Madrid, Spain, Nov 16, 2004 / 22:00 pm
During the Congress of Lay Apostolates which took place last weekend in Madrid, the President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko, called on Catholics in Spain "to free yourselves from the inferiority complex and boldly be yourselves" and "to maintain a decisive and sharp presence in society."
The Archbishop exhorted them not to be conformed to the dominant culture and to not allow anybody to turn them into "a marginal and irrelevant minority." "Its time for Christians to awaken from our lethargy and be salt and light for the world," even if it costs us our very lives, because "this is the time of martyrs," he assured.
Archbishop Rylko also condemned "the effort to neutralize the Christian presence" in Europe. "The culture of weak thinking begets weak, fragmented and incoherent individuals. In today's socialist society all explicit expression of Christian identity is tagged as fundamentalism or integrism. Therefore, the faith becomes something strictly confined to one's private life."
"The dominant culture is replete with strong anti-Christian prejudices," he added, and "modern society wants to make us invisible, because we make society uncomfortable."