Yes, this priest hits the nail on the head. But you have to be his age, my age and older to know what we lost after Vatican II or what others dismissed for us.
All the stupid things that we did, we were told by uber authoritarian clerics and religious that Vatican II told us to do it.
What? The loss of the transcendent, standing for Holy Communion, Communion in the hand, the abandonment of Latin, new songs that focused on us and not the transcendent God, casualness, low Christology and the horizontal gone bizerk. All of this is what Vatican II wanted.
REALLY? NO! NO! NO!
And now there is a a resurgence of the very things that have led to the sorry state of the Church today and in the highest elements of the hierarchy. It is enough to make one sick and in need of the Sacraments of Penance and the Anointing of the Sick!
I have seen more than a few articles as of late as to why our last three generations have been leaving the Catholic faith en masse.
There are many cognizant points.
As a pastor of 22 years, a member of one of those generations that departed, and a person who did leave as young man into agnosticism, I have my own theories based on my own experiences and what I have seen and read from others.
First, we tamed God. We made Him into our image. We turned him into a kindly and ineffectual therapist whose chief job is to enable our every behavior and pat us on the back for rebelling against Him.
With such a tamed God, there was no need to focus on Him. The concept of personal sin went away and became social sin or societal sin. With this move, confession went to the wayside and was replaced with a morphed view of social justice.
This gave us the liberty to complain about corporate sin and smugly distance ourselves from it. The tamed God was always on our side to the point where His being around at all was little more than a security blanket; something to be outgrown.
Taming God and the devil lead us to largely dismiss them.
Along with God and the devil went their corresponding courts: The Blessed Mother, the saints, the rosary and rest of the devotional life was dropped as was any sense of the demonic and sacramentals used to fight them.
In fact, things were so unchallenging that Mass itself became a dreary exercise in self-affirmation. If you want to lose people, especially men, then this is the correct route to take.
The more we experimented with the Mass, changed the Mass, gutted the challenge from preaching into therapeutic moralism, filled it with songs about us, the more and more people wandered out.
Pair this now with the emptying of the transcendent in education
.
Catholic identity was not only seen as old fashioned, but as detrimental to education. The Land o’ Lakes declaration shooed Catholic identity away as if it were a pesky fly. This seeped into the catechetical materials used on ages of children.
We shifted away from a transcendent God who has expectations of us as His people to a doddering old fool of a God who enabled our whims because He had no real preference to morality.
Morality became subjective
.
Want to use birth control? Cool. Want to cohabitate? No problem! Want to reduce you body to carnal playground to be used as a toy? Sure! The list goes on and on.
If we take it from God, we will have to appropriate it for ourselves. We made God irrelevant in that pursuit. This was the seedbed from which the popular ‘spiritual but not religious ‘ mantra used by the ‘nones’ came.
For three generations, we made God irrelevant.
This seeped into our homes. This is where things became fatal. The first generation raised on this watered-down nonsense became parents who learned well the lessons taught. If happiness was already guaranteed from God without our effort, then we could focus on happiness in the world.
Mass, prayer, and religious formation became theological roadkill on the highway to hell. However, as I said before, the heart need the transcendent.
So, what happens?
The temporal starts to take on a transcendent quality. The pursuit of wealth, pleasure, power, and honor became the focus. The temporal got treated with the devotion once given to the transcendent, and the transcendent got treated with the laissez faire attitude of the temporal.
Catholic schools then became reduced to private schools with statuary. We became comfortable with that. Catholic identity was no more important in the parish school than it was in the university.
Land O Lakes weaseled its way down to the elementary level. Religion classes were seen as the most optional of the curriculum, prayer as entirely to be sacrificed for more important endeavors, and Mass as bothersome to the more important aspects of the schedule.
Religion itself was taught as if morality and faith were subject to personal likes and dislikes. The students see this, and when this is paired with parents already readily sacrificing Sunday Mass and other Church related things, we almost beg them to drop away.
In losing our transcendence, we also lost our relevance. No wonder we have a shortage of priests! Who wants to give their life, not marry, and serve in such a faith?
