2 main factors that have contributed to the loss of religious practice in the modern world
1st: Philosophical trends, especially the Enlightenment thinkers (Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, and Kant), who sought to reset European culture on a common rational footing divorced from confessional theological norms (especially in response to the wars of religion)… [and they] emphasized the centrality of observational science, individual free thought, and dissociation of civic society from dependence on the Church” (36). And post-Enlightenment philosophers (Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzche, Freud) who generated “secular” theories of why people are religious and how to account for belief in God. As a result, they severed the philosophical bridge of the mind back to God, which classical culture (both Hellenistic and Christian) had spent time building (35).
2nd: The concomitant rise of political secularism, “that is to say, a prohibition of reference to divine revelation, or even to religious belief in general, in the public domain” (38).
The Church’s Response to Modern Agnosticism and Atheism
The Catholic “both-and” of grace and nature, revelation and reason, theology and philosophy, Church and natural state, were embodied in this response to the challenges of early modernity. 41
In the First Vatican Council (1870) decree Dei Filius, in response to atheistic materialism and theoretical agnosticism, Catholic belief was stated as reasonable. God can not only be known with certainty from the consideration of created things (cf. Rom 1:20), but out of His goodness, revealed to us supernatural things so that everyone can know with certainty and without error of our supernatural end to share in God’s life. This gift of supernatural revelation is contained in Scripture and Tradition.
“The mystery of Christianity has a place in public culture precisely because it is the true revealed religion, which grants ultimate perspective on reality and facilitates intellectual friendship with God, and because human beings are moved by their inner nature to seek the truth about God, which in turn affects their capacity to live in harmony with one another” (42-3).
To undertake an authentic, rational search to know and understand God, certain cultural conditions are of great assistance. Let us focus on two most especially:
- The first condition is the cultural interest in the search for God. A culture of faith is so important for purity and health of human reason. The saints prove this.
- The second condition is the creative preservation of the theological and philosophical heritage of Catholic Christianity, such that the Christian understanding of God is made intelligible and meaningful in academic venues.
Prodigal Catholic 