Christianity in our culture

I was reading (Fulton Sheen, “These are the Sacraments”) that ancient churches often had the baptistry outside of the church. Yet today, it’s not unusual to have a baptistry near the altar. Is this a problem? I don’t think so; in ancient times, the mysteries of the church were truly that; non-Christians knew so little of the faith that they often believed Christians were cannibals, “eating the flesh and drinking the blood.”

So I take it as a positive sign than Christianity is ingrained enough in our culture that we don’t have to leave the unbaptized out of the picture—in this country, virtually everyone will have at least some idea of Christian rituals, and also know basic Christian teaching, even if they don’t know they know it. (I came across one idiot who claimed to be an atheist, but who said he followed the Golden Rule—apparently unaware of who proclaimed that rule originally.)

If there’s a downside to this, it’s that our ridiculous secular society thinks that they invented it. Charity, equality—they’ve become hallmarks of social and political argument, but there’s nothing historically political about them. They come from a religious background. Were Bismarck or Genghis Khan interested in charity? Only as a political expedient, if that. Did kings promote equality? Hardly; it was in their interest to promote exactly the opposite. It was the monk, not the monarch, who promoted equality among all men. It was the priest, not the politician, who through history insisted on charity.