Again, though, the human heart needs transcendence.
If we truly want to get our lost generations back, it will be by reversing this trend towards the temporal as being the be all/end all of our lives. This will have to happen in our liturgy and education first.
This will be a long road. It will be a shock to the system. It starts with us admitting we messed up. We have to own our mistakes, do an appropriate mea culpa, and reverse course. We must understand that in trying to tame God and the devil, we left ourselves open for ruin.
Can there be any wonder that we have experienced the depravity in and outside of the Church in the last century?
The sexual scandals are a symptom of the disease, but not the disease itself. Sexual scandals can only grow in swampish landscape of a loss of transcendence (how can you molest children and seminarians and cover it up and still believe in a transcendent God?).
There most definitely is a transcendent God. He does have expectations of us. While He does indeed love us uniquely, we too must love Him as well. The road to relevance, a road we lost decades ago, can only be regained by restoring the transcendent.
Our foray into a sappy Catholic human-centered fraternal order has given us the identity of a cheap greeting card. We can and must remember who we really are called to be.
All the stupid things that we did, we were told by uber authoritarian clerics and religious that Vatican II told us to do it.
What? The loss of the transcendent, standing for Holy Communion, Communion in the hand, the abandonment of Latin, new songs that focused on us and not the transcendent God, casualness, low Christology and the horizontal gone bizerk. All of this is what Vatican II wanted.
REALLY? NO! NO! NO!
And now there is a a resurgence of the very things that have led to the sorry state of the Church today and in the highest elements of the hierarchy. It is enough to make one sick and in need of the Sacraments of Penance and the Anointing of the Sick!
Why Are Catholics Leaving the Faith? This Brave Priest Reveals the Dangerous Culprit
Fr. Bill Peckman -I have seen more than a few articles as of late as to why our last three generations have been leaving the Catholic faith en masse.
There are many cognizant points.
As a pastor of 22 years, a member of one of those generations that departed, and a person who did leave as young man into agnosticism, I have my own theories based on my own experiences and what I have seen and read from others.
The first culprit is that we forgot the transcendent.
Check that…we actively excoriated it from our identity. This happened in several ways.First, we tamed God. We made Him into our image. We turned him into a kindly and ineffectual therapist whose chief job is to enable our every behavior and pat us on the back for rebelling against Him.
With such a tamed God, there was no need to focus on Him. The concept of personal sin went away and became social sin or societal sin. With this move, confession went to the wayside and was replaced with a morphed view of social justice.
This gave us the liberty to complain about corporate sin and smugly distance ourselves from it. The tamed God was always on our side to the point where His being around at all was little more than a security blanket; something to be outgrown.
But God was not the only thing we tamed. We tame the devil and the demonic.
They became fodder for occult parlor games, slasher films, and as a poster boy for secular humanism. When we tamed him, there was no need to be any more afraid of him that we are of carnival rides.Taming God and the devil lead us to largely dismiss them.
Along with God and the devil went their corresponding courts: The Blessed Mother, the saints, the rosary and rest of the devotional life was dropped as was any sense of the demonic and sacramentals used to fight them.
Spiritual warfare was dismissed and replaced with ‘be nice.’
Dismissing God’s transcendence made it easy. We simply snapped our intellectual fingers and poofed them out of existence. In reality, what we actually did is let down our guard, dropped our armaments, and dismissed our help. We left generations open to being run over with very little resistance.We dismissed the transcendent in two ways: liturgy and education.
In liturgy, the focus of Mass went from God to humanity. We came to affirm ourselves and not worship God. We went for what was comfortable and unchallenging.In fact, things were so unchallenging that Mass itself became a dreary exercise in self-affirmation. If you want to lose people, especially men, then this is the correct route to take.
The more we experimented with the Mass, changed the Mass, gutted the challenge from preaching into therapeutic moralism, filled it with songs about us, the more and more people wandered out.
Pair this now with the emptying of the transcendent in education
.
