One of the Catholic Church’s foremost thinkers on Aboriginal history and spirituality has called on the Church to help steer the discussion about the Voice referendum away from politics and towards something more fundamental – its spiritual dimension.
Retired Diocese of Parramatta priest, Fr Eugene Stockton, who was appointed the first chaplain to Aboriginal Catholics in Sydney, and who helped found the Aboriginal Catholic Ministry in Parramatta among his many achievements over his long ministry, said that by including First Nations people in the constitution, the Voice would be inviting all Australians to become “one people”, not just a nation of migrants.
“It’s a voice to the whole nation, and therefore I’d say it has to do with the soul of the nation,” said Fr Stockton, adding that it was a voice not only of Aborigines but also the voice of the land.
Fr Stockton said Aboriginal spirituality – where people were aware of spiritual entities the Creator Spirit as they went about their daily lives – was “an awareness that we are within God’s creation, that God’s dealing with us is all around us, as is the atmosphere in which we move and live and have our being”.
“I’m reminded of the encyclical Laudato Si’ where the Pope appealed that we hear the cry of the poor, and a cry of the earth. This is a very concrete way in which we could hear that voice,” he said.
“I’d say that the Voice, or the referendum on the Voice, encapsulates Catholic thinking.”
Fr Stockton said the gathering of Indigenous leaders at Uluru, in central Australia, in 2017 – which came up with the Uluru Statement From The Heart, in which a Voice to parliament was first proposed – was “probably the most representative body of Aborigines reaching out to the rest of Australia”.
And the Uluru Statement was “a very generous, very gracious document” that should be accepted in the spirit in which it was offered. He said a hand has been stretched out to us; it is for the rest of us to grasp it in a generous handshake.
“I think it’s unfortunate that there’s been a lot of politics which has got away from [that] spirit,” Fr Stockton said.
“I think it’s important that church authorities make a very public declaration along these lines and try and lift the discussion up from the politics to what I see is the spiritual dimension.”
Ahead of the national referendum on Saturday 14 October, members of the faithful of the Diocese of Parramatta are invited to read Bishop Vincent Long’s pastoral message on the national referendum and the Voice and the statement from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Towards the Referendum.
