I have a theory (just that) on other factors that have turned folks away from God. When the calf is fat, people feed freely and forget God. When drought and famine arrive, they immediately turn eyes heavenward to plead for God's mercy. Recall that proud generation that served God and country during WWII. These young men were coming off the great Recession. When they returned, they were grateful to God and accompanied their families to church on Sunday, as proud Americans and catholics. We are their progeny. Our parents wanted the best for us. How many young men from our generation went off to serve in VietNam and never returned. And those that did, were never given the proper honor they deserved.
I mention all this because it reminds me of an old expression. There is the generation that builds up the fortune and the next one that spends it. Sadly, many from our generation did just that. They have enacted so many laws and grown government to the point of dependency. Rare is the individual who prays to God when the government is doling out. After a while, people simply expect the government to take care of them - not God.
I can't wait until this Pope puts the hammer down on these Rogue Bishops and priests who have descrated the Catholic Church and Religion. This house cleaning and purge will cause the ranks of the priesthoos to begin to swell.
Some of these bishops were intentionally planted by Archbishop Jadot. There are two, right here in NY, who have employed a slash and burn policy of shutting down parishes, while packing their seminaries with homosexuals. As a result, the number of priests has aged and there are few new recruits. Solution? Grow lay ministers. These lay people feel quite emboldened by their new 'powers'. Mercifully, I have a refuge in the Maronite Catholic Church, with one very solid and orthodox priest. His greatest frustration is getting parishioners to attend liturgy. We're working on it :-).
I'll step down from my soapbox now. Thanks for your input and feedback.
I think you're right. Another thing that few people recall was that there was, among a certain group of our generation, a sort of nostalgia for the socialist/communist wave of the 1930s. I went to one of NYC's specialized high schools, and most of my classmates were the children of people who had either been flat-out Communists or at least what was known as "comsymps" during the 1930's-40's. They had to duck and run during the anti-Communist 1950's, but in the meantime, a lot of them had gone on to become quite successful in the evil capitalist world, particularly in the entertainment industry, law and broadcasting; they had, of course, abandoned their revolutionary purity, but they still talked a good game, and their kids were listening.
The chaos of the 1960's, stimulated by them and others their age and carried out by their children and other people my age, was the fulfillment of their fantasies.
And all these many years later, we are still living with this. We have an "intellectual class" that inhabits not only the universities but the media and the legal field and has nothing but hatred for the US, the West in general, and Christianity in particular.
Somewhere along the line, they got into the Church - partly through the vanity of those who wanted to consider themselves hip and cool, but possibly also through Gramsci's strategy of planting communists and radicals in seminaries and grooming them to take over when the time was ripe. Modernists and Communists have the same goals, ultimately, and I think the strange confluence of events, coupled with the sudden relaxation of governance, gave them their opening.
And I have always wondered about Msgr. Jadot, who was responsible for some of the worst appointments in modern history. He obviously had an agenda, but nobody has ever looked at him very closely, and it would be interesting to know more about him.
As for our Pope Benedict XVI, may God grant him many years! (And much courage!)