FAITH magazine is glad to add its voice to the

welcome given to Bishop Robert Barron,

from the USA, to Britain for the 2018 Eucharistic

Congress. Bishop Barron has a strong and welldeserved

reputation as an evangelist – he has taken

seriously the challenge of teaching the Catholic

Faith in new ways across the New Media – DVDs,

twitter, blogs, and websites with glorious images

and music - and in talks and lectures to groups

large and larger. He has opened up for millions of people the insights of walking in the Holy Land where Christ himself walked, and of visiting some of the great shrines and churches and

cathedrals of the world. He has shown the huge beauty of centuries of Christian art and

architecture and the messages and meanings they convey. And he has patiently and with

a pleasant, informative way of communicating, he has opened up the Scripture readings

of the Church’s year Sunday by Sunday, feeding people’s souls and helping many priests

through many Sunday homilies to do the same.

It was a wise choice as a keynote speaker for what we all hope will be a memorable,

indeed landmark event for the Church in Britain.

 

Evangelisation

We need a boost to evangelisation. For too long, it was assumed that people in this

country had some basic notion of Christianity, and that Catholics, in particular, had a

sort of tribal association with the Faith and a loyalty to the idea of Sunday Mass. People

used to say “the Faith is caught, not taught” and there was an emphasis in Catholic

schools on organising fund-raising events for charity or encouraging forms of service to

the local community, rather than on teaching doctrine or on answering the deep and

often challenging questions raised by the young in a secular society. Even the Eucharist

was often presented as a sort of community meal, with a good neighbourly feeling being

nourished by gathering together.

 

Things have changed in recent – very recent – years. Today’s young priests – and

we don’t have enough of them, as the poor religious formation noted above failed to excite interest in the idea of answering God’s call to service in His vineyard - are fully

aware of the bleak spiritual state of our country. They do not see the Mass as a cheerful

opportunity for neighbourly togetherness, but as the sacrifice of Calvary binding us to

eternity. Eucharistic devotion has been revived. Young people gather for Night Fever

with adoration before the Blessed Sacrament in a city church and teams of missionaries

walking the streets with lanterns welcoming people in to light a candle and offer a prayer.

Summer gatherings at Walsingham and elsewhere focus on Eucharistic adoration too,

with teams of priests hearing confessions.

 

The treasures of the Faith

Good preaching, opening up the treasures of the Faith,

is central to the Church’s future. We need well-formed,

well-instructed priests and teachers. We need to

recognise that people do actually want to know about

the Church’s teaching: they are often genuinely baffled

about it. And this recognition also needs to include the frightening reality of the wounds

that many people in Western society carry which are in certain specific ways different

from the wounds of the past. Where once poverty and hunger stalked the cities of Britain,

now it is violent crime and a drug-infested culture, broken families, children introduced to

pornography and sexual perversions via the internet. Where people were once physically

hungry, we now have a national problem of obesity. Where once people struggled to

obtain a few simple toys for their children today there are households awash with plastic

and electronic gifts but where the children are lonely and screen-addicted.

 

Powerful

Saint John Paul called the Church to a New Evangelisation, and showed the way with

powerful missionary journeys and pioneering new events such as World Youth Day.

The odd thing is that WYD was essentially an old-fashioned idea: a big rally with preaching.

It’s almost 19th century – an emphasis on a great morale-boosting gathering with a strong

Christian uplifting message and large-scale

communal worship. But it began at the end of the

20th century when most commentators tended

to the view that such events belonged to the past,

with Billy Graham’s rallies the last of such things.

Then WYD - against expectations – proved hugely

popular, a gigantic and magnificent event that grew from year to year, and St John Paul

the Great had opened the way for something important and new.