Will Catholic parishes have to resort to filling the pews with photos of people, puppets or simply no people and shuttered churches, schools and other ministries?
One has to be living in an ecclesiastical cave not to have some opinion about what has happened to the Catholic Church in the last seven years.
The question is this: is what has happened been good or bad?
For example, some the earliest reforms of female religious life seem to be beneficial but the problem was that those initial reforms led to an all out “reimagining” of religious life for those orders that embraced it. Most of these “Reimagined” orders are on the verge of extinction along with the wonderful institutions these orders opened, staffed and maintained, such as Catholic schools and hospitals.
The question is this: is what has happened been good or bad?
I have asked this question over and over again on this blog. How many rank and file laity are caught up in the controversies that have come about because of what Pope Francis has said or not or not said or done?
A 59 year old lay friend of mine who is married with three children sent me this yesterday email yesterday exactly as it is posted:
Apart from anything I write or quote on this blog, I have not publicly addressed any of the controversies in the Church since the election of Pope Francis and if I use Pope Francis in a homily or teaching, I use what His Holiness has said or written which is orthodox and of the Catholic Faith.
I never use his off-the-cuff remarks, many of which are said with an Italian tongue-in-cheek attitude.
So, in your parish, have the last seven years been better, worse or just the good ole status quo. Don’t knock the status quo if that means you have the same number of parishioners, the same number who are happy or sad people, the same number of dollar bills coming in, the same number of kids in Catholic schools and CCD programs; the same number of RCIA candidates and the same number of paid staff, volunteer leaders and the like.
One has to be living in an ecclesiastical cave not to have some opinion about what has happened to the Catholic Church in the last seven years.
The question is this: is what has happened been good or bad?
For example, some the earliest reforms of female religious life seem to be beneficial but the problem was that those initial reforms led to an all out “reimagining” of religious life for those orders that embraced it. Most of these “Reimagined” orders are on the verge of extinction along with the wonderful institutions these orders opened, staffed and maintained, such as Catholic schools and hospitals.
The question is this: is what has happened been good or bad?
I have asked this question over and over again on this blog. How many rank and file laity are caught up in the controversies that have come about because of what Pope Francis has said or not or not said or done?
A 59 year old lay friend of mine who is married with three children sent me this yesterday email yesterday exactly as it is posted:
Exactly what I have been saying!!!
Apart from anything I write or quote on this blog, I have not publicly addressed any of the controversies in the Church since the election of Pope Francis and if I use Pope Francis in a homily or teaching, I use what His Holiness has said or written which is orthodox and of the Catholic Faith.
I never use his off-the-cuff remarks, many of which are said with an Italian tongue-in-cheek attitude.
So, in your parish, have the last seven years been better, worse or just the good ole status quo. Don’t knock the status quo if that means you have the same number of parishioners, the same number who are happy or sad people, the same number of dollar bills coming in, the same number of kids in Catholic schools and CCD programs; the same number of RCIA candidates and the same number of paid staff, volunteer leaders and the like.
19 comments:
BEATTLE?
The rear engine Volkswagen Beetle was, in its day, a very reliable, very long-lasting auto.
The "People's Car" was not something for the Latin-speaking or Latin-reading elite.
It wasn't ostentatious, loaded down with gaudy accessories and unnecessary extras.
It is listed as the fourth most influential car in the 20th century after the Model T, the Mini, and the Citroen DS.
In 81 years, the venerable Beetle sold 23 million units.
Rolls Royce, on the other hand, is a car for the wealthy elite, the few, and since 1884 has yet to sell a million cars. That's 136 years.
And Adolph Hitler promoted it. It is a monument to him which should be destroyed. I guess you are a fascist for extolling these Nazi vehicle?
I would say things are about the same. It feels like attendance is the same or slightly down, but an additional Spanish-language Mass was added so that might explain the slight drop in other Mass attendance. RCIA classes have been pretty big the last couple of years. However, I haven't noticed collections going up and the parish is still chronically short of money.
It just feels the same. We live in a veritable boom-town, so sometimes I think that there should be more people in the parish, but there are a lot parishes down here so maybe the newcomers are going somewhere else. We have increased confession times are the parish and another day of Eucharistic Adoration, which is due to the new priests that we have. We also have (or did before Covid) a 1/month Latin OF Mass. I can't directly attribute any of that to Francis, but it happened in his reign. Our priests never mention Francis in their homilies. In the parish, it's like the old days before JPII, when the Pope was in Rome that's all anyone knew about him.
Well this will be the next cause du jour for liberals clerics like "Father" Martin:
“Star Trek” actor and noted LGBT activist George Takei issued a veiled swipe at author J.K. Rowling this week when he said that those who defend “so-called biological sex” are actually scientifically ignorant.
