Cool!!!!
Just exactly what the Pope wanted!
A leaner, stronger Church!
Most of my friends are either Methodists or Catholics.
FWIW, none of my Catholic friends voted Republican last November, while many Methodists I know did.
It’s kind of like the problem with U.S. Jews voting for Democrats; it seems that Catholics are increasingly voting for liberal candidates.
Why is this?
After the tepid response to Fr. Jenkins and Notre Dame, I expect the stats on adult conversions to be even lower next year.
If Doug Kmiec doesn’t believe what the Catholic Church teaches, why should anyone who is not a Catholic believe it?
Most of the growth in the RCC has come via immigration. Conversions can’t offset the number of people who are baptized who leave the faith (this is an issue in other Xian denominations as well).
I see some serious flaws in this report. For example, what is the ethnic breakdown? I would expect to see a serious decline in liberal New England, but an increase in the South and West.
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We're finished.
“Each year, Catholic organizations in the United Sates provide an estimated $28.2 billion in service through institutions represented by the Catholic Health Association ($5.7 billion), Catholic Charities USA ($3.5 billion) and National Catholic Educational Association (19.8 billion). This does not include assistance provided through parishes and other organizations.”
Some good news!
We’re all fighting secularism - Europe is worse and it’s growing more rapidly here since Obama took office. We don’t have the voice that the MSM have - we’ve got to get the message to the youth - education!!! My dtr. attended a Catholic school and came out a kinda Catholic/Buddhist. I’ve been praying and working hard on her - she’s getting married in a Catholic Church next year but still not fully on tract. She sees through Obama as does her fiancee - they both voted for McCain. I keep praying but how she loves to watch Oprah....
Are you ready for a really wierd hypthesis?
It’s the economy.
Most adult conversions to Catholicism are through marriage. These are most often very legitimate conversions, as of late, because the Catholic church has a very rigorous marital preparation process as of late in most diocese. Combined with the very long, intense initiation process of the Catholic church (compared to modern Protestant denominations, anyway), and you’ll find that there’s a lot of doctrinal instruction presented to converts. The result is that they usually know their doctrine far better than a lot of cultural Catholics who only know the bare minimum warm-fuzzy garbage of modern CCD. (CCD is sorta like Sunday school, except not neccesarily on Sunday. It’s SUPPOSED to be doctrinal preparation for the sacraments for children.)
At the same time, the Catholic church stresses the requirement that married couples be willing to accept children into their marriage, or abstain from sex. (Those wanting smaller families may practice ‘natural family planning,’ but they still must be willing to accept that this is not fool-proof contraception, or abstain.) So, I wonder if economic anxieties are making those in mixed marriages avoid Catholic weddings... and, therefore, Catholic indoctrination and Catholic conversions.
It seems most FReepers are treating the Catholic vote for Obama as signs of Christian apostasy. Let’s be a little careful here.
The fact that Bush and Reagan won solid majorities of the Catholic vote is impressive. The “Reagan Democrat” was likely Catholic. Catholics grew up in regions where the Protestant vote is hugely Democratic. In Massachusetts, for instance, Bush won the Catholic vote twice, where the non-Catholic vote was something like 2-1 for Gore and Kerry.
To vote Republican for Catholics has been to go against tradition. When the Catholics were treated far worse than African slaves, they were the Democrats who courted the Catholic vote by defending unions, limiting work weeks, setting minimum wages, etc. The Democrats have since betrayed the American workers, but the effect, nonetheless, is that the Catholic vote by 1960 was hugely Democratic.
The switch to the Republican Party has been largely because the Democrats have become perceived as anti-God, anti-marriage, and especially anti-life.
In 2000, McCain had flirted with declaring himself pro-choice.
He was closely linked, along with Barry Goldwater, to Sandra Day O’Connor.
He supported EMBRYONIC Stem Cell research.
He was close to anti-Catholic bigot John Hagee.
He pointedly omitted Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia when he named judges he would choose Supreme Court nominees like.
He was a member of the “Gang of 14” which was widely seen as undercutting attempts to promote conservative judges, such as Miguel Estrada.
In short, his pro-life credentials were strongly lacking, most notably in those areas which were most likely to attract Catholic attention. Given the liberal culture most Catholics were raised in (a North Carolinian Catholic was still likely to have been brought up in the liberal Northeast), the Republican party has to offer the Catholics a reason to break their traditional bonds with the Democrats. McCain pointedly refused to do so. The one issue in which McCain seemed to court the Catholic bishops’ support, immigration, was the one issue wherein the Catholic churchgoers (along with numerous papal encylicals!) were in strong opposition to the Bishops, even among Catholic church-going hispanics.
Nonetheless, McCain won more than 62% of the Catholic church-goer’s vote.
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
But, since it is a religion, it is DOOM!