I think that the second biggest challenge is the BBC which is funded by the government. It suppresses stories about atrocities against Christians, hides any Protestant clergy abuse cases, rarely reports crimes committed by Muslims or other ethnic groups etc etc.
That’s the impression I’ve got the of BBC also, from over here in Australia. We get lots of BBC documentaries and they can explore the history and geography of Europe, and the world, without ever mentioning “God”. At the most they give a condescending and puzzled mention of peoples’ “faith”.
Of course, all our media has had a good run with our pedophilia scandals, but I don’t think the treatment has been so unfair that we could complain about it.
A home-grown problem we have within the Church is that the our (overly) egalitarian culture has affected much of the clergy. Many of our priests would rather be known as a “good bloke”, who can knock back a beer and have a joke with his mates,rather than be an authority in his parish. I joined the Church from Anglicanism, and in the Anglican church we discussed theology, liturgy, music etc… all the time, and our priests were on top the discussions. When I entered the Catholic Church I thought we would be talking about Aquinas, Palestrina, Newman, Chesterton, etc, and when I brought up such a topic I would get a response like “Did you see the football yesterday?”. It was quite a shock, and I quickly learned to keep my mouth shut! The roots of this are particularly in our Irish Catholic heritage, which has an inverted snobbery (ie. is anti-intellectual, anti-art, anti ruling class).
One thing I greatly admire about America is that religion matters to you. Politicians and public figure frequently invoke “God”, which never happens in Australia. You have serious debates about religion and ethics. I’d rather my children left the Church to become “Bible Christians” than to just leave it for nothing at all. These days, some of our best Church music comes from America.
