Church needs to return to its roots - bishops

Malta's bishops yesterday told parishioners that they were living in challenging times and that the Church needed to return to its roots.

In a pastoral letter entitled 'In the footsteps of St Paul' - to mark the opening by Pope Benedict XVI of the 'Pauline Year 2008-2009', which marks the second millennium of the Apostle's birth - Archbishop Paul Cremona and Gozo Bishop Mario Grech said: "There can be no doubt that our roots take us back to the first proclamation by our father in the faith, St Paul."

The bishops said he had had the strength to ask: "Who are you Lord?" adding that "This same question is being made by many among us. Woe to us, if, due to apathy, indifference or weariness that sometimes takes hold of us as a Church, there is no one able to answer this question," they warned.

"Paul's conviction was strong enough that he was not ashamed to speak in a different way than those around him," and he was not afraid of being isolated.

"We are living in a society and a culture similar to that of St Paul's, who can guide us in the haze of our times," the bishops said.

The letter was read out or shown on big screens during Masses celebrated yesterday evening and today.

The bishops said that faced with a pagan culture, "St Paul had to be radical, which also meant being controversial. It was not easy for him to speak about Jesus."

However, they said, he was neither embarrassed nor afraid. He was prompt, bold, and strong with those who were playing with words and embracing com-promises with those who were the cause of divisions in the community.

They added that St Paul was clear on moral issues with those who tried to twist the truth and he applied human wisdom and reasoning.

Referring to St Paul's shipwreck in Malta as a "misadventure translated into a grace for us" so that "from an early stage we were able to come to know our Lord Jesus Christ," the bishops said that "it is our sincere wish that this Pauline Year will not be just an occasion for a number of celebrations that will just pass by," but that "in the shipwrecks many of us have to face in our daily life" it will serve us to rediscover "the strength that comes from the faith".

The bishops said many today were experiencing a mixture of experiences including suffering, hurt, deception and disappoint-ment, and said "these are ex-periences where we feel faith being shipwrecked, and where we feel our hope being weakened".

Elaborating on different types of suffering, they said: "There is the suffering that is a mystery of life and which, if we are not strong, confuses us and leads us to think that we have been abandoned by God.

"There is the suffering as a consequence of our own wrongdoing, the suffering of those who are destroyed because of the arrogance or abuse of others, because of violence or egoism, or because of the urge for unlimited profit that some people have."

The bishops said society expected the Christian community to be first and foremost one of true and authentic witness and concluded that like St Paul people should "not refrain from proposing and building a new order in the public life of our country.

"Our country needs very much the yeast of conviction and the truth of the faith."