On Secularism

An Excerpt from
Annual Statment of the Bishops of the United States on Secularism 
Released on November 14, 1947

...In the dark days ahead we dare not follow the secularist philosophy. We must be true to our historic Christian culture. If all who believe in God would make that belief practical in their workaday lives, if they would see to it that their children are definitely imbued with that belief and trained in the observance of God's way of life, if they would look across the real differences which unfortunately divide them, to the, common danger that threatens, if they would steadfastly refuse to let a common enemy capitalize on those differences to the detriment of social unity, we might begin to see a way out of the chaos that impends. Secularism holds out no valid promise of better things for our country or for the world. During our own lives it has been the bridge between a decaying devotion to Christian culture and the revolutionary forces which have brought on what is perhaps the gravest crisis in all history. The tragic evil is not that our Christian culture is no longer capable of producing peace and reasonable prosperity, but that we are allowing secularism to divorce Christian truth from life. The fact of God and the fact of the responsibility of men and nations to God for their actions are supreme realities, calling insistently for recognition in a truly realistic ordering of life in the individual, in the family, in the school, in economic activity, and in the international community.
Signed by the members of the Administrative Board, N.C.W.C., in the names of the bishops of the United States:
+Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago
+Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York
+Dennis Cardinal Dougherty, Archbishop of Philadelphia
+Edward Cardinal Mooney, Archbishop of Detroit
+John T. McNicholas, O.P., Archbishop of Cincinnati
+Robert E. Lucey, Archbishop of San Antonio
+Richard J. Cushing, Archbishop of Boston
+Joseph E. Ritter, Archbishop of St. Louis
+James H. Ryan, Archbishop of Omaha
+John Mark Gannon, Bishop of Erie
+John F. Noll, Bishop of Fort Wayne
+Emmet M. Walsh, Bishop of Charleston
+Karl J. Alter, Bishop of Toledo
+Michael J. Ready, Bishop of Columbus