Inadequate religious education and formation of U.S. Catholics in their faith has weakened the Church when it is being “explicitly attacked”, a senior American archbishop has said.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco said that many of the 72 million Catholics were not practising their faith because they were never properly taught it.
He said the result was a weakened and divided Church, with many nominal, and some churchgoing Catholics, such as U.S. President Joe Biden, now siding with a secular consensus often increasingly hostile to the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church.
Speaking to Fox News Digital, Archbishop Cordileone said: “We have to realise that we’re being explicitly attacked. When I was young, that didn’t happen.
“I mean, our properties are being attacked, our sacred symbols are being desecrated. We’re being explicitly insulted, and that’s been championed and celebrated in the culture. So this is a new reality that we’re still trying to adjust to.”
“When we were younger, there was much more goodwill in the society,” he said.
“There was much more disposition to listening to the other and trying to work together, come to kind of a mutual understanding that we can agree on and live together – where there is much more of that kind of give-and-take with an openness and a goodwill
“In my lifetime, I’ve seen that disappear. There’s very little of that left.”
The archbishop continued: “We have a high percentage of Catholics on paper, but we haven’t done a very good job of forming our people well in the faith and helping them understand the faith and love it and live it out.
“Unfortunately, there are a lot of Catholics who don’t really follow everything our Church teaches because they probably were never taught what it really does teach and the wisdom that’s underlying it.
“So their lives aren’t informed by the faith. Even though they identify as Catholic, the way they live their life, their priorities, their instincts — even to some extent, perhaps, their values — are influenced more by the secular society than their Catholic faith.
“And I think that has caused a weakening in terms of the social influence that the Church should have and trying to contribute to the common good.”
Catholics represent almost 25 per cent of the overall 331 million population of the United States, making them the country’s second largest religious group after combined Protestant denominations.
Archbishop Cordileone argued that the Church in an increasingly precarious position because of the unchecked advance of aggressive secularism and the rise of destructive ideologies in recent decades.
It has been accompanied by a sometimes vicious trend of anti-clericalism and anti-Catholicism which has meant that since 2020, there have been 348 attacks against American Catholic churches, according to a tracker from CatholicVote, but with subsequent arrests made in only 25 per cent of the incidents.
Archbishop Cordileone said: “We’re in a struggle about living our faith in a world that’s become very secularised – but secularised not in the sense of apart from religion, but with a value system that’s hostile to some basic values that we have,” he said.
“How do we live our faith with integrity?” he asked.
“In the polarised society we’re living in, it’s hard to break through.
“But I think we have a very deep intellectual tradition, and there’s a lot to draw on in terms of our understanding of the human person, what our role is — being created in God’s image, that gives us this intrinsic category. And so I think we do have a lot to bring to the table.”
The archbishop warned Catholics, however, against responding to attacks aggressively, suggesting that prudence and restraint were needed to engage with the emerging new culture.
“I think we can’t be overly bombastic,” he said.
“I mean, we have this idea of discernment. Where do you have to draw a line and take a strong stand? Because that can’t be overdone either — because after a while, one will lose credibility, and it might have a reverse effect.”
He urged conscientious Catholics to return to the practice of supporting political representation or candidates who adhere properly to their ethics, and if none was standing to seek public office themselves.
“It’s the role of the laypeople to be participating in the political process,” Archbishop Cordileone said. “So run for office — run for local school board, their city council — and work up the system.”
It was absolutely essential, the archbishop added, for parents to raise faithful children “so that they can be well-formed, intellectually-rooted and able to pursue a career of community service or even in politics — to be the force that changes the culture by their own participation”.
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