Archbishop: secularists 'just as dogmatic'
By Ed West

8 January 2010

Archbishop Nichols argues that Christians have a right to take part in the public life of the nation (c) Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster has said that secularists are "just as dogmatic as the worst religious believer and sometimes more stridently so".

His remark comes as the bishops of England and Wales prepare to discuss the rise of aggressive secularism with Pope Benedict XVI during their five-yearly ad limina visit. He was speaking on BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme after being asked if religion should be allowed to intervene in politics.

The Archbishop said: "Public life is not a neutral place - some people might claim a neutrality, but in fact everybody comes with their own set of values. "The question is how open we are about those values, how reasoned we are, and how much we are engaged genuinely in dialogue. Religion has as much right as anybody else to be there."

The Archbishop repeated a call, first made at his installation Mass at Westminster, for dialogue between believers and non-believers to be "more reasoned and respectful". He said: "That means getting away from soundbites and getting away from discussion that is always centred around oppositional conflict." Archbishop Nichols, in pointing to the increasingly aggressive nature of secularism, is following the footsteps of predecessor, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. The Cardinal said over a year ago that secularism had created an "unfriendly climate" for people who hold religious beliefs. He said faith was treated as "a private eccentricity".

Speaking to the Sunday programme Archbishop Nichols also admitted that the announcement of the Church's provision for Anglicans wishing to join the Catholic Church in groups had put the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in an "awkward position".

But he said the joint press conference helped to avoid "a climate of competition" between Rome and Canterbury.

"I think that helped people to understand that our major concern was still the ongoing cooperation between the Catholic community in this country and the Church of England," he said.

The Archbishop predicted that a personal ordinariate - the legal structure for Anglo-Catholics which covers the area of a bishops' conference - would be established in America before anywhere else.

"[In England and Wales] it is very difficult to know," he said.

When asked about the Irish sex abuse scandal, he said it could have a purifying effect on the Church by forcing it to show shame in public.

He said: "The Catholic Church always traditionally understood itself as a Church of sinners. Shame is part of our human condition, and our shame is also what we have to bring before God. That mystery of the redemptive work of Christ is something that the Church doesn't just dispense like an objective administrator but it's something that we have to live.

"When we see that we have to live our shame and guilt in public that can purify faith and, as it were, strip away some of the pomposity that can easily gather round the roles of clerics and others in the Church today."

The diocesan bishops of England and Wales will begin their week-long ad limina visit on January 25.

During the visit they will meet various Vatican congregations and councils and each bishop will have a private audience with the Pope. They have already sent detailed reports to Rome in response to a wide-ranging questionnaire about Catholic life in their dioceses.

It will be the bishops' first ad limina visit with Pope Benedict XVI as pontiff.

Some bishops will be meeting the Pope for the first time.

Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton said: "In our report, we made clear that we are facing challenges that the Church in the West is generally facing. "These include a more strident secularism and atheism alongside a declining number of priests, which is having an effect on parish life," he told the Tablet. Bishop John Rawsthorne of Hallam agreed that a shortage of priests would be a key issue during the visit. He said he hoped to talk about it with the Pope. The bishop said that a "very significant" proportion of Hallam's priests would reach the age of 75 over the next 10 years.

He said other subjects the bishops would raise were the new provision for Anglicans, the campaign to legalise assisted suicide and the problem of second marriages among Catholics, which, he said, the bishops always raised in one form or another.

The changing nature of the English Church, with Catholic immigrants from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, was also very likely to be on the agenda, the bishop said. In February, the Catholic bishops of Scotland will be making their own ad limina visit.

It will be the first such visit for Bishop Philip Tartaglia of Paisley and Bishop Joseph Toal of Argyll and the Isles.