Posted on 05/27/2015 12:26:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I am only pointing out the crux of the problem. We are in the midst of a great cultural battle and half the clergy are AWOL; the other half seem to be siding with the enemy.
I place the blame for the state of our society with the hierarchy marching with the progressives.
Bravo? Who am I to judge? Obsessing on abortion? Who the hell’s side are these guys on anyway?
OK. Well, I don't think anybody could assert that the Catholic Church is the largest "denomination" in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, South Africa, the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Iceland, or Canada.
Don't get me wrong...I don't think the article is a bad piece overall; I just think that he was a bit fast and loose with the facts and that caused a really inaccurate conclusion.
For example, it is a fact that a high percentage of people who identify themselves as "Catholic" support all sorts of leftist, libertine garbage. It is a fact that many "Catholic"clergy either tacitly approve of it by their silence on the subject (most) or are actually outspoken about it (minority). If you wish to concentrate on the minority and their actions, you can concentrate on articles such as the one posted earlier today by marshmallow. If you wish to concentrate on the majority of this group, you can focus on the article posted yesterday by salvation. Both are valid: each emphasizes different things.
I, personally, recall an interview that Dolan had with, IIRC, NBC a year or two ago when he bragged he couldn't think of the last time he talked about sodomy or other moral issues and that he only mentioned abortion in the lead-up to the March for Life. He bragged on this as if that was held to his credit.
I am NOT excusing the Catholic Church's hierarchy, the laity responsible for educating the youth, or Catholic parents who are supposed to teach their children through word and example. There are far too many examples of those who have utterly failed in their responsibility. Far too many examples over multiple generations that have brought us to this point. (To show that this is not even close to a new problem, I'd encourage you to scan through a letter written by Pope Leo XIII to Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore all the way back in 1899 (entitled "Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae"). In that letter, he warned about the dangers of watering down the faith in order to better "fit into society." It sounds like the current hierarchy is doing just that: watering down the faith in order to better fit in. One short quote to show you what I'm talking about here:
The underlying principle of these new opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith. They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them.
But by excluding inconvenient facts like the Lutheran majorities in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, the Anglican: UK, Canada, and the Reformed: Netherlands, S. Africa, he misses the real point (of course, as a NY Slimes author, could we expect him to really get the real point). I see enough examples on FR to know that if you are Lutheran in your theology, you'll only get real Lutheranism if you go to a LCMS or WELS church; if you are reformed, the PCUSA is dead: you'd better hit up your nearest PCA or OPC branch. If you're Baptist, the only real Baptists anymore are Independent Fundamentalist Baptists -- even the Southern Baptists went 'round the bend a few years ago...and forget about the American Baptists or other groups. If you're Anglican, you'd better line up with the correct African bishop, because the rest of them are all apostate.
The real point is that when you start abandoning the hard moral teaching because you want to fit better in society, when you start substituting Scriptural truth for so-called "social justice," when you start blurring the lines between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, you're going to start running into trouble. That's what the author doesn't say (and, working for the Slimes, he wouldn't say it).
I'd hope that you could see that. But I might be a little Pollyanish...
I do see how the members of the Catholic denomination vote.
By the way, Catholic is the largest church denomination in Canada, your post 93 pretty much made that clear when it said that they were almost 39%, it also is in the United States.
The Catholic nation of Ireland is the first to just vote it in, some think that Italy might be next.
What’s the difference?
Good job on post 102. However let me say that the Southern Baptists are not entirely a lost cause — yet. When they are I’ll stop being one.
I pressed the abuse button on this post hours ago because it is personal. Of course, it was ignored by the religious admins - as personal abuse of Catholics generally is.
>>Therefore, D caused...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secrets-of-the-vatican/
When you have a perverted bunch of eunuch bee keepers running the state-established hive for worship and profit, “It” happens.
Just like Romans 1:25+ describes.
Weird, your posts just aren’t making any sense.
As the most pro-life, pro-marriage, conservative voting church, and group of people in America, at about 80% or more republican voters, they are actually the best voters, about as far from the pro-abortion. pro-gay voting Catholics as you can get.
And the Protestants rushed to accept "contraception" which is 95% of the just another name for abortion.
That's why Protestants make all sorts of absurd claims about Catholics who have always been the minority in this country but who, according to FR comments, are the only people who have their vote actually counted vote in elections while the millions of Protestants who outnumber them by better than three to one don't have their votes counted.
They know they're they've accepted and advocated the murder of roughly one hundred and twenty million infants in the womb (at a minimum, most say three times as many abortions caused by contraception as by invasive procedures) so naturally when someone is cheer leading for Protestants who think it's fine and dandy to murder over a hundred million infants in the womb they're desperate to find something, anything, to claim is a major ethical problem you can pretend Catholics are responsible for.
Not to even mention the fact that a far larger percentage of their fellow Protestants who just happen to be black vote democrat than the percentage of Catholics who vote democrat.
