54
administering the sacraments apart from other
forms of evangelization.
64.âThe process of secularization tends to re-
duce the faith and the Church to the sphere of
the private and personal. Furthermore, by com-
pletely rejecting the transcendent, it has produced
a growing deterioration of ethics, a weakening
of the sense of personal and collective sin, and
a steady increase in relativism. These have led
to a general sense of disorientation, especially in
the periods of adolescence and young adulthood
which are so vulnerable to change. As the bish-
ops of the United States of America have right-
ly pointed out, while the Church insists on the
existence of objective moral norms which are
valid for everyone, âthere are those in our culture
who portray this teaching as unjust, that is, as op-
posed to basic human rights. Such claims usually
follow from a form of moral relativism that is
joined, not without inconsistency, to a belief in
the absolute rights of individuals. In this view,
the Church is perceived as promoting a particular
prejudice and as interfering with individual free-
domâ.
59
We are living in an information-driven
society which bombards us indiscriminately with
data â all treated as being of equal importance
â and which leads to remarkable superficiality in
59
âU
nited
S
tates
C
onference
O
f
C
atholic
B
ishops
,
Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination:
Guidelines for
Pastoral Care
(2006), 17.
