THE NUNC DIMITTIS OF JOHN PAUL II

Catholic Dossier ^ | 2001 | Ralph McInerny

[narses]

In fact, mainstream prod's are in far WORSE shape. I'll ping you.

[Salvation]

**The Church has GROWN since Vatican II. In most areas, like my own parish, you have to shoehorn people into the pews at almost every Mass.**

Have to admit I completely agree with you here!

Our parish is alive and well with many new indibiduals volunteering for parish committees, ministries and services! We are in the process of adding a women's, men's and young mother's Bible Study regimen! All at once!

[Salvation]

Do you have a source for your percentage statistics?

In Philadelphia what are the trends?

[Salvation]

Bookmarked!

[ultima ratio]

It is not at all objective. The idea that because this Pope has published an astonishing amount of "teachings"--very few of which have made much of an impression on anybody--and has travelled more than any other pope--some would say to no effect, though it enhanced his celebrity--he therefore will be known someday as John Paul the Great is pushing it. Yes, he helped bring down the Iron Curtain--but what has his papacy done to strengthen the Church in twenty-five years? I can think of only one single accomplishment--he has published the Catechism, deficient as it is. On the negative side, he has not protected the deposit of faith, he has not guarded the Sacred Tradition, he has not punished apostate bishops, he has not elevated distinguished and devout prelates, he has not reformed the corrupt seminaries, he has not staunched the stream of scandals--so what is there to admire? Despite his voluminous publications, can it be said anyone knows this Pope's agenda? Has he any real vision or plan? Is he aware of the bad bishops and the corrupt seminaries? What are his ideas for reforming the hierarchy and the priesthood? Does he have any--or is he relying on whipping up daydreams--as he did with the Jubilee Year fiasco that was supposed to rejuvenate the Church by means of slogans and publicity gimmicks? On almost every front the Church is much worse off now than when he began his reign and not all the felt banners in the world will change this if it lacks inspired leadership. It is a little too facile to blame it all on the sixties and Paul VI's encyclical on birth control as this piece does. Granted the Pope is old--but he lacked direction even in his prime. This Pope has had his chance to make a difference and, for whatever reason, he blew it.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

And, if you were in charge, we'd still be praying for the "perfidious Jews" on Good Friday, and performing wedding ceremonies between Catholics and non-Catholics in the rectory.

No, you are wrong. We do still pray for the perfidious Jews (which means faithless, not evil, as you've probably been told).

If I were in charge, we would still be praying for the Holy Roman Emporer (currently Otto von Bismarck in my estimation), and there would be NO marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics. The original canons on this should be restored. We've had enough disasters of mixed-marriages.

BTW, do you know why in the traditional Holy Week rite the Kiss of Peace was omitted on Holy Thursday? Because on that night, Judas betrayed Jesus with the Kiss of Peace. Do you know why we do not kneel at the Prayer for the Jews on Good Friday? Because the Jews knelt in mockery of Our Lord's kingship on that day.

[sinkspur]

No, you are wrong. We do still pray for the perfidious Jews (which means faithless, not evil, as you've probably been told).

If I were in charge, we would still be praying for the Holy Roman Emporer (currently Otto von Bismarck in my estimation), and there would be NO marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics. The original canons on this should be restored. We've had enough disasters of mixed-marriages.

BTW, do you know why in the traditional Holy Week rite the Kiss of Peace was omitted on Holy Thursday? Because on that night, Judas betrayed Jesus with the Kiss of Peace. Do you know why we do not kneel at the Prayer for the Jews on Good Friday? Because the Jews knelt in mockery of Our Lord's kingship on that day.

I'll bookend this by thanking God that you are not in charge!

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Bet ya the figures for mainline Protestant denoms are roughly the same, if not worse. And they didn't have no Vatican II!

You apologists for Vatican II are wrong again. On the contrary, the mainline Protestant denominations went through exactly what the Catholics did - jetisoning their traditional liturgy for a made up modernist concoction and updating their dogmas.

The revised Luthern and Episcopalian Liturgies are almost word-for-word the same as the Novus Ordo. They use exactly the same lectionary.

And it was in the 1960's-70's that all these Church's "got relevant" and suddenly "saw the light" on women's ordination, abortion, fornication, divorce, liberation theology, etc., etc. The evil seems to have started with VCII and spread directly into all the mainline Churches from there.

Many in my family were Episcopalians, and they all stopped attending (except my mom) when the Church "got relevant". As my grandmother put it, in words that could have come straight out of the mouth of a Pius X'er - "When they changed the liturgy, it was like they took your whole faith away from you. I just said to myself, if they are going to take that away, what is the point of going? So I stopped"

As far as attendance falling, the mainline Churches never had the attendance figures of the Catholics. It would surprise me if more than 50-60% went every Sunday. In many denominations it has long been true that only 30-40% attended. Today, the Catholic Church has actually fallen to a lower attendance level than even the low level of attendance at the mainline Churches.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Sinky:The Church has GROWN since Vatican II. In most areas, like my own parish, you have to shoehorn people into the pews at almost every Mass.

NYer:As for your suggestion that the church has "collapsed" spiritually, I would beg to disagree.

