Parents’ faith can lead children back to the Church, says Archbishop
By Mark Greaves

24 July 2009

The best thing that parents can do if their children have lapsed is to remain faithful themselves, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster has said.

The Archbishop said the steady faith of parents had a profound influence on children once they had grown up and could often encourage a return to the Church.

He made the comments in an interview with The Catholic Herald - his most candid since becoming Archbishop of Westminster.

In the interview he also criticised traditionalists who reject the ordinary form of the Mass, saying they were "inexorably distancing themselves from the Church", and defended the bishops' decision to move three Holy Days of Obligation to a Sunday.

The Archbishop said that many students he knew as a sixth-form chaplain in the 1970s returned to their faith when they were older - "maybe when they intend to marry, maybe when they have children, maybe when their parents die".

He said that even though teenage years were a time of "testing boundaries, seeing what you can get away with", the "backcloth" of their parents' faith stayed with them.

"That steady backcloth and foundation of faith is often a real summons later in life," he said. "So I would say to parents: don't panic, read the parable of the Prodigal Son and see that it is actually a parable about a loving father.

"So be a loving father, be a loving mother. Be patient. But don't waver in your own living of the faith and cherishing of it. And that will pay dividends."

The Archbishop said the "heartache" of parents seeing their children leave the Church was not new. The task of preparing young people for adult Catholic life, he said, was "jolly difficult".

"I'm not sure if we've ever had it that right," he said.

In the interview Archbishop Nichols also defended the decision to transfer three Holy Days of Obligation - Epiphany, Ascension and Corpus Christi - to the nearest Sunday, saying that in the long run it could "enhance" their celebration.

Asked if the change had upset Catholics' liturgical rhythm, the Archbishop said it did "a bit, but not a lot. I mean, it goes from Thursday to Sunday. It's probably less of a change to the body clock than the change of the hours for the spring and the winter."

He said schools could prepare children for the feast days earlier in the week by holding processions and talking about their meaning at assemblies and in Religious Education.

But the parish, he said, "should be the central place where the mysteries of the faith are celebrated. There's no doubt that more people are able to go to Mass on a Sunday than on a working Thursday."

On the subject of liturgy, the Archbishop stressed that traditionalists had to accept the authority of their bishop.

He said "one of the troubling things at the moment" was that some people were trying to create tension between the ordinary and extraordinary form of the Mass.

The Archbishop said: "Most troubling of all to my mind is the mindset that somebody might get caught into, because perhaps they don't like some aspect of how the Mass is being celebrated or the music that's been chosen or something, that they begin to turn their back on the Church's ordinary pattern of prayer, the ordinary form of the Mass and say: 'I can't accept that.' That's really quite serious, because if they can't accept that then they are inexorably distancing themselves from the Church."

The Archbishop said it was impossible to separate the gift of Holy Communion from the authority of the bishop. He said: "The gift is one, whole and entire: sacred orders, the Eucharist and the authority of the Church."

In the interview, Archbishop Nichols spoke revealingly about a number of personal subjects, admitting that he once almost lost his vocation and that he sometimes struggled when people bore him ill-will "not to let a kind of resentment gain a foothold in me".

The Archbishop recalled a moment in seminary when he had "more or less made up my mind that I wasn't going to be able to go through with all of this. I think I was quite confused. And I remember receiving a letter. It was from a priest in Japan and China. I had no idea who this man was. But this letter arrived and it said: 'I understand that you're in some confusion within yourself at this time. And I just want to assure you that you should trust in the Lord and not be hesitant. Have the courage to go on'."

He said he believed the letter was a way for God to guide him to "stay faithful to what seems deep down to be the most important thing".

When asked if he, like St Thomas More, prayed for his enemies, Archbishop Nichols said: "I'd like to think I don't have too many enemies. But I think that's probably a bit naïve. I think I do annoy people at times and I must irritate them and get them upset. There are clearly one or two times when people have tried to make things difficult for me. I struggle with that. I struggle not to let a kind of resentment find a foothold in me. I think you can only do that in an openness before God, saying: 'Well, whatever that person's plan or intention might have been, it's not a lot in comparison to God's providence and God's intention for me.' "

The Archbishop also addressed the charge that he was ambitious. He said he had always been ambitious in the sense of trying to do his best "whether it was playing cricket, reading a book, understanding something, playing in an orchestra or whatever".

But he did not, he said, use his abilities to seek his own advantage. Instead, it was always "for the good of the whole enterprise, to serve the cause of the Church, to try and express what I believe in, to look after the well-being of other people".

The Archbishop also spoke about Andrew Robinson, a young seminarian who died from cancer in 2001, saying he was "quite sure" he had gone to heaven. He said he would be "delighted" if people sent testimonies of what they believed was evidence of his intercession to him or the parish priest at St Thomas More's in Coventry, Fr Timothy Menezes.