BY Liz Leydon | March 1 | 
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Papal nuncio to Ireland offers Jesus as anchor in Scotland’s throwaway culture
Few thought that the second audience at the Bishops’ Lenten Catechesis at St Mirin’s Cathedral, Paisley, could be larger than the full house at that the opening session with Bishop John Keenan, nor that it could be lifted higher, yet today's gathering with the Papal Nuncio to Ireland was.
“All of us have a desire to return to wholeness, to fullness… a desire to return to God,” Archbishop Charles Brown (above) told Scottish Catholics in Paisley this afternoon when talking about world religions, original sin and the quest for life’s meaning.
“Only in God will we find the truth and happiness we are looking for.”
Archbishop Brown had been asked by Bishop John Keenan of Paisley to speak on Believing in the uniqueness of mankind in a throwaway culture. The archbishop’s warm New York accent rang out clearly throughout the cathedral as he spoke in front of Bishop Keenan and Bishop Emeritus John Mone about the human condition and the eternal of question of ‘what am I doing here?’
His presentation spoke to young and old gathered alike, and included references to the theology of the body.
The archbishop spoke of how we as humans were created in God’s image—body and soul—for a purpose but added that ‘our society has no centre point.’
“That centre is Jesus of Nazareth,” the archbishop said.
Modern society, he added, has become ‘disposable, temporary’ and that there is ‘no certainty’ and ‘nothing lasts.’ With the great progress of modern technology, he added, it is all too easy to think that values and people, like the latest mobile phones, are disposable.
“We are told there is no truth, that everything is relative,” he said, adding that consumerism flourishes because many think as ‘life is meaningless, let me focus on something I like to do.’
“Throwaway culture is not enough to satisfy the desire in our hearts,” he added.
“Human beings are unique, we were made. We did not make ourselves. The fact that we are here is a gift from God.”
As in the opening session, some of the most powerful testimony of the day came from young Catholics. Today it was the turn of students from St Luke’s High, Barrhead.
—Full report, photographs in this week’s SCO in parishes on Friday March 6.
—Next week’s Bishops’ Lenten Catechesis at St Mirin’s Cathedral, Paisley, 2pm Bishop Hugh Gilbert of Aberdeen: Acknowledging sin, the world awakens to new hope.
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