How would you stop the decline in faith?

[AndrewAxland]

Give temporal power back to the church

The Popes had temporal power over central Italy for 1100 years. The results were not all that encouraging.

 

[Hodos]

Across the Western World Catholicism is falling back in terms of the percentage of population that claim to be part of the faith. What would you do to arrest the decline and ultimately to increase numbers?

I would constantly and consistently proclaim the problem of sin, man’s helplessness to deliver himself from the power of sin and death, and proclaim Christ crucified in our stead and resurrected in power, and that through his grace we are saved. I would build a community of faith on that foundation.

 

[Joey12]

The only answer is more Saints. There is no institutional way forward. We all have to return to the lessons in the Sermon on the Mount. Do things for the right reasons. Our good works should be public, our prayer and fasting should only be seen by the Father. We each need a relationship with the Father, in the Holy Spirit through Jesus.

I think we are all deaf to preaching now. The priesthood has lost legitimacy in the eyes if the general public. Rebirth will not come through them. They need to focus on the Sacraments and speak only if they have something of value to share. Even priests that I considered orthodox have run out of steam. Focus on Prayer, Study and Good Works. Study should be the easiest of the 3 as the whole world is now open to us. There are many good Catholic Bible Study courses and Catholic lectures appearing on Youtube. I’ve personally tried to start an Adult Education group in my Parish and only a handful of people were interested. I’ve been pondering how to light a fire of Faith in my community for decades but the reality is that the number of people who are interested in what is “beyond the veil” in my city is really, really small.

So let’s just all try to be Saints and not preachy hypocrites!

 

[Damian]

So religion is asking people to publicly shelve their moral assessments of what their deity has presented and to privately follow it with complete knowledge that they are being asked to have a moral code that they are morally against?
Don’t you first have to become convinced that something is a correct moral pathway before adopting it?
In reference to living the good life that religion is told it is supposed to do, you are describing religion to be leadership worship first and foremost. Then if it happens to be moral that is secondary, correct?
If not, could you clarify what you mean then? Because that seems to be a direct implication from what you wrote.

 

[Damian]

Is it the truth? According to @Augustinian it is leadership worship. If there is truth, it is irrelevant to following the leader’s commandments since they are describing religion to be where you shelve your moral assessment of the religion and its leader and just follow it.
Isn’t there current social understandings that are correct that are in direct conflict with the truth of this religion? If so, then how do you assess the truth of that?

 

[SeriousQuestion]

That’s not how religion works. It is more than just leading a moral life.