How to Keep the Year of Faith in 2012

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II, the twentieth year since the publication of the Catechism, and the first-ever Synod on the New Evangelization, 2012 has been declared the “Year of Faith.” As Benedict underscored in his 2011 Christmas address to the Roman Curia, the Year of Faith is meant to incite more than lively belief; its celebration is also a call to glance backward and to look forward.

The Year of Faith provides a chance to remember both the fruits and the failures of the Second Vatican Council’s implementation, with honest clarity. The failure to transmit the habits of piety coupled with the advance of an aggressive secularism led many young people, often after years of sitting at the desks of parochial classrooms, simply to abandon the Church. Such baptized but unformed souls never have nor ever will attend the fraternities, Catechism classes, or processions that their parents took for granted.