Below is a direct quote from the book Memoirs of a Catholic Midwife by Lisbeth Burger. a Catholic midwife who worked from the late 1800's till WWII. To explain better, I have added my comments in quotes and blue. This quote applies to all evils, and a clear example today in our world is what has happened to Venezuela, for Venezuelan is in the predicament it is in now because the wrong spirit has been there since at least the 1960's.
“What can be done about it (in this case the use of contraceptives and abortions, but it applies to all evils in society)? Should we organize a mission and try to stir up the (True Catholic) consciences of the people?”
It couldn’t do any harm. But the small folk need something more than a scolding. We ought to try to improve their living conditions. We ought to try to rekindle their joy in life and the courage and strength to fight for it And as for the other class (the upper classes, upper middle and up) , you won’t get at them with your mission.”
It’s the old story: if life and the moral laws are at odds, a man is far more ready to deny his faith in order to evade an inconvenient moral law than to change his life. Rousseau realized that when he said: ‘Always live as if God existed, and you will never doubt His existence.’ Man turns away from the source of happiness—and then he is surprised that he does not succeed in making himself happy, that, on the contrary, he becomes more and more discontented.
The wrong spirit spreads from the upper class downward, and the right spirit too must come from above downward. Do we not know from experience that what the upper classes do is being done a few years later by the common people—only in a far more radical and brutal fashion ?
Could we prevent this evil from spreading among the people by taking prompt measures to fight against it?
We must try, and we may be able to do a little. But, on the whole, as long as the dirt keeps falling on to the staircase from above, all our sweeping will be to no purpose."