Renowned British theologian Fr Aidan Nichols has called on Catholics to make their voices heard in public bodies like Parliament, the BBC, and the British Human Rights Commission at a time of growing secularization.Delivering the Craigmyle Memorial Lecture for the Catholic Union in London this week, Fr Nichols said it was important for Catholics to "mobilize and react in a positive way".
However, he stopped short of suggesting that Catholics should take their protests to the streets.
"I am not in favor of public protest movements or civil disobedience," he said. "To go down that road risks bringing the law in general into contempt," he said.
He did not rule out, though, individuals deciding they could not abide by a particular law on conscience grounds.
He called on young clergy and young active laity to use new media technology such as the internet to communicate their faith to the wider community.
Addressing the question of how Catholics should respond to the growing influence of secularism in society, Fr Nichols warned of the disintegration of the nation as a whole if its Christian narrative was lost.
He said secularism was far more of a challenge to Christianity in England than Islam, and he attacked the dangers represented by a "soft atheism that seeks to privatise the public space so that religion has no part to play".
Fr Nichols warned of the dangers of secularism coming together with utilitarianism, quoting the example of Lady Mary Warnock's recent call on people in mental decline to see it as their "duty to die", and drew attention to the recent legislation that forced Catholic adoption agencies to consider placing children with parents of the same sex as examples of how far the national discourse has strayed from its Christian basis.
"Catholic spokespeople were seen as lobbying for an exemption, yet the Church was protecting the moral ethos of the nation," said Fr Nichols.
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(Source: CTHUS)