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"Christianity in Europe Coming to an End": Vienna Cardinal By Hilary White

 VIENNA, April 14, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) –

The Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna has warned that Christianity in Europe is dying out. Christoph Cardinal Schönborn said at St. Stephen's Cathedral on Easter Sunday, "The time of Christianity in Europe is coming to an end. A Christianity, which achieved such great things like this cathedral or the wonderful music we will hear today."

Cardinal Schönborn's Easter homily follows comments he made earlier in which he criticised Austrian Church leaders for their failure to accept and promote the watershed 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitae that reiterated the Church's teaching against artificial birth control.

In March last year, the cardinal said that many bishops are "frightened of the press and of being misunderstood by the faithful." The result is that contraception has become widely accepted and Europe is "about to die out."

In this Sunday's homily, the cardinal addressed the obsession of the secular media with the Church's teachings on sexuality, saying that it has been the subject of a "massive preconception" that the Church is opposed to sexual happiness and freedom.

"The Church can help people acquire the right attitude towards sex, which is not an isolated thing of all-consuming importance. The quality of the entire relationship is what is important in a male-female partnership," he said.

The decline of the Catholic Church in Austria mirrors that of the rest of Europe since the advent of the 1960s "sexual revolution." While official Vatican statistics say that 72.7 percent of Austrians are Catholic, a 2005 European Social Survey found that just 63.9 percent of Austrians actually describe themselves as such and almost 30 percent say they have no religious affiliation at all. Weekly Mass attendance among Catholics in the country hovers around 10 percent and, between 1985 and 2002, the number of priests in Austria dropped by almost one-quarter.

Illegitimacy on the rise: out-of-wedlock births hit 40% in US

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=2345

      The number of illegitimate births in the US continues to rise, with the latest federal statistics showing that 40% of all births in 2007 took place out of wedlock. Figures from the Centers for Disease Control showed that teen pregnancy also increased in 2007-- the last year for which full statistics were available. But teenagers were not responsible for the rise in out-of-wedlock births; more than 75% of the mothers giving birth to illegitimate children were at least 20 years old. . .

Editor's note: The breakdown of the family It is said that about 25% of young people suffer depression by the time they are 24. This is often due to not understanding depression and being worried about what their friends might think, but Sometimes there are reasons like a family break-up, child abuse,  rape, the death of a friend or family member, a relationship break-up, family conflict, or several of these things that happen close together.

Without a religious outlook on life the young are tossed about on a sea of indifference. Pray for them.