Posted on 03/05/2005 7:15:51 AM PST by AAABEST
ping
"Such is an illustration of how the Cultural/Sexual Revolution influenced – perhaps “infected” would be a better term – a number of Church officials who seemingly let sexual deviants into the priesthood. Indeed, one could even say that deviancy was promoted at certain seminaries. Catholic author Michael S. Rose, in his 2002 book Goodbye! Good Men, quotes Father John Trigilio about an incident at the seminary in the 1980’s"
I'm reading this book right now. It's an excellent read...starts off slow and makes the same point over and over but it has an important perspective. We need to know how we got to where we are in order to combat the non-traditionalists.
To Matt Abbott,
"Why can't you blame both?"
He's got it backwards. The widespread cultural and moral decay in the world is because of the widespread cultural and moral decay within the Church. So goes the Church, so goes the world.
You know, you would think these people were the first to fall prey to the very worst elements of society, the way it's being protrayed here.
The 60s crowd was no less inately moral than any generation that preceeded it. It was afforded a greater opportunity to chase the immoral because everyone had a lot of time on their hands, that previously had to be used for mere existence or subsitence. That was part and parcel of this great economic expansion.
Had the Church remained firm in her committment to tell it like it is, always with open arms for her prodigal children, perhaps when the hippies came back to her after they'd taken their share of the fortune, wandered far, wide and dissatisfied, and found the Open Arms of the same Father, the current seemingly irreparable ditch could have been avoided. But you can't tell bureaucratic eggheads anything.
So now it's the Zeitgeist? I don't buy this explanation at all. The Church survived two World Wars stronger than ever. It survived the French Revolution stronger than ever. It survived the fall of the Roman Empire stronger than ever. Those were zeitgeists far more influential and powerful than Kinsey or the pill. It was the spririt of Modernism which infused the Council and caught traditionalists unawares that has decimated the faith. It has been doggedly pushed by two modernist popes despite scandal after scandal and failure after failure. Both Paul VI nor John Paul II despised Catholic Tradition and did all they could to undermine it. The Novus Ordo Mass and Assisi I and II are their monuments to faithlessness. They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
nor=and
Ugggh......please......no more Zeigeist!
I had some for dinner last night, along with a big side helping of Praxis, and a drink of Diversity.
My system will never be the same.
***The 60s crowd was no less inately moral than any generation that preceeded it. It was afforded a greater opportunity to chase the immoral because everyone had a lot of time on their hands, that previously had to be used for mere existence or subsitence. That was part and parcel of this great economic expansion.***
This is an excellent point. So often in discussions about the sorry state of the Church or society at large, people tend to idealize previous generations as more moral than we are. But people are people and have always sinned (or wanted to). It has simply become more easier to commit certain sins these days.
Actually, I think the fall of Christianity in Europe was caused directly by the two World Wars, and the corresponding decline in the Catholic Church (you can't have a Catholic Church without Christians) was accelerating by the time WWII was over.
In the Propechies of St. Malachy, Pope Bendict XV (1914-22) is listed as "Religio Depopulata".........religion depopulated.
Your very astute observation is all too true.
There's no evidence for what you say, though defenders of Vatican II will never admit this since it calls into question their wisdom and ideology. The Church in 1962 was at the height of its influence and growth. It was showing signs of steady exponential growth at the time the Council opened. Below is the story of what has happened since its close. The decline has been sudden and precipitous.
__________________________________________________________
An index of Catholicism's decline
A review by Pat Buchanan
As the Watergate scandal of 1973-1974 diverted attention from the far greater tragedy unfolding in Southeast Asia, so, too, the scandal of predator-priests now afflicting the Catholic Church may be covering up a far greater calamity.
Thirty-seven years after the end of the only church council of the 20th century, the jury has come in with its verdict: Vatican II appears to have been an unrelieved disaster for Roman Catholicism. Liars may figure, but figures do not lie. Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis has pulled together a slim volume of statistics he has titled Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II. His findings make prophets of Catholic traditionalists who warned that Vatican II would prove a blunder of historic dimensions, and those same findings expose as foolish and naive those who believed a council could reconcile Catholicism and modernity. When Pope John XXIII threw open the windows of the church, all the poisonous vapors of modernity entered, along with the Devil himself. Here are Jones's grim statistics of Catholicism's decline:
Priests. While the number of priests in the United States more than doubled to 58,000, between 1930 and 1965, since then that number has fallen to 45,000. By 2020, there will be only 31,000 priests left, and more than half of these priests will be over 70.
