A leading Catholic thinker in Scotland has been given a key role in the Vatican's long-term campaign to promote Christianity in Western culture.
John Haldane, professor of philosophy at St Andrews University, is to become consultor to the Pontifical Council for Culture. The 51-year-old, who has written for The Herald, said it was time to "reclaim Europe for Christianity".
Western society, he said, had lost its sense of the transcendent and lost the sense of "something beyond themselves that is greater and better than human beings".
The Pontifical Council for Culture was established in the 1960s in an effort to relate the Catholic church to modern society. Forty years on, the council has been charged with bringing spiritual meaning back into what is seen as an increasingly Godless culture.Professor Haldane said: "Everything has become unserious and shallow and we have got to re-evangelise the culture."The church has to engage with artists, writers, musicians and speak through radio, television and the print media in an effort to try to re-transcendentalise things. We have to inspire culture with a sense of its own dignity."
The Hearld
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