Catholic identity was not only seen as old fashioned, but as detrimental to education. The Land o’ Lakes declaration shooed Catholic identity away as if it were a pesky fly. This seeped into the catechetical materials used on ages of children.
We shifted away from a transcendent God who has expectations of us as His people to a doddering old fool of a God who enabled our whims because He had no real preference to morality.
Morality became subjective
.
Want to use birth control? Cool. Want to cohabitate? No problem! Want to reduce you body to carnal playground to be used as a toy? Sure! The list goes on and on.
Without the transcendent, religion is reduced to “feeling good.”
Sure enough, Catholic priests and nuns started dabbling in eastern religions and eastern mysticism. They encouraged others to do the same. Why? Because the human heart needs a sense of transcendence.If we take it from God, we will have to appropriate it for ourselves. We made God irrelevant in that pursuit. This was the seedbed from which the popular ‘spiritual but not religious ‘ mantra used by the ‘nones’ came.
For three generations, we made God irrelevant.
This seeped into our homes. This is where things became fatal. The first generation raised on this watered-down nonsense became parents who learned well the lessons taught. If happiness was already guaranteed from God without our effort, then we could focus on happiness in the world.
After a few generations, the eternal happiness was overwhelmed by the temporal.
The primary way religion was taught was by absence. Children, like their parents, became comfortable with pursuing the temporal exclusively.Mass, prayer, and religious formation became theological roadkill on the highway to hell. However, as I said before, the heart need the transcendent.
So, what happens?
The temporal starts to take on a transcendent quality. The pursuit of wealth, pleasure, power, and honor became the focus. The temporal got treated with the devotion once given to the transcendent, and the transcendent got treated with the laissez faire attitude of the temporal.
Why is it parents will consistently choose sports, dance, leisure, and multitude of things to worship and religious formation?
That was what they were taught to do! We made God irrelevant and these things filled that gap. It is why parents get hostile when approached with this: it is like we changed the rules on them.Catholic schools then became reduced to private schools with statuary. We became comfortable with that. Catholic identity was no more important in the parish school than it was in the university.
Land O Lakes weaseled its way down to the elementary level. Religion classes were seen as the most optional of the curriculum, prayer as entirely to be sacrificed for more important endeavors, and Mass as bothersome to the more important aspects of the schedule.
Religion itself was taught as if morality and faith were subject to personal likes and dislikes. The students see this, and when this is paired with parents already readily sacrificing Sunday Mass and other Church related things, we almost beg them to drop away.
In losing our transcendence, we also lost our relevance. No wonder we have a shortage of priests! Who wants to give their life, not marry, and serve in such a faith?
Again, though, the human heart needs transcendence.
If we truly want to get our lost generations back, it will be by reversing this trend towards the temporal as being the be all/end all of our lives. This will have to happen in our liturgy and education first.
We need to remember that without a transcendent God, the Church is irrelevant!
The world very much believes this and for too long we have acted as if they were correct. We must reclaim our birthright by remembering who our God is and what He expects.This will be a long road. It will be a shock to the system. It starts with us admitting we messed up. We have to own our mistakes, do an appropriate mea culpa, and reverse course. We must understand that in trying to tame God and the devil, we left ourselves open for ruin.
Can there be any wonder that we have experienced the depravity in and outside of the Church in the last century?
The sexual scandals are a symptom of the disease, but not the disease itself. Sexual scandals can only grow in swampish landscape of a loss of transcendence (how can you molest children and seminarians and cover it up and still believe in a transcendent God?).
To drain this swamp takes more than protocols to deal with where the swamp water is; you have to see where the water is coming from and stem the source.
Our Masses, families, parishes, and schools must truly reflect reality.There most definitely is a transcendent God. He does have expectations of us. While He does indeed love us uniquely, we too must love Him as well. The road to relevance, a road we lost decades ago, can only be regained by restoring the transcendent.
Our foray into a sappy Catholic human-centered fraternal order has given us the identity of a cheap greeting card. We can and must remember who we really are called to be.
