I believe that if the electricity ever unplugs them from what they call a "life" (tv, movies, music, games, etc.) that most of them will go stark raving mad. (The silence will do it, trust me.)

Yes, people are frighteningly lost to much of the concrete reality around them. Today EVERYTHING is "just an opinion." As though there were no truth, no reality, no solid, unforgiving external measure of things anywhere in existence. If everything is just an opinion, and lies are called just as good or just as real as truth, pretty soon everything becomes utterly meaningless. If everything is just as good and just as real as anything else (true or false, good or bad), then really, nothing matters. And that's where a lot of people are at. "Nothing matters, so lets just enjoy the party while it lasts."

It's almost creepy talking to people that you're trying to inform about something that is true and real, and either they cannot grasp it, they can't care about it even if they know they should, or else they so don't WANT it to be true, they take it for granted you're just full of it. But again, that's most people these days.

It's sad, but the only antidote for it is for the few people who DO have a grip on reality... especially the eternal aspect of it... to take it seriously enough to live like we do. I think if the whole world were like Sodom and Gomorrah, if even a handful of people started striving seriously for the sainthood we're all called to, you'd start to see a ripple effect in the other direction. It will take God's grace and mercy, and a heck of a lot of glaring good examples to prove what is the true and only good way to live (and to die): in God's grace.

I hate to say it but... as they say, the buck stops here. The Catholics... the Catholics who still know what real Catholicism looks like... are the light of the world, and that light has largely gone out. People don't want to be saints (even the least of all the saints that ever lived, or the most lowly saint, would be better than someone NOT a saint). They want to just give up and say they can't be saints. That it's impossible. That it's too much, or it's not for them. Well... as long as we're comfortable where we are, the world isn't going to get any better.

The great saints could go into entire countries that were almost solidly pagan and convert them. At the very least, I'm sure a lot of the saints converted people by their holiness in the towns or cities where they lived. Even being the least of saints, in your own home, you might have a good impact on somebody. More often than not, however, we'd rather hide and pretend we don't know anything as long as we're in front of non-Catholics. (Harsh, but true for pretty much all of us according to our fallen human nature which is, after all, pretty weak.)

I'm not trying to bash anyone individually here but... when Catholics start unleashing the indignation they feel while looking at the ungodly, upon themselves and their own sins and vices, I think we'll start to see a change. After all, if we can't really convert ourselves, why should anyone else live the life we would suggest to them? If we show them the saints and say, this is how we should be, they'll probably have the chance to say, "We'll YOU'RE not perfect yet." And we give them that chance. We like to think we're doing "good enough" or "everything we can do" in our own lives, and that we've "done enough" to be "good with God." But God said be perfect. True, many of us will never get to that point. But we have to at least try for it seriously. And that's where the problem begins. With us. With being comfortable with how and where we are. With thinking we're fine this way.

What's happened to the world is tragic. What's happened to the Catholics is catastrophic. And when we all finally get serious with ourselves, I reckon the world will start changing too. Turn the lights back on, and the darkness will flee before it.

It's not popular to suggest maybe we've got some work to do with ourselves, but... the truth is almost never pleasant, or popular.

(For the record, I'm saying it's true as much for myself as anyone else.)