A Catholic Group Movement?

Extract

There probably never was a time in the history of the Church when it was not true to say that the great thing needed was a well-instructed laity. To say that the need to-day is for teaching is trite, yet there is a sense in which it is perhaps unprecedentedly urgent that there should be teaching, and more and better teaching of the Faith than there ever was before. For there certainly never was a time when there was so much and such unescapable teaching going on about everything but the Faith, and against the Faith. The competition for human attention is so clamorous that many minds are simply stunned by it and rush headlong into the thing that gives them the best emotional outlet without ever stopping to think at all.

It is not easy to make people think in these days, because of a habit of superficiality and unreceptiveness which is partly the result of an instinctive mental self-defence in this welter of conflicting propaganda. The sermon has largely lost its appeal and its power, not because people are hardened but because their minds are so full of the clamour and racket that they have lost the power of attention. The people with a definite need may hear in Church or on a C.E.G. pitch something that answers to their need, but the majority, who are not making any particular demand of their religion, may never develop the knowledge they acquired at school or when they were instructed.