Faith and democracy have future 

Christianity is here to stay in western democracies despite challenges like superstition and muddled agnosticism, Cardinal George Pell says.

In an address to right-wing think tank the Sydney Institute, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney spoke of the ongoing relationships between religion and democracy.
  
Pell said there were positive signs for religion in this country, even though Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures showed the number of people calling themselves Christian had fallen from 68% in 2001 to under 64% in 2006.
  
Catholics remained Australia's largest religious minority, with the overall numbers increasing to 5.1 million people.
  
Pell said the contribution of religion to the renewal of social capital in democracy is part of its day to day work.
  
Citing the recent uprising of monks in Burma, and his own arguments against stem cell research in NSW, he said there were other "fault lines...likely to give rise to tension between religion and secularist democracy in the years ahead."
  
"Another fault-line concerns Islam and democracy, or more precisely, the presence of growing Muslim minorities in Western countries," he said.
  
Violent Islamic groups tarred the image of moderate Muslims, said the cardinal, and more terrorist attacks "would change the religious scene dramatically and provoke ferocious retaliation".
  
"We have to acknowledge, too, that the ideological struggle against Islamist violence in the Muslim community is one in which most of the heavy lifting has to be done by Muslims opposed to extremism, but we should be prepared to help them in this task in ways which are effective and which build trust and openness instead of fear and ghettoisation."
  
Pell has previously courted controversy through his comments linking Islam and violence.
  
He said religion provided an ethical and moral base for secular society.
  
"Challenges to Christianity are more likely to come at a popular level from a variety of superstitions, from muddled agnosticism, and for the more sophisticated, from some forms of pantheism, of semi-religious and personally undemanding environmentalism," he said.
  
Positive examples of religion in Australian life could be seen through next July's World Youth Day in Sydney, he said.
  
Pope Benedict XVI's arrival is predicted to draw the largest crowds Australia had ever seen.
  
"Based on the registrations of Australian pilgrims, and again with nine months to go before the Holy Father arrives, we are looking at a forecast participation rate among young Australian Catholics almost three-and-half times higher than the participation rates of locals at the two previous World Youth Days in Germany and Canada.
  
"Australia has never seen anything quite like it."