British cardinal sees crisis for European church in rising secularism

Published: 2005-05-26

LONDON (CNS) -- A British cardinal said rising secularism has the European church entering "a time of crisis." Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said that "Europeans are in need, as never before, of seeing God." In a May 25 lecture in Westminster Cathedral in London, the cardinal said that rising secularism had led to the "extension of choice to all sectors of human life" and was "corroding our consciences." He said, "People are as good as their contracts, to be hired and fired at will; relationships become transitory, ad hoc, dispensable; old people and immigrants are diminished in the eyes of society, scapegoated as parasitic or useless; we wish to create human beings for particular purposes."

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