I’m hoping the smaller more faithful Church will come about because abortion will be treated by the bishops as what they say it is.
Freegards
I don't see it as an attack on Christianity and certainly not an attack on Christian morality. The things that are being revealed and attacked are not Christian morality at all.
I'm surprised that Europe didn't reveal these things when the U.S. dealt with it's Catholic abuse coverup charges a few year back.
This is a downside of having a top down hierarchy with insufficient independent checks and balances. The abuse not only continued but was covered up. It's also possibly a fault of the previous pope, who I understand was reluctant to hear and try charges of abuse for fear that they were trumped up charges.
Protestant churches do deal with some of the same stuff. But because at least some of us are more democratic we have better checks and balances and can stop and address abuse quickly. The downside is that since we don't have an hierarchy there is no formal process that I'm aware of to alert other churches. That means there is no cover-up, but no protection to keep the abuser from preventing the same thing in another church. Provided of course he doesn't try to use the previous church as a reference.
I don't think we get quite as much of the same type for a couple of reasons. I suspect, we are more outspoken against homosexuality, which drives at least some intending to act on those impulses away. Our pastors are allowed to marry, and therefore aren't as tempted. But they are by no means temptation free.
That's my opinion....DannyTN, Southern Baptist.
“...She will no longer be able to fill many of the buildings created in her period of great splendour...”
40 years on, this is now obvious in Europe and much of the USA.
One other point - God will favor other peoples and places. We in the West have “dropped the ball.”
For example, I have visited Churches in Vietnam. One convent I visited recently built a new Church - and on Sundays it is standing-room-only and over-flowing to their courtyard - 700-800 people go to Mass at one time.
Saint John Eudes said that when God is angry with His people, He sends them bad priests as a chastisement.
Here is what he wrote in his book, The Priest, His Dignity and Obligations:
“The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clergy who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than charity and affection of devoted shepherds ...
“When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them. That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, ‘Return O ye revolting children ... and I will give you pastors according to My own heart’. (Jer. 3:14,15) Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge upon the people in consequence of sin.”4
Saint John Eudes warns us that as punishment for man’s sins, God will send us priests who are not according to His own heart, who have a different spirit from that of the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, who have a different heart from that of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart.
Good Catholics get what they pray for.
Catholics who are indifferent, CINO, and fallen away, get what they desire, AS A PUNISHMENT. We have bad clergy today because that is what the majority of baptized Catholics wanted. They wanted priest that act like any lax Catholic layman, that are “birth control, no confession, no rosaries, you are all good and going to heaven” priests. That is what they got! A CHATISEMENT from God.