Archbishop delivering inspiration
PART football coach, part preacher, all Archbishop; Mark Coleridge was in Marburg yesterday to deliver a rallying call.
The Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane, who was installed last month, spoke to Australian Catholic University students at Woodlands of Marburg.
Archbishop Coleridge spoke to the students, who are on a retreat at Woodlands, before performing mass in Woodlands chapel.
"I'm here to speak a word of instruction and encouragement to these young people," he said. "Partly my task is to present a vision and articulate it in a way that young people can understand and accept, and it might even enthuse and inspire them.
"I think we need a rallying call from time to time because there can be a weariness of spirit or an uncertainty of heart that is never the right response to the Gospel.
"It's like a pep talk. I've played a lot of sport in my time, I've heard a lot of pep talks and I've given a few on the sporting field.
"I think the church is going through a time of very deep and permanent change and a new experience of the church is being born. But we're not going out of business."
However, Archbishop Coleridge accepted the Catholic Church was seen as a rigid institution that didn't move with the times.
"But that's also our strength," he said.
"We have to be faithful to a truth in our faith that was passed on to Jesus, to the apostles then each generation simply has to pass it on. Therefore, while we have to be attuned to the culture, we don't have to bend the knee to the culture. Human life depends on something more secure than the tides of culture, however important culture is.
"But we're not about to renegotiate fundamental truths simply because the mood or vogue of this time and place and culture would want us to do that."
