A reader points me to Something John Allen pointed to last week that I missed, a report from the Council on Culture on the status of belief and unbelief in the world.

Here are the key findings from that survey, which will inform the deliberations of the council about pastoral strategies for the Catholic church:

• There is no overall rise in disbelief in the world. It is largely a Western phenomenon with little impact in Asia, Latin America, Africa or the Muslim world.

• Militant atheism is diminishing and has little public influence, except in officially atheistic states: Cuba, North Korea, China, Vietnam and Laos. There is, however, a “widespread cultural hostility towards religions, especially Christianity and Catholicism” in the media, and also within “Masonic groups active in various governmental and international non-governmental organizations.”

• Religious indifference and practical atheism are growing. The report describes the present as the era of homo indifferens, that is, a person indifferent to the existence of God and whatever practical consequences God might have for daily life. Happiness is reduced to economic and sexual satisfaction.

• Atheism today hinges on lifestyle rather than gender, generation or class. “Among women who work outside the home, and above all among career women, the level of unbelief reaches levels almost equal to those of men.”

• There is a notable fall in the number of people attending church. These statistics, according to the report, do not betoken a rise in unbelief, but a transformation of religious belief and practice. Today, people believe but do not belong, which produces a “deconfessionalization.” Institutions are losing their credibility, while exotic practices such as magic and witchcraft gain ground.

• In all quarters, and especially in the West, there are signs of a new searching which is more spiritual than religious. There are two characteristics to this search, the report says: first, a refusal to acknowledge a role for institutions in mediating rapport with the transcendent; second, the divine is not recognized as a personal being. This explains the attractiveness of Asian spirituality, where human and divine submerge into a “singular wholeness.”

The report lists several causes for these phenomena, including the modern tendency to make the human person the center of the universe and the historic limits of Christianity. It also blames the mass media for “damaging the credibility of the church,” and in this context mentions priestly sex abuse scandals:

“Such revolting perversions are sometimes used and diffused, exploited or even orchestrated by third parties who use the mass media with the deliberate effect of damaging the reputation of the entire clergy and to the detriment of the entire church,” the report says.

The reader wanted me to particularly note the allusion to Masonic activity, which perhaps is more than “old guys doing lame rituals” in other countries. But as a whole, I’m taken by the lack of responsibility in this report. There are certainly cultural reasons for unbelief, but I say that if a culture falls into contempt for Christianity and seeks spiritual wholeness Anywhere But Christianity, Christianity might just bear some responsibility for that – from top to bottom.