Secularisation and the "rise" of atheism

As the writings of Charles Taylor have shown secularism and secularisation can mean different things to different people. We need to distinguish social aspects, such as institutional separation of Church and state from cultural aspects, such as shifting attitudes to religious belief per se. At this level we can identify an increasingly aggressive and vocal atheism claiming an intellectual high ground. In this regard the paper considers traditional Catholic teaching on faith and reason and the natural knowledge of God, and more recent teaching repudiating Christendom and exploring other possibilities concerning the relationship between Church and politics. Churches need to be able to properly distinguish which aspects of secularisation they can support and which they must oppose rather than adopt a blanket judgment on the whole phenomenon.