Leicester Cathedral, Tuesday, 15 May 2012
His Eminence, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor delivered the Far and Near Club Lecture at Leicester Cathedral yesterday evening (15 May).
Cardinal Cormac explored three ways in which religion and, most particularly, Christianity relates to society in the public square. The reflection focused on the centrality of the family, the dignity and importance of elderly people and the relationship between faith and reason in today’s world.
“Scientific discovery does not reveal the whole of the mystery of the human person. Pascal says, ‘The heart has its reasons of which Reason knows nothing’. Or St. Augustine, ‘God has created us for Himself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him’. In other words, the need for the transcendent is not something, as it were, added on to humanity but is an intrinsic part of humanity. Whether we like it or not, the end of religion has not come. The spread of Islam, whatever its challenges to us, speaks for itself. Eighty years of atheistic communism visibly failed to extinguish Christianity in the old Soviet Union. Christianity is clearly a major political force in the USA, as well as in much of Africa and Latin America. Even in our ‘old, tired Europe’, religious believers remain a significant witness in what people call a post-modern or post-Christian society.”
Cardinal’s Lecture: Meaning and Hope – Christianity’s place in Modern Britain
