It is Christ who ‘enlightens’, says Fisher

A truly Catholic approach to truth should combine the wisdom of faith and science, an Australian bishop said at the Epiphany Mass, writes Mark Brolly.

Bishop Anthony Fisher of Parramatta, a Dominican bioethicist, said the modern age imagined itself to be uniquely enlightened and while there had been advances in science, philosophy, technology and politics, the Age of Enlightenment also had been marked by terror, destruction and totalitarianism. Quoting the English Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, Bishop Fisher said that when the Christians emerged from the dark days of early persecution, they decided that rather than suppress the pagan Egyptian and Roman festivals, “they would baptise them”.

Emphasising that “Christ is the light of the world, come for our enlightenment”, Bishop Fisher said: “There is a certain vanity in any age imagining it is more enlightened that all others before it.”

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