I am completely with you on this sister winkingmunda
Personally, I note this problem in many different religious communities, not least my own. I do not think that anyone should be born "Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, atheist" etc.
If I were a parent, I would not deign to have my child baptised or attend mass but neither would I feel the right to impose my belief system on him/her. I would strive to give them as broad an education in a free mind as possible so that, when they reached adulthood, they had the opportunity to use their God-given freedom of conscience and follow that conscience wherever it led them, even if that be away from the religion I consider to be the one for me.
There was an excellent saying of the Church Father Tertullian, which encapsulates the attitude of the Early Christian Church and which I feel modern Christianity has lost:
"...We come from among your stock and nature; Christians are made not born..."
- Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 225 AD), Early Church Father
I feel that we have lost this sentiment. Christianity has become in many respects a lazy, monopoly religion that one inherits from one's parents, or at least the values of it at some level, largely as a result of living in a Western country or within Western culture. And so you often find low levels of actual dedication within much of Christianity, a kind of nominal "belief" born from a deeply-instilled duty to "go through" the motions so to speak and attend mass and outwardly be a Christian without any true, inward renewal and/or change of heart.
I would also stress that men are not born Christians, Sikhs, Muslims or whatever else. It is always a process, a journey of the individual soul to find his own way to God and become a Christian or Sikh or Muslim. It is a continual journey of becoming not a static state of being simply on the basis of birth-right.
Tertullian's insight is perhaps the reason for many cultural Christians failing to successfully negotiate the shift from community faith to personal faith. Some of these cultural Christians will return later in life when they have owned their faith for themselves whilst others will not.
Faith is a verb it grows and develops throughout one's life.
