Many in the world of today are tending more and more towards atheism or at best agnosticism; there is a tendency to a secularism that excludes God and all that worship of God in the different religions means. We live in a world in which Christianity and more particularly Catholicism evokes cynicism, and even a hatred that is difficult to understand. We cannot understand why the faith and the Church that we love so passionately and are willing to live for, create such offence in the mind and heart of some in our world of today.
It makes one sad that some are just out there and do nothing much more than wait for an odd slip in a few so that they can pound this faith and institution that is of divine origin. We live in a world in which many have lost the sense of sin and the traditional moral values that lead to salvation and support order and discipline in society. Faced with this scenario, the Fathers of Vatican II and the Holy Fathers over the years have called the faithful, led by the Clergy, to respond to the challenges to faith and its discipline by continuing to tell the world about Christ and His power to save, by proclaiming and insisting on the truth of the faith and the moral values that Christ has consistently taught us in His Church.
We must be ready to continue to give people the reason for the hope and the faith that we hold and teach. However, we have also been reminded that it is not enough to teach and that we must witness to the faith and values that we teach if the world would listen to us. The world has enough teachers such that if it listens, it is because of the power that is inherent in witnessing than in the words of teachers or and their teachings. Witnessing is, therefore, key in the whole effort to bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ. .
• Most Rev. (Dr.) Alfred Adewale Martins, Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Lagos.
