Posted on 06/12/2009 10:18:58 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Despite an increase in the Catholic population of the United States during 2008, the number of baptisms, confirmations, first Communions, and marriages all declined, according to The Official Catholic Directory. While the number of baptisms and confirmations declined by less than 2% and the number of marriages declined by less than 3%, the number of adult baptisms and receptions into the Church plummeted by 9% in a single year-- from approximately 136,000 to 124,000.
Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
I disagree with you. Over 70 Bishops spoke out against Jenkins and Obama speaking at Notre Dame. The Pope is also putting straight-laced, orthodox Bishops and Archbishops in place replacing the “hippie” era of Bernanrdin.
The Church will grow as these Bishops stress the real message of the Catholic Church. In fact, it already is!
BTW, did you see that with the decrease in population that the percentage of Catholics is the same?? Sort of funny, huh?
Good article.
**Nonetheless, McCain won more than 62% of the Catholic church-goer’s vote.**
You have the correct number. Obama got much less of the Catholic vote that the lamestream ABCNNBCBS media will let on.
You are mistaken. dangus has the correct numbers.
It’s the media, understandably so.
I’ve been trying to say that Obama got much less of the Catholic vote since right after the election, but no one seems to believe me since the media had warped reports.
A few words and letters. Wow! I am so impressed.
As you can tell from the responses there are a lot of people more focused on politics than on this.
ROME, JUNE 11, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is warning of a “serpentine secularization” that penetrates the Church and is manifested in “formal and empty Eucharistic worship.”
The Pope celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi Thursday in Rome, presiding over Mass in the Basilica of St. John Lateran and then processing with the Blessed Sacrament to the Basilica of St. Mary Major.
In his homily, the Holy Father illustrated the importance of faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, telling the thousands of pilgrims that this faith “cannot be taken for granted.”
“Today there arises the risk of a serpentine secularization even within the Church, which can convert into a formal and empty Eucharistic worship, in celebrations lacking this participation from the heart that is expressed in veneration and respect for the liturgy,” he cautioned.
According to the Pontiff, “the temptation is always strong to reduce prayer to superficial and hurried moments, letting oneself be carried away by earthly activities and worries.”
And nevertheless, he added, the Eucharist is “the bread of eternal life of the new world that is given us today in the holy Mass, so that starting now the future world begins in us.”
“With the Eucharist, therefore, heaven comes down to earth, the tomorrow of God descends into the present and it is as if time remains embraced by divine eternity,” the Bishop of Rome explained.
He didn’t hide his joy at being able to accompany the Blessed Sacrament along the path to St. Mary Major; he invited the faithful to raise up this prayer: “Stay with us, Christ, give to us the gift of yourself and give us the bread that nourishes us for eternal life.
“Free this world from the venom of evil, of violence and of hate, which contaminate consciences; purify it with the power of your merciful love.”
www.ewtn.com
>>BTW, did you see that with the decrease in population that the percentage of Catholics is the same?? Sort of funny, huh?<<
Hey, we know the secret. We don’t have to recruit. We reproduce.
The Protestant church across from us has a huge building and many activites but averages 2 children per family. My parish has 900 families with an average of 5 children and quite a few over the two digit mark. We have 7 family buses for our most popular Holy Mass. One of my dearest friends has four children and now 1.5 grandchildren and she is only 45. We grow because we are open to life and every church that is, doesn’t have to convert to grow.
I’m glad you got my point — since I seem to have left out a “not”! < blush with embarrassment! > ;-)
But, since it is a religion, it is DOOM!
No, than being morally superior to being in support of fetal stem cell research in general.
No source provided = no credibility
The Tafts (William and Robert), the Adamses (John, John Quincy, etc.), and even the founder of the John Birch Society, Robert Henry Winborne Welch Jr., were Unitarians.
If John Hagee, is an "anti-Catholic bigot," then so is every single sincere Protestant in the world (which is probably your position anyway).
Well, Please understand, I was explaining McCain’s perception problems among many Catholics. Not to say that I entirely disagree with any of the points, but I was not intending to exactly nuance the subtleties of his actual positions.
No Hagee invents his own reasons to hate Catholics. Hagee is smart enough to know that incindiary rhetoric would hurt McCain, so he took great pains to explain that he did not mean that the Catholic Church was the whore of Babylon, an apostate cult, or the throne of the anti-Christ. He claimed that the video clip of him talking about “the church” that was such things was a church that would be anti-semitic, not the Catholic Church. What he did not mention was that in the same speech, he had launched into an insane conspiracy theory that the Nazi party was really acting on behalf of the Catholic Church to exterminate Jews... so his denials are well, fishier than Fridays at the Knights of Columbus.
... and unitarians deny the trinity. In most cases, this means they deny the divinity of Christ. (In some cases, unitarians believe Christ was divine, but deny that there is any sense in which Christ was distinct from the Father, but this is rare.) I do not claim to know much of the Tafts beliefs, in particular, however.
... actually, I just looked up and found that when John Quincy Adams’ congregational church (which had been John Adams) veered into unitarianism, Adams attended a debate between trinitarian Samuel Adams and unitarian William Channing, and found Sam’s position so superior, he denounced that church. That also tells me that when John “Sr.” attended the church, it could not have been unitarian.
Later, he became far more ambiguous, stating, “But neither this, nor any other argument that I ever heard, can satisfy my judgment that the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ is not countenanced by the New Testament. As little can I say that it is clearly revealed. It is often obscurely intimated; sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly, asserted; but left on the whole, in a debatable state, never to be either demonstrated or refuted till another revelation shall clear it up.”
He, however, continued to attend Presbyterian and Episcopal churches more frequently, and bitterly opposed as diabolical the teachings of emerging unitarian leaders such as Joseph Priestly and Ralph Waldo Emerson. (He also thought Priestly was WAAAY to old-looking to play a high school kid :^D.)
Actually, having read the Jefferson Bible, I might, however, suppose Jefferson to be unitarian. He seemed to reject any portion of the bible which attributed divinity in any form, including most miraculous works, to Jesus.
At least the Eastern Orthodox on this forum serve one useful purpose--they give you Catholics a dose of your own medicine.
Well, I know Martin Luther used such language, but I thought most Lutherans regard that as a historical embarrassment, much the way the insane rantings of Joseph Smith are glossed over by Mormons today, or the way Lutherans also gloss over the fact that Martin Luther removed seven books from the New Testament, wished for the wholesale slaughter of Jews, said that peasants (99%+ of mankind) was useful only to be cannon fodder in wartime, and encouraged his friends to be whoremongerers. The fact that the world didn’t end in the 16th century also seems like sort of a natural refutation of such nonsense which Luther couldn’t’ve known but modern Lutherans can’t avoid.
So, yes, if someeone STILL thinks that the Roman Catholic church is the whore of Babylon, and the papacy is the anti-Christ, yeah, I’ll consider that person a deranged lunatic, not just a bigot. But I really, really, reaaallly hope that isn’t mainstream Protestant thought, any more than there aren’t many Catholics around here who’d endorse killing them all to be a way to deal with French neo-pagans like the Albigensian Crusaders did.
>> At least the Eastern Orthodox on this forum serve one useful purpose—they give you Catholics a dose of your own medicine. <<
... and I might add the medicine isn’t half bad.
So the only Protestants who aren't bigots are liberal Protestants?
Obama just may round them all up for you.
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