Page 16 - The Priest, Summer 2015

The Kerygma as the gateway to holiness
by Most Rev Julian Porteous
Most Rev Julian Porteous is the eleventh Archbishop of Hobart. He was a gracious host of the 2015 national conference, at which he delivered this paper. It complements very well Bishop Schneider’s paper on holiness and truth.
My brothers, we are all deeply aware that we are moving through a time in our society
where its Christian underpinnings are in- creasingly being removed. We know that many even among our Catholic people no longer have a Christian mind. Many who would consider themselves Catholic have been shaped by the spirit of the world. This is currently very evident in the de- bate about changing the de nition of marriage.
We lament the loss of Christian culture which we love so much. We are saddened that many young people see no relevance in the sacramental life of the Church. We are pained by criticism and negativity di- rected towards the Church. We are nd- ing ourselves increasingly outsiders in our society.
This very real experience causes us to examine ourselves in the search for what can be done to arrest these changes. We nd ourselves so often seemingly power- less.
We can be tempted to retreat into the safety of a small coterie of like-minded
Catholics, clerical and lay. We can be at- tracted by the desire to live cut off from the crowd and enjoying the beauty and nobility of our Catholic culture of liturgy, music and the arts. We can seek to hide away in a safe place.
We know we cannot do this, attractive as it appears. We know our Master expects us to engage with the society. We are to be heralds of the truth. We are to be instru- ments of divine grace. We are to be in the public square proclaiming the faith.
This moment in history requires us to returns to the basics of our faith. As its cul- tural elements are being stripped away we are being laid bare. What remains is the essence of what it means to be a Catholic.
In our preaching and teaching as priests we are discovering that we need to return to the basics. We cannot presume any more what we once presumed. We can- not expect that the average Catholic with whom we engage in our pastoral ministry shares a level of faith that enables fruitful catechesis.
We are nding ourselves back at the
16 – Summer 2015
the