By Fr Maurice Pearce of Our Lady of Victories - IF the 19c was the age of doubt, then the 20C was, surely, the age of indifference.

Doubt and indifference, of course, in relation to the Christian religion.

The Churches have wrestled with and agonised over the problem of how to make Christ relevant to the religionless people of today.

All the ideas the Churches have come up with, all the strategies that have been put in place have not made the slightest difference - the world continues to go its own way.

It seems likely that, in the 21C, Christians are going to become a smaller and smaller group of people and a more and more marginalised group of people in our society.

It will be a time of testing faith. The old sense of prestige and privilege the Churches have enjoyed in society will gradually disappear.

Any vestiges of power the Churches still possess, the ability to tell people how to live their lives, will go.

What Christians can hopefully learn from this is humility.

Out of real humility there should emerge a desire to serve.

Instead of frantically looking for ways to reconvert the world, Christians need to ask themselves, how can we be of service to people today?

Again, it is going to be a time of testing faith. It really will be a time in which we Christians will have to give and not count the cost, and not necessarily look for anything in return.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.