"TRADITIONAL" FAITH

6 The faith of many Christians is strained to a critical point in those places where religion was seeming to favor the prerogatives of certain social classes to an excessive degree, or where it was depending too much on ancestral customs and on regional unanimity in religious profession.

Great numbers are drifting little by little into religious indifferentism, or are continuing in danger of keeping the faith without the dynamism that is necessary, a faith without effective influence on their actual lives. The question now is not one of merely preserving traditional religlous customs, but rather one of also fostering an appropriate re-evangelisation of men, obtaining their reconversion, and giving them a deeper and more mature education in the faith.

By no means, however, is the above to be interpreted in such a way that it results in neglect of the genuine faith which is preserved within groups in a culture that is traditionally Christian, or in a low estimation of the popular religious sense. Despite the growth of secularisation, a religious sense continues to flourish in the various parts of the Church. No one can fail to note it, for it is expressed in ordinary life by a very large number of people, and for the most part in a sincere and authentic way. In fact, the popular religious sense provides an opportunity or starting point for proclaiming the faith. The question is, as is clear, only one of purifying it and of correctly appraising its valid elements, so that no one will be content with forms of pastoral action which today have become unequal to the task, altogether unsuitable, and perhaps even irrelevant.