39 comments:
These aren’t abstract problems. Your post yesterday reminded everyone that Bishop Lessard played a large role in the pedophile scandal. He not only ordained the priest but covered up the crime and hid the priest so he couldn’t face justice. And for his actions many lost their faith and the diocese is $10million poorer. If he showed a lack of faith in that matter what is the state of the Catholic liturgy and education?
What was his excuse? Did he ever repent? Did his successor ever call him to account or is the diocese still honoring him with his name on buildings and dinners held in his honor. If the current bishop approves of Lessard, what is his excuse?
This is why the laity doesn’t trust the bishops. They only look out for themselves and view themselves as infallible and impeccable.
Wow, he is dead-on. One of the (few) good ones from his age group of priests. All the others are at this very moment listening to Cdl. Blase Cupich at the AUSCP conference spouting his progressive rhetoric. God help us (please)!
"We need to remember that without a transcendent God, the Church is irrelevant!"
"We dismissed the transcendent in two ways: liturgy and education."
These two sentences pretty well say it all.
The whole point of the liturgical movement for reform was to turn our attention to man, to his active participation in what became an idol, the liturgy. The Church had to become pastoral, which effectively meant looking at man first, not God.
Whatever inspiration by the Holy Spirit there was in the liturgical document of the Council, it was undone with one sentence, that in the reform of the liturgy "active participation of the faithful is to be considered above all else." That was about elevating Man, not God, about man worshiping the liturgy, not the transcendent God that the liturgy is meant to reveal to the hearts of men. Above all else? Above the transcendent? Above revealing glimpses of His Beauty? Above God Himself? The Novus Ordo is not just worship by the assembly but worship of the assembly. In the Novus Ordo, God can easily become irrelevant.
We often look at Bugnini as the villain in the liturgical reforms, but he just followed the pet ideas of Josef Jungmann as did much of the liturgical movement at the time, ideas that saw the pre-Conciliar liturgy as having been deeply corrupted since the Church's fight with Arianism 1,500 years ago, and needing assembly based worship founded on a pastoral theology to save it. (Sound familiar?) The scholarly pride here is shown by how outdated these ideas are today; but whenever you update anything, as opposed to seeking the perennial, it no sooner becomes outdated when it is updated.
As Fr Peckman points out, correcting the loss of God's transcendence in liturgy (and education) "starts with us admitting we messed up." I do not see Rome admitting this anytime soon. The mantra that the liturgical reforms were divinely inspired persists, maybe even eventually making Jungmann, Bugnini, and Bouyer saints before the Church completely collapses in the West. There is great pride in this liturgical document of Vatican II, and until Rome humbly admits that this document is purely prudential, it ain't going to happen. And in not admitting the prudential nature of this document, the elite in the Church continue to contradict the liturgical teachings of the Council of Trent which would need to also be taken as divinely inspired. But of course, if you are a Modernist, then theological and liturgical truth is relative to the times and mores.
At an Orthodox parish, I was actually having this discussion with a new friend I made. A young adult like me. We were talking about how the loss of reverence has changed everything. What we knew was no longer the case. Upon worshipping with us, her words were "This is exactly what I have been looking for"'''...There is something to be said about the loss of verticality in worship...It's not that God is absent in the modern Roman Liturgy, it's just that He's veiled by the various abuses and all of the banal things.
Bee here:
When the clergy at the Land O' Lakes conference caved into the "Enlightenment" world view that looks only to the scientifically provable as Truth, it signified an entire collapse of the Catholic world view. With that decision (a triumph for Satan) Catholic intellectuals adopted an anti-God position. Truth be told, they were intellectually embarrassed to make Faith claims in light of scientific truth, but they failed to realize the limitations of the scientific world view, which only can address truth in the concrete material world, but no other experience (for instance, the experience of love). In fact, the scientific world view denies the existence of anything but the tangible (which in itself demonstrates its limitations.) That atheistic world view was so strong (and still is in most secular and even Catholic universities) it mocks claims that God even exists. And Catholic intellectuals were embarrassed to defend God. These men, these educated men, forgot the words of Jesus, "For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." Luke 9:25 or "So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven." Matt 10:32
They didn't even believe in God enough to suffer intellectual humiliation for the love of God. Awesome, courageous shepherds, right?
