But second, more people today have never heard the Gospel than at any time in the last 200 years. That's more people both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the world population. In a way, we've actually lost ground as missionaries. And even among the millions who claim to believe in Jesus Christ, many don't know their faith, or don't really practice it, or just tend to use it to justify their own choices.

Freud described religion as "the solemn air of sanctity" we manufacture around our habits and moral decisions. I don't think I'm taking much of a risk in suggesting that most secular intellectuals in the United States probably regard religion as weak or naïve — a relic of humanity's past and a kind of cheap alternative to psychotherapy. Maybe I'm being unfair. But I doubt it.

Unfortunately, too many Christians experience their faith in exactly this way. That's why we have the world as it is. Many Christians — too many Christians, especially in a wealthy country like ours — live their convictions as if they were pious clichés. The language of faith gives us the words to comfort ourselves in the face of disappointment or suffering. But many of us never carry Christ beyond that. We're embarrassed to share Him with others. We're afraid to apply His teachings to our economy or our politics. And that suits modern secular culture very well, because privatized faith has no public consequences.

The trouble with such faith is this: It's a form of lying. It's hypocrisy. The greatest enemy of Jesus Christ in every age doesn't come in the shape of the world or the flesh or the devil. It's the lukewarm faith of His disciples. If we want to know why the world isn't won for Christ, take a good look in the mirror.

Henri Bergson once said, "If you want to know a man, don't listen to what he says; watch what he does." The Epistle of James says, "faith, if it does not have works, is dead." God didn't make us to be "good enough" Catholics. He made us to be saints. He made us for greatness and heroism. Every human heart, Christian or not, instinctively knows that. St. Irenaeus once wrote that, "the glory of God is man fully alive." God calls each of us to humanize and transform the world, and if we don't live life that way, people will seek meaning elsewhere, in counterfeits.

Earlier this summer, I read the biographies of two men: Robert Browning's book, "The Emperor Julian," and Jon Lee Anderson's book, "Che." Sounds strange, but bear with me. Julian the Apostate was the fourth century emperor who tried to restore paganism as the Roman state religion. And of course Che Guevara was the Marxist guerrilla leader killed in Bolivia in 1967.

These two men lived 1,600 years apart, but they had some odd similarities. Both were romantics. Both were hungry to change the world. Both were austere in their personal lives and intolerant of corruption. Both were intellectuals. Both were also men of action. Both died in their 30s, fighting for what they believed in, in places far away from their homes. And both completely rejected Christianity because of the example of the Christians they knew.

In Julian's case, he grew up in a Christian imperial family where the men would attend Liturgy, and then systematically murder each other for power. In Guevara's case, he saw the Church in his country, Argentina, as just another tool of the ruling classes in the oppression of the poor. Both men were repelled by what they saw as the hypocrisy of Christians.

Here's my point: The witness you and I give in our daily lives has consequences beyond anything we can imagine. Example is powerful. That's why the historian Christopher Lasch once said that "an honest atheist is always to be preferred to a (dishonest) Christian."

Real religious faith has nothing do with pious clichés, and it's never primarily centered on the self. On some level our faith should make us restless and uncomfortable, like a good infection. Karl Barth said that "to clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the world." John Paul II tells us again and again that our Christian vocation is to take part in a struggle for the soul of the contemporary world. Real faith has very serious public consequences. It's always personal, but never private. And it always seeks to change the world.

OK, how does any of this relate to Familiaris Consortio, and especially to Nos. 42-48? Let me answer that with another question. How many of you have had someone tell you, "What marvelous work the Church does in housing the homeless, feeding the poor, and helping migrant workers; it's too bad she's so hung up on the sex stuff."

Buried in a remark like that is the idea that over here, Catholics have all this wonderful social doctrine — but over there Catholics have a slightly nutty fixation on abortion, contraception, and monogamous heterosexual marriages. And if somehow Catholics could just lighten up on the sex issues, the world would open its heart to our social teaching.

But it can't happen. It could never happen — because the issues surrounding sexuality and the family connect intimately with the dignity of the human person. And the dignity of the human person is what all Catholic teaching seeks to advance. We learn this first and most fruitfully in the "school of love" which is the family. We can't remove abortion and contraception from our priorities in Catholic social teaching anymore than we can forget about our duty to ensure proper food, clothing and shelter for children once they're born.

Vatican II described the family as "the first and vital cell of society" (AA, 11). It stressed that "the well being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life" (GS, 47).

But let's go back even further, to 1891, and reread Rerum Novarum; then after that to Quadragesimo Anno; and Mater et Magistra; Pacem in Terris, Populorum Progressio, Laborem Exercens, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Centesimus Annus, right through to Evangelium Vitae in 1995. Again and again, over a hundred-year period, we see the family either explicitly or implicitly present as a key element in all the social teaching of the Church.

Here's just one example. Paul VI's great encyclical, Populorum Progressio, focuses mainly on issues of international development. But it includes this line: "The natural family, stable and monogamous — as fashioned by God and sanctified by Christianity — `in which different generations live together, helping each other to acquire greater wisdom and to harmonize personal rights with other social needs, is the basis of society'" (36).

Why add that reflection in a document on global development? Because as the U.S. bishops observed two years ago in their statement on Everyday Christianity, "Our families are the starting point and the center of the vocation for justice." The habits we learn and live in the family are the habits we bring to the public square, and finally to the world arena.

So let's take a look at what Nos. 42-48 actually say. Then we can turn to some implications for families.

The message of this section of Familiaris Consortio is simple. I can sum it up in a saying I first heard as a child: "The greatest gift a father can give his children is to love their mother." What separates Catholic social teaching from every revolutionary movement for justice is the rejection of violence and the affirmation of the power of love. Real love — love that involves a complete commitment to understand and meet the real needs of the person we love — is very hard work.

Nothing is more demanding, and nothing takes more care and self-sacrifice, than love within a family. Loving "humanity" is easy. Loving family members, friends and neighbors as God wants them to be loved, day in and day out — that's what separates the wheat from the chaff. Words are cheap. Actions matter. And nowhere is that truer than within a family.