The problem goes deeper than difficult doctrines or antiquated structures, problematic though these may sometimes be. Our children and grandchildren are abandoning the faith because they perceive--rightly--that its demands are at fundamental variance with the lives we have prepared them to lead. We have raised them to seek lives characterized by material comfort, sexual fulfillment, and freedom from any obligations that they have not personally chosen. Should it surprise us that they fail to take seriously our claims to follow one who embraced poverty, chastity, and obedience to the will of God? ~ a quote from the WaPo used in Lawrence Auster's "Should the Church Follow Society, or Society Follow the Church?"Still in the shadow of the deeply diabolical French Revolution, Western man is totally stultified by electronics: TV, the Internet, video games, and pornography. He views the state as a provider and saddles up to the trough.
Freedom? That's a burden. The common man thinks only in clichés, which is to say he doesn't do much thinking though is under the delusion he does.
But the mores of the modern age--"practical materialism" as diagnosed brilliantly by my Catholic mentor Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn in his 1999 Human Life Review article (He wrote one in 1992 that's similar in the same mag.) "Europe Without Vitality"--leads only to the cul-de-sac of demographic demise.
Having four children has ruined my life in the best way imaginable. But from a hedonistic standpoint, it's been an unqualified disaster, which may explain the sharp increase in couples opting to be, in the old diction, "barren by choice."
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