Politics in Northern Ireland

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Introduction
The paper aims to examine the happening of the church at St. Patricks cathedral in
Melbourne Australia. The paper will record any findings from my observations in the church
in which I used secularization theory in my analysis. I will investigate effects of rituals and
religiosity in the church where the church is witnessing a change in demographics and
abnormal attendance in the church. It will also dicsuss the strengths and weaknesses and my
thoughts and feelings during my observation.
Literature review: Christianity in Australia
Christianity in Australia began with the introduction of the British colony in 1788.
However, over the years Christianity has declined in Australia from 96.1% in 1901 census to
52.1% in the last census conducted in 2016. It is however the largest religion in the country.
The Catholics form the largest denomination in Christian faith constituting 22.6%, the
Anglicans ant 13.5% and the united church constituting a paltry 3.7%. Other protestant
churches have emerged and have become so popular like the Sydney’s Hillsong Church
(Bowen, 2017). The Christian footprint in the society and in culture remains deeply rooted
especially in areas of education provision and social welfare. It is also known in making of
holidays and festivals such as the worldwide celebrated Christmas and Easter festivities. The
Australian constitution out rightly protects the freedom of religion and the separation of state
and Church of England. This was brought about by the suppression of Catholic Church by the
state in the early colonial periods when the Catholic Church was suppressed by the political
class.
The religious organizations play a major role in provision of social services. Today,
the Catholic Church is the second largest provider of social services second to the

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government through organizations such as St Vincent DePaul Society and the Catholic
Church Social Services Australia. It is closely followed by the Anglican Church whose patron
is the Queen of England whose Anglicare organization provides social services such as
emergency relief, family support services, aged care and help for the homeless. Other
denominations like the salvations army and uniting care Australia also have social services
like schools and hospitals (Bruce, 2017). A quarter of Australian students attend church
owned institutions. Australia has all the religion including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and
Atheism. The church of Scientology is not very known in Australia.
Theoretical Framework and Gap knowledge
Before the Europeans introduced religion to Australia as missionaries, the indigenous
were performing the rituals and rites of their animist religion of Dreamtime. The Spanish and
Portuguese Catholics were in the late seventeenth century sailing the Australian waters. The
first arrival of the first British fleet of convict ships signified the start of Christianity in 1788.
Through a lot of efforts by the st. Partrick Catholic Church to improve education and health
in Australia, many public convictions occurred when clergy’s were charged by governors for
improving public molarity through improving health care and education. It is there that the
constitution ensured that there is freedom to religion and the separation of powers of the state
and church to reduce conflicts (Cox, 2016).
Research question
The research question include;
1. What rituals is being practiced by the churches in Australia
2. How the rituals conducted impact on the state of the youth in churches?

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3. Do the rituals promote involvement and engagement by the young people or youths
who attend the church?
4. What are religiosity rituals and their impact on student?
The research question based on the article is the impact of religion especially Christianity
to the welfare of the youth and the society. In modern conditions, when the pace of
development of the information society tends to increase, and the pace of development of
technological civilization far exceeds our ability to understand the consequences of such a
development, people begin to think more and more about the eternal. Tired, and sometimes
unable to perceive a completely new type of civilization, people turn to values that they are
accustomed to consider eternal (Harvey, 2017).
Currently, the role of religion in the life of Australian society is growing significantly,
which is facilitated by several factors. Firstly, this is the cessation of the state policy of
secularization and the legislative introduction of atheism and the transition to cooperation
with religious organizations. Religion revived where the old ideology collapsed, acting as its
compensator and substitute. The mythological component of social consciousness a priori
cannot have gaps, so the collapse of the old ideology leads to the emergence of a new
ideology (Whitley, and Hays-Gilpin, 2016).
Political movements with religious roots and using religious rhetoric as the basis of their
slogans have never been so numerous and powerful since the Caliphate and the Crusades as
they are now. It should be remembered that student youth is the most dynamically developing
part of society in the intellectual and cultural field. The change in the religiosity of society
primarily concerns this particular group because today’s student youth is tomorrow’s
foundation of society. Moreover, because of their specificity, students are always,
figuratively speaking, “on the cutting edge” of any social changes, and changes in the