An example of the apostacy in America from Vatican II onwards. From the Catholic Directory.

Year Infant Adult Deaths Total Annual Total

Baptisms Baptisms Catholics Apostates Apostates

87 941898 80703 430532 52893217 -353760 -8276263

86 953323 87996 446822 52654908 -207632 -7922503

85 947668 91750 438031 52268043 -726278 -7714871

84 975017 95346 421032 52392934 -345141 -6988593

83 965014 94251 414460 52088744 236360 -6643452

82 952586 92861 425241 51207579 137531 -6879812

81 943632 88942 417047 50449842 22137 -7017343

80 910506 81968 408651 49812178 -373680 -7039480

79 896151 77205 407102 49602035 -800395 -6665800

78 890677 78598 404163 49836176 -54688 -5865405

77 884925 79627 407783 49325752 -112889 -5810717

76 894992 80053 406497 48881872 -388511 -5697828

75 876306 75123 407258 48701835 -307774 -5309317

74 916564 74741 415412 48465438 -570882 -5001543

73 975564 73925 426340 48460427 -553712 -4430661

72 1054933 79012 407956 48390990 -549728 -3876949

71 1088463 84534 417779 48214729 -412578 -3327221

70 1086858 92670 400880 47872089 -779797 -2914643

69 1095172 102865 412264 47873238 -380868 -2134846

68 1139248 110717 382492 47468333 -264050 -1753978

67 1190842 117478 393534 46864910 -296051 -1489928

66 1274938 123149 389938 46246175 -402575 -1193877

65 1310413 126209 387739 45640601 -282653 -791302

64 1322315 123956 379390 44874371 -40448 -508649

63 1322283 125670 360637 43847938 -116043 -468201

62 1352371 128430 356878 42876665 -352158 -352158

61 1349240 136953 348529 42104900

And before the Council???

Year Infant Adult Deaths Total Annual Total

Baptisms Baptisms Catholics Apostates Apostates

61 1349240 136953 348529 42104900 95934 3482011

60 1344576 146212 334394 40871302 209433 3386077

59 1307666 140911 331295 39505475 1764216 3176644

58 1284534 140414 313796 36623977 948974 1412428

57 1256433 141525 299118 34563851 -109006 463454

56 1204952 139333 290855 33574017 -55115 572460

55 1161304 137310 288281 32575702 -83055 627575

54 1094872 116696 288300 31648424 300141 710630

53 1077184 117803 281466 30425015 103974 410489

52 1018303 116839 276197 29407520 -86303 306515

51 973544 121950 267521 28634878 40764 392818

50 943443 119173 271058 27766141 256240 352054

49 937208 117130 271905 26718343 -139787 95814

48 907294 115214 262991 26075697 48007 235601

47 738314 100628 258588 25268173 285695 187594

46 705557 87430 256433 24402124 -98101 -98101

45 710648 84908 264747 23963671

Another example?

1991

Infant Baptisms - 1,147,976

First Communions - 776,809 (only 67% of Infant Baptisms!)

Confirmations - 510,860 (only 66% of First Communions!)

Less than half of all Catholics baptised make it as far as Confirmation!

Another example?

1965 - Number of Seminarians - 48,750 in 571 Seminaries in the US

1990 - Number of Seminarians - 5,646 in 235 Seminaries

Another example? Adult Baptism (Conversions)

1960 - 146,212

1965 - 123,149

1970 - 92,670

1980 - 81,968

1990 - 82,409

Need more? Look up ordinations, number of religious sisters, number of priests, etc. And don't just limit yourself to the US - look worldwide, the negative trends are the same.

What a blossoming! What a springtime of faith! (If you were special Vatican II approved rose-colored glasses.)

[Loyalist]

What a blossoming! What a springtime of faith! (If you were special Vatican II approved rose-colored glasses.)

Anyone who praises the springtime of Vatican II has less credibility than the Iraqi information minister.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

To clarify my last post's tables.

Columns are Year, Infant Bapstism, Adult Baptisms, Deaths, Total Catholics, Annual Number of Apostates, Net Total of Apostates. In the 1945-1961 period, the Apostate number is positive, which means more people were joining the Church, immigrating, or returning to the Church each year (although there are only 60 million some Catholics registered, there are easily 80-100 million people whose religious ancestory is Catholic). The negative number for 1962-1987 is the number who apostosized and left. In net, natural growth of the Church gave us 19 million new Catholics, but growth was only 10.5 million because 8.5 million left the Church (and this at a time of rapid immigration of Catholic foreigners from Mexico, Phillipines, etc.).

[sinkspur]

What a blossoming! What a springtime of faith!

We'd have done so much better if Otto Von Bismarck was recognized as the Holy Roman Emperor, I'm sure.

[restornu]

Good Morning a little levity! Cheer!


