alone. Her friend- ships and support networks had been eroded by years of abuse. Police referred Gail to a temporary refuge, but she could only stay for three days and soon found herself again to get up in the middle of the night after experiencing har- rowing nightmares, and have a quiet cup of tea with a sup- portive Vinnies worker. Gail’s life was transformed with the help of Vinnies’ homelessness services, and the millions raised last week will touch countless more lives. The funds raised through the Vinnies CEO Sleepout go directly into crisis accommo- dation, food, clothing, health- care, debt relief and other sup- port for thousands of people who are homeless or at immi- nent risk. Importantly, at Vinnies we don’t just apply band-aid solutions; we work side-by- side with the people we assist to address underlying issues and wherever possible, secure permanent housing. There’s only so much that can be done at the individ- ual level, and we’re working for change on a systemic level too: lobbying the government to urgently address the short- fall in social housing, and in- vesting $242 million to build our own social and affordable housing (in partnership with the NSWGovernment’s So- cial and Affordable Housing Fund). For us, this work is the modern embodiment of Mat- thew’s Gospel message: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invitedme in, I needed clothes and you clothedme, I was sick and you looked af- ter me”. In the year 2020, people are still hungry, thirsty and home- less. Yet I amhopeful, because despite the numerous hard- ships of coronavirus, our sup- porters still showed incredi- ble generosity for the 116,000 Australians who face home- lessness. One day, hopefully soon, we will end rough sleeping in Australia. Until then, with your help, when people are hun- gry we will feed them. We will clothe them, look after them, put a roof above their heads and love in their hearts. It’s not too late to donate to the Vinnies CEO Sleepout. Visit www.ceosleepout.org . au/donate to make a contri- bution. Jack de Groot is CEO of the St Vincent de Paul Society NSW Will someone please explain what’s going down in Germany? J ust when you think this year couldn’t get any stranger, the German Church takes us to a whole new level of you- can’t-make-this-up. Just this week, Rome had to stop the Diocese of Trier from ‘rationalising’ all 887 parishes into just 35 ‘mega-parishes’, led by lay people and the odd priest. (We have all met the Odd Priest; he’s the one who sits sheepishly in a corner of the sanctuary during Mass while lay women do everything else around him.) Under this plan, lay people would apparently be preach- ing homilies and carrying out other functions that would render the priests as sacra- mental dispensers and noth- ing more. Creating centralised parishes would also mean that practising Catholics might have to travel up to 50 kilometres to get to Mass. Just a week or so before that, the German bishops’ synod suggested that their synodal process had much to offer the universal Church. Bishop Georg Batzing of Limberg, president of the German bishops’ confer- Bishop Karlheinz Diez of Fulda with synodal assembly participants in Frankfurt. PHOTO: CNS PHOTO/HARALD OPPITZ, KNA Highest Fundraiser: Nick Reade, CEO of BankSA and State General Manager at Westpac for SA, NT andWA. PHOTO: STEVEN MURPHY ence, said that he was ‘very much in favour of transport- ing to Rome, to the level of the whole Church, the insights and decisions that we garner from the Synodal Process.’ German engineering used to be pretty famous; let’s see how German Catholic engi- neering is going. Catholics in Germany have to register and then pay a Church tax of around 8 per cent of their income. But only around 10 per cent of German Catholics practise regularly, so the German Church is in a pretty cushy situation. It has lots of signed-up, fee-paying members generating a mas- sive income stream, but very few pesky laity in the pews. However, people do get sick of it. Last year, the Arch- diocese of Munich alone lost over 10,000 registered Cath- olics – record numbers for that diocese. When people de-register, the Church los- es income. So when you offi- cially renounce your Church membership, you don’t have to pay the tax any more – but you are also then denied the sacraments. In the olden days, the sys- tem of no pay, no sacraments used to be called ‘simony’. Apparently in Germany to- day, it’s called ‘good financial management’. The Catholic Church’s in- come in Germany in 2018 was around A$11.5 billion, which is not bad for a Church which haemorrhaged over 200,000 people in the same year. With increasingly empty churches and a huge pile of money, it’s only natural that the German Church should be seen as a model for other Churches in the West, includ- ing our own Plenary Coun- cil process. When you have a pile of money and very few troublesome laity to minis- ter to, that means well-funded white-collar jobs for every- one, with minimal duties. So the people whose Church is dying on its feet be- lieve that they can save the rest of us? I have an inspira- tional poster on my computer desktop which features a sink- ing ship. Underneath it says ‘It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warn- ing to others’. The German Church has plenty to offer the universal Church in precisely these terms. PRO-ABORTION LEADER P24 Dr Philippa Martyr is a Perth-based historian, lecturer and researcher. She can be contacted at: Philip-
[email protected] Philippa Martyr Whatever the effects of the pandemic, this nasty virus didn’t prevent Vincentian fundraiser frombreaking its goal for 2020 In the olden days, the system of no pay, no sacraments used to be called ‘simony’. Apparently in Germany today it’s called ‘good financial management’.” Jack de Groot