Pope on post-V II "desert without God," and new signs of life

In his recent Address to the Bishops of Brazil on their Ad Limina visit at the Papal Summer Residence, Castel Gandolfo, on September 7, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI made what is perhaps the frankest admission yet that the post-conciliar period has been disastrous for the Church:

Beloved Brothers, in the decades that followed the Second Vatican Council, some have interpreted openness to the world not as a requirement of the missionary zeal of the Heart of Christ, but rather as a passage to secularization... They were unconsciously caught up in the self - secularization of many ecclesial communities...

Today there is a new generation born into this secularized ecclesial context. Instead of showing openness and consensus, it sees the abyss of differences and opposition to the Magisterium of the Church growing ever wider, especially in the field of ethics. In this desert without God, the new generation feels a deep thirst for transcendence. (emphasis added)

One example of an apostolate that seems to be mounting a counter-cultural effort to quench this thirst and to plant flowers of faith and hope in this "desert without God" is The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and its affiliate organization, Keep the Faith, which aims to promote a "traditional, robust, missionary, and world-changing Roman Catholicism." In a recent promotional mailing from the organization, Fr. Francis Piro, S.T.L. writes:

You know from our previous letters that www.keepthefaith.org is the world's largest Internet source for traditional Catholic audio and video content covering every aspect of the Catholic Faith and its application to political, moral, and social problems.

You also know that Keep the Faith provides seminarians, priests, and religious with special accounts that allow them to have unlimited access to all the content at keepthefaith.org on a 24/7 basis, absolutely free of charge, and that they can download, reproduce, and distribute this content without limitation, all over the world.

But here is what you don't know: The other day, in going over our "web traffic" figures, I learned that more than five hundred seminarians have free accounts at www.keepthefaith.org. With the post-Vatican II decline in vocations, that represents ten percent of all the seminarians in America.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, with his interest in using modern communications technologies for purposes of evangilization, would be smiling his approval.