After Land O' Lakes theologians and professors in seminaries and Catholic universities incorporated this atheistic world view in their writings and teaching, and since they couldn't outright deny the existence of God and still pretend to be priests of the Church, they modified what they taught about God, trying to compromise with the Enlightenment world view.
And now we have from the Pope and top bishops and cardinals saying, 1) God does not lead us into temptation (No? Really? We are not tried by God as gold in the furnace? Do tell!), and 2) God is so merciful that probably almost everybody is going to heaven. (!! That would be GREAT! But then, if that is true, why do we need the Catholic religion at ALL? And whose hands does THAT play into? (Hint: the devil who doesn't exist either.) And I guess Jesus saying, "Go, make disciples of all nations..." was just a suggestion, not a mission. Funny how many martyrs died while trying to accomplish that mission, but no need for that nowadays. I guess they were just ignorant, pre-Enlightened extremists. Or something.)
Ah, the sin that results from "human respect." It's rampant in our clergy and Church.
Not me. I'm having none of it. For me, I assume if there is a conflict between what science says and what the Catholic Church teaches docrinally, either science is wrong, or I am not smart enough to resolve the conflict, but I believe what the Church teaches by default. I would rather err and remain Faithful to God and His Church, than placate my fellow human beings, who cannot save me. Thomas More once said, "I do not care very much what men say of me, provided that God approves of me." I'm with him.
God bless.
Bee
Bee here:
Someone recommended the following homily on another web site. I highly recommend it. I believe this priest gets to the very heart of the matter of the cause of the problems we are seeing in the Church.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOXPRpfjbtM
God bless.
Bee
I avoid Novus Ordo Masses not because I doubt their validity but because the casual, banal fashion it is usually offered by a priest who lacks a sufficient understanding of what and who he is representing when offering the gift (sacrifice) of Calvary to the Father. I also find it utterly distracting that the usual NO congregation is similarly spiritually uncomprehending. I am convinced that most NO committed Bishops are uncaring as well. Aside from badly formed priests and heretical theology which cannot be easily corrected in the short run, why don't they do something about the music permitted in the Mass? Music sets the emotional tone and effects the spiritual harmony of the worshipers at Mass.
Things are not likely to improve in my lifetime.
I believe also that Vatican 2 confirmed a heretical theological trend in the Catholic Church which by now engendered a de facto break with the Church Jesus Christ founded. Heretics and usurpers are in charge. Some cardinals and bishops have called for change but not enough. It is difficult to see how this will all end. I am not member of the SSPX but it comforts to remember that they as the remnant might in some distant future assist in a reform of a highjacked institution.
Those photographs you posted: that is the illustration of gays in charge. People didn’t just leave, they were driven out. It doesn’t take that many words to explain what really happened.
The bottom photo reminds me of a scene from the Italian B movies, the Hercules series, of a temple scene.
Unfortunately, my pastor is an active AUSCP member who wears their lapel pin and may be at their meeting this week for all I know. Still more disturbing is the fact that our bishop has participated at their meetings which creates the appearance that he may support their radical positions on certain issues such as their apparent support for female ordinations. This, along with the recent allegations against the late Cardinal Bernardin by Mr. Grein (the same credible abuse victim who brought down McCarrick) have me pretty disgusted with a lot of our bishops and clergy. Every day that passes I hear more evidence which causes me to pray for a massive clerical purge (or radical repentance and conversion of hearts) . . .
Our bishop should disavow the AUSCP and forbid his priests from being members of this organization as well as forbidding them from attending AUSCP functions. This would show clarity in supporting Church teaching and rejection of their heterodox positions and proposals. This is the kind of clarity that increasingly disaffected Catholics want to see! If bishops don’t get this, the Church will continue to shrink.
When you ask people who left they church why they’ve left the church, generally they don’t have anything to do with standing for Communion or which songs are sung. But when you ask clergy why people are leaving, it generally boils down to “because people don’t listen to me.”