A new priest at his first mass was so nervous he could hardly speak. After the Mass he asked the Monsignor how he had done. The Monsignor replied "When I am worried about getting nervous in the pulpit, I put a large glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I get nervous, I take a sip".
So the next Sunday he took the Monsignor's advise. He proceeded to talk up a storm. Upon his return to his office after the mass he found the following note on the door.
1. Sip the vodka, don't gulp.
2. There are 10 Commandments, not 12
3. There are 12 Disciples, not 10.
4. Jesus was consecrated, not constipated.
5. Jacob wagered his donkey he did not "bet his ass"
6. We do not refer to Jesus Christ as "the late J.C."
7. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost are not referred to as "Daddy, junior and the spook".
8. David slew Goliath he did not "kick the shit out of him"
9. When David was hit by a rock and was knocked off his donkey, don't say he was "stoned off his ass".
10. We do not refer to the Cross as "the big T".
11. When Jesus broke the bread at the last supper he said "take this and eat it as it is my body", he did not say "Eat me"
12. The Virgin Mary is not called "Mary with the cherry".
13. The recommended grace before a meal is not: "Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub, yeah God"

[Hermann the Cherusker]

I firmly believe with all my heart and soul that whether Vat II happened or not, attendance at Mass would be the same as we see today. We've succumbed to the secular culture.

Catholics had avoided succumbing before. What was different in 1960? The difference was the Institutional Church succumbed and lead the laity astray. Alvin Toffler (admittedly not a Catholic source), states his belief that the 1960's would not have been as radicalized as they were had the Church not changed. In other words, the Church was the vanguard, not something going with the flow. This should be intuitive. The Church made her changes by 1965-1967. The real radicalization of the US and World followed in the 1968-1972 period (i.e. Paris University Strike was in 1968, Abortion legalization started in the 1967-1969 period, etc.).

Bet ya the figures for mainline Protestant denoms are roughly the same, if not worse. And they didn't have no Vatican II!

Present Roman Catholic and Protestant figures here. RC = 24%, Proto = 20%.

The article also contains an example of the Catholic attendance collapse: "The Archdiocese of San Francisco has collected attendance data from all its parishes since 1961. In the subsequent 35 years mass attendance fell by almost half, dropping from 205,000 to 107,000. Yet two surveys of community residents in the three-county archdiocese area (one in 1972 and one in 1996) reveal a very stable Roman Catholic population and a stable proportion of Catholics who say they attended church."

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Bet ya the figures for mainline Protestant denoms are roughly the same, if not worse. And they didn't have no Vatican II!

As I said, nope! You are wrong. Protestant attendance was always much lower.

"Catholic losses from 1955 to 1975 were proportionately greater than Protestant, so that now 40 percent of Protestants and 55 percent of Catholics report attendance during the past week, compared to about 44 and 74 percent, respectively, in 1958." <a href="http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/oct1978/v35-3-criticscorner1.htm>From 1978, source here.</a>

[Hermann the Cherusker]

We'd have done so much better if Otto Von Bismarck was recognized as the Holy Roman Emperor, I'm sure.

Ooops! My mistake! Otto von Hapsburg! Not Bismarck! Hapsburg. The world would be a much better place with him in the forefront, instead of that nitwit Kofi Annan.

Otto von Hapsburg - Christ, Kaiser, Europaer.

Otto von Hapsburg

von Gottes Gnaden Kaiser von Österreich; Apostolischer König von Ungarn; König von Böhmen, von Dalmatien, Kroatien, Slawonien, Galizien, Lodomerien und Illyrien; König von Jerusalem etc. Erzherzog von Österreich; Großherzog von Toskana und Krakau; Herzog von Lothringen, von Salzburg, Steier, Kärnten, Krain und der Bukowina; Großfürst von Siebenbürgen; Markgraf von Mähren; Herzog von Ober- und Nieder-Schlesien, von Modena, Parma, Piacenza und Guastalla, von Auschwitz und Zator, von Teschen, Friaul, Ragusa und Zara; gefürsteter Graf von Habsburg und Tirol, von Kyburg, Görz und Gradiska; Fürst von Trient und Brixen; Markgraf von Ober- und Nieder-Lausitz und in Istrien; Graf von Hohenembs, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg etc.; Herr von Triest, von Catarro und auf der windischen Mark; Großwoiwode der Woiwodschaft Serbien etc. etc.

http://www.twschwarzer.de/ottobio.htm

Oremus et pro Christianissimo Imperatore nostro Otto ut Deus et Dominus noster subditas illi faciat omnes barbaras nationes, ad nostram perpetuam pacem.

Oremus. Flactamus genua. Levate.

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, in cujus manu sunt omnum potestates, et omnium ura regnorum: respice ad Romanum benignus Imperium; ut gentes, quae in sua feritate confidunt, potentiae tuae dextera comprimantur. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium tuum: Qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus: per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen!

[sinkspur]

Bizarre.

[Loyalist]

Unless we can travel back in time and shoot Gavrilo Princip before he shoots Franz Ferdinand, the Holy Roman Emperor will never sit on his throne again.

That said, keep the numbers coming. Not even the liberal Catholic apologists can make 2+2=5.

[St.Chuck]

All the evidence is against you.

Don't sweat it.

[St.Chuck]

To ridicule the Second Council is, in a sense, to challenge God's handiwork through His church.

The really cool thing about you, is the amount of typing you save me. God bless you and your pinpoint analysis.:o)