In a recent article in The Age newspaper Professor Greg Craven, Vice-Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, commented on the fact that Catholics today are targets of a new movement of atheists. He says that they’re not traditional atheists; the new hobby atheist is a different creature. “They want everyone to know that they’ve not found God, and that no one else should. Their particular target seems to be Catholics,” writes Craven. He claims that one of the reasons they attack Catholics is because they have the undeniable advantage that they still demonstrably believe in something.

 

Whatever people might say about dogma and beliefs, the foundation of our belief is not in any set of dogmas but in the person of Jesus Christ. All that makes up our church, our practices, our beliefs, our laws is based upon our fundamental dependence on Jesus. All that we are required to do and be as Catholics comes out of our dependence upon Jesus. Through the church he teaches us what we should do, what we should believe and how we should act – all of which revolves around his summary commandment that the fundamental axiom of our life is that we must love God and love our neighbour.

 

So while it is good for us to amass our arguments for the belief in the existence of God and to defend the church and its teachings, we have another war to wage. That war is based on our conversion to the teachings of Jesus and our determination to do all that we can to be faithful to him, expressing in every aspect of our lives our love for God and our love for our neighbour.

 

As it happens, the only way we can prove our love for God is by the quality of our love for our neighbour. So although we are all weak and sinful people, our commitment to conversion and reconciliation and the way we direct all of our engagement with our brothers and sisters in the world is the true test. Our faith makes us all brothers and sisters. Atheism divides the human family into protagonists and antagonists.

 

If the message of Christmas means anything, then this is it. We celebrate the birth of our Lord with great joy and hope each year because we recognise that our faith in God gives us a beautiful image of what the world can be if people everywhere would love God and love their neighbour.