Church organisations must not lose their Christian identity when making their case in the public square, Archbishop 
Diarmuid Martin (pictured) has warned.
Speaking at a meeting of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) Assembly currently underway in Nicosia, Cyprus Archbishop Martin warned that when Church bodies become simply lobbying organisations like other lobbying organisations, they lose their proper direction.
He said: “ When the Church’s organisations simply become lobbying bodies alongside other lobby organisations or social commentators alongside other social commentators then they lose their real originality and therefore their original contribution to the debate about the formation of society”.
Defending the Church was important, but how we defend it is equally important, he said.
Archbishop Martin said: “Today we are often in a situation in which we have to defend Catholic teaching within a cultural framework which is not of our creation and indeed may be hostile to our thought.
“This is especially the case when a culture becomes dominated by individualism. It is very difficult, for example, to defend the Catholic understanding of marriage and sexuality in a culture of individualism, when sexuality involves by its very nature the concept of mutuality and self giving.
“If we end up simply defending, there is the danger that we will end up being trapped within the categories of someone else’s culture and only present a negative vision of our teaching.
He said: “It is important at times to be against, but there is the more fundamental task of illustrating the real nature of our teaching. If sexuality is seen only in terms of individual rights, then any expression of sexuality, unless it is patently exploitative, will be acceptable.
“In today’s society we have to be able to illustrate the values of a vision of society which springs from our faith, but we have to be able to do so through rational argument”.
He said that Catholic laypeople working in public life needed “support to enable them to defend and illustrate that contribution through rational argument and scientific competence. They must have a personal cohesion within their own understanding of life”.
He added: “We need to educate young people in their faith so that they can, as I have said earlier, ‘defend and illustrate’ the significance of that faith in society.”
“While it is important to stress the place of reason and politics in working for social cohesion, in today’s individualist culture the danger is that each one makes his or her choices on the basis of personal interest or preference and in the end there is more confusion then cohesion.
“Rational argument must be combined with what Pope Benedict called ‘the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper’.”