Ordinations. In 1965, 1,575 new priests were ordained in the United States. In 2002, the number was 450. In 1965, only 1 percent of U.S. parishes were without a priest. Today, there are 3,000 priestless parishes, 15 percent of all U.S. parishes.
Seminarians. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700, a decline of over 90 percent. Two-thirds of the 600 seminaries that were operating in 1965 have now closed.
Sisters. In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns. By 2002, that had fallen to 75,000 and the average age of a Catholic nun is today 68. In 1965, there were 104,000 teaching nuns. Today, there are 8,200, a decline of 94 percent since the end of Vatican II.
Religious Orders. For religious orders in America, the end is in sight. In 1965, 3,559 young men were studying to become Jesuit priests. In 2000, the figure was 389. With the Christian Brothers, the situation is even more dire. Their number has shrunk by two-thirds, with the number of seminarians falling 99 percent. In 1965, there were 912 seminarians in the Christian Brothers. In 2000, there were only seven.
The number of young men studying to become Franciscan and Redemptorist priests fell from 3,379 in 1965 to 84 in 2000.
Catholic schools. Almost half of all Catholic high schools in the United States have closed since 1965. The student population has fallen from 700,000 to 386,000. Parochial schools suffered an even greater decline. Some 4,000 have disappeared, and the number of pupils attending has fallen below 2 million – from 4.5 million.
Though the number of U.S. Catholics has risen by 20 million since 1965, Jones' statistics show that the power of Catholic belief and devotion to the Faith are not nearly what they were.
Catholic Marriage. Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one-third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments has soared from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002.
Attendance at Mass. A 1958 Gallup Poll reported that three in four Catholics attended church on Sundays. A recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that only one in four now attend.
Only 10 percent of lay religious teachers now accept church teaching on contraception. Fifty-three percent believe a Catholic can have an abortion and remain a good Catholic. Sixty-five percent believe that Catholics may divorce and remarry. Seventy-seven percent believe one can be a good Catholic without going to mass on Sundays. By one New York Times poll, 70 percent of all Catholics in the age group 18 to 44 believe the Eucharist is merely a "symbolic reminder" of Jesus.
At the opening of Vatican II, reformers were all the rage. They were going to lead us out of our Catholic ghettos by altering the liturgy, rewriting the Bible and missals, abandoning the old traditions, making us more ecumenical, and engaging the world. And their legacy?
Four decades of devastation wrought upon the church, and the final disgrace of a hierarchy that lacked the moral courage of the Boy Scouts to keep the perverts out of the seminaries, and throw them out of the rectories and schools of Holy Mother Church.
Through the papacy of Pius XII, the church resisted the clamor to accommodate itself to the world and remained a moral beacon to mankind. Since Vatican II, the church has sought to meet the world halfway.
Jones' statistics tell us the price of appeasement.
This article is taken from http://www.townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/pb20021211.shtml
Pope Paul and Cardinal Wojtyla were the two men most responsible for preserving tradition in Humanae Vitae, despite the "zeitgeist" found even among the men appointed to advise them on the matter. Therefore your statement that they despised tradition and did all they could to undermine it is false, hollow, mistaken, and wrong. If Paul had granted Catholics permission to contracept, then you might be correct that they did everything they could have to undermine traditionalism, but since he didn't grant permission tto Catholics to contracept, then he didn't do everything he could have to undermine the Church.
Your comparisons are ludicrous. Wars and social upheavals are not remotely similar to an ethos of sexual liscence. Of course the church is stronger during wars and revolution, as it is a source of consolation to a fearful people. The sixties were populated by anybody but a fearful people. In fact, I'd venture to say they were a pretty self-satisfied lot.
In 1947 Karol Wojtyla, while visiting France, expressed his shock in a letter home, that only 75% of French Catholics attended Sunday mass. Apparently, at least in his mind, the exodus had begun.
Since when?
The pope's done a great job of reversing that trend, huh?
If Paul had granted Catholics permission to contracept, then you might be correct that they did everything they could have to undermine traditionalism, but since he didn't grant permission tto Catholics to contracept, then he didn't do everything he could have to undermine the Church.
However, if you want to place blame on the post-conciliar popes for the way people disobey or ignore the Church's teachings, then you would be correct, for it is Humanae Vitae that is most responsible, and therefore the two men responsible for it.
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