Posted on 05/01/2013 6:54:27 AM PDT by 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.........
(Excerpt) Read more at patheos.com ...
Think of how many times we would have voted Republican if the GOP had just given us a more compelling reason to vote for it. When you run candidates like Dole, McCain and Romney you have to expect half of us will stay home.
LOL, they voted AGAINST the republicans, they PREFFERED Clinton, and Clinton, and Al gore, and Obama and Obama.
You think the reason they voted for openly 100% pro-abortion candidates of the 100% pro-abortion party, for instance the 100% pro-abortion/infanticide Barack Obama, was because the McCain/Palin ticket was not pro-life enough?
ROTFL.
Ah, yes, to be a white and protestant in L.A. during the roarin’ twenties.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/10/opinion/la-oe-davies-catholics-20101010
http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jul/21/local/me-then21
Idyllic, no?
If you support abortion and liberalism, and the democrat party and their voters then say so in a way in which I can respond.
As overwhelmingly Catholic cities, or counties, San Francisco and Los Angeles and the state of California support the democrat party, and California will be pro-abortion liberal forever now.
Pro-lifers and conservatives regret losing California, and
I don’t understand your seeming glee in the left taking it over.
Of course I don’t expect you to defend the horrible legacy of racism and anti-Catholicism of American protestants in the early 20th century. If you are going to cite the 20’s as this sepia-toned paradise of WASPy virtue, however, you should at least understand the context.
I think you are on the wrong thread, see post 64.
Yet well over 50% of those who call themselves Catholic remain in the Catholic church and support homosexuality, abortion, euthansia, contraception, embryonic stem cell research.
So no, there is not a mass exodus out of Catholicism for the church officially taking a stand because it also officially does not enforce its very own rules about those who support such things.
If it were true that those who supported such things leave the church for other churches, then there wouldn't be such a problem WITHIN the Catholic church. They would have bled off and left only conservative Catholics who line up with official Catholic teaching, and that hasn't happened.
And right now, the biggest supporters of aforementioned vices appear to be the priests, who will not refuse communion to those errant Catholics.
With their mouths they say one thing. With their actions they say another.
It's called hypocrisy.
Actions speak louder than words.
What a cop-out. That blame game isn't going to fool anyone.
If the moral decline isn't enough motivation to get Catholics out to vote, it says volumes about where all those non-voting Catholics stand.
So now we have a whole block of non-voting Catholics without any convictions or enough intestinal fortitude to get out and vote conservative and we have over half the voting Catholics vote liberal. That does not leave a very impressive amount of Catholics who vote conservative.
But silly me, the Catholic church can do no wrong. Of course the Catholic voting record has nothing to do with the fact that the Church does not enforce its own rules about those who support abortion, homosexuality, etc.
It's always someone else's fault.
What a pathetic way to have to use to defend Catholicism.
And I'll raise you the Inquisition.
Why don't we focus on the real problem. Obama overwhelmingly won the woman's vote in both of his election victories. By your logic women are really the problem. Was that too a pathetic attempt to deflect your problem onto Catholics?
Peace be with you
I’m not the one waxing poetic about the KKK era in the earlier part of the 20th century, which it would appear that some others on this thread are advocating. Seriously, there are people here saying that L.A. in the 20’s was this protestant paradise until the unwashed papist masses showed up.
I encourage you both to simply and clearly condemn the treatment of American Catholics at the hands of the protestant majority during the 20’s. I promise you in return that the next time a Catholic on this forum posts something that lionizes the systematic descrimination, harrassment, and torture of other American citizens based solely on their denomination, I will join you in condemnation.
Wild, weird, and childish.
Try to stay on the subject of the article, what is killing American Catholicism, and why are Catholics voting as pro-abortion democrats?
Great post. Thanks.
Male or female, the problem that the pro-life movement and conservative movement has with the catholic vote doesn’t go away, the Southern baptist denomination votes about 80% pro-life republican, and it isn’t because they are all men.
You see how other Evangelical Protestants vote, again, it isn’t because they are all men.
It was actually bizarre and untrue, nobody is saying those things and they haven’t been posted.
If you support abortion and liberalism, and the democrat party and their voters then say so in a way in which I can respond.
As overwhelmingly Catholic cities, or counties, San Francisco and Los Angeles and the state of California support the democrat party, and California will be pro-abortion liberal forever now.
Pro-lifers and conservatives regret losing California, and
I don’t understand your seeming glee in the left taking it over.
Have you ever considered that it is the anti-Catholic bias like displayed in your posts that misrepresents and alienates the GOP in the minds of many Catholics?
Catholics voted AGAINST the republicans, they PREFFERED Clinton, and Clinton, and Al Gore, and Obama and Obama.
You think the reason they voted for openly 100% pro-abortion candidates of the 100% pro-abortion party, for instance the 100% pro-abortion/infanticide Barack Obama was because a couple of years ago I learned about what the Catholic vote is about and started posting about it? Or do you think that they voted that way, and then I learned about how they vote, and then started looking into it even deeper and historically?
Do you think that a conservative, pro-life activist trying to discuss the Catholic vote on a conservative political forum, during a time of the left importing Catholics voters by the millions, is the reason for Catholics voting liberal?
Personally, I think that your reaction to the information being revealed and the effort to squash discussion of it among us pro-life conservative activists, shows us why the Catholic denomination is so liberal and democratic.
Nor am I. Who is doing that and where's the link to the posts?
And I'm sure that all Catholics are completely innocent, pure, and upright in their treatment of all Protestants in this country.
I encourage you both to simply and clearly condemn the treatment of American Catholics at the hands of the protestant majority during the 20’s. I promise you in return that the next time a Catholic on this forum posts something that lionizes the systematic descrimination, harrassment, and torture of other American citizens based solely on their denomination, I will join you in condemnation.
You mean like those who yearn for a return to the Inquisition and think Protestantism needs to be eradicated?
Why wait till next time?
Look at NYS. NYS's cities tend to be heavily Catholic. Western NY and Buffalo is and it's been a democratic stronghold full of corruption and mismanagement for decades.
Schumer, Gillibrand, Cuomo, and many other NY politicians are practicing Catholics and NY is notoriously blue.
I've worked with many Catholics who vote dem in spite of the abortion issue because the dems are *Yes, I know where the dems are on the abortion issue, but the dems are "for the poor"*; the very words out of their own mouths.
I very recently talked to an 80+ lady who is a faithfully attending mass every Sunday and often on weekdays, and she supports abortion, homosexual marriage, obamacare. Her rationalization? *Yes, I know that the Catholic church teaches against that but I don't care. The government doesn't have the right to tell someone what to do with their own body.*
Say what?
The problem with American Catholicism isn't the influence of Protestantism with its *liberal* teaching. The problem is that many of the conservative ones when they find Jesus Christ, see the liberalism and leave for greener pastures, leaving behind the liberals who know the Catholic church, by its actions, condones those issues because a lack of any action taken when people espouse them, speaks louder that words.
It's no different that watching the parent of an unruly child in the store, constantly threatening the child, while the whole time the child ignores the parent because he knows there will be no follow through. At the end of the shopping trip, the child knows that by whining and saying *You don't love me*, the parent will capitulate and give the child the candy or toy (read communion and Catholic funeral) in the end.
FWIW, I've heard pastors in any number of denominations, Baptist, Pentecostal, Evangelical, speak out from the pulpit against abortion, homosexuality, divorce, sex before marriage, etc.
The Catholic church does not own those issues nor is it the only church which preaches against it.
The problem with the Catholic church is....
the Catholic church.
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