Cardinal’s remarks make for snappy sound bites

At the risk, of course, of being plucked out of their context and out of the tenor with which they were delivered.

Cardinal Ivan Dias did make an interesting analogy, though. And it did get attention.

Ivan Cardinal Dias told the Anglican bishops gathered at the Lambeth Conference that the current state of chaos and disunity, brought on by the member churches from the wealthy western nations abandoning their Christian moral and scriptural basis, is damaging Christian credibility in the wider world.

Cardinal Dias told the assembled bishops, “Much is spoken today of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. By analogy, their symptoms can, at times, be found even in our own Christian communities.”

“For example, when we live myopically in the fleeting present, oblivious of our past heritage and apostolic traditions, we could well be suffering from spiritual Alzheimer’s. And when we behave in a disorderly manner, going whimsically our own way without any co-ordination with the head or the other members of our community, it could be ecclesial Parkinson’s.”

Though there were plenty of “we”s in there, the prelate was addressing the Anglican Communion, which is going through plenty of controversy these days.

Many observing the meeting, held at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus until August 4, believe that this fourteenth Lambeth Conference will be the last. The reports of “chaos” and disillusionment growing from the meeting support the theory that the failure of the bishops realistically to address the problems of growing secularism in their church will spell the end of the Anglican Communion as a unified global religious body.

Dias pointed to the work of great defenders of the faith like Newman, Chesterton, Belloc and Lewis.

“The world today needs Christian apologists, not apologisers,”…

Christians need to get off the fence, he added.

Cardinal Dias stressed that “what the world needs today” is the testimony of Christians and quoted Pope John Paul II, saying, “our peers believe witnesses more than the teachers.”

Which gets back to the bottom line of Chaput’s message (below).