Understanding Our Faith

Entering a New Age

The interpenetration between society and Christianity that was characteristic of European societies for a very long time has shaped the way of thinking of Catholics until recently.  This has been the topic of this segment of the Parish Newsletter over the last several weeks.

We saw last week that following the Reformation, there were many Christendoms in accord with the religion of the rulers of the various divisions of Europe.  This tended to create a mentality in which one’s nationality and one’s religion coalesced.  So, to be of a certain nationality was to be a certain Christian denomination.  Along with this, antipathies between nations also took on a religious dimension.  These antipathies tended to reinforce each other.  And to deny one’s faith was associated with – even if not identified with – denying one’s people.  We can see from our obvious experience that this sort of religious belonging has in most instances disappeared.

I do not doubt that this way of handing on the faith was effective.  Within that system people became genuine believers and came to know Christ and follow him.  It was one way of handing on faith in Christ which fitted that human situation and period of history.  There were also certain presumptions about what it meant to be a Christian, which would not be able to stand up to the new situation after that earlier historical situation disappeared.  With the disappearance of that time and social structure, many people found that they did not have faith.

Whatever the pros and cons of that way of handing on the faith, it will no longer be effective in the new societies in which we live today, because the basis of that earlier system has disappeared, that basis which was the coalescence of Christianity and society.

We are in a new situation, a new context and we have to look again at how we hand on the faith.  This is possibly the strongest topic addressed by Pope Francis in his writings, homilies and actions.  He is a light for the future.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin