And I have lived to see the Catholic Church, and Big Religion in general, decline in power and influence.
Everyone I know that was raised Catholic is now a proud ex-Catholic.
They seem totally embarrassed when they talk about their cultish Catholic upbringing.
It’s not going to move forward or even survive as long as the Marxist from Argentina is in charge.
“American Catholicism”?
That’s a problem in itself. That’s why we have the USCCB doing the Demoncrats’ bidding.
My observation, from outside the RCC as a Lutheran, is that the one and only way the church has retained a conservative basis is in its adamant opposition to abortion, for which I am grateful. In every other area of Christian doctrine, the RCC is either the eqivalent of a liberal liturgical denomination, a Roman version of the Episcopal or ELCA, or hurtling headlong in that direction.
As I have written elsewhere, I long for the days when I could sit with a Catholic colleague and debate the five solis, or whether there is a purgatory, or should we pray for the intercession of specific saints in specific issues (e.g. St. Rita, who lived in the middle ages yet somehow became the patron saint of baseball). I despise sitting with Catholic colleagues and having to defend Biblical sexuality, refute green mandates, accept pagan rituals in God’s holy church, and hear them attempt to explain why I cannot share Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament, but every Marxist abortionist political and social leader can.
When the Catholic church becomes the bride of Christ again and not the prostitute of Hosea, then and only then will salvation begin once again to spread from Rome to the world. Until then, I will stay where I have found eternal life in Christ, and orthodoxy in Scripture.
Have you not heard of the prediction by Francis Cardinal George?
“I will die in my bed.”
“My successor will die in jail.? (Cupich)
“His syccessor will put the Catholic Church in America back together.”
I am parphrasing the last quote — I lost it when I my old computer crashed.
And we also have the words of Jesus Christ, “The gates of hell will not prevail against it.” (the Catholic Church which Jesus founded on the apostles — the first Bishops.
"Catholicism would ultimately be the strongest, most stubborn bastion of conservative, religious truth in the United States."
"Despite sexual abuses, liturgy wars, and episcopal malfeasance, the Church retains its magisterial authority and serves as a bastion of traditional, objective religious truth."
Which you can only wish was the case for the last 60 years, for in reality Catholicism is an admixture of mostly liberal and semi liberal members (as Rome manifestly considers them) and a minority of sects of conservatives, while those who most strongly esteem Scripture as the accurate and wholly inspired word of God, with its basic literal hermeneutic, have long testified to being far more conservative and unified in polled core beliefs and values than overall those whom Rome counts as members in life and in death . Which even includes proabortion prohomosexual public figures. And if you think those RCs who reject the pope or who call him a heretic are guilty of departing from the Catholic faith, then you could try to tell them.
And as another poster delineated:
so-called traditional Catholics have split themselves into almost as many sects as Protestants have. There are:
1. Church Militant who chastise the Bishops but not the Pope
2. The Wanderer supporters
3. The Remnant led by the brother of the publisher of The Wanderer who now disowns The Wanderer
4. The SSPX
5. Those that believe the SSPX is a valid Catholic organization but aren't members.
6. Those who believe the SSPX is in apostasy
7. Those former members of the SSPX that believe Fellay is too deferential to the Pope
8. Sedevacantists who believe Francis is the first anti-Pope or non-Pope
9. Sedevacantists who believe John XXIII was the first anti-pope or non-Pope and that the Second Vatican Council is invalid
10. Those that believe in various conspiracy theories that the Church is now completely controlled by: The Vatican Bank, Gays, Masons, Space Aliens, the Illuminati or some combination of the above
11. Various groups of reasonable Catholics who either quietly or on record disagree with the Pope but are unwilling to go all the way and call him a heretic
12. Various groups of reasonable Catholics who are willing to call the Pope a heretic but are also willing to wait for the process of replacement to unfold in an orderly manner
(NOTE: Church Militant may have changed its position recently to be more directly in opposition to the Pope but I haven't kept track.)
And as another poster wryly summed it,
The last time the church imposed its judgment in an authoritative manner on "areas of legitimate disagreement," the conservative Catholics became the Sedevacantists and the Society of St. Pius X, the moderate Catholics became the conservatives, the liberal Catholics became the moderates, and the folks who were excommunicated, silenced, refused Catholic burial, etc. became the liberals. The event that brought this shift was Vatican II; conservatives then couldn't handle having to actually obey the church on matters they were uncomfortable with, so they left. ” - Nathan, https://christopherblosser.wordpress.com/2005/05/16/fr-michael-orsi-on-different-levels-of-catholic-teaching (original http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/blog/2005/05/fr-michael-orsi-on-different-levels-of.html)
Thus we have, Is Catholicism about to break into three?
Archbishop Viganò: We Are Witnessing Creation of a ‘New Church ’
The SSPX's Relationship with Francis: Is it Traditional? post #6
Is the Catholic Church in De Facto Schism?
The Impossibility of Judging or Deposing a True Pope...If Francis is a true Pope …
"[Catholicism’s] destructive power has resulted from this: that it has not been the invention of any one cunning and hostile mind, but a gradual growth, modified by hundreds or thousands of its cultivators, who were the most acute, learned, selfish, and anti-Christian spirits of their generations, perpetually retouched and adapted to every weakness and every attribute of depraved human nature, until it became the most skillful and pernicious system of error which the world has ever known. "
Which would be consistent with the modern adaptations which TradCaths rail against.
"Nevertheless, Dabney was wise enough to recognize that the character and qualities of the Church—however pernicious he might view them—were attractive to many people, including American Protestants."
Well of course: every cults usually excels in areas in which generally doctrinal sound churches neglect. Mormons have their strong families and authorities., etc.
"“When the atheistic doctrine begins to bear its natural fruits of license, insubordination, communism, and anarchy…democratic Protestantism does not know how to rebuke them.”"
Actually while Rome and liberal Prots were engaging in liberal revisionism - which notes and helps in your official Bible for America has provided for 60 years - and promoting Marxism, the fundamental/evangelicals were at the forefront of exposing and combating such.
Too bad it didn’t work out that way.
He's accurate enough to be a LDS Living Prophet®!