Sadly, he’s right. Most Catholics sitting in the pews on Sunday mornings don’t care about the Religious Liberty issue, even though they made the effort to get to Mass. They just don’t care what the Bishops say.
Sadly they will keep up the same attitudes all the way to the final judgment where they will be rejected for being false converts.
I venture to guess that most folks who self-identify as Catholics on opinion polls aren't sitting in the pews on Sunday mornings.
My Parish has a medium-sized Church building (by American Catholic standards). On an average Sunday, it's about 2/3 full at each Mass.
On Easter Sunday, we set up extra chairs anywhere in the nave that won't offend the fire marshall too badly, in the narthex, and even down the corridor from the narthex to the "fellowship hall". It's still standing room only. At every Mass.
What the heck? Where do these folks come from? Where do they go?
I haven't a clue.
But when you hear them all saying "and also with you" ... you get a clue where they haven't been ...
I just became Catholic this past Easter so finding out what folks "in the pews" are like has been interesting to say the least.The parish I'm in seems to have more families and young folks compared to others I hear people talk about that are mostly older folks. From what I can tell, people are split right down the middle over whether they care about this or not. From the people I've talked to, people who agree that this is an important issue are prone to thinking that it's already too late to save religious freedom in this country anyway.
A common line of reasoning is that with mainline Protestant denominations mostly moving toward everything liberal socially, Evangelicals being divided over whether to even bother with politics, and the Catholics still fighting internal battles against social liberals, there's not enough people who will focus on the real issue of religious freedom to make a difference.