Culture and Secularism

It seems like alot of secularism and materialism has crept into our American society. Here is a section from the SFO monthy ongoing formation project, the Monthy Dossier August edition. The section that I am pulling out is about our service in culture and hits home on some of the problems that we face in our culture today. The Church and state would do well to work together but rather in todays culture we are seeing alot of intentional ways to leave God out of the public and the schools. Although the paraphraph is about some of the challenges to the develpment of Christian culture it can go hand in hand with secularism as well.

Culture must represent a privileged area for the presence and commitment of the Church and individual Christians. The Second Vatican Council sees the separation of Christian faith and daily life as one of the most serious erros of our day (Guadium et Spes,43). Without a metaphysical perspective, the loss of a longing for God in self-serving narcissism and the varied means found in a consumeristic lifestyle; the primacy given to technology and scientific research as ends in themselves; the emphasis placed on appearance, the quest for an image, commmunication techniques; all of these phenomena must be understood in their cultural aspects and placed in relation to the central issue of the human person, of integral human growth, of the human capacity to communicate and relate with other people, and of the constant human search for an answer to the great questions that run throughout life. It must be kept in mind that "culture is that through which man, as man becomes more man, 'is' more, has more access to 'being'" [John Paul II address to UNESCO (2Junde 1980)].