Decline of British Catholicism

John Haldane, "God doesn’t guarantee that the British Church will last" (Christendom Awake), offers a depressing account of the decline of contemporary British Catholicism. Haldane identifies three features of British Catholicism that suggest loss of faith:

• a pervasive inclination to neo-pelagianism
• becoming sentimentalist about matters that call for hard, reasoned thought, and
• becoming accommodationist, preoccupied with means of forestalling secular criticism, rather than engaging confidently with it, in part by means of ingratiating ourselves with dominant groups and classes.

Haldane concludes:

The decline of Catholicism in Britain will continue until such time as it is defended and promoted for what it is, not a social teaching or a cultural lifestyle, but the truth that without grace we cannot be saved, that grace comes by Christ’s salvation, and that what Christ himself taught is that no one comes to the Father save through Him. Serious re-education in this teaching, through home, school and parish, would transform the condition of Catholicism in Britain and equip it to embark on the necessary tasks of engaging the faithless, and missioning to the unfaithful.

[Hat tip to E.E.]