….As one lucid observer put it in the aftermath of the papal visit, “The British hierarchy didn’t do much wrong on this visit, but they did contain their enthusiasm until the secular press declared it a success, and then they joined in.” Five days after Benedict left, Archbishop Nichols of Westminster reflected on the visit in an article in L’Osservatore Romano and suggested that the thread uniting the pope’s various talks was that “faith in God plays an important role in modern pluralist societies.” That role should be played, the archbishop continued, with sensitivity, openness, and courtesy. All of this, he concluded, amounted to a “new agenda” for the Church in Great Britain.
Unobjectionable if not inspired, one might say. But Archbishop Nichols’ summary did seem to underplay several of the points that Benedict stressed in Britain. The first was the imperative of seeking holiness in truth, and speaking the truth in love. Then, and only then, will the Church’s place at the table of public conversation mean anything. As the pope noted in a pointed comment at a press conference on his plane en route to Britain: “A Church that seeks above all to be attractive is already on the wrong path.” In other words, a Church that takes the edge off the truth it bears will be unattractive evangelically and useless publicly.
And there was that business about cheap grace and costly grace, at the nocturnal vigil before Newman’s beatification: Will the “new agenda” of the British hierarchy include a call to bear the costs of a “passion for truth, intellectual honesty, and genuine conversion”?
That, one might suggest, is the only appropriate strategy in addressing the spiritual hollowness of the Britain Tony Blair left behind””a Britain whose current cultural crisis is less understood by its former prime minister than by the German pope who thanked the people of the United Kingdom for winning the Battle of Britain.
An interesting turn of phrase, “Britain’s Christophobic high culture”.
What struck me was the difference between the “chattering classes” in the USA and England. Of course, in both countries there is a deep animosity against the Catholic Church amongst the “chattering classes”, but in the USA it is usually expressed in a semi-deferential way while in England it seemed as if the “chattering classes” were almost demonically possessed( the sneering contempt, the mockery). After watching the English media I had the impression that the USA media were not nearly as deracinated as their English counterparts.