The mural had been fully covered in white paint.

The artwork veered away from traditional iconography and aimed to represent a more modern and inclusive image of Jesus Christ.

Novak of Ngai Te Rangi and Ngati Kahungunu descent guided the pupils of St Joseph's Catholic Primary School Dunedin as they designed and painted the mural.

"I don't mind about myself, but it's just the kids have put a lot of effort into that so that's not fair on them," Novak told the ODT.

She is labelling the Jesus mural vandalism as "really vindictive".

"No matter what people's ideologies are, they shouldn't be desecrating children's artwork, basically."

St Joseph's Cathedral School principal Jo Stanley was shocked when she arrived at school yesterday morning to find the new mural had been fully covered in white paint.

"When I first came in, I thought it was just absolutely unbelievable.

"I just thought - what? ... what have they done?"

Without being certain, Stanley told the ODT that she suspects the vandal wrecked the non-traditional, modern and inclusive mural because Jesus was depicted as Maori.

Commenting on the mural's unveiling, Monica Devine says "Shame about the rainbow background".

Stanley suggests the culprit is "very small-minded".

She has reported the incident to the police.

"We really wanted to have an accessible piece of artwork for everyone," Novak said, stressing the importance of stepping away from monochromatic portrayals.

Emblazoned with "Care like Christ", the Jesus in the mural wears a Korowai, has a rainbow-coloured halo and items that speak of the children's lives.

That was the pupils' idea, Novak says. Everything about the mural was designed and dictated by the pupils' choices.

The mural was unveiled less than a month ago and reflects modern, multicultural New Zealand.

At the time, Year 6 pupil Leo Innes said everyone in his class added something that was important to them and their culture. Leo, aged 11, chose to include a basketball motif in the artwork.

For Novak and the pupils of St Joseph's, their masterpiece is more than just a wall decoration; it is an affirmation that Jesus, a figure often associated with specific ethnic and cultural traits, belongs to everyone.

Indicating the children of St Joseph's Cathedral school are of resilient character, Stanley says they will design and paint a new mural depicting a Maori Jesus.

Sources

• ODT
• CathNews

Then he smiled and said: 'We probably won't see them again the following week, but that's OK.'

I was pleased to hear that.

It is of the very nature of Catholicism that we welcome people but don't demand they conform to our expectations.

We're not a sectarian or exclusive church. The very word 'catholic' means universal, big, and embracing. I'm reminded of debates at clergy conferences about whether priests should baptise the children of non-practising Catholics. My view has always been 'yes', reach out to people, be like Jesus and welcome them.

But there's a flip side to this.

Earlier this month in La Croix, the bishop of Odienné in West Africa's Ivory Coast, Alain Clément Amiézi, complained that 'People are baptised without becoming Christian, the sacraments are given without evangelising.'

He says that 'the number of faithful who are truly committed to … the virtues of the gospel is infinitesimal.'

Speaking of African converts, he said that just being seen at church is insufficient, and that committed Christians have to break the tribal logic of social convention and be willing to critique societal norms and practices in the light of the gospel.

That requires a spirituality of faith and courage.

My purpose here is not to critique of African Christianity. You can see exactly the same superficiality in the conversion of Europe in the first millennium.

We have an entirely romanticised notion of the medieval 'ages of faith' and the notion of Ireland as 'the island of saints and scholars.'

Recently historians like Anton Wessels and Jan Romein have questioned whether Europe was ever really Christian. Wessels argues that medieval missionaries attempted to convert pagan Europe by Christianising the culture, and transforming it by re-interpreting it.

Jan Romein says that 'medieval Christianity was only a thin veneer,' a superficial overlay with people's basic pagan beliefs remaining unchanged.

This is understandable when mass baptisms followed the conversion of the local ruler or when people like the Saxons under Charlemagne were faced with the choice of either baptism or death.

The church has always embraced people with different levels of commitment

The result was that medieval 'Christendom', the combined power of church and state, dominated people's lives from birth to death. Sure, there were many people in the medieval period deeply committed to the teaching and person of Jesus and to a life of service, but they were the small minority.

Another historian writing in this vein is Frenchman Jean Delumeau, whose work focuses specifically on early modern Catholicism after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the period that still influences us today.

He says that as late as the seventeenth century, 'the intellectual and psychological climate [of Europeans] … was characterised by a profound unfamiliarity with the basics of Christianity, and by a persistent pagan mentality.'

While Christendom still prevailed, there was a thriving underworld in which sub-Christian beliefs and pagan folk practices flourished.

When enclosure and a population explosion turned the landless peasantry into the urban working class in the emerging industrial cities of the early nineteenth century, their superficial faith quickly disappeared.

Delumeau argues that the church didn't lose the working class; they were never really Christian in the first place.

Now, this may be interesting historically, but you're probably asking: what's the point? The answer: the church has always embraced people with different levels of commitment.

Actually, modern secularism has done Christianity a big favour. First, by closing down Christendom and separating church and state; and secondly, by removing the social supports that made church-going 'respectable'. People can now choose to be or not to be Catholic.

