QUOTATION: Deists

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.

--Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock

QUOTATION: American Secularism

Perhaps America’s brand of secularism poses a particular problem: it allows for professing belief in God, and respects the public role of religion and the Churches, but at the same time it can subtly reduce religious belief to a lowest common denominator. Faith becomes a passive acceptance that certain things 'out there' are true, but without practical relevance for everyday life. The result is a growing separation of faith from life: living 'as if God did not exist'. This is aggravated by an individualistic and eclectic approach to faith and religion: far from a Catholic approach to 'thinking with the Church', each person believes he or she has a right to pick and choose, maintaining external social bonds but without an integral, interior conversion to the law of Christ. Consequently, rather than being transformed and renewed in mind, Christians are easily tempted to conform themselves to the spirit of this age. We have seen this emerge in an acute way in the scandal given by Catholics who promote an alleged right to abortion.

--Pope Benedict XVI, during his Apostolic Visit to the US, 2008

QUOTATION: Practical Atheism

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.

--Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock

QUOTATION: Our Pagan World

Even as the first disciples faced a pagan world which had not even heard of our Lord Jesus Christ, so, we, too face a culture which is forgetful of God and hostile to His law.

--Cardinal Raymond Burke

QUOTATION: God is the fundamental question

But the question of the interior life is being more sharply raised today than in several periods less troubled than ours. The explanation of this interest lies in the fact that many men have separated themselves from God and tried to organize intellectual and social life without Him. The great problems that have always preoccupied humanity have taken on a new and sometimes tragic aspect. To wish to get along without God, first Cause and last End, leads to an abyss; not only to nothingness, but also to physical and moral wretchedness that is worse than noth­ingness. Likewise, great problems grow exasperatingly serious, and man must finally perceive that all these problems ultimately lead to the fundamental religious problem; in other words, he will finally have to declare himself entirely for God or against Him. This is in its essence the problem of the interior life. Christ Himself says: "He that is not with Me is against Me." (5)

--Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

QUOTATION: Practical Atheism

Again and again we encounter the signs of an alternative civilization to that built on Christ as “cornerstone”-- a civilization which, even if not explicitly atheist, is at least positivistic and agnostic, since it is built upon the principle of thinking and acting as if God did not exist. This approach can easily be recognized in the modern so-called scientific, or rather, scientist, mentality, and it can be recognized in literature, especially the mass media. To live as if God did not exist means to live outside the parameters of good and evil, outside the context of values derived from God. It is claimed that man himself can decide what it good or bad.

--Pope John Paul II, Memory and Identity, 2005

QUOTATION: Putting God First

Matthew and Luke recount the three temptations of Jesus that reflect the inner struggle over his own particular mission and, at the same time, address the question as to what truly matters in human life. At the heart of all temptations, as we see here, is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and the material, while setting God aside as an illusion—that is the temptation that threatens us in many varied forms.

Moral posturing is part and parcel of that temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil—no, that would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves in the work of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moreover, to speak for true realism: what’s real is what’s right there in front of us—power and bread. By comparison, the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one needs.

God is the issue: Is he real, reality itself, or isn’t he? Is he good, or do we have to invent good ourselves? The God question is the fundamental question, and it sets us down right at the crossroads of human existence.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth.

QUOTATION: Practical Atheism

What does it avail to know that there is a God, which you not only believe by Faith, but also know by reason: what does it avail that you know Him if you think little of Him?

--St. Thomas More