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.........

[marshmallow]

Longenecker doesn't mention voting. At all. That's your cut and paste hobby horse which you bring to every thread. He does, however, emphasize an inconvenient truth....."the “wonderful” values of most Americans are unapologetically materialistic, hedonistic and self centered."

Those are not Catholic values. Longenecker nicely exposes a falsehood which is proposed in all of your posts; namely, that "Democrat" values are "Catholic" values. They're not. They're American values and those who fall away from Catholicism embrace them.

America is, and always has been, a liberal project.

That's its fundamental problem. The "pursuit of happiness" is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and is the major driving force behind the progressivist, liberal agenda which advances incrementally with time. At our core, we're liberal. We hold a liberal view of the human condition. People must be free of constraints in order to pursue their dreams, desires and to find worldly "happiness".

This philosophy was responsible for America's spectacular economic rise and brief (in historical terms) ascendancy in the world. Sadly, it's also responsible for its current decay, decadence and equally fast-approaching end as our search for "happiness" encompasses the destruction of marriage, unborn human life and the celebration of sodomy.

Longenecker is spot on.

[ansel12]

Did you even read the article, for instance the opening description?

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.

[ansel12]

The problem isn’t the Protestant Christian vote, it is the Catholic Christian vote.

If Catholics voted like non-catholic Christians, the left would dry up.

The Catholics remaining unAmerican is what the left sees as the keys to the kingdom of owning the future, it is why they fight for Catholic immigration and gave us the 1965 Immigration Act.

[Rashputin]

So the 75% to 80% of the population who aren’t Catholic never vote. Gotcha.

[ansel12]

Try reading the post, “”The problem isn’t the Protestant Christian vote, it is the Catholic Christian vote.
If Catholics voted like non-catholic Christians, the left would dry up.””

If members of the Catholic denomination voted like Protestants we would win, if they voted like members of conservative Protestant denominations who vote 75 and 80% republican, then the left would barely exist at all.

[marshmallow]

No.

Longenecker is pointing out something which has been explained to you on multiple occasions by numerous posters.

"Catholics" who vote for Obama, for instance, have abandoned Catholic values and Catholicism itself. They have instead, adopted the prevailing values of current American culture. In what sense are they "Catholic" then?

They are not sustaining "the left". They are in fact, embracing a longstanding liberal ethos which predates the Catholic influx to this country and which is now approaching its end game. "The pursuit of happiness" to increasing numbers of modern Americans, Catholic, non-Catholic, agnostic and atheist, means the pursuit of unrestrained sexual gratification and the disposal of its unfortunate products in the form of abortion, for instance. Who are we to stand in their way? This theology is ancient and not dependent on fallen away Catholics for its propagation or continuation, although many have embraced it.

It should be noted in passing, of course, that Republicans have no solution to this problem. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded. They are, in increasing numbers, pining to join the Democratic cool crowd and are bending over backwards to show that they're not "homophobic" or "anti-women".

They are also at the forefront of America's current liberal cause de jour; the destruction of ancient Christian communities in the Middle East. Iraq's de-Christianization owes much to the last "conservative" in the White House.

[ansel12]

Yes Longenecker opened up describing the Catholic vote.

I disagree with him that Catholics become liberal when they become more American, it is just the opposite.

Protestants vote conservative, pro-life, anti-homosexual, etc, the Catholic vote has always leaned left in America, always pushed it left, when Protestants were trying to stop Roosevelt, the Catholics were fighting for the left's agenda, it is the same under Clinton and Obama, heck, they almost got Al Gore in.

And we all know that Catholic immigration has turned America left and swallowed up entire states like California, and is killing off America forever to the point that liberalism takes it all, forever.

California became a fortress of the left because the traditional Christian Americans were replaced with Catholics.

It is bizarre that a left-wing democrat voting block keeps claiming that they are fixing the greatest nation ever created by curing it's liberalism.

[Natural Law]

"It should be noted in passing, of course, that Republicans have no solution to this problem."

Neither party is actively courting the Catholic vote. Every major election presents Catholics with the conundrum of which of our moral values will be violated least. The result is that less than half of all Catholics vote and neither party can claim a majority of Catholic votes. Those who look to blame Catholics for not toeing a party line and remaining Catholic are naive at best.

Peace be to you

[Rashputin]

What a line of hokum.

Catholics are few and far between where I live in the South but there are eleven churches who get together and set aside a Sunday each year to "celebrate diversity" and preach about what a wonderful blessing being queer is.

I seriously doubt the thousands of people who show up for those services who claim to be Methodists, Baptists, Independent Evangelicals, and all sorts of other things are voting for any Conservative or ever have but they sure do vote for scum like King Barry and any democrat fascist agenda item that comes down the pike.

