The Malta Sunday Mass Attendance Census 2005 was recently published by Discern. Besides the statistics, it contains an almost 30-page essay by Fr Joe Inguanez entitled 'On Leaving the 51 per cent'. He is obviously alluding to the fact that the results showed only 51 per cent attending Sunday Mass and to the parable of the Shepherd leaving the 99 in search of the lost sheep. What do you think of his analysis?

If I got the main drift of what the sociologist is telling us, it is not to lose ourselves in looking for such reasons for the fall in Sunday Mass attendance to almost a minority level as poor quality of sermons or pop music.

These may be contributing factors in a secondary way, but the deep-lying reason is simply loss of faith, and we should not shy away from admitting it. Consequently, the action that is called for is radical evangelisation.

A Christian in contemporary global society is in a roughly similar position to that of a missionary in pagan territory in previous ages. The role of the priest is therefore primarily prophetic, or, in other words, he should be interpreting the signs of the times and pointing out the authentic Christian response to the challenges as they arise. Surprisingly, I have not become aware of any wide discussion of Fr Inguanez's diagnosis.

His text reminded me of the report presented by Mgr Claude Dagens to the assembly of the Bishops of France that was published last February. Mgr Dagens is the only priest who is at present a member of the Academie Francaise. His main thrust is that for the gospel to have a positive impact on the global society of the early 21st century, the Church should not rely on social and political influence, but rather on its poverty, trials and fragility.

In this perspective, Catholics are invited not to spend their time denouncing the obstacles placed by society or regretting the loss of power. They should rather rediscover the approaches of the early Christians in a society that was overall pagan.

The culture of the Church must, without relinquishing any of the essential factors of true Catholic identity, change since in the past it came to be associated too much with claims to a dominant position. A new kind of relationship with society needs to be established that acknowledges a more humble position for the Church in spite of the proud memories surviving in our collective unconscious.

If Christians become too resigned to their becoming or already being a minority even in a country such as ours, does this not give rise to the temptation of enclosing themselves in a ghetto nourished by the dream of a counter-culture opposed to the consumerist and disenchanted prevailing trends?

There are quite a few Christians who are accusing Pope Benedict himself of falling into that trap. But actually, the call is rather that Catholics need to learn new ways of expressing their faith and tradition in language that is comprehensible to people who are no longer brought up in a culture where religious knowledge was taken in with the air that everybody breathed.

Another kind of language has to be learnt for conversation with another set of people. Many are still attached to the Catholic tradition as part of their historical identity, but do not participate really effectively in the life of a community.

This is due to the individualism, fragmentation and atomisation that mark contemporary global society. Such an attachment is not believed by sociologists of religion to be capable of surviving for long if there is detachment from the institutional Church.

Mgr Dagens insists that the visibility desired by him for the Church is not that which could be measured by frequency of appearances in the media. He calls it "sacramental", by which he means a sign of the deep need by human beings of reciprocal ties, bonds of friendship, solidarity.

In almost the same tone of voice as Fr Inguanez, the French bishops lament that Catholics who are expected to give reasoned accounts of their faith often stay silent, as if dumbfounded by the questions posed to them or by the fear of not being understood.

Don't both these reports chime in with what the Prior of Bose Community, Enzo Bianchi, was urging when he spoke in the St Augustine lecture at the University?

His presence, just as much as his words, showed the great thirst for a deeper spirituality of which the monastic call is the clearest sign. Prior Bianchi claimed that the greatest service rendered by the presence of monastic communities, meaning people dedicated primarily to prayer, giving preference to contemplation over action, was giving a sense of urgency to the expectation of the Kingdom, of Christ's return in glory.

In Malta, there have been for many centuries female monastic communities, and they have given us, among many other gifts, the Blessed Adeodata Pisani. But male monastic communities do not seem to have flourished for more than brief periods.

However, recently, in response to the invitation of former Archbishop Joseph Mercieca, renewed by Archbishop Paul Cremona, a Maltese monk has set up a house with another Maltese priest at Tas-Salib in the Binġemma neighbourhood. He is Fra Gioele, best known for the lyric poetry in which he narrates an ongoing love story that is certainly not without its moments of agony.

He is coming from the Benedictine tradition and in particular from the semi-hermitical school of St Romuald, incidentally one of the saints with a charming, somewhat bizarre sense of humour.

Unfortunately there are no quantitative measuring rods as there are for Sunday Mass attendance to enable us to perceive how closely a life has been assimilated to that of Christ, other perhaps than poems and other works of beauty.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.