It was in March, 1946, that the phrase “Iron Curtain” came into common currency when it was used by Churchill in his speech at Westminster College in Fulton ,   Missouri .

 “From Stetin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "Iron Curtain" has descended across the continent.”

 With the Second World War only concluded months before, a new period of tension was becoming a reality. In the years that followed, described with the chilling phrase of the ‘Cold War’, East faced West in a stand-off given the acronym MAD- Mutually Assured Destruction. It was a time of brinkmanship, a time of spy rings infiltrating both sides at the highest level and years of ever-growing arsenals of nuclear weapons.

 Into that scenario came the peace movements, groups of individuals who came together to protest the arms race. Many of their number paid the price of their stand in the courtrooms of Europe and the United States .

 With the collapse of this division some forty years after the speech in Fulton , the politics of the Western world were dramatically transformed. The influence of John Paul II is said to have been significant in hastening the changes that occurred. The courage and realism showed by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR , must also be recognised.

 That was in 1989. Now, a quarter of a century later, we are again facing risks that we thought were part of history.

 It is within this context that the Church in Europe is facing a huge challenge. With falling congregations and a drastic fall in vocations to the priesthood, a continent framed in the spirit of Christian faith over many hundreds of years is rapidly changing. How does the Church proclaim the message of Christ in what is at best an indifferent culture and at worst one that is openly hostile to the faith that we profess?

 In a blog posting in last week’s Tablet where I compared the home family with the larger parish family I wrote this:

 “We leave our homes on many journeys, returning later for rest, relaxation, security and recreation. Our identity is recognizable in the artefacts, the furnishing, the family pictures and the ornaments. It is from within our homes, situated within a geographical parish, that our early lives are formed and attitudes tested within the safety of the family.

The Church is that family writ large, for our experiences at home, the joys and the tensions, the sorrows and the pains, are reflected within broader communities, be they the local parish, the diocese or the national Church.”

The full posting can be found at http://www.thetablet.co.uk/blogs/1/575/0/our-evangelisation-plans-rest-on-outdated-assumptions

We must recognise the very real and fundamental change in Western society, at so many levels, if we are to successfully make our Christian message relevant to those we live with and work among.

Maybe we could start with remembering that phrase from the early Church ,  “See how these Christians love one another”

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