First the diagnosis, then the cure – Catholic World Report

Fewer Catholics are attending Mass. Fewer Catholics accept the Church’s teaching about the Eucharist, about the sanctity of unborn life, about the Christian’s responsibility to the poor and suffering, about marriage, about Jesus as the only way to abundant life. This is old news. The reasons offered for this phenomenon are numerous: the Enlightenment provoked a long descent into materialism and nihilism; Vatican II was ill-advised; the “spirit” of Vatican II hijacked the Church in the wake of the Council; socialism or communism or capitalism or the clergy abuse scandal is the culprit. More old news. Materialism—the universe and man are merely matter and energy, there is no God or eternal soul. Nihilism—moral choices are evolutionary or sociological or psychological phenomena. Call these “isms” whatever you want; atheism and relativism; skepticism and hedonism. Philosophical precision is less important than the practical consequences of people adopting these perspectives. Few today who are informed and live by materialism and/or nihilism know what these words mean, though they think and act according to these creeds when their choices are guided by a conviction that we’re only atoms, or ergs in a cosmic force (like the Star Wars Force), when accomplishing anything good is just a man-made enterprise, when how they feel about something determines how they act. To see what materialism and nihilism look like on a national scale, see modern China, except there “virtue’ is determined by the regime. Materialism and nihilism have been around since before the time of Christ. There isn’t a period in recorded history when these perspectives did not have their champions. The Enlightenment, the Industrial Age, and the Information Age dispersed these perspectives more widely, but not until the twentieth century did materialism and nihilism begin to dominate societies around the world.

First the diagnosis, then the cure – Catholic World Report