Obviously, they "love" Catholic folks so much they want to straighten us all out but can't seem to find it in their hearts to straighten out their own fellow Protestants. Or, maybe they just know their doctrines and rants have failed among everyone else and hope to make some converts among Catholics who haven't already fallen for the Protestant, Self and Self Alone heresy the way the Kennedys and Pelosi have.
Really, I don't know why they don't brag about good old Pelosi and the Kenndys who have all very publicly espoused exactly the same line of "I decide for myself after reading the Bible and praying about something" that the Protestant folks espouse, so where are the victory celebrations over their converts?
That isn't true, Protestant votes are counted, although as just a big lumped together mass, rather than by denominations.
That is how JFK and the democrats knew that the majority of the Protestant vote only went democrat in 1932, and 1936, while the Catholics always voted democrat, and why the left so desperately needed to rewrite the immigration laws to import replacement voters. if they were ever going to completely defeat conservatism.
I realize the mods are letting you get away with your “personal” remarks but you are getting personal so knock it off and continue, with passion, to ascribe the fall of western civilization onto the shoulders of Catholics. It’s so enlightening.
LOL, yeah, it's never, ever, Protestant folks responsible for anything just because they're the overwhelming majority.
Forget the democrat South putting people in office who went along with the democrat party lock, stock, and barrel for decades on even the most liberal agenda items, no, no, it was never, ever a single Protestant who voted for any of them.
Why, in fact, it was the four Catholics in Georgia who gave us Jimmy Carter because the entire rest of the State would never elect Jimmy to anything just like all the good Protestants didn't turn out and vote for Jimmy when he ran for President. And Clinton? Not a single Protestant vote for Clinton either time, nope, all the Protestant folks stayed home on elction day !!
LOL, keep makin' me laugh with the absurd juggling of facts. Half or more of the Protestant folks I know here in the South still defend Jimmy Carter as "a good Christian man who was a victim of circumstances".
Dem nice Protestant folk all sits home an don't vote fo no body, right?
They're all too busy but they have plenty of time to whine and point fingers at Catholics after they refuse to participate or quietly vote for scum like Obama. Too bad they never have time to get out and bring their own flocks back to being even vaguely Christian rather than point fingers at anyone except the responsible majority.
But I understand, one particular group of fourteen people are more "pure" in the way they vote so that's the pie slice to look at, not the several hundred million Protestants who for all intents and purposes ceased to be Christian in any real sense of the word several decades ago.
Jimmy Carter never won the majority of the Protestant vote running for president.
The only democrat presidential candidates to win the majority of the Protestant vote, were FDR by narrow margins in 1932 and 1936, and LBJ in 1964.
Aside from that statistical genius, Frank Bruni, I have yet to see any proof or statistical evidence of what some Protestants are claiming here.
The author pretty much admits the real problem, albeit unwittingly, when he writes, (in-between breathless admiration of the lax Catholic):
“That’s because ‘Catholics’ includes not just worshipers who attend Mass weekly and perhaps tilt in a more conservative direction but those who go less frequently and those for whom Catholicism is as much an ethnic as a religious identity.”
It’s clear: in his warped view of what the Church really is, basically anyone who calls themselves “Catholic” and “votes according to [his] conscience” is a “Catholic” and probably a better one than who goes to Mass weekly and (gasp) “tilt in a more conservative direction” than their cafeteria counterparts.
Any fool can see this is what happened in Ireland and what drives the “progressive Catholic” in any country. It’s a “Catholic” not grounded in his faith but one who lets his “conscience” (i.e., his subjective whims) rule his morality.
Any fool can see that but it’s truly a worse fool who claims such “Catholics” are honest and true representatives of the Faith.
That was silly.
Baptized members of the Catholic church, who know themselves as, and call themselves Catholic, are Catholics.
Nope, all those Southern Baptists, Independent Baptists, Evangelicals, Methodists, and a horde of other groups who claim to be Protestant are really not Protestants. They're, well, not-Protestants, right?
LOL, every Baptist preacher within fifty miles of where I live now was in Jimmy's corner and expecting great things from their "born again" bud who now even has his own Bible for sale in Protestant book stores.
One thing for sure, those folks who think no one is Protestant unless they're part of their 12 person clique are a barrel of laughs.
Such a simplistic analysis of the situation is hardly worth even a reply. Anyone with half a brain knows that just because someone calls themselves “Catholic” and/or was just Baptised in the Church does not automatically make such a person a Catholic. Not one in good standing at any rate. Not a genuine representitive of the Faith.
There is nothing more that needs to be said there; I will trust in the good judgement of any lurker to see that what I say is correct and what you say is incorrect simplistic nonsense.
Just look at their advocating the murder of millions upon millions of infants as long as they can call it "contraception" and the strength of the diabolical delusion they're under is obvious.
Given that degree of diabolical delusion, is it any wonder that some numb-skull here or there pretends Christianity isn't about Christ, it's really about trying to blame someone else for the fact that US Protestant majority has totally surrendered to secularism and rejected everything that once made the US a Christian society ?
Regards
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