Scottish Catholic Observer

Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, Australia, has told Scottish Catholics that in spite of past and present challenges, ‘the Church is always capable of renewal with the proper foundations in place.’

Cardinal Pell, who was appointed last year to the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelisation, was the keynote speaker at the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland St Andrew’s Conference in Glasgow on Saturday, an uplifting, major international Catholic conference on the New Evangelisation that built in Scotland on the recent launch of the Year of Faith.

Christ at the centre

Cardinal Pell, who was introduced by Professor John Haldane, told conference host Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Antonio Mennini, the organisers present from the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland and more than 300 delegates that ‘to reverse decline’ in the Church in a post-Christian society—as highlighted by Professor Haldane—‘is to insist that the fundamentals are in place.’

“We have to confront this bad news with determination,” Cardinal Pell said, later adding ‘no New Evangelisation is possible without a sound Catechisis for the young.’

Our personal encounter with Christ is the essence of the New Evangelisation, the renewal of Faith among the Baptised that Pope Benedict XVI called for, according to Cardinal Pell, when the Holy Father established the Pontifical Council on New Evangelisation in 2010 in his apostolic letter Ubicumque et semper and calling for the need to re-evangelise the West.

Cardinal Pell told delegates in Glasgow that ‘Christ is too often displaced from the centre’ of our Faith and worship by worthy but nonetheless secular issues.

Abuse barrier

Cardinal Pell also spoke candidly of the abuse problems within the Australian Church and the Church at large.

“Few, if any, people 50 years ago expected the dark stain of sexual abuse to have spread so widely across the Church, while varying in extent even within countries,” he admitted to delegates. “It does not need to be said that this is the most important and powerful barrier to the New Evangelisation.”

He mentioned the deep concern among Catholics and the wider community over abuse and the fact that Church officials sometimes failed to deal appropriately with it.

“Substantial steps have been taken procedurally in the last 16 years,” the cardinal added. “We would hope that the Church community is purer and stronger in itself after removing much of this criminal moral cancer, however, the Church will remain at the foot of the cross until every cancer cell is excised.”

Families and allies

Cardinal Pell said that ‘the Catholic family is the heart of the Church and we need to encourage that heart to have a strong prayerful beat, so its members can be effective witnesses to the New Evangelisation.’

He encouraged families to take the advice of a US bishop to ‘eat together, pray together and go to Mass together.’

Cardinal Pell spoke also of the Church’s need for allies: religious, such as ‘Gospel Christians,’ and secular, to protect Christian values in the public square.

“We need secular allies also, especially civil and political leaders,” he said. “Even in these troubled times, there remains an enduring respect and admiration for the Church because of its commitment to serving the poor and its contribution to education, health care and human dignity.”

Forward thinking

While Cardinal Pell spoke of the need for orthodox and authentic Catholicism—and spoke of his personal preference for traditional practices, such as that of putting a Crucifix between the congregation and priest during Mass, so the centre of the celebration is not the priest—he saw renewal in keeping with the hermeneutic continuity of the Church as key.

He told the audience that a return to a pre-Second Vatican Council world would be bad for the Church.

“Instead of lamenting the helps traditional Catholic life gave across the centuries in cities, towns and villages and somehow rejoicing in small numbers in our hostile world, we need to be working to rebuild our defences, to shore up Catholic identity and practice sociologically rather than insisting on the removal of those surviving props,” he said.

“We all know what lies at the heart of the New Evangelisation, that it is not like the higher mathematics of rocket science; beyond the reach of most of us,” he concluded. “Rather, the New Evangelisation is like losing weight. We know this is achieved by eating less and exercising. The challenge is to do what is required and, in Australia at least, to convince many that they should lose weight.”

The Papal Nuncio to the UK later spoke to delegates saying: “How important it is for all of us to confirm our commitment to continue to be testimony to the Gospel.”

Archbishop Tartaglia, who recently attended the Synod for Bishops on New Evangelisation on behalf of Scotland’s bishops, said that he was delighted with the calibre and success of the conference, adding ‘Cardinal Pell has been a hugely influential figure in Australian society and a powerful voice in the English-speaking Catholic world for more than a decade.’

— For the full version of Cardinal Pell’s speech, visit: http://www.sconews.co .uk/news/23900/our-personal-encounter-with-him-that-is-the-essence-of-the-new-evangelisation

—[email protected]

PIC: PAUL McSHERRY