By Deacon Mike Manno
(The
Wanderer) – Every week, either here or on my radio program, I
feature stories that, when taken together, reveal a rather sharp decline in the
civic and cultural mores of the day. Growing up in the 50s and early 60s, I
don’t think too many folks were concerned about their children being accosted
by teachers and librarians trying to “open” their minds to sexual pleasure, or
the possibility that your little kiddie might be in the wrong sex.
It was a different time where
most people went to church on Sunday and at least professed a faith in a
“higher power,” and tried to set their conduct so as to at least reflect that
belief, even if they — like all of us — sometimes had difficulty living up to
that standard.
Yet as we headed into the 60s
things seemed to change. Of course to the older generations, to which I am not
a part, the 30s or 40s might have seemed just as dramatic as what I saw from my
high school vantage point. The timing, I guess, can be debated, but what I see
cannot.
Our culture has degraded, and
leading that degrade is the sense of family and our responsibilities, both
collectively and individually, to those who depend on us the most, leaving
family and children as a seemingly part-time obligation. With that, of course,
comes not only the loss of morals but the embrace of an anti-moral social
agenda.
Look at the polls — half the
country seems to embrace, or at least tolerate, that anti-agenda. We now accept
the “grooming” (and that is the correct word) of our children by schools
pushing an ideology of sexual dysfunction in the earliest grade levels.
Abortion, the killing of the most innocent and vulnerable, is being touted by
our “devout Catholic” president as a right that the government should mandate,
and force compliance on disagreeing doctors, nurses, and hospitals.
Leaders of one of our great
parties are now trying to outlaw our pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, yet we
hear very little pushback from our clergy and religious leaders, too afraid of
appearing to be “too” partisan or political. I can’t imagine Fulton Sheen being
quiet if this had been happening in his midst.
Personally, while I think the
degrading of our culture and morals is a many-factored hydra that spreads its
tentacles throughout the culture, the root cause of this evil is the simple
loss of religious faith. And if the recent report from the Pew Research Center
is correct, or even close to it, that undermining source of our cultural decay
is going to get worse.
In a report released on
September 13, the Pew researchers found that while only a few decades ago
Christianity was so common in America that the United States was undoubtedly a
Christian society and as recently as the 1990s nearly ninety percent of U.S.
adults identified as Christian.
“But today, about two-thirds
of adults are Christians. The change in America’s religious composition is
largely the result of large numbers of adults switching out of the religion in
which they were raised to become religiously unaffiliated.” The report uses the
word “switching” to represent those who left the religion in which they were
raised to another religion or became unaffiliated with any religion, called
“nones.”
“Whatever the deeper causes,
religious disaffiliation in the U.S. is being fueled by switching patterns that
started ‘snowballing’ from generation to generation in the 1990s,” it reported.
Nones, it says, are gaining a lot more adherents than it is losing back to
Christianity and in one of its possible scenarios has found that the nones will
be a majority religious group by 2055.
One of the key findings in the
report is that about a third of those dissatisfied with Christianity leave the
faith in favor of the nones by the time they turn thirty.
“If the pace of switching
before the age of thirty were to speed up throughout the projection period
without any brakes, Christians would no longer be a majority by 2045. By 2055,
the unaffiliated would make up the largest group (forty-six percent), ahead of
Christians (forty-three percent). In 2070, fifty-two percent of Americans would
be unaffiliated, while a little more than a third (thirty-five percent) would
be Christian….
Depending on whether religious
switching continues at recent rates, speeds up, or stops entirely, the
projections show Christians of all ages shrinking from sixty-four percent to
between a little more than half (fifty-four percent) and just above one-third
(thirty-five percent) of all Americans by 2070. Over that same period, ‘nones’
would rise from the current thirty percent to somewhere between thirty-four
percent and fifty-two percent of the U.S. population,” it said.
As part of its historical
analysis the report states: “Switching gained significant momentum in the
1990s….In 1972 ninety percent identified as Christian and five percent were
religiously unaffiliated. In the next two decades, the share of nones crept up
slowly, reaching nine percent in 1993. But then disaffiliation started speeding
up — in 1996, the share of unaffiliated Americans jumped to twelve percent and
two years later it was fourteen percent. This growth has continued, and
twenty-nine percent of Americans reportedly claim to have “no religion,” up
from sixteen percent in 2007.
The report projected the
nation’s religious composition to 2070 and by using historical trends has made
some disturbing projections, the reliability of each depending on several
factors such as projections of the numbers of “switchers,” migration patterns,
birthrates, family dynamics, and other demographic changes.
Now, what does all this mean
to truly devout Catholics and Christians in the United States? Have most of our
fellow citizens found the faith unsatisfactory and failing to meet our needs?
Have we become so jaded that we no longer need God and have become our own
redeemer? Has our “quickie” culture with a disposable ideology torn us away
from what life really means?
I’m not sure I know the
answers to all these things, but I do know that we will fail as a Godly kingdom
if we don’t make a serious effort to stem the flood of secularism. Some will
look at the answer in political activity, others will take a less
confrontational path; but what I do know is that our faith and families should
be the most important things in our lives and if we don’t cater to that we
might as well throw in the towel right now.
Regardless of how steep the hurdle
is we need to find our way over it. But we need all hands on deck, not just the
activists or prayer warriors, but everyone including our clergymen, pastors,
bishops, and church leaders.
This is not a fight against
other men, it is a fight against powers and principalities that can only be won
through the power of God.
In 1886, after celebrating his
morning Mass, Pope Leo XIII heard a terrifying conversation between Satan and
God in which Satan boasted that he needed only a century to defeat the Church.
God granted him the time, and horrified, the Pope drafted a prayer which he
ordered recited after every Low Mass worldwide.
That prayer was said by the
Church continually from 1886 to 1964. Notice the date it ceased. Here is that
prayer:
St.
Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the
wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do
thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan
and all the other evil spirits who roam about the world, seeking the ruin of
souls. Amen.
In this time of great division
and uncertainty, we might restart that tradition whether or not your parish
does, and talk to your pastor if it does not. And it would be nice if each
Catholic family had a remembrance of St. Michael, a statue or icon, place in a
prominent place in your home. We’ve turned to St. Michael before, let’s go back
again.
Remember, our enemies are not
men but powers and principalities. This week is St. Michael’s feast day and a good
time to renew the call.
(You
can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to his radio program at
https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/ which always closes with the
prayer to St. Michael.)
