As some of you may know, I am a catechist, that is I am a person who catechizes, one who instructs catechumens in preparation for admission into the Catholic church. Catechumens are those who want to be admitted to the Church and who choose of their own free will to listen to a catechist (bless their hearts).
In my catechetical sessions I am very careful to point out that I will convey to the best of my ability only what the Church says about stuff, and if I am to present my opinion about something, or if I want to offer my interpretation of something the Church says, I will clearly designate it as my opinion. For example, the Church teaches that there are two things we know about the end of times: one, Christ will come again, and two, we don't know when that will be. That's it, that's all we know for certain. I can speculate all I want about the details, and I can even try to pick a date for the Second Coming as some people do, but that would be entirely my opinion. My thought falls clearly into the later category. In fact, it really may well be considered more of an anthropological than a theological observation.
Natural forces and events seem to run in waves. Throughout history, there are periods of war followed by periods of peace followed by periods of war. Trends in the arts rush in one direction and peak, then rush off in another direction to peak somewhere else. Areas that were poor become rich, then become poor, then become rich again and again. Empires are built, decline and are built somewhere else. Some of these things can occur relatively quickly (like fashion trends), some can take decades or even centuries to play out (like the rise and fall of empires). I suggest that there might be one of these cycles that is longer, deeper and more fundamental to all of these, and it occurred to me as I was looking at a picture I took in Japan
The Japanese are the most nonreligious people in the world. Almost 90% of them would say they are either agnostics or atheists. They do not appear to be particularly anti-religious people. In my encounters with them, they are very tolerant of other people's beliefs. Nor because they do not espouse any religious beliefs are they immoral or amoral people. Indeed, Japan has one of the most honest and orderly societies on the planet. I think however they are what most of the world will become -- a society that chooses not to believe in God.
Europe is well on its way to the same state. The vast majority of Europeans now have no regular participation in a church. They still like to identify themselves as one thing or another, but I think that is because they have had hundreds of years of being Catholic or Lutheran or some other Christian denomination. Give them another generation or two or three, and their children or grandchildren will be far enough removed from religious practice that even these vestigial associations will disappear.
I think maybe what we are seeing is the ebbing of the wave of religion, and I think we have seen it before. The Garden of Eden stories in Jewish literature tells of the first time that man opted out. Similarly Noah's generation had a reputation for being nonreligious. In the generations following Christ's crucifixion, Israel would be destroyed, Rome would be brought to its knees, and the world would decline into ignorance and violence that lasted for more than 600 years.
I think that the ebb of religion in our world will continue, maybe quickly, maybe over the next 100 or 200 years, leading to a cataclysm, either natural or man-made, and that will remind man of his place in the scheme of things and renew his search for what is good.
Of course by then I'll be dead, and I will know for sure whether or not I was a nut case.
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