Christianity portrayed as ‘evil force’: Derry Bishop

Dr Donal McKeown, in a homily for Easter, remarked on a “new intolerant secular dogma that wants to populate the minds of us all”.

He added: “In a new narrative, Christianity is portrayed as an evil force that decent people want to remove from the public sphere. All sorts of agendas insist that faith is a conduit of culturally unacceptable teachings for modern people.

“Education is a particular area where intolerant secularising forces resent anybody else influencing young people except themselves and their ever-fluctuating ideas.

“In church circles, there are also voices which say it would be much more convenient if we attuned our beliefs to what public opinion likes.”

Bishop McKeown added that much of the new “secularising dogma” was obsessed with the body and its functions.

“It is nor surprising that an earthbound preoccupation with the body cannot see far beyond the end of its own nose,” he said. “A me-centred culture insists that I am a little god who becomes divine and infallible in own self-contained universe. Young people find it hard to stand up for anything other than the pressure to behave like what are described as normal people. But we see the destructive results of that ultimately hopeless and meaningless vision of human life... Our bodies are sacred and not merely toys to be played with.”