The crisis of faith in the Church is a crisis of faith in Christ's real presence.
Hmmm, where have I seen this idea before? ;-)
Disclaimer: I do NOT want to stir up the dust storm from the other thread. Can we meet in the middle somewhere?
Sure, you sit between sitetest and I.
patent
Can we meet in the middle somewhere?
I don't want to be taken as being too flippant, though if that attitude ever fit a night on FR it would seem good for tonight, so I should provide a better answer to a fair question than my last answer.
The crisis of faith in the Church is a crisis of faith in Christ's real presence.I would agree that we do not appreciate what we have, and that far too many Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence. We live in a secularized age, one that refuses miracles, relies on skepticism, and will not believe that which it cannot touch or see. Belief in the Real Presence in this age is hard, and this has been brewing for some time in the West. By this, I mean decades, well prior to V2 and the Novus Ordo.
We discussed yesterday the issue of whether the Novus Ordo or V2 or something like that had caused a decline in faith in the Real Presence. I would expect there has been a decline in faith in the Real Presence. Just how much, I don’t know, nor can I ever find anyone to answer that question.
I attribute the decline (that I expect is there) to many things. The changes in society, and the process by which those changes were allowed into the Church, being the largest factors in my view. You and I might disagree about how they were allowed into the Church. I can’t speak for you, but from our discussions of late it seems you might place a fair amount of blame on the Novus Ordo and changes like that. I put some blame on that, but I can trace many of the problems back farther. We had Bishops who were dissenting long before the Weaklands and Mahoneys took office. They had their champions who moved them up the ecclesiastical ladder and made it possible for them to do the damage they did.
One was the ArchBishop (several archbishops ago by now) up here in my neck of the woods, he was a powerful kingmaker in the Church, and he put a lot of the people in place that put the dissenters we currently deal with in place. These people created an atmosphere of dissent in the American Church, theologically and morally. This all goes way back, nearly to the 1920s from what I can tell (though this is all sketchy). IMHO the only think that can be laid at the feet of the Novus Ordo is that given its four canons it is more open to disobedient innovations. I think many of the same things were going to happen to the Tridentine, and I think the dissenters would have corrupted our seminaries, our schools, and the like, regardless of what Rite of Mass was being said.
In fact, pointing to Boston’s seminary (as just one example, I can point to ours here as well) it is clear that they did in fact do that, before the Rite changed.
Things are swinging back the other direction. Regarding the Bishops, we are getting better bishops these days, more or less. I’m not happy with mine up here, but he is a clear step up from his immediate predecessor. Regarding faith in the Real Presence, I think it will get a little worse before it gets better, but I also think it is near the bottom of the pendulum, and all the parishes doing perpetual adoration are already pushing that upswing hard.
Dominus Vobiscum
patent +AMDG