[Maximilian]

Jones believes, as do many Catholics, that the Second Vatican Council and the implementation of various reforms immediately following that Council are directly responsible. “No reasonable person looking at the evidence could come to any other conclusion. The beginning of the declines in all categories commences after the Council, and it’s been all down hill since.”

This is what the supporters of Vatican II fear the most: facts. They are only able to exist in a fantasy world; in the real world everything is the opposite of what they claim. A simple dose of reality is the most powerful antidote to bromides about the "new springtime of the Faith."

[sinkspur]

These stats get posted every three or four months by the trads.

Just an excuse to bash the Novus Ordo and Vatican II. Same old, same old.

Good luck at getting much interest. In case you trads hadn't noticed, there's a BOYCOTT of you guys going on.

These threads are boring, boring, boring.

[sitetest]

Maximilian,

Don't ping me anymore. Most of this is regurgitated cr*p. If I wanted to rehash the excuses of schismatics for the nth time, I'd join in on these junk threads.

sitetest

[Notwithstanding]

And I thought it was my birth in the 1960's - or the Beatles, or Viet Nam, or (fill in the blank any event that occurred in the 1960's) - that caused all this. All these things happened to coincide with the start of the decline.

[TradicalRC]

It is remarkably similar to the debates on the left throughout the twentieth century. Was communism itself to blame or was it merely the abuse of rogue personalities? When the first disillusioned ex-communists surfaced they were vilified and often assassinated. It wasn't until abuse piled on abuse that the light slowly filtered through the cracks. Time will tell...

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Amidst the general doom and gloom in American Catholicism, there are several points of hope.

1) Conversions are at an all time high, running at an annual rate of 170,000 annually or so. This is even more remarkable when one considers the low number of practicing Catholics. The number of converts began declining in 1961 and reached a low point in 1973.

2) Infant Baptisms per Catholic marriage are only very slightly under the levels reached in the peak of the Baby Boom, and are going up.

3) The number of children continuing on from Baptism to First Communion has trended upwards from around 80% to around 87% in the past 15 years. Similarly, the number of children continuing from Baptism to Confirmation has risen from around 55% to 66% over the same time period.

4) While the number of Seminarians has declined, the decline has not hurt the number of ordinations nearly as much as might be expected. Whereas before during the mid-1950's to 1970, only about 20-30% of men entering a seminary were ordained, today, the vast majority continue through. Whether or not this is a good thing regarding the desirability of the candidates cannot necessarily be shown, although it seems the young Priests of today are much to be preferred to the revolutionaries ordained during the earlier period. What is good is the drastic reduction of wasted expenditures on the vast majority of men who went to seminary for a few years and then dropped out.

5) The number of baptized Catholics marrying inside the Church, after dropping sharply from 1972 to 1982 from almost all to slightly over 40%, has now risen starting in 1991 back up to slightly over 50%.

So while there is certainly a widespread catastrophe in this country, things are looking up in many categories. In all cases, the positive trend appears to be starting in earnest around 1990. It would appear that as the Vatican II generation, so upset by the turbulence and chaos of the 1960's and the trends set in motion by the Council, is replaced by those who have no memory of the pre-Vatican II Church, that the practice of the faith is slowly reviving in this new generation.

[tracer]

Prayers for the Roman Catholic faithful in these turbulent times.....

[StAthanasiustheGreat]

Vatican II accomplished some good, though in the negatives definitly outweight the positives. I think Paul VI summed it up best, "The Devil is in the Church, smoke is around the altar."

But the heresy was already in the Church. Liberation Theology (Marxism) was in the Church prior to Vatican II, Piux XII constantly was battling these heretical theologians, one of them, a Jesuit named Jean Baptiste Hilfert (I think), led Pius XII to exclaim, "I want Jean Baptiste's head on a plate."

[BlackElk]

Vatican II itself is not the problem. Rather the implementation by the unscrupulous and by some faithless has been a significant problem together with the "progressive" itch that can never be adequately scratched, liberalism being defined as permanent disturbance of the peace for the sake of such disturbance (in this case, the endlessly innovative disturbance of Christ's own Church by the usual gang of leftist malcontents, aging badly and dying in droves each day).

Picking at scabs will get you nowhere. Most of you are curiously absent on pro-life threads, anti-homosexuality threads, the anti-RINO/CINO Ahhhhhhnold Schwrzenkennedy threads, et al., because these offer less of a venue for easy opportunism aimed at the impressionable.

Our Rockford Diocese has no problem with Vatican II, plenty of orthodox seminarians and ordinations and a bishop to kill for who is quite well-connected in the Vatican. We are fortunate. This is not necessarily an earned situation. We are lucky that Bishop Doran was born here, served as altar boy in the cathedral, ordained here, and consecrated as bishop here while well serving the Vatican and therefore the Church in other capacities such as service as one of seven judges on the Apostolic Signatura. That is the reality here and it can be the reality wherever a talented and thoroughly orthodox bishop takes firm control and does not fear to act.

The reserve troops ought to take care lest they be noticed firing at he backs of the regulars and doing so in the guise of firing at the actual enemy. You guys persist in attacking the Vatican when the problems today are much closer to your homes as in the chanceries of faithless bureaucrat liberals who have run your dioceses into the ground.

JP II is pope. Lefebvre was not. Fellay is not and will not be. Get over it. Take some responsibility for a change and stop being conscientious objectors in the spiritual warfare for which Jesus Christ founded this Church.

Also remember that, as a Church, we necessarily take the long view. We did not get into various messes overnight nor will we get out of them overnight because some apostle of disobedience of an excommunicated and illicitly consecrated bishop waves his magic wand and says Magicaboola. We mark time in centuries and not in moments.

Finally, I will admit that I do not favor any Vatican IIIs, Pope Joans, People's Revolutionary Pew Critter Caucuses or other delusions of the anti-Catholic "Catholics", but frankly, death comes for us all, particularly the aging anti-Catholic "Catholic" rebeles of yesteryear whose dreams of a thoroughly wreckovated RCC institution are dead. They are recognizing that their time is long past and that it will not come their way again. Their failure is marked by learning the hard way that heaven is neither democratic nor Demonratic as many die each day. It is in all the obituary columns every day.