Bishop Mark O’Toole of Plymouth has said that bishops and priests must pray every day to be rid of cynicism. The bishop said it was a “particular fault” of clergy and was a “manifestation of a practical form of atheism”, before suggesting that priests “ask the Holy Spirit to rid us of it daily.” Bishop O’Toole was speaking at St Patrick’s, Soho, to the Guild of Our Lady and St Joseph, a group associated with the School of the Annunciation at Buckfast Abbey, Devon. The speech, marking the 25th anniversary of the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, called on Catholics to recognise that “every moment of catechesis” is also a “moment for evangelisation”. “I believe that we have not taken this to heart in this country,” he said. He suggested that the Catechism was initially misunderstood as the “imposition of a set of factual rules”, akin to the philosophy of Charles Dickens’s character Mr Gradgrind, who in the novel Hard Times called for the teaching only of facts. Bishop O’Toole argued that the Catechism was an invitation to “always wonder” and to “see the sheer beauty and wonder of our faith”. The Catechism, Bishop O’Toole said, emerged in 1992 against an “impoverished intellectual milieu”. The years leading up to it were a “time of confusion and conflict” when “almost everything in faith seemed ‘up for grabs’.” He remembered the excitement he felt reading the original French text. “I have always loved the Catechism’s clarity, its structure – particularly the four pillars – and its accessibility.” Its four sections – on what we believe, how we practise it, how we live it and prayer – were “at the heart of our evangelisation”, he said.