"I would very much prefer to convert those who betray the Faith..."

... by example and argument. But example and argument are never enough for those who do not wish to be converted. Newman may have been too sanguine in his expectation that a secular world would be sufficient to keep those who stray from the Truth outside the Church, but he was right about the principle in question: It is much better for the Church if those who despise the tenets of her Faith and her fundamental moral tradition are on the outside looking in, and not theologians in good standing.

That is why it is necessary to exclude those who are no longer Catholic from theological positions within the Church. But exclusion requires more than teaching and sanctifying. Exclusion requires that bishops learn once again how to rule. By their failure to rule, the bishops have participated in the creation of this radical divide. Only by ruling now can they once again close that yawning chasm—or rather put that chasm and its other side outside the borders of the Church of Christ.

That is from an essay, "On the Crisis of Theology and the Need for Rulers", by Dr. Jeff Mirus on the CatholicCulture.org site. Shortly after reading his essay, with which I completely agree, I read some of Dr. James Hitchcock's book, The Recovery of the Sacred, published back in 1994 by Ignatius Press. The following excerpt from that book (which is on the CatholicCulture.org site) intersects well with Dr. Mirus's observation that the restoration of orthodox teaching and catechesis cannot be left to chance, but only follows when there is good leadership that does not bend to the prevailing winds of fads and passing fancies:

The decline of the sense of the sacred in worship was not, as some reformers have argued, the inevitable effect of a secular age. If anything, advanced secular culture has shown itself more open to the sacred and the pseudo-sacred than at any time within memory. The spirit of pragmatic, technological rationality is in at least temporary disfavor, and the sacral worship of the Church was, paradoxically, more appealing and effective in the 1950s, when that spirit was more pervasive than it is now.

The decline of the sacred was, rather, something which was willed and planned: its demise was predicted by those who wished it to occur and who took steps to bring it about. To some extent also it occurred through inadvertence, by a process of liturgical change which gave little thought to long-term effects.

For many people this decline may be irreversible. Although nurtured within Catholicism, they have passed over into that kind of modern secularity which can see no point to religious ritual and which may even regard it with a certain loathing. For many others, however, it is still a genuine possibility. In large measure this is because the traditions of sacredness are still alive in the Church, among people for whom they were once quite strong. To a lesser extent there is a manifest hunger for such things among the supposedly secular younger generation. In any case the attempt to restore and revive sacral worship must occur before long, if it is to be successful, because its most important foundation will be those traditions which are still alive but are becoming progressively weaker.

Read more here.

Comments

[LJ]

The decline of the sense of the sacred in worship was not, as some reformers have argued, the inevitable effect of a secular age. If anything, advanced secular culture has shown itself more open to the sacred and the pseudo-sacred than at any time within memory.

So true. It seems that many in the "advanced secular culture" simply default to some sort of pagan worship.