Sometimes my readers simply focus on the dismal state of the liturgical life of the Church and they comment that if only the EF Mass would supplant the OF Mass and that the OF Mass should be suppressed like the EF Mass was in 1970, that all our dones and nones would return to the Church. But would they?
Apart from the fact that Catholics are all over the place concerning what constitutes "good" liturgy, there are all kinds of reasons why we have dones and nones.
Of course the hypocrisy of the clergy unveiled these past fifty years has something to do with it and not just hypocrisy, but corruption.
Of course for the past 50 years a loss of Catholic identity and trying to reinvent Catholicism over and over again with little or no positive results may have something to do with it.
BUT LETS FACE IT; IT IS ALL ABOUT SEX.
1. First, Catholics wanted the ban on artificial birth control lifted. When it wasn't those who wanted it were done.
2. Then there are Catholics who want abortion without guilt. When the institutional church didn't comply, they were done.
3. Then there are Catholics who want to divorce and get married and be in good standing with the Church without the hassle of intrusive annulment procedures that might succeed or not. They are done.
4. Then there are Catholics who want same sex marriage and of course they are done too.
I suspect with young Catholics today, the Church's teaching homosexuality is seen as discrimatory and against their beliefs. It is equated with institutionalized racism.
This attitude of younger Catholics and today's culture in general, that the Church is the cause of anti-homosexual bigotry is going to cause the Church to continue to make dones and nones.
How can we maintain orthodox Catholic teaching and yet be pastoral with those who are homosexual and actively so?
8 comments:
I can see and understand the point of those who think that restroing the EF and eliminating the failed OF would be the key to changing the life of the Church. The logic runs something like this: The EF teaches and instills the completeness of our faith in a way that the OF has failed to do and does not even come close to acheiving. If we get enough "real" Catholics and add in those who would re-learn their poorly formed faith and would be renewed, the inluence of the Church has the potential to explode, just as Christianity originally exploded on the scene 2000 years ago from the influence of 12 men on fire for God.
And while that is certainly a worthy consideration, I don't think it is enoug (perhaps I lack faith--but today's fast moving media pack a "one-two punch" against Christianity with such overwhelming speed that it is hard to counter with the logic and patience of a time without such media.
All of these "victories" of the sexual revolution against Christianity have created a "perfect storm" for Christianity's demographic implosion.
• . We live in a culture of divorce. Children of divorce are statisticly more likely to engage in promiscuous behaviors. Add to that the fact that most divorced children grow up with little or no fathering and you have an absence of fatherhood that breeds a longing for male love and approval in young men which ends up being sublimated into a same-sex attraction. This is also a by-product of the massive illegitimacy rate that continues to rise. In short, we have a culture that breeds same-sex attraction while we stand around asking ourselves, "Gee, what happened." (Caveat: I am not saying that fatherlessness or emotionallly unavailable dads are the only cause of homosexuality, but it is a major contributing factor.)
• . Most of our children are products of the public school system. Here in Georgia, even if you can afford to send your kids to a Catholic school, by high school, most of us have to settle for sending them to one of the Godless diploma-factories that takes no moral position on anything and is filled with children from every type of belief-system, who have more influenc on our children than we do. Many of these schools. Children can take sex-ed classes in public schools, which are taught from an amoral Godless perspective. Part of that education will include contraception and WHERE TO GET IT. The irony is that we have "taught" this stuff to death for the last several decades and STD and teen pregnancy rates just keep going up anyway.
• . All of us want our children to have a better education than we did, so we encourage them to attend college. More students attend college today than at any time in American history. In fact, we boast to our neighbors if they get accepted by a "prestigious" college, especially perhaps one of the Ivy League schools. So we send them off where we will have virtually NO influence to places that are even MORE amoral and Godless than our public high schools where they are instilled with the gospels of tolerance and libertinism. They come back fancying themselves as "enlightened" and permeate our communities with their sophisticated pretensions of higher-thinking by helping legislate laws that institutionalize sexual deviation and perversion (a little learning is a dangerous thing).
So what can we do about this?
