"The Realm: An Unfashionable Essay on the Conversion of England"

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/news_1.html

Father Aiden Nichols, O.P. thinks calls for conversion are a good thing. How very un-PC.

One of Britain’s leading theologians has broken ranks with the ecumenical establishment by calling for Catholics to convert non-Catholics.
Fr Aidan Nichols, the English theologian most closely associated with the thinking of Benedict XVI, has appealed for England to be “re-made” as a Catholic country.
He set out his radical and comprehensive programme for Catholic renewal in a new book entitled The Realm: An Unfashionable Essay on the Conversion of England, published by Family Publications.
In his preface he says that Catholic Christianity should be put forward “not as an occupation for individuals in their solitude but as a form for the public life of society in its overall integrity”.
He admits that the conversion of England is “an absolutely colossal agenda”, adding: “It can only be brought into being, so far as it depends on us to do so, by a coordinated strategy for recreating a full-blooded catholicity with the power to... transform a culture in all its principal dimensions.
“That is what ‘the mission to convert’ and ‘the conversion of England’ mean to me.”
His comments will be seen as an implicit criticism of the direction of the Church in England and Wales.
He points to “flagship” Catholic institutions which have “suffered shipwreck through secularisation”. The Second Vatican Council, he argued, did not replace mission with dialogue. Instead it drew attention to respectful dialogue and an understanding of other faiths as a necessary condition of missionary work.
Fr Nichols, a Dominican friar, argues that the disappearance of other Christian and non-Christian religions would not necessarily be “a Bad Thing”, since the Catholic faith contains all the elements of truth, goodness and beauty that are present in other forms of Christianity and faith traditions.
He argues that Catholicism was crucial in the formation of England and suggests that the Church is well suited to remaking a “not terribly impressive culture” dominated by “supermarkets and sport”.
English Catholicism is fit for the challenge, he explains, because it is a “pot-pourri” of recusant families, Anglican converts and Irish, Polish and Filipino immigrants.
He says the example of the original Anglo-Saxon conversion of England showed that only a mixture of “indigenous and exogenous elements” can successfully transform a whole society.
Fr Aidan Nichols's plan for renewal:
Firmer doctrine in our teaching and preaching
Re-enchant the liturgy
Recover the insights of metaphysics
Renew Christian political thought
Revive family life
Resacralise art and architecture
Put a new emphasis on monastic life
Strengthen pro-life rhetoric
Recover a Catholic reading of the Bible
Fr Nichols identifies a number of strategies he believes the Church ought to implement to draw England back to the faith.
He argues for the renewal of Christian political thought beyond merely a concern for the poor. Indeed, he suggests that religious apathy is partly a product of Christianity’s removal from the political sphere.
A “re-enchantment” of the liturgy is also needed, he says, since liturgy forms the imagination and is crucial in “getting others to grasp the inwardness of Catholic Christianity”.

Another book to put on the Must Read list.
Why is the call to evangelization, (for this is what this "call to call to conversion" entails,) so resisted?
Why do some of those who might be thought most bound to share the Way with others have so littel... faith in the Faith?
Fr Nichols has all but thrown down a guantlet in front of those diffident Churchmen who think their responsibilty is to help shore up various protestant sects, I'm most anxious to see some of the reaction.

I wonder if the continuing stirring of the pot regarding the supposedly offensive Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jewish people isn't a very good thing, if for no other reason than it provokes thought and discussion on the subject of conversion, continuing conversion to which we are all called -- do you or do you not believe, and if you do, how can you NOT want to share the Truth of what you believe with all of mankind?