Many years ago Professor Arnold Toynbee could write: "We have obviously, for a number of generations past, been living on spiritual capital, I mean clinging to Christian practice without possessing Christian belief - and practice unsupported by belief is a wasting effort, as we have already discovered to our dismay in this generation."

Dr. Carey, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, commented lately: "A tacit atheism prevails. Death is presumed to be the end of life." In England there are about 27 million Anglicans but Dr. Carey declares that less than 1 million attend church.

Cardinal König, brilliant Emeritus Archbishop of Vienna, speaking in London (as quoted in "Tablet" September 18, 1999) cites David Martin's comment: "Europe has become the only really secular continent in the world." He also quotes the Jesuit sociologist, Fr Jan Kerkhofs who concludes that there is a Europe-wide drift away from Christianity leading to a vague sort of agnosticism and secularisation of Europe.

As an argument for belief in God, Cardinal König cites Alfred Einstein, the greatest physicist of our age, who did not adhere to any particular faith but in his last essay on SCIENCE AND RELIGION, he wrote: "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimited spirit who reveals himself in the minutest details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of superior reasoning power is revealed in the comprehensible universe. That forms my idea of God."

In 1966 I had the good fortune of an interview with Cardinal Martini, most erudite and famous Jesuit Archbishop of Milan, who said to me: "This is 1996 but many are talking as though it was 1966 - or worse, as though it was 1866. WE must always listen to the people." How true! The Churches often don't listen to the people, don't consult the laity, men and women, who live in the real world. The Second Vatican Council noted "the accelerated place of history is such that one can scarcely keep abreast of it."

There are and always will be, mistakes and failings in the Church. In our times, it seems to me, the Church fails to communicate adequately. The American Jesuit, Cardinal Avery Dulles, rightly observes: "We cannot nourish contemporary man with the stale fragments of a meal prepared for believers of the 4th, 5th or 16th century …The Christian message must be refocussed in a way that speaks immediately and directly to the deepest concerns of the present."

The Future? Cardinal König stresses that we must not just discuss the word of God - BUT LIVE IT, bearing loving witness by the way we live. Words alone are not enough. Human beings and what they do are the decisive factor." The person of Christ, saviour and brother, ALIVE in our midst, must be the constant inspiration and hope of our lives. Deepen our prayer life and works of charity. Christ gave us all this mighty challenge: "Whatever you did to one of these, you did it to ME."

INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH… THE HUMAN ELEMENT: Many tell me they reject the Church - but not Christ! That is a contradiction because the Church - with all its faults and mistakes - is the extension of Christ who founded the Church to continue his mission through time and space. A most famous French Jesuit, Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, who suffered much for the Church, wrote:

"Without the Church, Christ is fragmented,
evaporates or cancels himself out."