The Archbishop of Westminster has said that he sees “no shortage” of churchgoers with the “instinct for faith” this Christmas.
Speaking to Times Radio, Cardinal Vincent Nichols said that the celebration of Christmas “tells us the importance of ritual”.
“There’s no shortage of that instinct for faith, which is connecting again with church services, particularly in the Catholic Church,” he said.
In a Christmas message broadcast by Vatican News on December 17, Cardinal Nichols said that Christmas was God’s “unambiguous public declaration of his love for every human person”, comparable to the vows made by a couple at their wedding.
“Of course, God has made manifest that love before,” he said, “but it’s sometimes been shrouded in cloud or obscured by his messengers or lost in the complexities of history.”
Christmas, he said, “is a public declaration in our flesh, such as a married couple might make to each other on their wedding day”.
By recognizing this, he said, “we begin to understand that every single word and gesture and deliberate action of Jesus is an unfolding of this single proclamation of God’s love for us”.
The cardinal told Times Radio that “ritual helps us to step outside of our own little bubble, connect with something that we have received, inherited, and that we hope to pass on”.
He was responding to questions about the re-writing of Christmas carols, following criticism of a version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen sung at an Anglican church in Loughborough.
Cardinal Nichols said that he thought “those values of continuation of musical repertoire, of the ability to sing together, of looking at the rituals that have been fashioned over the centuries” were “for me, more important than particular sensitivities which come and go” .
His Christmas message was one of several issued by bishops across the British Isles this week.
The Catholic and Anglican Archbishops of Armagh, Eamon Martin and John McDowell, issued a joint Christmas message on 21 December condemning the “ideology of customer satisfaction which cannot do justice to the richness of personal life”.
“The current public understanding of abundance is incapable of healing the divisions in our society,” they say.
“Society cannot be truly democratic without a strong sense of solidarity and community – something which can often be absent today.”
Christmas, the archbishops say, challenges our “surveillance capitalism” in “an age of algorithms and atomisation” and “a global system of behavior modification which can threaten human nature itself”.
They continue: “The coming of the ‘Word made flesh’ drags us back to both the primacy of person and of their solidarity.”
In Wales, too, the Catholic and Anglican archbishops issued a joint Christmas message, inviting people back to church for the feast.
The Archbishop of Glasgow, William Nolan, delivered a message emphasizing that the peace of Christmas is “not a superficial peace”.
“Whether our life is going well or going badly just now, whether we have things to celebrate or things that we mourn, God is always with us,” he said.
“That is the great joy that comes with Christmas.”
In England, the Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley, issued a message which reflects on the obstacles to traditional gift-giving amid rising costs and strikes.
He observes that “one very welcome gift for everybody affected would be a just resolution to the various disputes over pay and working conditions”.
“Peace of mind in place of anxiety would be a welcome gift in many homes,” he says.
Archbishop Longley also offers prayers for the four boys who died earlier this month, after falling into a frozen lake in Solihull.
“This Christmas we remember and pray especially for the families of the four children who lost their lives so recently in Birmingham. May the child born at Bethlehem give them comfort and strength to face the coming year.”
England’s newest bishop, Peter Collins of East Anglia, also published a Christmas message, asking members of his diocese to “recognize how interconnected we are, how interconnected is our world”.
Bishop Collins, who was ordained to his see last week, describes the world’s “darkness”, where “the wellbeing of our brothers and sisters is jeopardized by widespread injustice, malicious intent and selfish indulgence”.
“As heralds of peace,” he says, “let us embrace one and all.”
