I can't all his comments to come up in red. (Even though I highlighted them and asked for red. Bah!
Catholic Caucus Ping!
“...the critical factor seems to be that Mass attendance has dropped dramatically...”
So, why?
Are the teachings Biblical? If not, that is the answer.
Numbers don’t equal strength. I would rather have a smaller church that truly believes in everything in the Catechism, than some “feel good, Catholic-lite” big tent church. Smaller isn’t necessarily worse.
I’m born and raised Catholic, and still consider myself Catholic, but I don’t attend Mass. The primary reason is that the Priest in my parish is a sissified wimpus who barely speaks English. The guy is literally so soft spoken that you’d think he’s a nursery school psychologist, not to mention the fact that he’s born and raised Mexican. I have absolutely nothing in common with him.
I want a Priest who’s a man. Someone who isn’t afraid or ashamed to wield the sword of St. Peter for the good of God and country. And someone who can communicate with me in English on my own level, with the subtleties of a shared cultural experience. But what I’ve got is a wimpy Mexican dingleberry.
Yet another great article from Mosignor Pope. I do think that there is a tie-in, also. Just my opinion, but the combination of the increasingly secular society at large and related pressures seem to be generating many, umm, “cultural Catholics,” in some areas. I think that there is likewise some fallout (no puns intended) from some changes in the American Catholic Church that came after Vatican II and the debut of the Novus Ordo Mass. I am not saying this because of my love for the Tridentine Latin Mass, although I am deeply, perennially in awe and admiration of it. I am saying this because I have seen parishes wherein the feeling of community seemed to be more focused on the people than on the Lord. Part of this seems to stem from (in my poor and humble opinion) those more concerned with a certain rendition of the term Social Justice than the teachings of the Church. Either way, I think it a shame, and hope and pray for greater focus on this. I do feel that increasing the number of parishes where at least one Latin Mass occurs each week will help.
We go to our parishes for the Sacraments but it is important to remember that Catholic identity starts at home, the domestica egglesia, and the home has always been the core church and Catholicism has never survived in a country in which the faith was not primarily taught and passed on in this manner.
The late Fr. John Hardon wrote about this phenomena and he was appointed to the growing Catholic Homeschooling community in the US by the Pope because of the apparent problems in the Dioceses. Perhaps what we are seeing is statistical reflection of this solid core egglesia domestica as the Diocesan Church shudders from the past decade of scandal after scandal.
I know many all over the country who travel considerable distance to attend Mass because their parish has become offensive and liberal. I know many who just travel locally from parish to parish as the Mass times fit their busy schedules. These people identify as Catholic but their parish has become the church at large for a variety of reasons. We tend to think of Church as Diocesan because of all the trappings of Diocesan and parish life but that has lost the family focus in many places. In the early primitive Church, the Eucharist was often brought into a home for safekeeping and an altar was set up. Of course we know how St. Anthony brought the Eucharist to the Desert for safekeeping, then as monastic life developed the Eucharist was kept in the Chapels. The Faith will live on but I expect Diocesan life to change back to earlier patterns from a century or two ago.
Yet, at Christmas and Easter, the same Catholic churches get “packed” with worshipers.
The basic problem...Is 30 years of lousy catechesis and liberalism infecting the church.
Firm up the core and the blessings will flow out like a river.
The caucus label was removed because the article compares between Catholic and non-Catholic.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
The attendance at my parish is 'steady' only because we hit bottom twenty years ago. It's hard to get lower than bottom.
Fifteen years ago my parish was closed. This was not because we had too many attendees to fit in the building.
Our new merged parish is about to close the school, at least there are continuous discussions about the number of empty desks in it.
About a month ago our Archdiocese announced it was closing several more parishes including the one in which I grew up.
I attend Midnight Mass almost every Christmas. When I was a kid at Midnight Mass they had to put a speaker in the vestibule so the people that had no hope of fitting into the fairly large church could listen to the rite and at least say they were in the building for the event.
Tomorrow night we won't likely fill more than half the church, and ours doesn't come close to holding the number of people as that one in my youth.
Perhaps they are doing better elsewhere. I hope so.
I don’t attend Mass anymore because of medical problems. I miss going. And to make matters worse, am now without transportation. Had to scrap the vehicle. No one from my parish lives in this neighborhood, and don’t know anybody from the ones closer to me. Thank God Midnight Christmas Mass from the Vatican is available on network TV!
I read all the comments and thoroughly enjoyed the main article and most all of the comments. Thanks for the post. I could weigh in on this but the comments seemed to sort of migrate away from what I saw as the major theme of the article, i.e., what, if anything can be done to increase participation. I have some serious thoughts on that subject but I don’t believe posting them here would do much good. I just pray that perhaps the truth will come to light and the Bishops and Priests will come to realize that with a few simple changes in focus, Roman Catholics could make some great strides going forward.
Have a wonderful and joyous Christmas.