In so-called modern so-called democracies, we celebrate or bewail the so-called decline and death of religion.

Meanwhile, what are others saying?

Here are a couple of quotes made recently in a speech by Cardinal George Pell.

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(1) From Zhao Xiao, currently Professor of Economics, Beijing University of Science and Technology:

“These days, Chinese people do not believe in anything. They don’t believe in God. They don’t believe in the devil. They don’t believe in Providence. They don’t believe in the Last Judgement — to say nothing about heaven. A person who believes in nothing can only believe in himself. And self-belief implies that anything is possible — what do lies, cheating, harm and swindling matter?”

Many well-educated Australians would say that’s OK — one can devise and live by a real code of ethics without bringing God into it.

Sometimes it takes somebody from outside — who has experienced the cruel reality of godless society — to remind us how lucky we are still having remnants of Catholic culture in our society.

And how stupidly self-destroying we would be to neglect that Faith

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(2) From Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz:

“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Christianity bothers modern trend-setters by its insistence that some things are good and others are evil . . . .

That we can’t turn our backs on God, the source of all good, without making our souls unfit to be with God in Eternity . . . .

Something we’ll have the whole of Eternity to grieve over in painful, never-ending remorse.

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The Catholic Faith teaches that we can, in this life, attain real friendship with God:

* step one:  Use your will power. Force yourself to quit all bad and self-indulgent actions.

* step two:  Stop using your will power. Say, “Lord, I’ve gone as far as I can go in my own power.  Over-power and replace my every sinful thought — so that I may persevere in making my every action pleasing to you.”

Remember and aspire to what Saint Paul wrote, “No longer do I live, but Christ lives in me.”  (Galatians, chapter 2)