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US Bishop Laments "Post-Christian" World

By Howard M. Friedman

In a strongly worded address delivered to the Canon Law Association of Slovakia on Tuesday (full text), Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput argued that events in both the United States and Europe "suggest an emerging, systematic discrimination against the Church that now seems inevitable." Here are a few excerpts:

In general, Catholics have thrived in the United States. The reason is simple. America has always had a broadly Christian and religion-friendly moral foundation, and our public institutions were established as non-sectarian, not antireligious.
 
At the heart of the American experience is an instinctive ?biblical realism.? From our Protestant inheritance we have always ? at least until now -- understood that sin is real, and men and women can be corrupted by power and prosperity. Americans have often been tempted to see our nation as uniquely destined, or specially anointed by God. But in the habits of daily life, we have always known that the ?city of God? is something very distinct from the ?city of man.? And we are wary of confusing the two.....
 
Today, in an era of global interconnection, the challenges that confront Catholics in America are much the same as in Europe: We face an aggressively secular political vision and a consumerist economic model that result ? in practice, if not in explicit intent -- in a new kind of state encouraged atheism.....

This vision presumes a frankly "post-Christian" world ruled by rationality, technology and good social engineering. Religion has a place in this worldview, but only as an individual lifestyle accessory

LifeSite News yesterday reported on the speech.

Full post as published by Religion Clause on August 26, 2010 (boomark / email).