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may 26, 2005
All of Europe will fall into anguish if we forget God, says Catholic leader
By Ruth Gledhill
The Church and its people are in crisis, according to the Archbishop of Westminster
EUROPE is filled with angst and the Roman Catholic Church is in crisis, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said last night.
In a lecture at Westminster Cathedral, the spiritual leader of more than four million Catholics in England and Wales said that the Church in Europe, in particular Britain, was in a time of crisis and of “dying and rising”.
He described the modern European as a person of angst, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the many liberties enjoyed in contemporary Western culture. He said that Europe would fall into anguish if it forgot God and lost touch with its Judaeo-Christian tradition.
He argued that the greatest temptation facing Europe was not evil but indifference, but he gave warning that the response to aggressive secularism could not be aggressive Christianity. One of the main tasks facing the Church was to recall Europe to its roots in God.
The Cardinal was speaking on the eve of the launch of his long-awaited “green paper” on the re-organisation of his own diocese of Westminster.
Westminster is one among 22 dioceses in England and Wales but, as the foremost, its plans radically to change the way it operates in order to cope with the rapidly declining numbers are being watched closely by church authorities throughout the West.
The paper, which will be introduced to parishioners at Masses this weekend, controversially proposes parish mergers and closures. Parishes will be told that they can no longer assume that they will have a resident priest and that they must prepare for this. Lay people will be urged to take a more active role in worship, administration and pastoral care. Numbers of Masses will be reduced and parishes will need to share staff, prayer ministries and even major liturgies, such as organising joint celebrations during Holy Week.
Unlike the developing world, in which the Catholic Church is experiencing explosive growth, numbers of priests in this country are in freefall as vocations continue to decline.
Some blame the celibacy requirement. In the Westminster consultation, a number of parishioners served by married priests who left the Church of England and went over to Rome after the ordination of women suggested that the success of this ministry meant that the celibacy requirement should be relaxed.
The Cardinal says that this is a question for Rome rather than for the local Church. Church authorities today continue to insist on the celibacy discipline and put the decline in vocations down to increasing secularisation and the reluctance of young people to make lifelong commitments to unfashionable spiritual values. From 843 priests working in the ministry in Westminster in 1990, the number has fallen to 623 today and is projected to be 471 by 2015.
Over the same period, the number of Catholics in the diocese has remained steady, replenished, in part, by immigration. Of 500,000 Catholics living in Westminster, 150,000 regularly attend Mass. This year saw a record number of adults, 780, seeking admission to the Church through its adult baptism and confirmation programme.
The surprise success of the television programme The Monastery shows that there is still a demand out there for what the Church offers, even if few men wish to be priests.
The Cardinal urges Catholics to pray for priestly vocations. He says: “There is no reason to lose confidence in the Lord of the harvest who desires to send labourers into His harvest.”
He also says that the paper is not simply a response to the crisis in vocations but is born also out of a desire to develop the gifts “of all the baptised”.
The paper gives warning that the shift in the image of a parish will need to be profound and parishioners and priests will need to take on a new mindset to develop strong lay leadership. “Over the next 10-15 years, the Church in Westminster will need to move away from the idea that the viability of a parish is contingent on its resident priest.”
do to www.spiritdaily.com
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