“When you defend so-called ‘biological sex,’ you sound scientifically ignorant and you elevate transphobia,” the actor tweeted.
Our FSSP parish is seeing a renaissance. There is a glaring hole in our demographic, namely that a large percentage of our people are not geographically local but from about an hour away. That is changing but slowly. Our coffers are bursting, but that never satisfies me. We have a very active men’s prayer group that Is struggling with the very problem described in this post. I counsel the men to not respond to the Pope personally because they are not addressed by him personally.
Hey Anonymous K,
Trump Administration rolling back more Obama tyranny!
Federal health officials announced a final rule Friday scrapping an Obama-era regulation that forced medical workers to perform abortions despite their religious beliefs.
Your lightbringer obviously did not support religious liberty. As a "catholic" do you care, at all? Do you think Pope Francis cares at all?
I see it as something happening entire life, from elementary schools with masses of uniformed children herded by sisters in habits to what we have today, Catholic versions of a public school.
And although surely the changes in rite and the freeform version of "Catholicism" (an oxymoron practice sure to engender a religion as schizoid as the external culture's) has done tremendous damage, the problem started much earlier, and which led to the latter focus only on externals.
It started when the Church forgot how to, and how to pass along, any clue on any manner of teaching its members and outside seeker how to positively experience God without a shadow of a doubt.....a total spiritual catechesis vacuum....
leaving an empty shell to totter clanking along until it started shedding parts in natural lethargy and entropy, it lacking what had built it and sustained it....
That being those who strove truly to be saints...who practiced the disciplines, the denials, the hours of daily prayer and acts and devotions and exercises to cleanse themselves of worldly attachments and focus only on God....whether they were those in religious vocation or family vocation.
There are no saints raising saints, denying the world....only wordly cultural and ethnic catholics squabbling over externals as their numbers plummet when so plain to insiders and outsider that the squabblers have no answers, not even if you put a gun to their head. And as long as this continues, the numbers will continue to implode.
My canonical parish is something I only go to for Confession on Saturday afternoon. It’s a Baby Boomer hospice center.
My local parish of choice has risen steadily upward by all metrics. It also got far more liturgically orthodox in that time. It has multiple TLMs per week (including two on Sunday morning) and boasts the best ROTR Sunday Novus Ordo in the DC area.
My vacation (and someday retirement) parish is an FSSP parish in Providence. It was a dying, homosexual captured place until the bishop gave it to the FSSP. Now it’s thriving.
Dunno. Don't attend local parish anymore. One local men's religious order has recently opened mass back up but you have to make an appt via email. The SSPX I attended is only having outdoor mass. Not sure I will ever go back. can barely get thru a trip to the supermarket wearing a mask. too physically and mentally draining.
Father, as a priest you know that no Catholic cannot belong to any organization that practices, promotes, or encourages violence against others or any organization which does not condemn acts of violence within its membership.
The Klu Klux Klan is such an organization and I believe the Church holds that it is a mortal sin, subject to possible excommunication, for any Catholic to belong to such an organization.
There are two organizations that have come into prominence today that are attracting young people but which I believe are at the least highly problematic, if not sinful, for a Catholic to be a supporter of or member. These organizations are Antifa and Black Lives Matter, both whose members have been associated with violent acts, both against properties and persons. At the very least these organizations should condemn any acts of violence or destruction associated with any member or supporters. Shouldn't the Church speak out about these organizations?
https://townhall.com/columnists/jackkerwick/2017/09/12/antifa-antiamericanism-the-left-and-the-democratic-party-n2380295
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-danger-of-the-black-lives-matter-movement/
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/473457-antifa-is-anti-america-and-its-values
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2015/09/02/exposing-black-lives-matter-for-what-it-is-promotion-of-cop-killing-n2046941
https://www.dailywire.com/news/7-things-you-need-know-about-antifa-michael-qazvini
https://www.dailywire.com/news/5-things-you-need-know-about-black-lives-matter-amanda-prestigiacomo
https://townhall.com/columnists/ryanbomberger/2020/06/05/top-10-reasons-i-reject-the-blm-n2570105
Two Masses tomorrow, one outside. Out of doors Mass in the American midwest weather this time of year is similar to jogging across an interstate highway early Sunday morning expecting there will be few trucks. There might be only a few thunderstorms but the ones that show up will be large and fast.
newguy40, I’m kinda with you there at this point.
Locally we attended a church outside our canonical jurisdiction for over 40 years, 30-minute drive one way, because we just couldn’t stand the new-agey parish in town here. Now for three months we have been “attending” live-streamed Masses which have been beautifully celebrated by our faithful, conservative priest.
