What’s Killing American Catholicism – 1

Patheos.com ^ | 4/30/13 | Fr. Dwight Longenecker

[marshmallow]

Reading Sherry Weddell’s excellent Forming Intentional Disciples is making me think about the American church and what ails her. Can anybody deny that there is a sickness in the body ecclesia? When 50% of Catholics vote for a man who stoutly defends same sex marriage and partial birth abortion can we say that Catholics in America are okay?

I don’t think so.

Thus a series of posts on what’s killing Catholicism. All the words begin with the letter ‘C’. I can’t help it. I was brought up as a Biblical Evangelical and our pastors always used alliteration to make their points memorable.

The first problem is cultural catholicism. The Poles, Italians, Irish, French, Czech, German and more Catholics came here from the old country and the bishops reckoned the best thing to do with them all was to allow cultural parishes. So in the same town the Irish Catholics went to St Patrick’s and the Poles to St Stanislaus and the Italians to St Anthony of Padua. Geesh, a man in my parish who grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania said that when he was a boy a girl from his Czech parish fell in love with an Irish boy and the Irish priest wouldn’t marry them because it was a mixed marriage.

I’m all for cultural customs and so forth, but the problem is that the immigrant Catholics–in a foreign land–clung to their culture for security and happiness and part of that culture was their Catholicism. The didn’t distinguish their culture from their Catholicism. Then, after a few generations, when they were all really American and stopped being Italian or Irish or German they also stopped being Catholic. The Catholic faith wasn’t much deeper than Mama’s special spaghetti sauce or stories of the Blarney stone.

Of course they didn’t.........

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

I used to blame Vatican 2, born in 1964. I had no formation, but a deep love for God, so I made it through the swamp by His grace alone, then began learning my faith from Catholic radio and praying outside abortion clinincs.

I can say now it wasn’t weak bishops - the Church will have and has always had weak bishops....from weak people like all of us really.

V2? Read it - it’s beautiful and they wanted everyone to evangelize like Popes JP2, B16, Francis, not just weak bishops and weak priests. We just still refuse to do it. How many of us help the poor and scared-pregnant? Here’s a few bucks, some tax momey, and go away.

My parents were so devout - didn’t teach us a darn thing but to act like them. Turned out, they didn’t understand their faith, they just held it strong, deep inside, and died with it. We needed to learn it. V2 wasn’t going to teach it to us, our parents needed to. Having taught CCD and as a homeschool teacher, let me say the best CCD is going to do is get you through your first sacrements. Parents are not teaching - it’s hard, and it’s yours to do!

Going from Latin to English (lamented all my life until I started attending Latin masses again) in reality just allowed us to lose the Catholic culture faster - again, there was no faith UNDERSTANDING behind/beside/within it. No more culture, no more faith. The parents held it firm inside and died with it. Latin, beautiful, masked the lack of understanding and when it went like a flash, the mask was off like a flash. We blame the sexual revolution, Roe v. Wade, .... but they were just the unmasked generation growing up.

The problem is me, as Chesterton said. If I fail, I, first of all, and my family (henceforth) fails and the world fails. If I succeed, God will use them and me every day I have left.

Francis said it again today - speaking to the individual and not the bishops and priests - we don’t need strategic planning, we need prayer, entrusting the success of the Church to Jesus, and moving feet.

[loveliberty2]

From the web site, "The Official King James Version of the Bible," the following words seem apropos to this discussion, as well as others, today:

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

- King James Bible "Authorized Version", Pure Cambridge Edition

 

Other Translations of Proverbs 14:12

There is a way which seemeth right vnto a man: but the end thereof are the wayes of death.
- King James Version (1611) - Compare to scan of original Proverbs chapter 14

There is a way {which seems} right to a man, But its end is the way of death.
- New American Standard Version (1995)

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man; But the end thereof are the ways of death.
- American Standard Version (1901)

