Colm Fitzpatrick
Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan The Church needs to “go back to basics” if it wants to continue the work of Christ in a “more secular society” and “different place” today, Waterford and Lismore’s bishop has said.
Writing in the Irish Examiner, Dr Alphonsus Cullinan said: “With the emergence of a more secular society and the decline in the Church’s influence some will say ‘good riddance’, while others fear the onslaught of secularism and may feel tempted to despair.
“How then is the Church to react and how must she see herself in this new era? We must go back to basics.”
The bishop stressed that parents, and particularly young people, can “benefit from the Church’s spiritual nourishment and moral guidance” as now they face an “array of moral choices” which challenge their Faith, ranging from peer pressure, to our “throwaway” pop culture as well as addictions facilitated by alcohol, drugs and negative aspects of the internet.
Minority
In order to realise the work of the Church, the bishop said that we must be a creative minority whose task is “the rebuilding of Christian culture”, and also be willing to get our “hands dirty” by being like a “hospital in a battlefield”.
“In Ireland right now, there are many green shoots of a new Church, very different in appearance to the old but in continuity at the same time where the laity wake up to their true role, not to be like glorified clerics but living their Faith fully in the middle of the world,” the bishop said, noting the impact of new Christian movements such as Youth 2000, John Paul II Awards, and NET Ministries.
Commenting on whether young Catholics are the future of the Church in Ireland in light of Bishop Cullinan’s remarks, Lana Wilson-O’Driscoll, Youth 2000’s National Leader said: “We certainly aim to try and cater for that, absolutely. We put on several events throughout the years focusing on the basics of Catholicism and trying to bring young people into the Church, adding that those who attend the events are “countercultural”.