And none of those younger families follow Humanae Vitae, they're OK with married priests, and even with women priests. They are NOT promoting "moral clarity," or "doctrinal orthodoxy," at least not of the Vatican variety.
You need to get out more. Weekly Mass Catholics couldn't care less who the Pope is, or what he says. They look to their pastor and bishop for leadership and direction.
What should we do about it?
Who are your other Catholics? The Christmas/Easter ones?
"Weekly Mass Catholics couldn't care less who the Pope is, or what he says. They look to their pastor and bishop for leadership and direction."
Then aren't these folks, therefore, de facto Presbyterians and Episcopalians?
Why not merge denominations and make it official?
Considering the record of most of our bishops, I have some bridges I would like to sell these folks.
Sounds like the Church is dead where you are. But not everywhere. My point (which you missed, probably intentionally) is that the most vibrant lay movements in the Catholic Church today are all conservative. The pro-life movement is just one example. The laity, increasingly the younger laity, are pushing the clergy to take stronger positions on the issue.
Couldn't care less who the pope is? The geriatric set who read America and Commonweal and NCR can only wish that were true of younger Catholics.
Ha! You got it the other way around. The pastor and the bishops look to their flocks for leadership and direction. My guess is that the most agressive woman in your parish has more influence over the bishop than the pope did.
You need to get out more. Weekly Mass Catholics couldn't care less who the Pope is, or what he says. They look to their pastor and bishop for leadership and direction.
In other words, they aren't even remotely Catholic. What wonderful leadership they must be getting from their pastors, bishops, and deacons!
I'm sorry to hear about the state of your parish. It sounds like the complete opposite of our parish. Plenty of larger young families faithful to the Magisterium.I sure love St. Mary parish!
And what directiion is this? If their local pastors tech that contraception is right, thast married married is "the answer,"--meaning they don't have to give their own sons to Christ or if they do then they can still have their grandbabies, if they have lost sight of fatherhood as a leading principle whether in the Church or in daily life. it is because they have been wrong taught by their local Talleyrand.
Not in my parish. In fact, the women have gone to wearing chapel caps and mantillas. And believe me when I say there are a lot of little kids. The lines for Penance have gotten awfully long, too. On Good Friday, they had to add a few hours with five confessionals going after the service to accomodate everyone.
Exactly. They are in schism, or worse. They live in MORTAL SIN (in your words, "none of those younger families follow Humanae Vitae,...", they have beliefs that are profoundly not Catholic (again, in your words, "...they're OK ... with women priests.", and you celebrate this! Amazing.
You're wrong. We are VERY much are interested in who the Pope is AND what he says! I am praying for a conservative Pope who will lead Christ's One True Church back where it belongs. We have thrown aside much of what makes our church CATHOLIC. You can talk to the "younger" Catholics all you want, about contraception, abortion, etc. It doesn't matter what they're opinions are. Sin is still sin. The youth of our church need to learn about their church and its teachings. The last 30 years of chaos and liberalism has produced a generation of young people who don't know their church at all. They don't understand that the Real Presence of Christ is there in the tabernacle at all times and they need to be in solemn, quiet reverence. They don't understand the need for, and value of, confession. If these are the people who we must talk to to find out what our church needs, then we are in even more trouble than I thought.
In several weeks, my husband and I will be going to visit my son at Great Lakes, where he is in Navy A-school. I have already searched for a Tridentine mass and we will be attending. I want my 21 year old to see a REAL Catholic Mass.
This is one Catholic who wants her Church back!
The case of younger Catholics and their commitment to orthodoxy is very interesting. I don't have any studies, any poll data to cite, but I do have quite a bit of personal experience in the area. I'm Catholic and I'll be 24 next week. I went to Notre Dame and had the chance to observe hundreds of young Catholics of all stripes for 4 years.
In my experience, most young people (here I'm talking college-age) that were raised Catholic still identify as Catholic. A few reject it outright, but most seem to like the label. Of those who call themselves Catholic, very few are 100% in line with Vatican teachings. Some of this is due to the fact that my generation has been denied adequate catechesis. Many of these young Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence, Purgatory, etc because they were not taught these things. They haven't a clue about what the CHurch teachings on so many issues.
On the other hand, while young Catholics are clueless about teachings like the Real Presence, it seems that everyone knows about the sexual teachings. Those attract the most attention and the most dissent. Those become a sort of litmus test for how good a Catholic you really are.
How active are these dissenting young Catholics in the Church? Most are not very active, especially in terms of Sunday Mass attendance. Notre Dame is an interesting case because there student Masses are also a major social event. After graduation, many heterodox Catholics who attended Mass regularly at ND stop doing so. This seems to be typical for most Catholics in their 20s. Mass attendance and involvement with a parish usually pick up in young people around 30 when they start getting married and having children. People want their kids to be raised in a Church, even if they are at odds with most of what that church teaches.
The exception to do this are the young Catholics who do stay active in the Church in their 20s, especially with regards to Mass attendance. By and large these Catholics tend to be highly orthodox and conservative. But they are a small minority both in the Church and among their peer group. It's hard to gauge just how much influence they will have on the future of the Church. On one hand, they are where most new priestly vocations are coming from. They also tend to have larger families. But they will also be outnumbered in roughly a decade, when their heterodox peers become active in the Church again, while remaining heterodox.
So it should be really interesting over the next few decades to see how my generation will influence the Church.
Oh fiddle-faddle, sink. Absolute codswallop!
You wish!!
In my experience, it's exactly the reverse. Long suffering Catholics in the pews for the last 30-40 years have heroically sat through homily after insipid homily about how the miltary is evil, big business is wicked and how we need to hug each other more and have let it all drift in one ear and out the other. They have gone home with their children, knelt down, and said their prayers and devotions and been sustained in their faith by the knowledge that the polyester clad hippie who lived in their parish rectory had absolutely nothing in common with the Pope and those united with him.
All of us who've survived the last half century of apostasy have done so by completely ignoring the activist priests and bishops who've been around us and focusing instead on the often beleaguered and abandoned Holy Father.
You are a provocateur. Catholics are not OK with women priests and you know it.