Papal Visit May Awaken Secular Britain from Religious Apathy

September 06, 2010
Ann Kane

While Rome burns, head clerics in Great Britain look on their Catholic kingdom with rose-colored glasses. Commenting on the upcoming "official visit" of Benedict XVI to Scotland and England, Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brigton, smugly says:

Pope Benedict is coming to a country where Catholicism is unusually stable, cohesive and vibrant enough in the current overall context of decline in the church in Western Europe. Indeed, I think he may well be relieved to be coming to a place where, unlike some of his other recent trips, there are no big problems for him to sort out.

No big problems? How about the fact that only 1 in 5 Catholics fulfill their weekly obligation to attend mass on Sunday? What about Archbishop Vincent Nichols, head of the church in England and Wales, endorsing the former Labour party's explicit sex education programs for children in faith schools? Nichols also continues to support a weekly mass for active homosexuals in a London parish. the rest

A couple of years ago, my son brought his British roommate to stay with us over the Thanksgiving holiday. Besides being ‘emo', he also felt like a fish out of water. Upon leaving to get back to school, he handed me a note. He wrote that he had never seen a family like ours in his entire life. He witnessed how connected we were to each other, and he said that in England, "families like yours don't exist."