Posted on 02/06/2016 4:38:13 PM PST by marshmallow
Yet growing in the south and southwest.
....Until they deal with personal life-changing issues. Then the faith factor comes right back in.
The Christians will just live in a separate world (like the Amish); Christianity had the same conflicts with the pagan Roman culture 2,000 years ago. It is up to us to pass along the faith.
The problem here is that NJ is dominated by teachers’ unions; that is why our property taxes are among the highest in the nation (75% of those are public school taxes).
Thank you for your prayers; Jesus knew that most wouldn’t accept Him, and this simply playing out. The Church is eternal; we just don’t know where...
It is growing in central NJ as well, but I doubt they’ll be building much to accommodate it. It seems churches built 50 years ago in northern NJ are already contemplating merging (the schools are already gone); the Catholic population is declining and the faith isn’t being transmitted to the younger generation (if one is even bred).
The society the Amish have lived among has been largely Christian. The neo-pagans will not tolerate the Amish or any other Christians. They are already making it impossible for Christians to work as bakers, photographers, florists. Soon, no Christian will be able to work as a pharmacist, doctor, nurse, etc.
I agree that Christians will end up excluded from several fields in terms of serving the public, but like the Amish they’ll end up dealing a lot with one another. A Christian baker doesn’t have to bake a wedding cake for sexual deviants “playing married” if said baker isn’t operating a business open to the public - or if they just word their by-laws in such a way that they are protected under religious liberty (see any business that closes on Sundays).
On the other hand, the push by some extremely evil libs to include participation in an abortion as part of the schooling for doctors/nurses demonstrates how the medical field may be closed to Christians at some point (since the state controls the licensing).
Just guessing, but could it be that the diocese is heavily into social "justice"? Because if their main focus is on advocacy for secular causes, where is the draw to the priesthood? But if their main focus is worshiping God and bringing souls to Him, then the draw is obvious: to be a part of something of eternal importance.
Perhaps that is why the Diocese of Phoenix has no shortage of seminarians.
The Catholics have moved. Pope Paul was the first pope to visit Americans. a reporter noticed the unexpectedly sparse crowds lining the streets in NYC. Manhattan, he said, is not long a Catholic island. That was fifty years ago. The parishes in Chicago, were ethnic. and no blacks etc, are now living where Poles, Germans, Irish used to live. Now, to be sure,there is also a theological split. The arrival of a modernist priest will drive away traditional Catholics. A friend of mine said that he had his whole live just attended the nearest Catholic Church. But the last time he moved he found he could not stomach the local priest and so ended up driving thirty miles to find a tolerable parish.
Chicago has for some time been driving down the same road as the Episcopalians. Now they have an archbishop who equivocates like an English bishop.
Yeah, they have to get on the same page; when friends complained to the diocese about liturgical abuses they were encouraged to simply find another parish...
I was glad to see the translation of the mass into English. What I did not like was the radical step of the New Mass. It was clericalism at its worse. Take the most tyrannical old Irish pastor and make him a reformer and he will be these liberals. It was a cultural shock and it sent the same message to both young and old. That everything they told them about the liturgy and their prayer life up to that time, was worthless, just a human contrivance. They literally drove people out of the Church. They demoralized many of the older clergy. But even today, despite the evidence that they created a disaster, they are blind to the harm they did. PureMaoism.
I suspect that they realize the harm they did, and that is why they are allowing the traditional Mass to return. They need to do much more, though.
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