This is what you hear when you actually ask people who've left the church, not conservative cranks (present company excepted of course). The abuse crisis, of course, and all the attendant hypocrisy. Treatment of women. Treatment of gays. Right-wing politics. The divorce issue. I'm surprised birth control didn't come up, but this article didn't mention it. I have no problem with either the quality of sermons or of the money talk. Get real, kids, you've got to keep the lights on.
7 reasons Catholics leave church (in Trenton, #1 is sex abuse crisis)
By Dan Merica, CNN
Washington (CNN) – Even though Roman Catholics are the second-largest religious group in the United States, the tradition has seen an exodus of members in recent decades. One in ten Americans is an ex-Catholic.
A recent study by two college professor tries to get at a simple question: Why are they leaving?
Conducted William J. Byron, a professor of business at St. Joseph’s University and Charles Zech, founder of the Center for the Study of Church Management of Villanova’s School of Business, the anecdotal study conducted in late fall of 2011 processes the opinions of 300 non-churchgoing Catholics in Trenton, New Jersey.
The 7 biggest reasons Catholics from Trenton are leaving the church, according to the study:
1. The sex abuse crisis
Several respondents said they had been victims of sexual abuse by church leadership.
2. The church’s stance on homosexuality
The second most cited reason for leaving the church was that former worshipers felt homosexuals were unwelcome in the church.
When those surveyed were asked if there were any religious beliefs in the Catholic Church that troubled them, a number cited views on same-sex marriage. “The church’s view on gays, same-sex marriage, women as priests and priests not marrying, to name a few,” said one respondent, explaining her departure from the church.
“Hypocrisy,” said one person. “History of discrimination against women, anti-gay stance, unwelcoming attitude.”
3. Dissatisfaction with the priest
About half of those surveyed in the Trenton report were not supportive of the pastor they had left behind.
According to Byron and Zech, words like “arrogant,” “distant,” “aloof” and “insensitive” were all used by respondents to describe their priest.
4. Uninspiring homilies on Sundays
A number of people responded that homilies, weekly Sunday messages from the priest, did not relate or “speak to” them.
“I stopped going regularly because the homilies were so empty,” one respondent said. “And whenever the church wanted to raise money, they dropped the homily and talked money.”
5. Perception that church hierarchy is too closely tied to conservative politics
Politics was a mixed bag, according to the survey.
“Eliminate the extreme conservative haranguing,” said one person. Another respondent said politics and the church shouldn’t mix: “I feel the church should stay out of politics; it should certainly not threaten politicians.”
6. Church’s stance toward divorced and remarried Catholics
Catholicism’s stance on divorce and remarriage were also highlighted, especially by divorced females.
“Instead of making every Mass a form of humiliation for Catholics who cannot receive communion,” one respondent to the Trenton survey said, “do something like a private blessing at communion time, to include everyone.”
7. The status of women
With the political debate over religious conscience and contraceptive coverage, women’s rights and the church have come to the forefront of debate in American politics. According to the Trenton study, a number of people who have left the church cite a “history of discrimination against women,” as one reason for leaving.
“If the Catholic Church does not change its archaic views on women, it is going to become a religion that survives on the fringe of an open-minded, progressive society,” one person who was surveyed said.
Daniel, you just made a case for this article and how the loss of Catholic identity built upon the transcendent and Divine Truth has been so eroded that Catholics and would be former Catholics see the Church and god as a social construct that must accommodate social trends and it is a consumer mentality. The store has bad employees, poor service and outdated products so I will consume elsewhere.
Again, Father, you are projecting your own agenda instead of listening to what Catholics say. That is part of the problem.
We are Macy’s & you have to come to Macy’s because we have always been Macy’s. By the way, no gays or women or divorced people or liberals are welcome in Macy’s. Also, 10 percent of our staff will videotape children in the dressing rooms and cover it up & attack people who protest.
Gee, I wonder why business is off? I think it’s because our prices are too low.
Goodbye Macy’s.
