Probably many of you have read by now the interview that Bishop Conry of Arundel and Brighton gave to The Catholic Herald. There are plenty of disturbing remarks in this, as Damian Thompson says, “astonishingly frank” interview, but here’s the one that’s making all the headlines:

“You can’t talk to young people about salvation. What’s salvation? What does salvation mean? My eternal soul? You can only talk to young people in young people’s language, really. And if you’re going to talk to them about salvation, the first thing they will understand is saving the planet. You’re talking about being saved, and they will say: ‘What about saving the planet?’”

Okay. An idiotic thing to say? In a sense yes, but on another level (a pagan level, you might say) Bishop Conry has made a very sensible observation: it isn’t easy for young people to grasp the concept of salvation, because the whole idea is quite beyond them.

Perfectly true. But, Your Excellency. It’s beyond all of us. That’s the whole point, isn’t it, of the Incarnation, and Our Lord’s great Sacrifice?

The Bishop’s words here aren’t exactly foolish, but they simply aren’t Christian. To order one’s life towards a postmortem supernatural end is a challenge indeed, and he is not wrong in this observation. But he does err in supposing that maturity is the ingredient needed to make this difficult task possible. No amount of ordinary human development would ever put that end within reach. Grace is the only thing that will serve. And that, Deo gratias, has been made available to every human creature, regardless of age.

Obviously he isn’t going to be asking my advice, but if he did, I would encourage His Excellency to meditate a bit on what the Good News really is. Perhaps he needs to regain a bit more of that childlike wonder.