THE statistical trends summarised by the overt pessimism of historian Callum Brown that was quoted in Centrepoint (“Britain’s absent flock”, CL 8/10/06) indicates that as a Church we have moved along the “grief curve” from denial and are at least prepared to acknowledge the reality of the task ahead of us.
Cardinal Pell rightly challenged Catholic educators to dispel what he referred to as the “religious confusion” of young Australian Catholics (CL 8/10/06).
Catholics judge the Second Vatican Council as an internal reform movement. Sadly we are mistaken.
Pope John XXIII intended the council to open the Church to the world.
The internal reforms were meant to position the Church for dialogue with the world of modernity and were not ends in themselves.
The council had not anticipated that modernity would pass into post-modernity.
The internal reforms suddenly lost context and we have yet to regain our composure.
We have to state as our number one belief neither monotheism nor polytheism.
We have to proclaim a God for whom our best description is Trinity.
Immediately we have gone from simplicity to a word that has 2000 years of complex history.
Pope Benedict’s 2005 encyclical letter “God is Love” reminded us that becoming a Christian is the result of an event, an encounter with a real person which gives life a decisive direction.
In 1968 he wrote the book Introduction to Christianity in which he showed that even at that early time Christian-speak alienated the unchurched as much as it attracted.
St Mark’s Gospel ends with the description of the women leaving the empty tomb in fear and thus saying nothing.
I fear we have become embarrassed at the silence of our God in the face of post-modernity’s challenge for Christians to provide a better answer to its needs.
We stand like Elijah in chapter 18 of the First Book of Kings to face the 450 prophets of Baal and to show that our God is stronger and greater.
It seems that for St Mark, God’s primary grace is to have that fear cast out … words will come later.
VINCE HODGE
Paddington, Qld