Daniel, you continue to make it abundantly clear that you are a poster boy for this article. All that you say is correct in terms of perversion. Why was it tolerated so much in the post Vatican II Church, Why isn't there a fear of hell. Where is the belief in the devil. You want active homosexual lifestyles and marriage for them rather than God's teaching about chastity. Really? And just who isn't welcome into the Church and just who isn't called to repentance and a firm purpose of amendment?
Who are you kidding Daniel. You are part of the problem not the solution. And yes who in the hell videotapes children, abuses them and thinks they can get away with it and be treated like royalty in a treatment facility.
Where is the transcendent in all of this Daniel and in your ideologies that so many follow, the wide path to hell?
Daniel,
The 7 “reasons” are fake, left-wing loon talking points, period. Father McDonald is spot on. Fyi, millions of American Catholics departed long before the sex scandals became public. This “journalist” must be so young that he forgot about Humanae Vitae
Daniel reports people leave the church because of sex abuse crisis. The he reports that people also leave because the Church discriminates agains homosexuals. Hello, homosexuals are the chief reason for the sex abuse crisis in the Church.
"And of course the gay men with the most poisonous and toxic sexual priorities are the most committed and vocal — these are people who value their sexual practices and choices more, much more, than they value their own lives or the lives of their sexual partners." This is an opinion of a gay man.
If the homosexual priests, bishops and cardinals feel this way the first order of business for the Church is to remove all homosexuals and their protectors from its ranks. If not done, in the current cultural climate, the institutional Church will be hopelessly corrupted (dead) in a short time if it is not so already.
The gates of hell not prevailing does not have to mean that Rome is not already in the thrall of the Evil One.
CNN is fake news.
I fully agree with JJ. Let the purge begin!
"The 7 biggest reasons Catholics from Trenton are leaving the church, according to the study:
"1. The sex abuse crisis"
There is not a "sex abuse crisis" within Holy Mother Church. The so-called "crisis" peaked at least 35 years ago. Prior to the mid-1980s, only a microscopic amount of priests had been accused of sexual abuse sins/crimes.
It is true most certainly that since the Dallas Charter was initiated in 2002 A.D., rare has been the priest accused of sexual abuse.
The so-called "crisis" in question does not exist.
Pax
Mark Thomas
Mark the crisis has always been about questionable episcopal management of priests and allowing predators to have their way with minors and vulnerable adults, but keeping it quiet so as not to cause scandal.
The crisis is one of revealing this malfeasance accomplished for more than 50 years and naming clerics who abused--this is a mega crisis for the Church throughout the world.
Worse yet is the complicity of bishops who also were abusers but got away with it for so long, i.e. McCarrick and the guy from West Virginia and others. This is a crisis Mark, pure and simple and the only way out of it is prayer and good works.
I wish Father McDonald would post one of the recent articles shown by just what the AUSCP has been up to recently and which bishops (Cupich, for example) are showing up and speaking at their gatherings. Most lay Catholics probably don’t even know of the existence of this liberal priests’ network.
JJ, just a guess here: A priest who often comments on this blog might be able to fill you in, if you ask nicely, when he returns from the conference...probably traveling back today or tomorrow. I doubt our blog host knows much about the current goings-on at the AUSCP, nor would he spend parish funds to attend.
The so-called "Trenton Report" sounds like what some want which, is greatly opposed to what many need.
I wonder if churches with only the sanctuary, and no room for pews or an audience have ever been built? So much of this progressive stuff is playing to an audience . It has nothing to do with prayer.
Who or what is AUSCP? And what is the bishop who belongs to it (the unnamed one about which there are several complaints he is a part of it)?
TJM says CNN is Fake News. OK, and FOX is just a mouthpiece for Trump. 2 sides of the same coin. But with 2020 coming along, I may be OK with FOX'S stance as so much is at stake----it is pretty clear that none of the Democrats running for president supports so much as a single restriction on abortion. Not one. Not on public funding, not on parental consent, not on late-term abortions. None. Zilch. Instead we hear about "reproductive justice." What?!?
