« NY Times test of Clinton diplomacy -- Just handle Bibi and U.S. Jews; No problems with Abbas | How's that Iranian outreach working out Barry? »
PrintSeptember 6, 2010
Papal Visit May Awaken Secular Britain from Religious Apathy
While Rome burns, head clerics in Great Britain look on their Catholic kingdom with rose-colored glasses. Commenting on the upcoming "official visit" of Benedict XVI to Scotland and England, Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brigton, smugly says:
Pope Benedict is coming to a country where Catholicism is unusually stable, cohesive and vibrant enough in the current overall context of decline in the church in Western Europe. Indeed, I think he may well be relieved to be coming to a place where, unlike some of his other recent trips, there are no big problems for him to sort out.
No big problems? How about the fact that only 1 in 5 Catholics fulfill their weekly obligation to attend mass on Sunday? What about Archbishop Vincent Nichols, head of the church in England and Wales, endorsing the former Labour party's explicit sex education programs for children in faith schools? Nichols also continues to support a weekly mass for active homosexuals in a London parish.
When the bishops in England recently proposed setting up separate wash rooms for Muslim students in its schools, political correctness hit a new high. Since when does the "one, true religion" bend over backwards for a political ideology with religious overtones? Either the Catholic Church believes what it preaches or it falls apart.
In countries where socialism blurs the line between church and state so that neither is distinguishable from the other, out of touch bishops and laity can claim everything is just fine and dandy, but they're just kidding themselves.
One of the voices in the wilderness who doesn't accept this lax attitude toward the faith in England is Edmund Adamus, Director of Pastoral Affairs for the Archdiocese of Westminster. He said:
Britain has become a "selfish, hedonistic wasteland" and "the geopolitical epicenter of the culture of death."
I would have to agree with him. A couple of years ago, my son brought his British roommate to stay with us over the Thanksgiving holiday. Besides being ‘emo', he also felt like a fish out of water. Upon leaving to get back to school, he handed me a note. He wrote that he had never seen a family like ours in his entire life. He witnessed how connected we were to each other, and he said that in England, "families like yours don't exist."
There was no time to ask him to elaborate, but if he was right, how very sad the situation must be there.
Another traditionalist, James MacMillan, a composer of a new setting of the mass, "labeled the current wave of anti-Catholicism as "the new anti-Semitism [sic] of the liberal intellectual." He was commenting on the general population's uninterested attitude towards the church, and their animosity towards the Pope himself.
Perhaps the papal visit from September 16-19, 2010 will jar some consciences dulled by a secular society into questioning what's wrong. The main event will be the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, a beloved theologian of the mid-19th century. Newman's conversion to the Catholic faith and his love of education should be reminders to the faithful in England and Scotland of the treasure of their Catholic heritage.
