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THE Ut 'IHE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S
MiON Or GEORGIA
DECEMBER 11. 1954.
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U, $, Bishops Emphasize: Godless
Materialism Is The Evil, But
Renewed Faith In God The Cure
ST. JOSEPH'S CHURCH—Pictured here is the Church of
St. Joseph, Waycross.
(N.C.W.C. News Service)
WASHINGTON, — The threat
of atheistic materialism, “a tyran
ny already imposed upon a bil
lion souls.” can. be combatted in
this ination by renewing “our
Faith in God and in His Christ”
and by clinging again “to that
Christian moral code which is
the American way of life at its
purest and its best,” the Ameri
can Hierarchy has declared.
The nation’s Cardinals, Arch
bishops and Bishops sounded the
warning and prescribed the an
tidote in their statement released
at the close of their annual meet
ing here in the nation’s capital.
The title of the 1954 statement
is “Victory—Our Faith.”
The Bishops emphasized that
the tyranny of atheistic materi
alism can come in the form of
communism or as godless human
ism. They said: “We need, first
of all, to identify our enemy; to
recognize it for what it really is.”
And they warned: “If our nation
is to escape the fate of Poland and
of China, of Yugoslavia and of
Hungary, anci of so many others,
if we are to survive as a free
Christian nation, then we must
be clear-eyed and we must be
strong.”
Material strength, the Bishops
reminded, is a necessity, but “like
physical vision,” it is not enough.
The Bishops said: “This resources
and our masterly technical skills
will avail us nothing unless we
are a people strong in the faith
that gives purpose to action, and
in the morality . which fosters
discipline and courage. The true
strength of a Christian nation
is in the power of God which out
weights all force of arms.”
The Bishops said that in recent
times the drift from God and from
the spiritual way of life has weak
ened this country. They observed
that in the last few years, there
has been a rise in church member
ship, “but in the light of other
evidence, one is forced to ques
tion how significant such mere
statistics may be.”
“Indeed, the trend in public
and private morality has been
downward; there is an alarming
disregard in practice for God’s
teaching and for God’s law,” the
Bishops asserted. “Is there any
need to instance the growing evils
in family life, the lustful self-
indulgence which leads from
birth prevention to divorce, from
broken homes to the lives of
youthful delinquents? Need we
adduce in evidence the appalling
circulation of indecent literature,
and the low moral level of so
much of the public entertainment
in these days?”
The Bishops said it “is not that
the existence of God is expressly
or generally denied; it is rather
that so many men ignore Him and
His law in their absorption with
the material world which He
created.” There is no deliberate
turning away from God but “an
excessive preoccupation with cre
atures,” the members of the Hi
erarchy declared.
“This form of materialism re
veals itself as secularism in poli
tics and government, as avarice in
business and in the professions,
and as paganism in the personal
lives and relations of all too many
men and women,” the statement
declared.
Materialism has brought about
a decline in the influence of re
ligion upon American life and has
caused “confusion in our think
ing and a sort of paralysis of the
national will,” the statement con
tinued. The Bishops said history
clearly attests that unless “we ar
rest this religious decline, unless
we push back the domestic inva
sion of materialism, we shall not
be able ... to withstand the
enemy from without.” Material
ism is the real enemy, both at
home and abroad, the Bishops
said.
The Bishops said this nation
needs, first of all, faith - in God
because faith is the first essen
tial of human living. Faith is
the key to knowledge of the high
est and noblest character, the
statement asserted, for by “faith,
we iiso above the things of earth
and of time and glimpse the
things of heaven and of eternity.”
“The Western world, with its
law of fraternal charity and its
humane culture,” the Bishops de
clared, “was created by this Faith
in God and in His Son, Jesus
Christ. At its best, our civiliza
tion was the fine flowering of
the Christian Faith. Now that
the West has fallen from its
former greatness, let us recognize
that it is because so many have
fallen away from the Faith, or
have denatured it by dilution and
compromise. We have fallen
down before the idols of flesh and
of gold. It is not the True Faith
that has failed us; it is we who
have failed the Faith. A week and
vacillating Christianity, a partial,
truncated Christianity, paying lip
service to God and to the spirit,
but devoted in practice to man
and to matter, can never triumph
in the battle with total, deter
mined materialism.
“Our nation, if it is to survive,
must recover and renew its
Christian Faith,” the statement
concluded. “Here alone can we
find purpose to end the present
confusion; strength instead of
weakness; a dynamic zeal to over
come the difficulties of life; an
uplifting soul-stirring motive for
the fight to the death against the
total materialist enemy. In the
sign of Christ’s Cross our ances
tors in the Faith conquered the
ancient paganism and gave man
kind the golden ages of the Chris
tian era. We in our day shall
conquer the new paganism, athe-
i'tsic materialism, in the same
triumphant sign.”
“The greatest tribute that the
world can pay to Christians is the
fierce persecution of hate . . . Men
build colossal dams to obstruct
only mighty rivers; they make
use of fearsome weapons of de
struction only against an enemy
with a tremendous potential. So
too, they rage with, relentless hate
only against the love that is
strong as eternity.”—Simon Wood,
C. P., in The Sign.
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