This echoes a passage from a bit earlier in Luke’s Gospel: having heard the news of her own pregnancy and that of Elizabeth, Mary, we are told, “went in haste” to the hill country of Judah to help her cousin. We hear that, upon receiving the angel’s message, the shepherds “went in haste” to visit the holy family. It has to do with the visit of the shepherds to Mary and the Christ child in the stable at Bethlehem, and it hinges on three words: haste, astonished, and treasured.
But for the moment, I would like to reflect on a passage from the Gospel of Luke, which was featured on the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, and which sheds considerable light on this issue. I have written frequently regarding practical steps that religious leaders ought to be taking to confront this rising tide of secularist ideology, and I will continue to do so. What makes this situation even more distressing is that fully 64% of young adult nones were indeed raised religious but have taken the conscious and active decision to abandon their churches. Fifty years ago, only a fraction of the country would have identified as unreligious, and even a decade ago, the number was only at 14%. And among those in the 18-29 age group, the percentage of nones goes up to 40! This increase has been alarmingly precipitous.
The most recent survey showed that now fully one fourth of Americans belong to no religion at all-that’s approximately 80,000,000 people. By now most of you are probably aware of the depressing statistics regarding the “nones,” that is to say, those in this country who claim no religious affiliation.
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