We feel so alone and unclear about all this, but our beloved church only has about a 10-15% seating capacity, and we just can’t get motivated to fight for pew space on Sunday, then risk being turned away. When it finally opens to full capacity, will we attend in person again? I don’t know. We continue to tithe online, but honestly don’t know if we will be back in the pews. So, so not the way we had hoped to end our earthly stay.
I should have typed above:"no Catholic can belong to any organization".
I only wished to repeat myself a different way, and with perhaps more completeness and comprehensibility....
There are two classes of people who attend Mass....the cultural/ethnic/habitual goer, and those seeking meaning in life and an encounter with God in order to know God is real, and to be in God's true presence out of returned love.
I will not ask for a show of hands as to those who have a true spiritual guide and director on their journey to God, and I am not talking a parish Confessor as normally practiced.
I am talking a holy man or woman who knows God intimately and can help others to God, as well. Rarely will you find that, even at a retreat house, today.
The more beautiful, traditional Masses with impressive rites most certainly do help foster a most helpful interior disposition, and offer much time for attempts to commune with God, and likewise the places of worship helpful in that same way.
But, if they are just as empty spiritually as any felt banner lined Father Hugalot parish, it becomes swiftly apparent to any seeker that this is only a fancier country club filled with mostly the same empty folk as at the local drive-thru Mass,...
and often prayer is impossible even in the most beautiful and traditional of churches due to it being used mostly as a high zoot wedding hall for high zoot parishoners, and place for Garden Club ladies and concert hall recitals, and open slots between those social life bookends loudly interrupted constantly by high level parish members loudly doing their thing and utterly uncaring if folk there might actually be attempting to pray....
complaints do no good, they are generally dismissed with, "we have an adoration chapel for YOUR type" attitude, and often that chapel really shoddy compared to the church.
You can judge the health of a parish, and the success of its adopting and fostering the Gospel by how many people are there spending time with God, before Mass, after Mass, and in between Masses....if the numbers are low or nil, it is a place lacking only rigor mortis to complete its death.
Before/after Mass preparation and thanksgiving/communion is mostly impossible, even in the most beautiful of churches due to most are not showing up to encounter God, and their lack of encounter shows at their thundering gabbling herd entrance and exit, as well....really no better than Father Hugalot's wonderland of felt whose musicians always show up to do their weekly practice in the half-hour before Mass, and with both groups commencing their coffee and donuts socializing before the priest has yet to exit the building.
Both are doomed parishes....no answers and no God, is no answers and no God, no matter how beautiful or tacky the rites and the building.
The saving grace of a more traditional church is the that it at least preserves somewhere in dusty unused books, the objective possibility of finding the actual teachings and/or doctrines and/or practices on how to be a true disciple of Christ and walker in his footsteps as a true follower putting love of God ahead of every other concern. Or, at least leads to such, for the truly dedicated seeker. But none make it easy, and most make it hard to impossible, and those places die.
What made the Church special was that it was a Rolls Royce for everyone.
"ANTIFA" is NOT an organization. It's a label used by some activists and imposed on others. It's like calling someone (or them calling themselves) an "activist" or "alt-right" or "woke" or "right-wing" or "left-wing." Among all of those vague leanings can be found people who practice violence and people who do not.
'The "People's Car" was not for the Latin-speaking or Latin-reading elite'.
There is a grain of truth in this. The Nazis did not have much time for what we call a 'classical' education, which had hitherto been a staple of the German academic tradition. The aim of education, as they saw it, was to indoctrinate future generations in National Socialist ideology based on racial theory, and study of Latin and Greek did not promote this, and could even be regarded as subversive.
Roman culture was not valued in the same way as the 'Aryan' past with its Norse deities and barbarian languages, although Nazi architecture tended to be ponderously neo-classical. The Roman Empire was associated with the spread of Christianity, and the Latin language was closely identified with the Catholic Church.
ANTIFA is an organization in the sense that it is a group with a common goal bound by an operational philosophy. It is also funded by a number of shady bank accounts in off shore institutions. Most important, its actions and effects are real. You will notice that their operations in southern and western areas where the 2nd amendment is taken seriously, are minimal.
The VW was an election promise (when they still had elections in Germany) that Hitler never had any real promise of fulfilling beyond a few prototypes. Production was shifted to military vehicles in 1938. Postwar capitalist and automotive genius Ferdinand Porsche revived and improved it in 1947 for general citizen purchase. The rest, as they say, is history.
It's pretty much the status quo in my Parish, but not for just the past seven years. It's pretty much status quo ante Concilium since I live in the Diocese of Lincoln. Most of the 'Deforms' of the 'Spirit of Vatican II' passed us by, Deo gratias! Yes, we have the Novus Ordo, but it's celebrated reverently and strictly according to the rubrics, with no 'altar girls' and no EMHCs. The preaching is solidly orthodox as well. I feel very blessed.
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