29 May 2024

The Hazards of Modernisation

In our first post Fr Ian Dalgleish, parish priest of St Mary Magdalene Catholic Church in Blaenau Ffestiniog, reflects on some potentially negative aspects of adapting Christian faith to the values of modern society (approx. 2,500 words).

(click on the photograph for a modern celebration of Pentecost 
from the Archdiocese of Chicago)

In the Catholic Church, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, there was an Italian word which came to sum up the Council’s purpose and goal, and that was the word aggiornamento. It meant ‘up-dating’ or ‘modernisation’. It also had the connotation of renewal and re-energising: the renewal of Catholic spiritual life and the re-energising of the Church's mission.

It’s difficult to say very much briefly without oversimplifying things but I don’t think it’s misrepresenting the facts of Catholic Church history to say that by the 1950s there was a conviction among many Catholics - certainly among many of the Church’s bishops and theologians - that the Catholic faith had become in a sense fossilised, out-of-touch with modern society, perhaps even with most Catholics’ experience of everyday life.

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