As Christians today we find ourselves in a completely secularized society. Pope St. John Paul II in his teaching on the mission of the lay faithful in the world reminded us, in an unmistakable manner, that many today, even in what were once Christian countries, live as though they have no relationship with God and no knowledge of His plan for us and for our world. To remedy the situation, the saintly pontiff observed, “a mending of the Christian fabric of society is urgently needed in all parts of the world.” He hastened to add that if the remedy is to be achieved, the Church herself must be evangelized anew.
Fundamental to understanding the radical secularization of our culture is to understand also how much the secularization has also entered into the life of the Church. In the words of Pope John Paul II, “But for this mending of the Christian fabric of society to come about, what is needed is to first remake the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself present in these countries and nations.”
In a similar vein, Pope Benedict XVI in his 2010 Christmas Address to the Roman curia, reflecting on the grave evils which are destroying us as individuals and as a society, and which have generated a culture deeply marred by violence and death, described a relativism in contemporary moral theology called proportionalism or consequentialism, which has generated profound confusion and outright errors regarding the most fundamental truths of the moral law. It has led to a situation which, in his words, “morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process, it ceases to exist.”
If, therefore, the irreplaceable moral order, which is the way of our freedom and happiness, is to be restored, we must address with clarity and steadfastness the error of moral relativism, proportionalism, and consequentialism, which permeates our culture and has also entered, as Pope Benedict XVI reminded us, into the Church. – from a speech given at Thomas Aquinas College [1] on January 16, 2016