Church is a Social Club
I want it to be more like Me
So It will be worthy of my greatness
It's ALL about my way, not God's Way
PRIDE
Great post. Thanks for sharing it.
A thought in response to the author’s sentence: “If liberal Catholics don’t believe what the Church proclaims, why do they still identify themselves as Catholics?”
Perhaps it is that they are becoming/morphing into considering Catholicism as a racial/ethnic group similar to those Jewish people who consider themselves “Jewish by heritage/genetics” but do not practice the Jewish faith.
Sort of like those whites who are have a Spanish surname or speak Spanish are now classified as “Hispanic.”
...i.e. the "CINOs", "cafeteria Catholics", "not 'real' Catholics" etc, is IMO that the Catholic church still counts and reports them as being Catholic.
...let me once again share the four-pronged typology that a veteran priest here in Washington, D.C., gave me a few years ago. There are, he said, four kinds of Catholics in this country and, thus, four “Catholic votes” on almost any issue. Any news report that lumps these groups together isn’t worth very much.* Ex-Catholics. Solid for the Democrats. Cultural conservatives have no chance.
* Cultural Catholics who may go to church a few times a year. This may be one of those all-important undecided voters” depending on what’s happening with the economy, foreign policy, etc. Leans to Democrats.
* Sunday-morning American Catholics. This voter is a regular in the pew and may even play some leadership role in the parish. This is the Catholic voter that is really up for grabs, the true swing voter that the candidates are after.
* The “sweats the details” Roman Catholic who goes to confession. Is active in the full sacramental life of the parish and almost always backs the Vatican, when it comes to matters of faith and practice. This is a very small slice of the American Catholic pie.
-- from the thread Bare Minimum Catholicism
They may call themselves Catholics, and they may even go to Mass, but when it comes to life choices they are virtually indistinguishable from everyone else in America. They don’t live radical Christianity out in any real sort of way. Their lives look just like the lives of their worldly neighbors. They don’t give any more than the average joe. They seem just as likely to divorce their spouses, have only 2.5 children as their non Catholic neighbors and they seem just as materialistic as everyone else. They attend church if they feel like it, but if there’s a weekend football game or the call of the beach house they’re just as likely to respond to that demand. When it comes to voting, they’ll vote as they wish according to wherever they get their opinions from–TV, the newspaper, the mass media–just like their neighbors. The one source they won’t consider when informing their vote is their priests and bishops.Related threads:
— from the thread Catholic Vote?Are Catholics now so “successfully” assimilated into American political life that they are without political impact—that there really is no such thing as a “Catholic vote”? Unfortunately enough, Catholics are largely indistinguishable from non-Catholics and, despite a few pundits, no, there really is no “Catholic vote.” This obvious conclusion—clear enough from the fact that the vote for the winning candidates in the last national election was approximately the same for Catholics and non-Catholics—has serious current implications....
....Compare two lists: According to the USCCB, the five most Catholic states, in population, are: Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. According to the American Life League, the states with the most pro-life legislation (i.e., inhibiting abortion in various ways) are: Oklahoma, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Texas. This is a shocker. In short, there is no Catholic political impact in support of life in those states reportedly having the most Catholics. As Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia put it, after the 2008 election, “[w]e need to stop overcounting our numbers, our influence, our institutions, and our resources, because they are not real.”
— from the thread The Mythical Catholic Vote: The Harmful Consequences of Political Assimilation
For the past fifty years, indifference to Church teaching has been actively encouraged by bishops, priests, and catechists. Official episcopal announcements, books from Catholic presses, winking homilies, and a culture of silence on moral matters not only gave room for dissent but made assent actively difficult. Catholics in the pews simply followed the cues.
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Spot on!
Wow! Our Pastoral Council broached this subject just last night.
You don't say? But I thought that Catholics considered such an attitude "extreme" and one of the "errors" of Fundamentalist Protestantism?
Don't tell me the unchanging church has changed???
Unfortunately, Protestant churches are undergoing the same kind of indifference to doctrine.
Anyone who expects a “non-believing Catholic” to be concerned about a doctrinal revolution in the Catholic Church is missing the point entirely. A “non-believing Catholic” doesn’t care any more about Catholic doctrine than he or she does about the rituals and traditions of Judaism or Islam.