Glasgow: Cardinal Pell, George Weigel to speak at Year of Faith conference

Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, Professor George Weigel, American biographer of the late Pope John Paul II and the papal Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Archbishop Antonio Mennini are due to speak at an international Conference in Glasgow tomorrow, 1 December 2012 to mark the Church’s ‘Year of Faith’. The ‘St Andrew’s Conference’ which will be attended by over 300 delegates will provide a platform for guest speakers from around the world to address Pope Benedict XVI’s call for a new evangelisation.

The Conference will be hosted by Archbishop Philip Tartaglia, President of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland and will be attended by Cardinal Keith O’Brien, it will be held in Glasgow’s City Chambers, where Depute Lord Provost Gerald Leonard will welcome the delegates.

Archbishop Philip Tartaglia, President of the Bishops' Conference of Scotland said: "I am delighted that two of the most influential voices in the Catholic world will be coming to Scotland to offer their insights on the challenges we face and the solutions we might adopt in re-invigorating the Church and bringing the values of the Gospel to bear on our society.”

Archbishop Tartaglia added; “Cardinal Pell has been a hugely influential figure in Australian society and a powerful voice in the English-speaking Catholic world for more than a decade, while George Weigel, the biographer of John Paul II has been a highly persuasive and influential commentator on Church and society in the United States and mainland Europe. The fact that both men were so willing to come to Scotland is for me a sign of hope, a sign that the Catholic Church in Scotland is open for business, confident and prepared for a new effort to re-evangelise our society and culture."

According to the Scottish Catholic Media Office press release, speaking on the topic “From Vatican II to the New Evangelisation”, Cardinal Pell will say: “During the 2000 year history of the Catholic Church we find a number of dramatically successful examples of reform and renewal”

Cardinal Pell will say; “we should seek to build upon our natural common ground with our brothers in faith in areas such as the defence of marriage and the family. The Jewish and Muslim communities are also deeply concerned by the rise of aggressive secularism; in particular, its attempts to redefine marriage and impose a new orthodoxy on the culture, the aim of which is to silence traditional believers and force them to depart from the Public Square.”

Adding; “We need secular allies also, especially civil and political leaders. Even in these troubled times, there remains an enduring respect and admiration for the Church because of its commitment to serving the poor and its contribution to education, health care and human dignity. This compassion is the practical and public expression of a Catholicism that is free to practise, to grow, to teach and to evangelise.”

Cardinal Pell will also point out, that; “the Catholic Church provides a quarter of the world’s healthcare, is the largest non-government provider of education in the world, and, through its Caritas network, distributes over US$2.6 billion annually in aid to the poor. As other Christian Churches and Communities sadly are struggling to hold on to a coherent apostolic tradition, the depth and fidelity of Catholicism to the roots of Christianity has become heightened. The beauty and richness of its witness to the person of Jesus Christ in all aspects of human life and society is a compelling answer to the void of secularism.”

Professor George Weigel  will propose that we are living at the end of Counter-Reformation Catholicism and the beginning of Evangelical Catholicism. Arguing that; “In the post-World War II period, Catholics experienced a relatively comfortable fit between the culture of the Church and the ambient public culture throughout the regions in which Christianity had been long established”

Since then, the culture of the West has become aggressively secular which often manifests itself through “a deep hostility to Gospel truth (especially moral truth) and a determination to drive Christians who affirm those truths out of the public square and into a privatized existence on the margins of society”.

Professor Weigel will suggest, “the Church faces a challenge that is somewhat similar, at least structurally, to the challenge it faced in communist lands during the Cold War years. That challenge cannot be met by timid or lukewarm Catholicism. It can only be met by a robustly evangelical Catholicism that proposes the Gospel in a compelling and courageous way, and that insists that public authorities allow the Church the free space in which to be itself, make its proposal, and offer the service of charity to others.”

Source: SCMO