People who are too lazy to make a difference where they are always have a boogie man to blame everything on. Usually, though, such folks aren't so mentally tepid that they constantly drool and slobber out the theory that the results of the past forty years of elections are the result of what a little over twenty percent of voting public has or hasn't done.

[Natural Law]

"California became a fortress of the left because the traditional Christian Americans were replaced with Catholics."

California has approximately the same percentage Catholics as does Texas. The cause of California's leftward lurch is not the Catholic immigrants, it is the influx of non-Catholic fruits and nuts from the other 49 states since 1970.

[ansel12]

""During the 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles was a bastion of Anglo Protestantism, reflecting the values of Midwestern parishioners who had been carried to the Southland on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Well into the 1970s, Protestant denominational leaders enjoyed comfortable, influential ties with the city is still-strong "downtown business establishment," which itself was largely Protestant.

The Immigration Act of 1965, however, created the condition for a radically different religious future for the City of Angels-a future that would anoint Roman Catholicism as the area's dominant religious group. Today Roman Catholicism is the single largest faith tradition in Los Angeles County, with 294 parishes and 3,631,368 adherents. Among Christians, 71% are Catholics. Between 1980 and 1997, Roman Catholicism experienced a 36% growth.""

That results in pro-abortion, liberal voting even in elections where abortion issues are front and center, such as illustrated here.

[Natural Law]

"Dring the 1920s..."

First, I would ask that you cite toe sources of your cut and pastes.

Second, if you are going to continue to attempt to prove a point with statistics, make sure they are relevant I corroborate your point. In 1920 Los Angeles' 57 thousand population represented only 1.6% of the state of California's 3.5 million persons. That LA was then a "bastion" for WASPs doesn't pass the so what test. Further, California today has the same percentage Catholics as an actual bastion of conservatism, Texas which does pass the so what test.

Peace be to you

[ansel12]

If you are going to quote then quote the “1930s” and “Well into the 1970s, Protestant denominational leaders enjoyed comfortable, influential ties with the city is still-strong “downtown business establishment,” which itself was largely Protestant.”

and then “The Immigration Act of 1965, however, created the condition for a radically different religious future for the City of Angels-a future that would anoint Roman Catholicism as the area’s dominant religious group. Today Roman Catholicism is the single largest faith tradition in Los Angeles County, with 294 parishes and 3,631,368 adherents. Among Christians, 71% are Catholics. Between 1980 and 1997, Roman Catholicism experienced a 36% growth.””

Then you can look at that 2004 election breakdown at the Catholic versus Protestant vote.

How did the members of the Catholic denomination vote on those pro-life issues?

[HoosierDammit]

Yes, and some of those fights were ones that many, many protestants, especially southern ones, so vigorously opposed (the voting rights act, non-segregated schools, and and the rest of the civil rights act, to illustrate a few). In hindsight, few would argue they weren’t the right thing to do.

The bottom line is that, politically, it’s hard to be a good Catholic if you’re too far at either end of the spectrum. The magisterium will never allow itself to be twisted to fit the temporal interests of partisan politics. I take comfort in that.

[vladimir998]

Being an Oblate doesn’t mean you’re a monk. Benedictine Oblates, for instance: http://www.osb.org/obl/intro.html

[Toespi]

Acquaintances and family members who profess to be devout Catholics who consistently invoke the blessings of Jesus Christ to those around them, and in the same conservation praise Barack Obama for all he has done. Pretty much in the same manner that Notre Dame welcomed Obama to their holy house.

[Natural Law]

"Then you can look at that 2004 election breakdown at the Catholic versus Protestant vote."

We have been around this canard many times. Less than half of the self described Catholics vote and of those that do approximately half vote for each party. To try to characterize the 25% of Catholics voting for liberal policies and politicians as being representative of all or even most Catholics is completely disingenuous and mathematically flawed. Remember, there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

I would recommend that if the Republicans actually want to win elections again they run real conservative candidates on genuinely conservative platforms and begin to address all of Catholic teaching in those platforms. Better yet, go try to improve the voter turnout and fidelity of the entire self described Protestant population. If you accomplish that the Catholic vote won't matter anyway.

Peace be with you

[ansel12]

Not canards, simple voting facts.

Look at the chart.

[ansel12]

Yes, and some of those fights were ones that many, many protestants, especially southern ones, so vigorously opposed (the voting rights act, non-segregated schools, and and the rest of the civil rights act, to illustrate a few). In hindsight, few would argue they weren’t the right thing to do.

Yes many, but the majority of Protestants always voted against the democrat presidential candidate, with the only exceptions in our history being 1932, 1936, and 1964.

The Catholics have only voted republican 5 times in our history, and none during that era.

The democrats destroyed America.

[Natural Law]

"Look at the chart."

I need only look at the facts.

Peace and Blessings