One interesting thing about alcohol is that it is soluble in water. So, for example, if one part methanol (fuel) is mixed with two parts water, the methanol is dissolved enough to the point that it can’t ignite. To extinguish a methanol fire, you can dilute it with about nine parts water for one part methanol.
The Catholic Faith is like alcohol in this regard. If you water it down… and water down the teaching… and water down the rituals and liturgies, eventually it loses its flammability and become inert in the culture.
And that’s where we are today. People don’t know and understand their faith anymore. It has become “watered-down” with sappy, humanistic ideas, and because of that, Christianity today no longer moves the nations to pursue a higher plane of existence for its people. This milquetoast version is, in the aggregate, incapable of inflaming souls and driving them to higher virtue.
Don’t believe me? Just look at art today. Compare it to 500 years ago. Or look at the new church buildings with their banal, open, community-focused ugly architecture and compare it to churches made even as little as a century ago, where art, beauty, regalness, strength and acoustics were all prominent factors in design.
This is why today, perhaps more than ever, we have to make the time to learn our Faith and put it in to practice. It’s no longer good enough to simply live in the culture and absorb it passively. No, we have to transform the culture.