Much fuss yesterday about an enormous (36, 000 people,) study done on attitudes toward religion, it was the lead story on some of the evening network news programs.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h8ftb8lipCc_XqwfUp0PLhdQGYTwD91FUT6O0
It was spun as demonstrating how "tolerant" Americans are, but even a perfunctory glance shows that what it demonstrates is ignorance.
To whit: 21 percent of self-identified atheists said they believe in God or a universal spirit.
Archbishop Chaput, as usual, nails it: "The statistics show, more than anything else, that many who describe themselves as Catholics do not know or understand the teachings of their church," said Denver Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput. "Being Catholic means believing what the Catholic church teaches. It is a communion of faith, not simply of ancestry and family tradition. It also means that the church ought to work harder at evangelizing its own members."
Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...
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In our new neighborhood, taking a brief respite from unpacking at the community pool, the boys and I met a woman and her two boys there this afternoon.
She happily told me about her church (some sort of non-denominational protestant church) that they had found after moving here from New Jersey. In the next breath she mentioned that, prior to that, the entire family had been "devout" Catholics. This actually left me a bit speechless... what to say to someone who obviously doesn't understand or believe in the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist? How else could the entire family have left, I asked myself? That she would have labelled herself "devout" truly astounded me.
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