Bishop Egan: a gentle New Evangelization

(Vatican Radio) – “Faith is very much today’s issue, particularly in Western countries, like Britain”, says the new Bishop of Portsmouth, England, Philip Egan. One week on from his installation – on the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham - he speaks to Emer McCarthy about gently evangelising the land once known as Mary’s Dowry. Listen:

“I think the Year of Faith is a brilliant initiative from the Holy Father and it coincides of course for me with the beginning of my Episcopal ministry. It’s a wonderful opportunity for us all to deepen our faith because faith is really the most precious gift. Faith is very much today’s issue, particularly in Western countries. The question of faith, the meaning of life, the existence of God, the relationship between science and religion. I would really like to gently, in my first pastoral, ask people to do a number things: I’d like them to think about the Creed over the next twelve months and especially I want to encourage people to witness”.

Witness, according to Bishop Egan begins with the small things: “I’ve made a few suggestions, for example; why not wear a crucifix or a religious symbol? Or perhaps when you are out for a meal, make the sign of the Cross before you begin; or even simple things like saying, ‘Thank God’, when someone tells you good news. These can be very gentle forms of publically witnessing to our Christian faith”.

A first step he adds, but one that must be accompanied by a deepening spiritual devotion: “In the Church I’d really like to encourage people to adore Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and that our churches are open and that people can visit them and the Blessed Sacrament”.

As he embarks on this latest challenge, his first as the leader of a diocese, Bishop Egan says he sees one thing as central to the mission ahead: “I think that a deep, passionate relationship with Christ… can help Catholics come to a more critical awareness of themselves as different from the kind of culture in which they live, or should I say, a more critical awareness of the culture where the Church now is in the early 21^st century. So for me the central thing is that relationship with the Lord”.

“Our Christian Faith is essentially public and it does seek to influence and build a culture based on the revelation of Christ and natural law that is written into the human heart. And the role of religion in culture, and I thinks its one of its key roles really is to support natural law, things that are naturally true and good for the human person. Of course living in a very pluralist and multi-ethnic culture there is a danger in our Western societies and the secularist agendas there to drive religion out of the public domain, to take it out of all public discourse and in the process of that they obliterate the Christian traditions on which our British cultures are actually based. These deprive us of our ability to express our religion in the public domain. My concern is that the people who are making very important decisions about they way we live are doing that without the support of the faith traditions which can give us a clear view on what is true and good and loving for human beings to flourish, as a result they restrict our freedoms and begin to control us, ultimately leading to this relativistic – or what some term ‘politically-correct’ – world, which is actually destructive of human freedom in the long run, rather than liberating people. This is going to be for all Catholics and all Christians in Western societies an ongoing issue over the next decades”.