Nowadays, particularly following the sexual abuse crisis and the failure of the church to address the issues that concern our contemporaries, commitment to faith and Catholicism is seen by many as irresponsible, if not unethical.

People deeply committed to the gospel is small

In addition, to many, the church projects an unattractive, unwelcoming image and seems besotted with a narrow range of issues focusing on gender, sex, reproduction and euthanasia, leading to the impression of a closed-door, hard-nosed, uncompromising institution.

The damage done to the church by a 'boots-and-all' approach is terrible.

In this context, we should, like my PP, be welcoming people.

Yes, it's true that the number of people deeply committed to the gospel is small, but that doesn't make us judges of the lives of others.

The word 'Catholic' is derived from the Greek 'katholikos' meaning universal, of the whole, and the entire tradition is the very opposite of sectarian, particularist, or narrow. It is most truly itself when it's embracing and inclusive.

This is where I think Catholic schools have been particularly successful.

With only a tiny number of students coming from committed-Catholic households and increasing numbers of non-Catholic students (in Sydney archdiocesan schools about 25 per cent and in South Australia 44 percent), the schools face a real challenge to form an approach to life that is genuinely Christian and Catholic, yet allows room for freedom of conscience to operate.

They need to form what theologian David Tracy has called a 'catholic imagination.'

That is the whole educational ethos of the school must be founded in the Christ-like values of love, compassion, acceptance and forgiveness and on a genuinely Catholic understanding of inclusivity and freedom of conscience.

For sure, staff, students and parents need to know they are embracing a whole 'package' when they come to a Catholic school, including religious education, liturgy, retreat days and explicitly Catholic values and spirituality.

That said, these are expressed in a welcoming, embracing way; no one should have Catholicism forced on them. And here 'embracing' includes LGBTQI+ students.

Here we're back with my PP last Sunday. We welcome people, whether we see them next week or not. Just like Jesus, really!

• Paul Collins is the author of 15 books, several of which focus on church governance and Australian Catholicism.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

It said, "Jesus didn't dine with tax collectors and sinners because he wanted to appear inclusive, tolerant, and accepting.

"He ate with them to call them to a changed and fruitful life, to die to self and live for him.

"His call is transformation of life not affirmation of identity."

It would take some time to explain how bad this meme is, starting with its answering a claim no one ever makes.

Does anyone think that Jesus did what he did because he "wanted to appear inclusive," or to impress others?

Of course not.

But those sharing this quote are not really talking about Jesus. They are accusing people today of pretence and virtue-signalling, and of abusing Jesus' example as a way to excuse sinners and their sins.

Some in the Catholic world feel a need, even a compulsion, to make sure that judgment is always pronounced whenever mercy is offered.

By this thinking, sinners—or at least certain categories of sinners—must never be allowed to forget their offences.

How will they sin no more if they don't feel condemned?

Some in the Catholic world feel a need, even a compulsion, to make sure that judgment is always pronounced whenever mercy is offered.

The judgmentalism is bad, but I think the worst thing about the meme is that it effectively denies Jesus' humanity.

Real people like other people.

If Jesus became man, then he became a man who had friends. With the disciples most closely, as St. John Henry Newman explained, but with many others as well.

I came across the meme one evening in our townie dive bar, after spending a couple of hours sitting with my young friend who believes in crystals and three kinds of aliens (one that looks like birds), and my older friend, a retired cop.

I had also talked with the 30-something programming whiz who shares very intricate conspiracy theories, the man who admits to drinking a lot but prides himself on getting up the next morning and doing a good job at work, a huge young man who once asked if I could get him a girlfriend and then if he could sit on my lap (which baffled me until he called me "Santa") and several other people who use the F-word in a creative variety of ways.

All friends. Not close friends, but friends.

Some of these people live (I am sure, but I don't ask) in irregular sexual relationships, as Catholics understand it, and perhaps enjoy illegal substances as well as substantial amounts of alcohol.

Though many of the older patrons grew up Catholic, no one, as far as I can tell, ever goes into a church.

I like them all.

They're likeable people.

In fact, I like them better than most Catholics I know.

They are the same kind of people, I'm guessing, that Jesus ate with.

I think that Jesus ate at his equivalent of our dive bar because he liked the people.

Not just loved them, but liked them, enjoyed them for themselves, took pleasure in their company and felt happy just hanging out with them.

I think that Jesus ate at his equivalent of our dive bar because he liked the people.

Not just loved them, but liked them.

He wanted them to change, of course, the way he wants every one of us to change.

But I don't think the people I hang out with need to change any more than I do, or more than most of the good Catholics I know.

In some ways, among them kindness to others, they need to change less.

If I read them right, and I've been looking at this kind of thing for a long time, those who share the "Jesus didn't dine…" meme picture Jesus as purely divine.

They believe he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, but mainly as a guarantor that he shared our humanity in order to save us.

The Jesus they imagine is always on, always about being God, and being God means pronouncing judgment first and then forgiveness.

Always, if you will, making the sales pitch.

They don't imagine him doing normal human things for normal human reasons.

The Jesus they imagine is always on, always about being God, and being God means pronouncing judgment first and then forgiveness. Continue reading