Pope Benedict Ferverinos from US Visit Part XI

From remarks made to US Bishops regarding secularism

"Of course, what is essential is a correct understanding of the just autonomy of the secular order, an autonomy which cannot be divorced from God the Creator and his saving plan (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 36). Perhaps America’s brand of secularism poses a particular problem: it allows for professing belief in God, and respects the public role of religion and the Churches, but at the same time it can subtly reduce religious belief to a lowest common denominator. Faith becomes a passive acceptance that certain things “out there” are true, but without practical relevance for everyday life. The result is a growing separation of faith from life: living “as if God did not exist”. This is aggravated by an individualistic and eclectic approach to faith and religion: far from a Catholic approach to “thinking with the Church”, each person believes he or she has a right to pick and choose, maintaining external social bonds but without an integral, interior conversion to the law of Christ."

For me, the Pope's comments here about picking and choosing represent a tendency on the part of Americans to speak about making God a 'bigger part of my life' instead of real interior conversion and obedience to the law of Christ. The same tendency regards the Church as a store and the sacraments as 'items for purchase' within the store. We think of going to Church when it is convenient for us and of availing ourselves of the sacraments if and only if we are convinced they will be able to add something to my life. We have to move beyond thinking of adding or subtracting God from our lives. We have no power to do this. We only have the power to use our freedom to recognize his presence, and to unwrap the superabundance of grace that is always present through the sacraments of the Church. Thinking with the Church as the pope instructs us does not allow for our thinking of the Church as something of relative value, but we must recognize Her as the unique instrument of the salvation found in Christ alone.