Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
Choose a topic from Vol 4:
However great the evil of irreligion, there is no need to exaggerate it. Whatever may be said of individuals, our social life is based upon and molded, to a great extent by religion. Even those who have drifted from personal religion still accept the lingering conventions of a Christian civilization. They are living, if you like, on their Christian capital; and that will still be kept going by those who do personally live Christian lives and maintain Christian standards. The lives of all in the community are affected by it, even though many are not conscious of it. And the lives of all are affected by religion as the lives of ants are not.
I am well aware of the growth of irreligion. And rightly you speak of people "drifting" from it. Most of them have just let go, a very easy thing to do. But if you look into the matter you will find that the driftage is to be found chiefly among non-Catholics who have had a secular education only and who have been taught little or nothing about religion. Not knowledge but ignorance is the cause of it. They have no positive reasons for their lack of religion.
It is true that Catholics are more tenacious in clinging to their religion than others. It is not true that only a few Catholics take their religion seriously. That saints are rare I grant. For heroic virtue would not be heroic were it ordinary. But the vast majority of ordinary Catholics take their religion sufficiently seriously to try to fulfill its basic obligations and to be distressed by any failure on their part to do so. If they are not saints, they are at least sorry they are not saints; and that's something. That at least means taking their religion seriously. It is always in their consciousness and not ignored right through life whilst all goes well, to be thought of only at the very end when the vanity of perishable things is forced upon their notice. The average Catholic cannot be said to regard his religion lightly.
That I have already answered. Far from thinking for themselves those who have drifted from religion live thoughtlessly. They find it too much of an effort to take sufficient attention and energy from the flood of events which engulf them. They prefer to stop thinking in order to do things rather than to stop doing things in order to reflect. So they are empty-headed where God and religion and the things of the spirit are concerned. Their moral character is consequently undermined and they are swayed by likes and dislikes rather than by intelligent principles and will power. Socially, what is conventional is enough for them; but that means doing as others do, without thinking for oneself. Lack of religion is due to lack of thought, not to thinking for oneself.
There may be some religious people who are credulous. But that is because they are credulous, not because they are religious. Credulity has no necessary connection with religion. Half the patent medicines in the world flourish only because of the credulity of people who read the advertisements for them. As for superstitions, they are not the monopoly of religious people. There are far more of them among the irreligious.
To that I would say: "Truth only, but all of it�the truth about God as well as the truth about all that He has made." Indeed, were there no God there would be no truth. And why do you say that what is wanted is truth? Why should it be wanted, what obligation would there be to seek it, if there is nothing at all of permanent value in the universe and the whole of human life is one day bound to come to nothing with the end of the solar system? What would it matter in the long run then whether people had bothered about truth or not?
There have been some such as you describe. But atheists among scientists have ever been in the minority. And if they have professed to be atheists, that is only because they have concentrated their attention on one aspect only of truth, that concerned with material things, to the neglect of higher and more important aspects of truth. They are simply ignorant of religious truth and quite unscientifically declare that it has no reality just because they have paid no attention to it.
a. Not always. But at least you are taking it for granted that people ought to have a horror of lies, which implies a moral obligation to prefer truth to falsehood. However, you have anticipated that I would stress that point.
b. You wish to avoid admitting conscience as the voice of God. But let us take your suggestion that society has conditioned us in such a way. Why should it do so? If you say because society could not continue to exist if we could not rely upon people normally speaking the truth, why should society be so made that truth and not falsehood is necessary for its very existence? The reason is because there is a necessary connection between truth and reality; and as God is Truth itself, so He is the Supreme Reality. Our very desire of truth, part of our very nature, is a desire of God whether we acknowledge it or not. And as men cannot rest until they find the truth, St. Augustine rightly said, God being the Source of all truth, "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God; and our hearts will know no rest till they rest in Thee."
It is certainly not humility which rejects the possibility of such relationships. For those relationships are founded upon the consciousness of our dependence upon God, of our indebtedness to Him of our sinfulness and helplessness, and of our need for His intervention for our salvation. Those who reject the religious expression of these things find man s significance in himself. Their doctrine is one of self-sufficiency and human achievement. For them, the thing is to assert oneself. Consciousness of sin is eliminated and sorrow that one has offended God becomes quite out of place. Self-complacency is the inevitable result.
Again I must say that it is not humility that leads a man to set himself above such human observances. Of course the pretence is that God could not be interested in our small ways, and that they would have no meaning for Him. But it is against reason to say that God was sufficiently interested to create us and then lost all further interest in us. It is against reason to suggest that God would expect us to acknowledge Him in other than human ways according to the nature He gave us. And it is against reason to suggest that any word or gesture that has meaning for us would have no meaning for Him. He
If they returned to the Catholic religion and lived right up to it in practice all major world-troubles would be remedied, and many minor ones. The greatest service men can do the world today is to spread the Catholic Faith, awakening human beings to a sense of the need of God, teaching them the meaning of the world and of their own existence, and bringing them to the worship of God and to the supernatural life of grace and virtue. Only as the religious, spiritual and supernatural life affects individuals, families and the different nations will the world be redeemed from the miseries into which it has been plunged.
"THAT CATHOLIC CHURCH
A Radio Analysis"
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