Posted on 06/09/2003 9:28:34 AM PDT by Maximilian
UVA Interviews Ken Jones, Author of Index of Leading Catholic IndicatorsUna Voce America director Fred Haehnel recently sat down with Ken Jones, vice president of Una Voce St. Charles, to discuss his new book, Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church since Vatican II. Mr. Jones is an attorney and legal publisher in St. Louis. His translation from the French of Cardinal Hoyos letter to Bishop Bernard Fellay of the Society of St. Pius X was published in the August-September 2002 issue of Inside the Vatican. Why did you decide to put together your Index of Leading Catholic Indicators? My second reason for writing the book was to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the effects of the Second Vatican Council. We all have our own gut feelings about the Church since Vatican II. Some insist were experiencing a vibrant renewal, others say were suffering through an era of unprecedented disintegration. Im a lawyer - I want evidence, not feelings or anecdotes, to support my verdict. What is your verdict? Do you find any of the statistics particularly striking? The shortage of priests has created a problem unknown to modern Catholics the priestless parish. Parishes without a resident priest were virtually unknown at the time of the Council; only 3 percent of them, 549, were without a priest in 1965. In 2002 there were 2,928 priestless parishes, about 15 percent of U.S. parishes. By 2020, a quarter of all parishes, 4,656, will have no priest. As one would expect, the priest dearth has been fueled by a collapse in the seminarian population. There were 49,000 seminarians in 1965. By 2002 the number had plunged to 4,700 - a 90 percent decrease. Without any students, countless seminaries across the country have been sold or shuttered. There were 596 seminaries in 1965, and only 200 in 2002. The devastation of religious orders of women since Vatican II can only be described as shocking. In 1965 there were almost 180,000 nuns in the United States. Today there are 75,000, with an average age of 69. By 2020 we have projected that there will be 21,000 below age 70. It is not being an alarmist to say that within our lifetime, there will be virtually no nuns in the United States - a stunning turn of events since 1965. Do the statistics show anything about the ordinary life of Catholics? Attendance at Mass has also plummeted. A 1958 Gallup poll reported that 74 percent of Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1958. A 1994 University of Notre Dame study found that the attendance rate was 26.6 percent. A more recent study by Fordham University professor James Lothian concluded that 65 percent of Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1965, while the rate dropped to 25 percent in 2000. What about Catholic education? Some people say, We know the numbers have declined since the Council, but the downward trend started before the Council. How do you respond? Heres another objection. Some people might say that youre making a post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument - just because something happened after the Council doesnt mean it was caused by the Council. Do you have an answer to that? In the end, though, my purpose in writing the Index of Leading Catholic Indicators is not to make any argument at all - its simply to present the facts to people so they can come to their own conclusions.
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8 and 5. Hmmmm....
My oldest wants six kids. She's pretty set on it. No more, no less. The youngest said, "You can have twenty babies and I'll have ten babies, then we'll have thirty babies!" I couldn't get a straight answer out of her though as to why her sister was going to have ten more babies than her, although I think she's figured out that twenty babies might require some work. 8-)
The numbers of Infant Baptism divided by the number of Marriages imply a long term trend of ~4 children per Catholic family. I find the steadiness of that figure interesting with respect to the use of Birth Control by Catholics. Traditionally moralists used to set 4 children as a minimum number to strive towards in marriage.
I think that Vatican II was the work of "liberals" in the worst sense of the word who were embarrassed to be part of a medieval institution like the Catholic Church when they got together with their liberal protestant and Jewish friends at the university. They were determined to remake the Church in their own image, what we see today in the Anglican communion, which is generally just one step ahead of the liberal Catholics, but the liberal Catholics are always determined to catch up.
They succeeded in setting in place a never-ending "process" by which, like a river, you never set foot in the same church twice. This process is still going on, and it is supported by 100% of the hierarchy including the pope most of all. As Catholics who wish to defend the faith, our job is to remind fellow Catholics again and again of the reality of the true unchanging faith which was handed down by the apostles and preserved for almost 2000 years.
The "Index of Leading Catholic Indicators" reported on in this article proves statistically the manifest and undeniable fact that the Church is suffering from a terminal illness and that it can never improve as long as this "process" continues.
A person would have to be a moron not to comprehend....with first hand observation....the "true (and uncorrectable) situation in the Church."
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