There is a way which seems straight before a man, but its end is the ways of death.
- Basic English Bible

There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is the ways of death.
- Darby Bible

There is a way which seemeth just to a man: but the ends thereof lead to death.
- Douay Rheims Bible

There is a way which seemeth right to a man, but the end of it are the ways of death.
- Webster's Bible

There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
- World English Bible

There is a way -- right before a man, And its latter end [are] ways of death.
- Youngs Literal Bible

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
- Jewish Publication Society Bible

View Wesley's Notes for Proverbs 14:12

14:12 Right - There are some evil courses which men may think to be lawful and good. The end - The event shews that they were sinful and destructive.

[oh8eleven]

Excellent points - I couldn’t agree more.

[dragonblustar]

I agree.

[BO Stinkss]

Sodomites

[Salvation]

Thanks goodness all those Bernardin’s Boys and Jadot’s Jots are being replaced with good, upstanding Bishops who are not afraid to speak the truth.

[Salvation]

A lot of good reasons here, but I am going to propose one that I believe is happening.

All (well, most) the other churches have endorsed homosexuality, abortion, euthansia, contraception, embryonic stem cell research.

The Catholic Church has maintained its spine and stood against these items.

As a result — people have fallen into the trap/heresy of modernism and have taken the easy way out -— Let’s attend another church (small c) that is more modern thinking than the Catholic Church.

So they go off and are soon supporting all the sins mentioned above.

[Finatic]

i go looking quite often after mass in the parking lot for liberal/0bama bumper stickers and thankfully at my parish have never seen one.

[vladimir998]

Catholic Monk? He’s a married man. I don’t think he was ever a monk - at least not as a Catholic he wasn’t.

[Sergio]

bkmk

[beaversmom]

I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car yesterday. “I’m Catholic and I Vote.” That was in one corner. The other corner: “Obama 2012”.

[D-fendr]

I agree with your reasoning.

Whatever the cause de jour, the Church is in the way. Free love, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, same sex marriage...

To remain truly in the Church is to stand apart from this culture and to oppose it and to be quite unpopular. Some aren’t willing to do this.

[Salvation]

We are each responsible for our own little corner of the world. We must talk about the life-giving gifts of Jesus Christ on the Cross and being re-presented in memory of him in the Mass.

We must reach out to others.

Where are most of the Catholics in my town? Probably in the evangelical or Baptist Churches because THEY want to be free of the Church’s rules on these subjects.

We’ve got a big job ahead of us to bring them back. (And we can probably start within our own families — I know I can.)

[firebrand]

The Catholics I know abhor the “social justice” garbage that pours from the pulpit on Sunday. They stay for other reasons, mostly that they have been persuaded that the Church is their only hope of salvation. They have been scared good and proper in their childhood and dare not think these things out for themselves.

[G Larry]

That was helpful....

...for those who’ve been asleep for 50 years

Most are aware of the poor management.

My point is that it was not due to the actual content or intent of Vatican II.

[ansel12]

This is way off base, he equates becoming an “American” Catholic as leading to being a democrat voter, when it is the opposite, the more American a Catholic becomes, the more likely he is to vote like a Southern, all-American Protestant.

It is Catholic foreignness which is the more liberal, and it always has been, today, and a 100 years ago, and a 150 years ago.

Catholics are to the left of the non-Catholic Christians, that is the problem, they move right by becoming more American, not less.

[ansel12]

Non-Catholic churches collectively produce people who mostly vote against the left’s agenda of abortion and homosexuality.

The Catholic denomination produces people who mostly vote for the pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda.

[D-fendr]

Amen. And, speaking for myself, Pope Francis is calling to do just that.

[Tax-chick]

I like what you said.

[Kenny Bunk]

http://dwightlongenecker.com/

Fr. Longenecker, like many an Anglican priest and Lutheran pastor before him, took Roman orders and remained married. Next time I see the Pope, I’ll ask him about the monk part. He belongs to the Oblate Order,