Posted on 01/28/2011 9:32:34 AM PST by marshmallow
Shery Weddell at the St Catherine of Siena Institute reports that 32% of Americans raised Catholic abandon the identity altogether by their mid twenties. An additional 38% retain the identity but rarely practice their faith. 30% of those who call themselves Catholic attend Mass only once a month. On a given Sunday only about 15.6% of American Catholics attend Mass.
What is the reason for these disastrous statistics? Basically because for the last forty years Catholics themselves have not taught Catholicism to their children. They've taught 'American Catholicism' which is a watered down blend of sentimentalism, political correctness, community activism and utilitarianism. In other words, "Catholicism is about feeling good about yourself, being just to others and trying to change the world." The next generation have drawn the obvious conclusion that you don't need to go to Mass to do all that. You can feel good about yourself much more effectively with a good book from the self help shelf, or by attending a personal development seminar. You can be involved in making the world a better place without going to church.
If only 15% of Catholics go to Mass on a given Sunday, look around and see how many of them are old. Even the 15% who are there won't be there for very long.
The solution is simple: we must return to the supernatural realities of the historic faith and evangelize like the Apostles of old. The big difference is that the Apostles knew their targets were pagans and the pagans knew they weren't Christians. We're dealing with a huge population of Americans (Catholics and Protestants alike) who are pagan but who think they're 'good Christians.' It is very difficult to evangelize people who already think they're fine just as they are. We don't know what we don't know, and the vast majority of poorly catechized, lazy and worldly Catholics aren't aware that there's anything wrong.
What will it take for us to wake up?
A lot of Protestants voted for Obama too. I don’t think either the Catholics or the Protestants will ever vote for him again.
Bye, bye Obortion O!
A lot of Protestants voted for Obama too. I don’t think either the Catholics or the Protestants will ever vote for him again.
Bye, bye Obortion O!
Still can’t change the fact the bluest states are also the most ROMAN CATHOLIC
Pelosi/Kennedy/Carrie ring a bell ? Pretty obvious they don’t know what murder is by their pro abortion votes .
So who was it that DIDN’T teach them ?????
**Pelosi/Kennedy/Carrie **
Carrie????
LOL! That’s a girl’s nickname for Caroline.
**Pelosi/Kennedy/Carrie **
Carrie????
LOL! That’s a girl’s nickname for Caroline.
They are not Catholics; they have excommunicated themselves by supporoting non-Catholic agendas and are only CINOs.
Sure you can...But your mistake is in injecting the Bible into your threads and then posting the threads in the midst of Bible believing, born again Christians...
In the scriptures that you guys change and reject, God tells us to deal with you...
2Ti 4:1 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;
2Ti 4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
2Ti 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
God does not expect us to just stand by while you guys pervert His words to the world...
That is not the example that Jesus, Paul and the rest of the Apostle gave...And frankly, that is not the history of your religion...
Classification Protestant
Theology Reformed Evangelical
Governance Presbyterian
Origin June 11, 1936
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Separated from Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
Separations Bible Presbyterian Church
Congregations 255
Members 29,421
(ministers: 485
communicants: 21,123
non-communicants: 7,813)
Statistics for 2009[1]
Well son of a gun. We have here a church founded by men. Not Christ, not God, and not growing.
Classification Protestant
Theology Reformed Evangelical
Governance Presbyterian
Origin June 11, 1936
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Separated from Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
Separations Bible Presbyterian Church
Congregations 255
Members 29,421
(ministers: 485
communicants: 21,123
non-communicants: 7,813)
Statistics for 2009[1]
Well son of a gun. We have here a church founded by men. Not Christ, not God, and not growing.
“Ever think he wouldn’t like the fact that this thread puts a false blame for the failure of American Catholics at the feet of American Protestants ?”
...and for those who can’t read, there are other pursuits...candyland, walking dogs....or the harder choice of starting with reader rabbit.
“God does not expect us to just stand by while you guys pervert His words to the world... “
Some at about Reader Rabbit 2
Thank you for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
And, Mat 23 COULD be sobering to anyone who begins to think they've got
all packaged in a pretend tidy manipulate-able little box.
=====================
Religious Fashion Shows
1-3 Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. "The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God's Law. You won't go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don't live it. They don't take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It's all spit-and-polish veneer.
4-7"Instead of giving you God's Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn't think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called 'Doctor' and 'Reverend.'
8-10"Don't let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don't set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of 'Father'; you have only one Father, and he's in heaven. And don't let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
11-12"Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you'll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you're content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.
Frauds!
13"I've had it with you! You're hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God's kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won't let anyone else in either.
15"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.
16-22"You're hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, 'If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that's nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that's serious.' What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: 'If you shake hands on a promise, that's nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that's serious'? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.
23-24"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God's Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that's wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons?
25-26"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.
27-28"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You're like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it's all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you're saints, but beneath the skin you're total frauds.
29-32"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You're cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.
33-34"Snakes! Reptilian sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It's on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.
35-36"You can't squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah's son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I'm telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation.
37-39"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God's news! How often I've ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn't let me. And now you're so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I'm out of here soon. The next time you see me you'll say, 'Oh, God has blessed him! He's come, bringing God's rule!'"
The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson
BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD.
BLESSED BE THE WORD OF THE LORD.
Christ has no part,
Holy Spirit has no part,
Mary has no part
in the Idolatrous Blasphemy that is so much of the
Vatican Alice In Wonderland School Of Theology And Reality Mangling dogma, teaching and practices.
Those aspects are deceptions and scripts from hell.
Send in the clowns.
There ought to be clowns.
So, can we count on you to avoid including them in the inflated figures of
Roman Catholic membership?
Do not ping someone who has been instructed to leave the thread.
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