To be read out at all Masses
Sunday 2 January 2005
Webmasters note - this pastoral as written before the events in Asia. Also the text here differs from the text used on the tapes in some respects.
My dear people of Arundel & Brighton,
I was listening to the radio in the car at the beginning of December and a listener had entered a quiz. The presenter asked him about his family to get a bit of background on him, and the man said, "The wife's upstairs wrapping the Christmas presents." This was four weeks before Christmas.
If you ask most adults what they got for Christmas, they will probably say, "I got stressed." Christmas is probably the single most stressful time of the year. There are all sorts of reasons for that - you probably have a list of your own in your head now - but most of them are probably related to family and all the expectations that are created around Christmas. In trying to make it good for everybody, we take on enormous burdens and set ourselves almost impossible targets.
Our diocesan Listening Day on Family Life took place in Crawley on Saturday, 27 November. A good group came along, and many others shared in the process in small groups within the parishes and by responding to the questionnaire. I am grateful to you all for that.
The three main themes that were identified that day as areas where you want to see some more work done were young people, the Church's teaching, and making our parishes more welcoming places.
Young people are a natural concern for everyone, partly because they are the natural focus for most families. We invest a great deal of resources into nurturing our young people in schools, and it is good that we not only try and do our best for them, but also find out what they want. One of the phrases used on that Listening Day was, "Listen to what young people are saying and do something about it with them and not for them." That is an important point. If there is a parish council in your parish, is there a young person or two on it. I am on the Board of CAFOD, and we make sure that there is at least one young voice heard there, at present from a student from Brentwood diocese studying performing arts in London. His insights are often quite surprising and usually challenging in a very direct way (in other words, "I'm glad he said that, not me."). Adults often duck this challenge, I think, by complaining that the young people are not in church on Sunday morning. But then we need to ask if we make it a very interesting place to be.
Which brings me neatly to the other issue raised, that of welcoming parishes. Barbara Wallace and the team at DABCEC in Crawley have been doing work in parishes on this particular ministry, and with good results, I believe. But you can't make a parish a welcoming place just by having someone at the door smiling and making people wonder if he's perhaps not well. The whole of the parish needs to be a place of welcome, with some genuine sense of family - professional, corporate hospitality will not work in church. Do you know all the people in the row of seats you're in? You can all look at one another now.
And church teaching - on the one hand you don't want everything that comes from the Vatican and from the diocese (I hope), but on the other hand you should want to know about what the Church says about euthanasia, for instance. This is all the more important as the Mental Capacity Bill is being discussed. I hope that many of you have written to your local MP to express concern about the dangerous proposals being put forward in this area.
It is a real concern that has been expressed independently in many places, that we need better ways of communicating Church teaching, especially in areas that you see to be relevant to your lives.
So there's plenty to do in the new year.
I hope that Christmas went well, and that if it was stressful, you're now relaxed and calm again.
Have a happy and stress-free new year.
With my prayers and good wishes.
Rt. Rev. Kieran Conry
Bishop of Arundel and Brighton
