Chapter 1. Why are Catholics confused? Who can deny that Catholics in the latter part of the 20th century are confused? A glance at what has happened in the church over the past 20 years is enough to convince anyone

that this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Only a short time ago, the path was clearly marked.

Either one followed it, or one did not. One had the faith, or perhaps had lost it, or had never had it. But he who had it,

who had entered the church through baptism, who had renewed his baptismal promises around the age of

twelve, and had received the Holy Ghost on the day of his confirmation, such a person knew what he had to believe and what he

had to do. Many today no longer know. They hear all sorts of astonishing statements in the churches.

They read things contrary to what was always taught, and doubt has crept into their minds.

On June 30, 1968, at the close of the year of faith, His Holiness Pope Paul VI made a profession

of the Catholic faith in the presence of all the bishops in Rome and hundreds of thousands of the faithful.

In his introductory remarks, he puts us on guard against attacks on Catholic doctrine,

which he said,

Give rise as we regretfully see today to trouble and confusion in many faithful souls.

The same words crop up in an allocution of His Holiness Pope John Paul II on February 6th,

1981. He writes, Christians today in large part feel lost, perplexed, confused, and even deceived. The Holy Father

summarize the underlying causes of the trouble as follows. We see spread abroad ideas contrary to

the truth which God has revealed and which the church has always taught.

Real heresies have appeared in dogma and moral theology, stirring doubt, confusion, rebellion.

Even the liturgy has been harmed.

Christians have been plunged into an intellectual and moral illuminism, a sociological

Christianity without clear dogma or objective morality. This confusion is seen everywhere,

in conversations, in books, in newspapers, in radio, and television broadcasts, in the behavior

of Catholics, which shows up as a sharp decline in the practice of the faith, as statistics

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