Second in a two-part series on a Pew Study about why young people are leaving the active practice of Christianity. Part one looked at, first, the relationship between religion and science and, second, the dismissive “psychologizing” of beliefs. In this second part, Bishop Barron examines two more reasons young people offered in the study for “walking away from Christianity.” His analysis of the source of the problem, included in part one, is reprinted here in the first two paragraphs.
For the past 50 years or so, Christian thinkers have largely abandoned the art of apologetics and have failed (here I offer a j’accuse to many in the Catholic universities) to resource the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition in order to hold off critics of the faith. I don’t blame the avatars of secularism for actively attempting to debunk Christianity; that’s their job, after all.