Looking for a quote

[acadian]

I think it might be Fulton Sheen, but I’m not positive…

Something along the lines of

One generation doesn’t practice their faith…and the next generation doesn’t believe in God…

Or we are only one generation away from atheism…

Anyone?

 

[jimmy]

I think it might be Fulton Sheen, but I’m not positive…

Something along the lines of

One generation doesn’t practice their faith…and the next generation doesn’t believe in God…

Or we are only one generation away from atheism…

Anyone?

I have heard Scott Hahn say something like the first version.

 

[empther]

I doubt that Bishop Sheen ever said that as so written. He was optimistic and expected a growth in belief.

This article suggests that the atheist “religion” doesn’t sustain itself:

blog.adw.org/2012/07/did-you-know-that-atheists-have-the-lowest-retention-rate-of-any-religious-group-some-interesting-data-from-cara/

I remember the venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen observing many years ago that “Atheism is acquired.” In other words, no one is born an atheist, and atheism is not natural to the human person. Even the most casual observer of the human scene must accept that belief in God, is a natural and ubiquitous human trait. It therefore makes sense that Atheism, while a phase many pass through, it not usually an enduring state. We are spiritual by nature and “wired” to see beyond the merely physical, to the metaphysical, beyond the merely material to the mystical.

The catechism of the Catholic Church says,

The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for (#27)
Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.”5 Although man can forget God or reject him, He never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find life and happiness. (# 30)
The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. the soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”,9 can have its origin only in God. (# 33)