Archbishop Anthony Fisher, 54, was installed as the ninth archbishop of Sydney on Nov. 12. 

Pope Francis named him to succeed Cardinal George Pell, who heads the Vatican’s newly created Secretariat for the Economy.

Archbishop Fisher entered the Dominicans in 1985 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1991.

In 2000, he was appointed foundation director of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family in Melbourne, Australia, where he remains a professor of moral theology and bioethics.

In 2003, Pope St. Pope John Paul II appointed Father Fisher as an auxiliary bishop of Sydney. He served as bishop coordinator of World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney. On Jan. 8, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him the third bishop of Parramatta.

Archbishop Fisher has published extensively in bioethics and moral theology and is the author of Catholic Bioethics for a New Millennium (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Since 2004, he has been an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

He recently participated in an email interview with Tom Wehner, the Register’s managing editor.

 

What makes the Catholic Church in Australia distinct from other areas in the world? Are there pastoral issues in Australia that other countries wouldn’t understand?

To generalize a bit, I’d say Australia is less religious than America and more so than Europe. We’ve been hit hard by the sexual and consumer revolution, increasingly dictatorial secularism and relativism, the child-abuse crisis and the effects of technologies (especially the car, TV and computer) — just like the Church in the U.S. I suppose what’s a bit different about us “down under” is that we have a rather easygoing, relaxed attitude to life. The upside of that is our sense of giving everyone a fair go and never getting worked up enough to riot violently or have a civil war about anything. The downside is a sort of apathy and anti-intellectualism, a lack of passion about the things that should stir us to reflection and action.

Without regularly hearing the word proclaimed and preached, without regularly receiving the sacraments of mercy and Communion, without the support of a community of fellow sinners aspiring to be saints, that connection with God in Christ risks fading away. I saw a recent study commissioned by the Diocese of Springfield, Ill., into why Catholics no longer attend Mass or have left the Church altogether: People gave as their four main reasons issues with Church doctrine, lack of connection to the Church, Church scandals and a perceived lack of Christian values in the Church, parish or priest. It’s probably fair to say that many of these issues also confront the Church in Australia.

 

What is your main task as shepherd of the oldest diocese of Catholics in Australia?

I am called to preach the truth in charity to the people of Sydney. In The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis suggests that that task is a joyful if sometimes arduous one: joyful, because Christians know that what they offer is fresh and life-giving and inexhaustibly exciting; arduous, because the task must be embraced amidst the sickness of the world economy, the growing attacks on religious freedom and religious minorities, the relativism, materialism and individualism that mar private life and the secularization and attendant rejection of transcendence and absolutes that is corrupting public life and even parts of the Church as well.

 

With the teaching of the Church being distorted by popular culture, how do you catechize a media-assaulted populace?

A good question! It is very important that the Church embrace the call to the New Evangelization, which the recent popes have promoted, and do so joyfully, as Pope Francis has emphasized. In a media-saturated culture like ours, we have to be creative and prudent about how the various means of communication can be harnessed to present the fullness of the Gospel of Christ and to encourage a personal encounter with the God-man who saves. But powerful as they are — for good and ill — we can’t put the whole weight of evangelization and catechesis on the old and new media. A personal, face-to-face encounter with a faithful and enthusiastic Christian, an experience of the sacred liturgy, the witness of Christian family life or a quiet act of charity — these are often the most powerful vehicles for transmitting the Gospel of Christ.

I like to tell the story of St. Dominic, who, upon meeting a heretic, spent the whole night talking to (and drinking with?) him in a pub, eventually converting him to the Catholic faith. (Dominicans use it as an excuse for visiting pubs.) In western Sydney these past few years, we’ve had a very successful “Theology on Tap” series each month, with hundreds of young people gathering to hear talks from orthodox and interesting Catholics. The young people would often end up talking through the night like Dominic, so fired up were they about the topic. There are also opportunities for confession and the context of Christian friendship, food and drink. These things help. I have also recently published a study on the positive effects of World Youth Days and other Catholic youth festivals: They are a way of connecting directly with the young and giving them the opportunity to experience life as an unabashed Catholic, even if only for a week at a time, and to receive some quality catechesis. We need this sort of creative thinking to catechize today.

 

Do you think there is a tendency, especially for Western Catholics, to think of the Church as a democracy? What can be done to reorient the faithful?

There’s no doubt that many people in the media — and, therefore, many people who follow their lead — think the Church is, or should be, a democracy, in the rather limited sense that democracy is understood today, and therefore assume that by a simple majority vote of Catholics, or of Catholic leaders, we could change the Bible, correct “outdated” teachings of Christ and the Church — “move with the times.”

The International Theological Commission recently published a helpful document on the concept of the sensus fidei. It recalled that baptism does not make us merely passive viewers of a film, recipients of a wisdom that comes from above, from outside. No, we are remade with the dignity of a priestly, prophetic, princely people, with our own part to play in securing and elaborating the faith. Guided by the Spirit, the entire Church is brought into the fullness of the truth and empowered to bear witness to that truth. She reads the signs of the times, discerns how best to proceed and transmits the faith as best she can. Laypeople, and not just the hierarchy, play a crucial part here. But that doesn’t mean deriving doctrine from opinion polls.

G.K. Chesterton suggested that Catholicism is the most democratic of religions because it extends the teaching franchise to all the baptized — not just those over 18 — and to the dead as much as the living — and to future generations as much as to present ones. In other words, it recognizes that the Church extends across time and space; that Revelation closed with the ascension of Christ and the death of the last apostle; that all have a role in guarding, communicating and witnessing to that Revelation; and that, ultimately, all will be fulfilled in heaven. So the Church cannot be beholden to one time or place or opinion poll only. Rather, as Paul said, “What I received from Christ, I in turn pass on to you.”

A longer version of this story appears at NCRegister.com.