Who's to blame for the marginalization of Christians?
No doubt secularists have their part in this phenomenon.
But ultimately it's our own damned fault.
For a number of reasons.
We have not upheld our faith in the public square. We have not argued for objective truth, natural law, the reasonableness of faith and Christianity.
No, wouldn't want to upset our opponents, now, would we?
And ultimately, we have not gone out and made converts.
Let this be the lesson of the 20th and 21st centuries:
If we do not make converts, if we do not argue and persuade, through the mind and through the heart, we will lose ground.
We did not want to make converts in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
It's not even a question of you reap what you sow. If you don't reap, you don't sow.
We just assumed the ambient culture would transmit Christianity by itself.
We also assumed that mushy and/or post-modern Christianity was the key to attracting people to the Church.
How's that workin' for you, professional Catholics?
Fr. Raymond Gravel says if the Church does not adopt pro-homosexual values, that it will die.
Here's a prime example of someone who is so blinded by his ideology, he has completely failed to learn from history.
The Church has compromised, and compromised and compromised with the contemporary culture.
And the more we compromise, we the more we sink.
The best predictor of future results is past results.
I know people might think that the forays of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI represent a step back in the Church.
But the truth is, on the ground, a lot of what they say is routinely ignored.
It's liberal dissent as usual in the local churches.
And their compromises is what has led to the decline to the Church.
Reason 1: because it's intellectual and spiritual pap
And, maybe more importantly, Reason 2: because you can get it elsewhere.
If you do not need the Church to get secular values, why would you even go there?
Compromising with the world has done nothing for us.
So the obvious solution to it all is to stop compromising.
The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
It's time for the Church to grow a spine and go back to the basics.
And not just the Gospel basics. The phrase "back to basics" can be misconstrued to mean teach barebones Gospel as if to a bunch of second graders.
By "back to basics" I mean all those areas of knowledge that make up the intellectual edifice of the Catholic fath: not just Scripture, but Thomistic metaphysics, Church Fathers, apologetics, Papal encyclicals and the Catechism; all the things that every educated Catholic should be familiar with and accept.
It's a tall order. Really, it takes a genuinely Catholic school to do this; this should be learned in the formative years, especially in the upper years of high school, when one is ready for the headier aspects of our faith.
Because once you lose the kids, it's tough to get them back.
And it's tough to make converts when you don't even teach your own youth.
Conservative Catholics have been saying this for years, and those who have implemented this have seen some success.
But no, no, the lib-left thinks it can just compromise just a little more, maybe the world will like us a little better, and people will come back.
It doesn't work that way people.
The world will always dislike us. It's our job to convince people to think our way. Because otherwise, we marginalize ourselves. We either convince, or we lose. There is no middle ground.