With regard to the Church's so-called "archaic views" on women, it should be noted the mainline Protestant denominations have been losing members for decades, even with such ordinations. Not like people are flocking to the Episcopal Church these days because there are women priests and bishops. Women already perform a lot of non-ordinated ministries in the Church, like lectors and Eucharistic ministers. There is of course no precedence for ordination of women priests in traditional Christianity (perhaps some dispute about ordination of deaconesses in the Eastern Orthodox Church---there is nothing in their canon law prohibiting that) and certainly not bishops either. Perhaps we need to squelch the impression that one has to be ordained to play a role in the Church, or that being part of the clergy is some sort of political thing as opposed to spiritual.
The AUSCP is the Association of United States Catholic Priests. I am not aware of several complaints stated here that a bishop is a member but I have read more than one story (including online stories by the organization itself) that several bishops have attended and spoken at its annual gatherings. One of these bishops is Cardinal Cupich.
Anonymous,
Unlike fake news CNN cheerleading for the Abortion Party 24/7, Fox has commentators highly critical of President Trump: Mike Wallace, Sheppy Smith, and “Judge” Napolitano. Heck there are fake catholic bishops and priests who support the Abortion Party with impunity
Father McDonald, I appreciate your point that the "crisis has always been about questionable episcopal management of priests and allowing predators to have their way with minors and vulnerable adults, but keeping it quiet so as not to cause scandal."
However, Father, the "crisis" to the majority of people within and without the Church is a crisis of tremendous proportion that concerns a priesthood filled supposedly with sexual predators who abuse children.
Said folks believe the Catholic right-wing hype, as well as the secular left-wing hype, that the priesthood is packed with sexual predators/perverts.
That is why, for decades, the popular culture's image of a priest is that of a pious fraud who abuses children sexually.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Dear friends, sorry I upset you so. But to clear things up, I am not arguing, necessarily, saying that Catholics are leaving because of the abuse crisis. Neither is CNN. That is what former Catholics themselves are saying. That is a study conducted, as the article says, by two academics at the request of the Bishop of Trenton. Reading, as they say, is fundamental. The alternative to this approach, I suppose, is for a group of elderly misanthropic recluses to ask each other why people are leaving the church. The answer always seems to be “because everybody else is not as wise, as pure or as holy as yours truly.” Seems like a winning formula, guys. Stick with what works.
There used to be a saying: 'Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.' Those who no longer attended Mass were referred to as 'lapsed', but there was no question of anyone 'leaving the Church', nor was there any mechanism whereby they could formally do so. Even on the rare occasions when a Catholic decided to 'convert' to (say) Anglicanism, all he had to do was to worship in his local Anglican church; an Anglican could not become a Catholic without undertaking instruction and being formally received.
“Leaving the faith” was the phraseology used by the good reverend Peckham in Father McDonakd’s original post, John. As I said earlier, reading is fundamental. I younwish to snark about it, take it up with them. Have a nice weekend.
Daniel,
You are stuck in a time warp of the last 10 years. Catholics in the US have been leaving the Church in droves since the early 1960s LONG before there was a whiff of sexual scandal. CNN is fake news and if that's your source, you are in big trouble. Also, calling people "elderly misanthropic recluses" is "agist" and you are hearby banned from Lib World for committing one of its most egregious sins. You sound like someone who should be posting at the National Anti-Catholic Reporter.
How distinct was the Church and her laws before VII? Was there the same confusion and resentment towards, say, communion? My last daughter will be wedded tomorrow. She inserted the following in a short program for her guests from college: “If you have never attended a Catholic Mass please follow along! We hope you enjoy experiencing our ceremony. During the Eucharist you may come forward for a blessing but not the bread or wine.” I don’t expect to many objections. But we will see.
rcg,
Congratulations on obtaining a new son-in-law! May the Lord richly bless the newly married couple!
Carol, thank you! He is a good kid and very smart and hard working. They are hopeful for children and he is very respectful, almost to a fault. The rest of family likes him, too. He is very welcome to our family.
Sounds like my marine summer seminarian but his hoping to have children are spiritual ones although he would make a great dad too.
He should. He’s fresh out of USAF Academy.
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