Well, what I think (some of it) can be better said by Thomas Merton. He, too, was a Catholic. He speaks here of the widespread modern consciousness of Being, derived from Descarte's dictum, cogito, ergo sum, (Latin) - "I think, therefore I am"
It is this kind of consciousness, exacerbated to an extreme, which has made inevitable the so called “death of God.” Cartesian thought began with an attempt to reach God as object by starting from the thinking self. But when God becomes object, he sooner or later “dies,” because God as object is ultimately unthinkable. God as object is not only a mere abstract concept, but one which contains so many internal contradictions that it becomes entirely nonnegotiable except when it is hardened into an idol that is maintained in existence by a sheer act of will. For a long time man continued to be capable of this willfulness: but now the effort has become exhausting and many Christians have realized it to be futile. Relaxing the effort, they have let go the “God-object” which their fathers and grandfathers still hoped to manipulate for their own ends. Their weariness has accounted for the element of resentment which made this a conscious “murder” of the deity. Liberated from the strain of wilfully maintaining an object-God in existence, the Cartesian consciousness remains none the less imprisoned in itself. Hence the need to break out of itself and to meet “the other” in “encounter,” “openness,” “fellowship,” “communion.”
(From an essay "The New Consciousness" to be found in Merton's book "Zen and the Birds of Appetite")
Maybe your "act of will" is simply meeting a brick wall?
That's it. There are other starting points. Maybe you haven't got a weak faith at all. Maybe you see through the whole load of nonsense that so many have succumbed to, waffling on about their very own "acts of will" which they equate with salvation itself. Maybe the true Source, the true God, IS speaking to you through your lack of connection. Paradoxical. But what isn't a paradox?
