Urban Decline from the Industrial Revolution

The religious situation before the War was being disrupted also.

The two Christian denominations maintained missions in Asia and Africa for securing new adherents to the Faith.

Yet they were losing millions of adherents at home in Europe.

The progress made by these missions in spreading the Christian Faith abroad was only quite modest compared with the spread of Islam.

The attack on the dogmatic principles underlying ecclesiastical teaching increased steadily in violence.

Yet this human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief.

The great masses of a nation are not composed of philosophers.

For the masses of the people, especially faith is absolutely the only basis of a moral outlook on life.

The various substitutes that have been offered have not shown any results to warrant usefully replacing the existing denominations.

But if religious teaching and religious faith were once accepted by the broad masses as active forces in their lives, then the absolute authority of the doctrines of faith would be the foundation of all practical effort.

There may be a few hundreds of thousands of superior men who can live wisely and intelligently without depending on the general standards that prevail in everyday life, but the millions of others cannot do so.

The place which general custom fills in everyday life corresponds to that of general laws in the State and dogma in religion. The purely spiritual idea is of itself a changeable thing that may be subjected to endless interpretations.

It is only through dogma that it is given a precise and concrete form without which it could not become a living faith.

Otherwise the spiritual idea would never become anything more than a mere metaphysical concept, or rather a philosophical opinion.

Accordingly, the attack against dogma is comparable to an attack against the general laws on which the State is founded.

This attack would lead to complete political anarchy if it were successful, just as the attack on religion would lead to a worthless religious nihilism.

The political leader should estimate a religion’s worth by asking himself whether there is any practical substitute which is demonstrably better. Until such a substitute be available only fools and criminals would think of abolishing the existing religion.

The present unsatisfactory religious situation can be blamed on those who have encumbered the ideal of religion with purely material accessories. This has led to an utterly futile conflict between religion and science.

In this conflict, victory will nearly always be on the side of science.

Religion will suffer heavily in the eyes of those who cannot penetrate beneath the mere superficial aspects of science.

But the greatest damage is the debasement of religion as a means to serve political and commercial interests.

The impudent and loud-mouthed liars who do this make their profession of faith before the whole world in stentorian tones so that all poor mortals may hear–not that they are ready to die for it if necessary but rather that they may live all the better.

They are ready to sell their faith for any political QUID PRO QUO.

For 10 parliamentary mandates or a seat in the Cabinet, they would ally themselves with the Marxists, who are the mortal foes of all religion.

For , they would go the length of wedlock with the devil, if the latter had not still retained some traces of decency.

Religious life in pre-war Germany was disagreeable to many people because:

• Christianity had been lowered to base uses by ‘Christian’ political parties.
• some tried to identify the Catholic Faith with a political party.

This substitution was fatal.

It procured some worthless parliamentary mandates for the Catholic party, but the Church suffered damage thereby.

The consequences of that situation had to be borne by the whole nation; for the laxity that resulted

The laxity in religious life allowed traditional foundations and morals to lose hold and fall.