Posted on 02/10/2025 2:11:54 PM PST by ebb tide
It’s no secret that the Catholic Church is bleeding members. According to Pew Research, those who have left Catholicism outnumber those who have joined the Catholic Church by nearly a four-to-one margin. As such statistics continue to worsen, the emphasis on evangelization grows. Yet, few can state what that ought to look like. So much of the focus has been upon reaching “across the aisle” and attempting to assimilate with Protestants.
A recent case of a Catholic young adult group chat that was admonished by clergy for sharing memes with a jocular approach to Protestant themes serves as an example. Catholics, especially younger Catholics, are urged under the name of charity to be more open to Protestants, which is difficult if not impossible to delineate from simply being less Catholic, even though those who promote this behavior would never admit their stance with such candor.
One of the principal arguments posed against enthusiastic Catholics is that they will be offensive to Protestants and thereby drive them away. Thus, be careful about those memes, kids, lest someone might be repelled by jocularity. But this is a rather new mindset, out of lockstep with human behavior and a long chain of saints who said the truth because it was the truth and because people had a right to hear it. In Decem Rationes, Edmund Campion talked of Protestants in a way that might not be considered ecumenical today:
Throughout the whole course of fifteen centuries these men find neither town, village nor household professing their doctrine, until an unhappy monk by an incestuous marriage had deflowered a virgin vowed to God, or a Swiss gladiator had conspired against his country, or a branded runaway had occupied Geneva.
While sharp-tongued, his points were true, and Decem Rationes was massively influential in both aiding conversions and inspiring demoralized Catholics. (Campion was eventually killed for his faith.) If the modern mindset of conversion-by-tepidity were true, Campion would have merely alienated his readers, but that is not what happened.
Sometimes the truth bites, and humor can relieve its sting. Chesterton was well loved for his wit, with which he contended that “Protestantism was born of men who were sure they were infallible, and it has lived on in men who are not sure that anything is infallible.” It’s impossible to say how many people he converted to Catholicism after his own conversion, but we do know that it was considerable and that he was never shy about speaking the truth.
Masses with tambourines, World Youth Days with Tuppernacles, and attempts to mimic the megachurch all ignore that there was anything to draw people throughout the ages. All of these attempts to convert via dilution might lead us to ask: Why become Catholic at all? If Catholicism is merely one denomination among many acceptable options, then why would one assent to the higher mandate that comes with conversion? Catholicism asks us to change ourselves. If it is not possible to delineate Catholicism as being in some sense better than other denominations, then surely those of other Christian faiths would feel no reason for conversion, let alone the sacrifice that so often comes with it.
For many converts, crossing the Tiber means losing contact with family members and being rejected by old friends. People do not endure these things because Catholics are nice people (even though that’s often the case). They do it when they become convinced that what the Church claims of herself is true and that it is, therefore, the best way to serve Christ. They endure the sacrifices as acts of love. The idea that people will be attracted if we speak less about our differences and only about our similarities is simply false. There is no reason to convert to what you already have.
Then there is the topic of what is owed to the faithful Catholics, lest they be surrendered on the altar of conversion. Must we implicitly assert that they would be better off, or at least on equal footing, if they were elsewhere—deprived of sacraments and the deposit of faith? That is what we do when we cower away from speaking about the Faith boldly. It is offensive to assert that the distinctions of our Faith are so trivial as we revere the saints who died for what we now reduce to nuance.
St. Athanasius, when he was battling the Arian heresy, did not back away from speaking of the differences between Trinitarians and Arians, even though it was true that they shared a great deal in common. Yet it matters that some people are in error about that which is most important. So instead of conversion-by-dilution, he asserted that “Even if Catholics faithful to tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the true Church.”
To be clear, nobody is calling for aggression toward potential converts or even anti-Catholic Protestants. But neither is there room for complicit silence, and the latter is far more common today than the former. For decades, attempts to fill struggling churches have been embarrassing capitulations to either other faiths or to the broken world around us.
In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI was welcomed at Westminster Abbey, which has been Anglican since 1559, when Elizabeth I ejected the Catholic monks under threat of death. Some fanfare was made of Benedict’s visit because never before had a Catholic pope been welcomed there. It would have been unthinkable to former generations. But should we laud the fact that modern generations (of both Catholics and Anglicans) no longer care enough about the distinctions? Did such acts of ecumenism help to draw people closer to God, closer to the Truth? Did it fill the struggling churches?
In an environment of widespread deceit, relativism, and indifference, what both Catholics and potential converts will always need is the truth. It can seem radical, shocking, and even offensive. Yet, it is also the only antidote to what ails us. It is what the human heart yearns for because we were made for Him.
We do not profit by abandoning the traditions, rituals, and truths that have been passed down for millennia. They ground us in the spiritual realm in the same manner that a home does in the temporal. If we abandon our home for the sake of those who are still searching, we shall all find ourselves lost.
Ping
As the old cowboy said, “When your horse is dead...get off.”
The current “Church” needs to be reborn as Catholic, and the current heresy must be left behind along with the hierarchy that pushes it. The Church is being run by homosexuals and pedophiles who are proceeding with normalizing their lifestyles of habitual mortal sin.
It is the Latin Church that is on the rocks, the rest of the Catholic and Apostolic Church is doing pretty well.
Both the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches are picking up catechumens right now mostly owing to woke Pope Francis and his ongoing willful destruction of the Roman Church and its (formerly) legitimate Sacred Liturgy.
The Latins’ only hope is that after Francis dies, that the Cardinals have enough spirit left in them to elect another Pope Gregory The Great to put things back into order before the entire facade falls off.
God willing!
But if the RCC goes back to remembering that us Christians are in the world not of it, then I'll go back to counting the RCC as some of the good guys.
That's right, the Rock of Peter. Not some piece of driftwood the schismatics are floating around on.
I remember when I prayed for what I have now. I don’t quite know why.
In the Second Vatican Council’s document on divine revelation, Dei Verbum (Latin: “The Word of God”), the relationship between Tradition and Scripture is explained: “
*****
Gotta tell ya ebb, it's like shooting fish in a barrel with you.
You are such a hypocrite.
Please, tell me sometime, why do you create the threads you do? I think they are introspective and will cause a human being to wonder about things and I am glad that you make them. Ecclesiastes wrote about “what hath a man of all his labour that he taketh under the sun?”.
Why does ebb post what he does? He seems to view himself as a modern day Luther trying to reform the Roman Catholic church. Kinda ironic in a way.
Pay no attention to my little stalker. He’s an habitual liar.
I’ll send you a PM later tonight.
ebb, you wouldn’t know the truth if it smacked you in the face.
I’m man enough to ping you....too bad you cannot say the same.
.
And that’d be a big ol’ no.....you’re a small sad little person.
See what I mean about him being a little stalker?
But consider...who is the real stalker but the one who doesn't have to guts to ping someone.....
Head on back to your caucus threads, ebb....no one will bother you there.
The little troll under the bridge always gets angry when he’s ignored.
Who would “debate” with a troll who lies?
Explains why you have to put as much as you can in a caucus thread....where you can spin any yarn you care to and no one will challenge you.
Though I do think you come out of your little myopic world from time to time just to have someone post to you.
It takes deliberate, conscious action to remove someone’s name from the *To* field when replying.
It reveals a complete bankruptcy of character to behave that way. It’s very childish, petty, and cowardly to not be able to face someone man to man.
It’s one thing to not respond to anyone at all, but another to respond and hide it and try to do it surreptitiously, which fails because everyone can see the post numbers and knows who the other is posting to anyways.
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