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Culture as an "ocean which surrounds us"

The Jesuit Michael Paul Gallagher sj, led an impressive two day conference entitled “Discerning a Secular Culture: what hope for faith?” at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, at the end of last week.

Clergy from all over the country gathered in south west London to explore how the Christian faith can be communicated in the face of current cultural shifts.

Over 24 hours, the conference looked at theological, spiritual and pastoral issues posed by changes to the cultural landscape of both the wider world and Britain in particular.

“Are we at a major cultural break point? We might be in the middle of something huge? We don’t know,” suggested Fr Gallagher at the start of the event.

He posed two key questions: “where are we? and “what do we want?” He described culture as “the ocean which surrounds us” and referred to the
cross currents in which the church often found itself.

Fr Gallagher also suggested that “Christian imagination is different to the imagination we see in other places: we need to feed it and protect it against the dominant imagination which we see all around us,” he told his audience.

Clergy attending the conference we given plenty of resources to reflect on in their own ministries.

A new book (In Praise of Paul) celebrating the life, work and teaching of St Paul edited by Dr Michael Hayes, a vice Principal of St Mary’s University College, was also launched at the conference.