Living in a Radical Age of Disbelief

If anyone wants to know where the real battle is to be won take a read of the comments in the Telegraph article that speaks of Rowan Williams' challenge to the government that he describes as 'seeing people of faith as an oddity.' I sometimes wonder if all of our flopping about as fish out of water isn't coming to a head, as it presently seems that it is, so that we Christians can get our acts together and do what it is that Jesus really calls us to do by handing on the FAITH in this age of disbelief as one of the Holy Father's titles reads. Are we really not seeing what is at stake? What is happening to us Christians that we are so losing the plot? Why should we be so surprised at radical persecution of different sorts when Jesus told us to expect it if we are being faithful? Where is our culture in Great Britain? It is in a crisis catechetical!!! What sort of a catechetical crisis? The Holy Father explains:

In the technological world, which is a self-made world of man, one does not immediately encounter the Creator; rather, initially, it is only himself that man always encounters. The fundamental structure of this world is feasibility, and the manner of its certainty is the certainty of what can be calculated. Therefore even the question of salvation is not geared to God, who appears nowhere; rather, once again, it is geared to the ability of man, who wants to become the engineer of himself and of history. Accordingly, he no longer seeks his moral standards, either, in discourse about creation or the Creator, since such talk has become unfamiliar to him. For him, creation is silent with regard to morality; it speaks only the language of mathematics, of technological utility, or else it protests against its violation by man. But even then its moral exhortation remains indeterminate; ultimately, in one way or another, morality becomes identified with social acceptability, compatibility with man and his world. In this respect, morality too, has become a question of calculating the best possible arrangement of the future. All of this has fundamentally changed society. To a great extent the family, the basic sustaining social form of Christian culture, is in the process of disintegrating. When metaphysical ties do not count, other sorts of commitment can scarcely shape it in the long run. This whole world view is mirrored, on the one hand, in the new media and, on the other hand, is nourished by them. To a great extent, the representation of the world and of events in the media today makes more of an impression on people's awareness than their own experience of reality. All of this affects catechesis, which finds that its traditional social supports--family and parish--are present only in broken form. Since it can no longer connect with the experience of faith lived out in the living Church, it seems to be condemned to remain mute in an age whose language and thought feed almost exclusively by now upon experiences of the self-made world of man.

I do not know about any other reader, but this paragraph ought to be frightening to us. We have embraced method over content as the Holy Father goes on to say rather than using method to communicate the true content resulting in the haphazard and incoherency of the whole Faith. We are ranking praxis over truth and look at what it is doing to our culture! What we have is a priority of the study of man over the study of God and we are living with the consequences of a man-centred world. Experience is now the measure for one's understanding of the faith heritage we are called to pass on and is it any wonder why the government sees it as an oddity? Perhaps they haven't encountered it or experienced it! Have Catholic Christians lost confidence in the organic whole of our faith?

Now, read the commenters from this news story again and perhaps on this gaudete Sunday we can pray for a return to faithful catechesis that communicates the entirety of the faith and not piecemeal anthropologically centred experience. Perhaps our internal battles and wranglings are not allowing us to see the evangelisation that is so desperately needed in our parishes, homes, schools and communities! Mary, pray for us!!!