If a person said he was Muslim, yet also told you that he does not believe in the prophet of his religion, could you really take him seriously? Perhaps not. Or if somebody told you he was a supporter of such or such party at an election, yet didn’t vote at all, could you really trust his sincerity? The answer is again No.
Yet, this is precisely the kind of situation in which France finds itself now. When asked if they believe in the Resurrection, only 10 % of the population would answer yes. This figure can be understandable at the population level, given the strongly secular state combined with the traditional Western agnosticism and atheism. But when this figure with regards to those who claim to be Catholics is no higher than 13 %, we may start wondering that there is something wrong. Even those who practice regularly are no more than 56% to believe in the Resurrection. Even more frightening is the fact that Catholics as a whole are more to wish either a reincarnation or ‘something unspecified’, or wish that there were nothing at all, than those who wish a Resurrection.
France, once ‘the daughter of the Church,’ is now rather the daughter of a modern nihilism, the product of sorrow and fear. And sadly, I do not believe that things will get too much better, given the incapacity of the modernized Church to appeal to the people and transmit its message of hope and salvation.
Paul Poston
I think Western Christianity as a whole is kind of moving toward secularism. While I don’t like it (I’m a Christian baptist that believes in the resurrection [which is pretty important to our faith]), it seems like that is happened. Even recent poll in the United States show that most people are reaching toward a secular point of view. This is a sad shift in history of the world…
Silentiarius
The subject did not arouse only calm comments as Paul’s. If you are interested in them, you can read them at https://www.ellopos.com/blog/874/christians-without-hope/ That discussion made me see again a sad phenomenon, how much people may go on to various judgments without taking our centuries-long history into account.