I was having a few words of pleasant chat with a monk before dinner when the Angelus rang. "Say the Angelus with me," I said. And he replied, "But I do not know it."

"So what do you do when the bell rings three times a day?"
"I don't do anything."
"Well, say it with me anyway. I'll show you how."

And while doing that, I wondered to myself: do you suppose he knows the Rosary? So when we were done, I asked him. No, he did not know how to say the Rosary. "That's odd."

And he said, "Four years Catholic high school, four years Catholic college, two years novitiate here. Nobody ever mentioned Rosary. You're the first."

With that, another bell rang within me: larger, deeper, more somber. And I knew I was getting older in a way I did not know before. Times have changed. Not that the Rosary is all that much. It is not the Faith, the Gospel, the liturgy, the Rule. Just a pious custom. Something like a fireplace in the living room. Who needs it? Yet who will deny the charm of a hearth and a fire and a quiet evening at home some winter night? Maybe fireplaces, too, have long gone. How would I know?

Times do change. A Princeton-based testing service just reported for the United States Department of Education that 80 million American adults are functionally illiterate. That's about half our grown people. I find it hard to believe.

One million children a year see their parents split up. "Split" being a rather cool term for a tragic event. No wonder Senator Daniel Moynihan calls ours a post-marital society. 4,500 abortions each American day seems even more incredible. And nearly a third of them are teenagers, some 400,000 a year. 60% of teenage mothers are not married. One baby out of four born in the United States is born out of wedlock. And to add a note, some 2 and 1/2 million adolescents will contact a sexually-transmitted disease before the year is out. Times do change.

And they will continue to change. For how long do you think a society of such a kind can last? And how long do you think people will put up with it? Only as long as they want to. But once the appalling amount of suffering comes home to them, once they experience the devastation of a violent society without grace or beauty, they will arise and say, "We can do better than this." And they can. And they will.

The evidence lies in the very nature of things. I do not speak of a spiritual revolution, but a natural one. A human one. There are laws built into human nature, and when those laws are violated, there is hell to pay, here on earth.

Else, how do you suppose a primitive people can arrive at a way of living -- after how many years -- that makes life sufferable? They learned the hard way: that it must be one man with one woman for keeps. Nothing else works. That children must be reckoned a treasure. Nothing else works. That bothering another's wife is taboo. Nothing else works. And marrying within your kin is taboo. And doing harm to children. And the taboos bore a reprisal for failure to observe them: death. So there was no thieving in a primitive village. And it was share-and-share-alike in all things. And all of this surrounded by contact with the spirits that added another-worldly quality.

It sounds like paradise. It wasn't. The love of God was not there. Nor the love of Christ and one another in Christ. Christianity is the love of Christ and one another in Christ, not a code of ethics, a body of law, a cultural program. Christianity is the fear of hell, the love of heaven, to be one with Christ and His Father in the Spirit. It is human nature graced, for the good life here and the better life to come.

Therefore, have hope. Even in the midst of a disintegrating society. "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." (Hopkins) Humankind has an amazing capacity for doing better, for beginning again, for renewing and starting over. Given by God. Praise God for it.

And God in Christ blesses and prospers such efforts. His Church promotes, supports, inspires and motivates all such movement. Does now and always has. And will continue to do so.

So mope not. And do not wring your hands that things are not as they once were. For they need not be as they are, either. Meanwhile, have a little mercy with people overwhelmed by a plastic society that has betrayed them. They have been cheated, sold shoddy goods, been had. Let us help them in prayer and sacrifice to begin anew.