It's not just the economy, but still . . .

There are certainly other, even more fundamental issues besides the economy, such as the fact that people have forgotten God, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said in his Harvard University address decades ago after being exiled from the U.S.S.R.

Still, the economy is to religion a bit like the brain is to the mind, or like the body is to the soul, a sort of corporeal life support system. Without it, the New Evangelization has no corporeal vehicles to preach the Gospel.

The gravity of the current situation is made crystal clear by Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, shows [http://youtu.be/Xwv5EbxXSmE].

Then, too, one recalls how the material collapse of civilizations in times past -- certainly as recorded in the Old Testament -- was often a consequence of God's judgment upon spiritual apostasy, i.e., "whoring after false Gods."

[Hat tip to C.B.]