America has been completely secularized. 1947 Everson v. Board of education the court had declared that the first Amendment erected a wall of separation between church and state. 1961 Torcaso v Wathins court declared that a State could not require public employees to believe in the existence of god. 1963 Abington v Schempp, Supreme Court struck down, sponsored bible readings and recitation of the lords prayer in public schools. The Washington Evening star stated God and religion have all been but driven from the public schools. Consequently because of the changed public sector of education you could easily believe that it would result in decline of Catholicism. However with this change as Rose states Evangelicals began withdrawing from the public schools in 1950s.Between 1960-1975 public school enrolment declined by 40% while Christian school enrollments increased by a factor of 4-5. Rose goes on to say The Christian schools movement is today the fastest growing sector in private education representing the second largest group. The first being Roman Catholics. Therefore with the decline in Catholicism in the public sector there was a shift in enrollments from public to private. This indicates the strong sense of catholic faith that still exists in American society.With all the extreme opinions out there it is easy to get caught up in the myth that Catholicism cant exist in a culture of materialism where liberal politicians rule in our governments and we are engulfed in modernisation, science and technology. Although devotion is down there has been a lot of change in the church and being a Catholic today is a lot different than it was fifty years ago and this does not reflect decline. Furthermore the fact is Catholicism still does exist and statistics show is on the increase, reasons for this being money, science and politics can do a lot of things but still will never fill up the hunger that exists in our lives for meaning....