• . Fast and Pray
• . Continue to attend the EF and encourage our pastors to permit it or, at very least, try it: Look at what a profound effect it has had on Father McDonald!
• . If possible, homeschool your children with a Catholic system like Seton or Kolbe or one of the others. What's more important, having a higher income or keeping your family out of Hell?
• . Insist that you will only support your children if they attend a Catholic college that YOU approve and start doing your homework. Send your kids to "Catholic" universities like Georgetown, Notre Dame, Fordham, Boston College, University of San Diego and most others, and they will either lose their faith or get transformed into Catholics-In-Nam-Only who support all of these sexual perversions and sinful lifestyles. Re-think what a Catholic college should be and you will find a large array of smaller schools that burn the Catholic identity into their student's life. Some of these schools include Steubenville, Christendom, University of Dallas, University of Mary, Wyoming Catholic, Thomas Aquinas College and several others.
• . Be the best Catholic you can be, especially for the sake of your children. Go to Confession frequently and receive Holy Communion frequently.
A few days ago, in a different post, I responded:...”Rather than continuing to fight Liturgy wars, I would much prefer an honest and specific appraisal of what “accompaniment” entails and obligates us to believe as faithful Catholics. Thanks”
Here’s the problem: it seems to so many that “accompaniment” functionally translates to “Live and let live”. Don’t intrude, don’t confront, and for sure don’t lecture. I call it the Dr. Spock way of dealing with issues.. Let someone else worry about it, and just go on about your business as usual. But when does “Live and let live” become “Live and let die”? (Yes, I shamelessly borrowed from James Bond).
We greatly need this frank discussion. The Holy Father and his cadre have seriously confused an already greatly-compromised teaching authority within the US Church. Basically the “boots-on-the-ground” Catholics I know no longer look to the USCCB nor to Rome for grounded teaching. To whom do we go? The Church in the US has been struggling since the 1950s with massive enculturation issues, to the extant that we no longer truly know and thus cannot teach the difference between good and evil. And we expect our intelligent savvy children and grandchildren not to notice? Good grief!
We just have to stop calling evil ‘good’, and good ‘evil’. The Nones and Dones will notice.
Uhmmmm... anyone notice that the 'church' seems to be giving us all those things that people supposedly want?
Bee here:
Fr. McD asked, "How can we maintain orthodox Catholic teaching and yet be pastoral with those who are homosexual and actively so?"
Well if you don't want to tell them it will ultimately destroy them spiritually, you can't. It's like being pastoral to a drug addict. How can you not tell them to stop killing themselves? Okay, maybe you don't have to be so blunt, but I believe you have to back all the way up to the fundamentals, and explain why the behavior is a problem.
What to say to homosexuals? Back up to a mis-use of sexuality. Back up to how we all feel a sense of longing for intimacy, for love...a longing for closeness and companionship, and how we can often try to achieve that in our lives with quick fixes and wrong actions, because so many times we try to avoid the suffering of living without it until we actually do find an appropriate relationship.
You cannot imagine the war wounded stories I hear from parishioners at St. John Cantius of things they lived through while they were fallen away, or the things their extended family who are still fallen away are living through. Bad decisions followed by bad actions that led to broken families, kids going down wild, self destructive paths, shattered lives and heartbreak. Unbelievable things.
None of them wanted those disasters. They grabbed for some quick fix to their suffering, and bam, the devil had them on the line. And then they REALLY started to suffer.
People need to know what a trick bag sin is, and how even though they think it will scratch that itch, or salve that wound, it will only eventually destroy them more. They need to see how badly lives of sin turn out, which is usually hidden from them. No one does anybody a favor by enabling destructive behavior.
God bless.
Bee
The first photo is exhibit A for the sin of presumption
Golly, speaking of sex, should we now boycott Chick-Fil-A? They will no longer donate to the Salvation Army or the Fellowship of Chirsitian Athletes because such groups opposed the trend of the day, same-sex "marriage." When are conservative Christians going to fight back?!? Is the day too late?
Chic-fil-A is running into expansion issues due to government oppression. This may be part of a smart tactic if it allows for them to expand into protected markets. Staying closed on Sunday should still be viable.
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