Ireland is facing a crisis of culture rather than of faith and the steady growth of secularism threatens the existence of everyday symbols of Christianity, according to the Catholic Primate of All Ireland Seán Brady.
Speaking at an ecumenical service to launch an Irish inter-church meeting in Cork last night, Dr Brady said that without a careful balance between body and soul or spirit and matter, culture loses its capacity to see beyond what is clearly visible.
"In this sense, I think Ireland, indeed Europe, at the beginning of the third millennium is facing a crisis of culture rather than of faith. Most people still believe. There are very few considered atheists. Yet there is increasing evidence of a loss of culture, a loss of sensitivity to the things of the spirit and the soul. You see it on our roads, you hear it in our language and you read it in our papers," said Dr Brady.
He said that with the "steady advance of secularism", Christian symbols risked becoming "a mere vestige of the past" rather than a means of integrating the Gospel into our daily lives.
"Living one's faith in Jesus has become increasingly difficult in a social and cultural setting in which that faith is constantly challenged.
"It is sometimes easier to be identified as an agnostic than as a believer. At times, the impression is given that unbelief, or hostility to faith, is self-explanatory, whereas belief needs a sort of legitimisation which is neither obvious nor taken for granted," Dr Brady said.
"We are in real danger of losing our balance. And when we lose this capacity, we begin to measure the value of things by their usefulness and expediency rather than by their beauty or their being."