Denver, Colo., Aug 8, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Denver’s Archbishop Charles Chaput, who made headlines during last fall’s presidential election for speaking out on the role that U.S. Catholics should play in government and public life, warned in his recent column about a “growing hostility to the Christian faith” which he says is right in the U.S.’s backyard.
In the column, which appeared in this week’s Denver Catholic Register, the archbishop discusses the fall of Christian culture in Europe, which, he wrote, inspired much of the great European art, music, philosophy and architecture of the last 15 centuries.
He notes that this profound cultural impact happened because the faith of Catholic believers translated into “habits of thought and action, which became culture.”
Sadly, the archbishop observes that “As the faith of European Christians has dwindled over the last 70 years…so has the soul of their culture. So has their idea of human dignity. So has their culture’s sense of hope and purpose.”