Young people told the pope this past week, among other things, that they want a more inclusive Church.
I am so confused by this.
I was taught as a child and I teach as a priest that every single Catholic without exception must by Church Law, the Third Commandment and Holy Obligation attend Mass each Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation--no exceptions except for poor health and a couple of other reasons.
You can't get more inclusive than that. And we encourage non Catholics to attend Mass and participate in every way except for the Reception of Holy Communion.
Can anyone out there in blog land tell me if they belong to a parish where the priest and congregation are not inclusive????????????
Confused in Richmond Hill!
14 comments:
They want the Church to dispense with dogma and welcome peversion
No, they mean they want homosexuals, transsexuals, pederasts, perverts of every kind, Muslims, Hindus, and every conceivable religion included in every Sacrament of the Catholic Church. Any moral law, any meaningful value system, any restraint upon the id is considered to be exclusivistic, mean-spirited, and either homophobic, racist, or narrow-minded. These people will not be happy until unrestrained sexual acts are permitted in the nave of every Church.
TJM and Gene = 100% correct.
Dear Confused: You are too young - maybe - to recall that "inclusive" Catholic churches did not welcome African-Americans. If they did, the non-whites were relegated to back rows or to upstairs "bleacher" seating.
Or, an entirely separate parish was established so the "inclusive" white Catholics would not have to worship with their brothers and sisters in the Lord in any form.
Maybe you have not served in a parish with a recently arrived Latino population. "They," it is not infrequently heard, "want to take over everything."
The gay man or the lesbian woman is shunned, but everybody knows that Mr. S has been living in an adulterous "marriage" for years, but, because he is wealthy and his family well-situated in the community, his sins are overlooked while the gay man or woman is ostracized.
Agree with TJM and Gene. The fruit of the "Who am I to judge?" tone that comes down from the Chair.
PS,
I think we can all agree that African-Americans should not be segregated within a church. The decision to desegregate American Catholic worship was made decades ago, during the same time period to which Father McDonald now refers.
As for Latinos, the vernacular liturgy promoted by VCII necessarily results in segregated Masses. The only way around that is to make either Spanish or English the mother tongue of everyone in the future. Or, go back to Latin.
As for fruitless sexual proclivities, as long as they keep their temptations between themselves and their confessors, nobody else will even know about them, much less discriminate against these tormented souls.
Finally, yes, the rich man in an adulterous marriage should be denied Holy Communion unless he agrees to live in sexual continence. No free passes.
P S Buck Kavanaugh,
I was raised Presbyterian in the South. My first experience of blacks and whites worshipping together was in a Catholic Church in the 60's. The blacks were among the regular worshippers.
I have never heard anyone say that Hispanics want to take over everything, and I attend Mass and fellowship at three different Catholic Churches. In fact, Hispanics, by and large, are far more devout than your average Catholic and I think this is appreciated by other Catholics. The Priest at one Church I attend is Hispanic, very devout, and I have never heard any remarks about his ethnicity. You are creating straw men to serve your own ego and your low opinion of the Church you serve.
There is a huge difference in a local parish overlooking an adulterous relationship or closet homosexual and the Church as a body normalizing those relationships and encouraging them. All denominations have their own hypocrisy, but it cannot become policy or doctrine. The Church is flawed, but the flaws must not be codified and adopted as the rule.
Gene,
LOL. You discovered that Buck has the "eau de Kavanaugh!"
IMHO, that is just another way of saying that they want a Church that doesn’t interfere with their life.
PS Buck, are Catholics required or not to attend Sunday Mass and Holy Days of Obligation???? Does this exclude minorities, gays and the otherwise perverted?
That some Catholics exclude others is not Catholic, just as Catholics who exclude babies from life through abortion isn't Catholic. You seem to be exclusively confused by the perfection to which the Church calls us and the sins of her members.
All Catholics, Holy and Un-Holy, are required to attend Sunday Holy Mass and Holy Days of Holy Obligation.
That God's offer of saving grace has been impeded by the historical non-inclusiveness (read: Segregationism) of not a few Catholic congregations and is impeded by the current anti-ethnic attitude of some Catholic congregations is a sin.
Dr. King was right. 11:00 A.M. Sundays remains the most segregated hour in American society.
As to the distinction between the practices of one or a few congregations and the "official" policies and doctrines of a denomination, how does the person who is being excluded, shunned, looked down upon or otherwise minimalized in a particular congregation feel about this differentiation I wonder....
Anon @ 6:56, Again, you amazingly (well, maybe not) miss the point.
So do all Y’all inclusive people like Spanish Parishes and other local vernacular segregation? Do we not really want our Lord to distinguish our cause from the unjust? It is always a little surprising how much people enjoy passing judgement on judgemental people. I guess it feels good. It is not surprising that certain people on this blog fell trapped into the permanent eddy of race when it is pretty obvious even the children who made the comment were not thinking that small.
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