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Father, I dont know what happened to our children. Thats how a woman I had only just met at a wedding reception opened the conversation. She and her husband had a large family, she explained, but only two children remained practicing Catholics. Of the others, a couple have followed their spouses to Protestant churches; one is a searcher who never quite settles down; the rest seem not to care. It is a pattern we all know well. Figuring out how to respond to it, whether in organizing holiday gatherings, in parish work or in evangelizing the unchurched, is another matter.

The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, the winner of this years Templeton Prize, has written an 800-page book, This article appears in October 8 2007.

Drew Christiansen, S.J., served as the editor in chief of America from 2005 to 2012. He was a Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Human Development at Georgetown University and a senior fellow with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. He was co-editor with Carole Sargent of A World Free from Nuclear Weapons: The Vatican Conference on Disarmament (Georgetown, 2020).