Posted on 12/11/2002 4:58:07 AM PST by ninenot
As the Watergate scandal of 1973-1974 diverted attention from the far greater tragedy unfolding in Southeast Asia, so, too, the scandal of predator-priests now afflicting the Catholic Church may be covering up a far greater calamity.
Thirty-seven years after the end of the only church council of the 20th century, the jury has come in with its verdict: Vatican II appears to have been an unrelieved disaster for Roman Catholicism.
Liars may figure, but figures do not lie. Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis has pulled together a slim volume of statistics he has titled Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II.
His findings make prophets of Catholic traditionalists who warned that Vatican II would prove a blunder of historic dimensions, and those same findings expose as foolish and naive those who believed a council could reconcile Catholicism and modernity. When Pope John XXIII threw open the windows of the church, all the poisonous vapors of modernity entered, along with the Devil himself.
Here are Jones' grim statistics of Catholicism's decline:
Though the number of U.S. Catholics has risen by 20 million since 1965, Jones' statistics show that the power of Catholic belief and devotion to the Faith are not nearly what they were.
At the opening of Vatican II, reformers were all the rage. They were going to lead us out of our Catholic ghettos by altering the liturgy, rewriting the Bible and missals, abandoning the old traditions, making us more ecumenical, and engaging the world. And their legacy?
Four decades of devastation wrought upon the church, and the final disgrace of a hierarchy that lacked the moral courage of the Boy Scouts to keep the perverts out of the seminaries, and throw them out of the rectories and schools of Holy Mother Church.
Through the papacy of Pius XII, the church resisted the clamor to accommodate itself to the world and remained a moral beacon to mankind. Since Vatican II, the church has sought to meet the world halfway.
Jones' statistics tell us the price of appeasement.
The Amchurch to spread its error ridden teachings faster and further take every oppurtunity to reprogram the faithful. That is why it is now necessary to have classes for the parents of children receiving the sacraments. Try to find a couple of like minded parents,whose chidren are being prepared and plan to attend classes with them.
Take a Catechism and know how to access it quickly,split up at the door so you are spread out the classroom and question everything they say that is wrong using the Catechism as your "bible",do it respectfully and when they make it clear that your question has received all the attention it's going to get,have one of your cohorts,say "I don't think you fully answered that last person's question".Believe me it can be very effective and it prevents them from teaching error because it cuts into their propaganda time and it actually teahes some of the parents what Catholicism is,and it supports many who know what there saying is not right but don't have the courage to stand up and be humiliated.
I think this is what Vatican II was looking for when it advocated for more lay participation.
I think they are victims of unrealistic expectations, coupled with cultural pressure and expectations. It really seems to me that a lot of vocations, not necessarily abnormal sexually, are by default because they don't seem to fit any other mold. There are many heterosexuals in the priesthood who are emotionally immature; some are unbalanced; others seem quite normal and stable. I haven't come to the above thinking entirely on my own; others have noted immaturity on the part of the clergy.
The laity are part of the problem. They need the ideal and expect priests to be something they could never be themselves. They have put them on pedestals because they have to believe the fantasy that they are holier, merely because of their vocation, than others.
When you read about the apostles, they come across as fairly normal men, even though information about their private lives isn't given. I had trouble with St. Paul for awhile, but I do admire him that he worked and didn't expect a free ride from his parishioners. That probably wouldn't be practical today. In large parishes a priest couldn't really do his job with so many sacramental obligations, without burnout.
Sometimes I wonder if Augustine would have made a holier choice if he had married the mother of his child. I'm told they may have been unequals socially. His later philosophy, while not necessarily bad, may have been trying to rationalize his own conflict between his mother and the woman and the normal right thing to do. That may not be the case, but I'm weary of trying to see holiness where it may have been absent
I do think you're getting somewhere about the overnuancing of sexual morality in the Latin West. When every activity (no matter how mundane) is a grave sin, no activity is sinful. In ther words, be careful about how many rules you make - if you make too many, all will be ignored.
Many catholics seem to be able to comfortably ignore all the rules, which in some cases seem to be excessive and exaggerated. Same with our society where there are so many laws now, people don't even know they have broken one until they get caught. People start to think, "I'm going to sin (or break some law) anyway so why worry about it any more?"
As to your comment about convents in the east vs. convents in the west, I wouldn't know. The east culturally had a tendency to hide their women in the world. The early Christian singles in the NT seemed to fit in quite wholesomely with the others and were a part of normal Christian everyday life.
I think that is why we are losing vocations and I'm not convinced it is necesarily a bad thing. How is a nun holier (and she is treated as such in the church as a given) as a laywoman who does the same things, prayer, continence, charitable works, etc.). I do acknowledge that historically it wasn't safe or economically feasible for single women to remain in the world. Furthermore, marriage entailed so many different sorrows in those times, that many women would be tempted to escape them.
There is really no right or wrong about these customs per se but presenting a false picture to the young about various aspects of a narrow interpretation of holy living can cause a lot of unnecessary unhappiness and conflict. The bottom line is fully mature, informed, voluntary consent to such choices.
You seem to be biased towards the east; from my vantage point, both east and west seem to have perpetuated customs that are difficult to understand in our modern world. In some ways, it does seem that the east wasn't quite so stringent other than the Lenten fast. I can't imagine being able to keep up with that, but that is cultural, too . . . In many ways, it's the same in the world. People are held to narrow channels, career paths, etc. It's seems to be a human and societal tendency to control peoples lives more than is really warranted.
Good question, thanks for pitching me a softball! The vast majority of the earth's organised belief structures are anticipations, echoes, reflections, distortions, and/or perversions of Biblical Christianity. For example, the Hindus came up with little blue sterile Krishna soon after the Christian gospel began making progress in India!
The covenant-making, self-revealing Creator of the universe is delighted in by His elect. The reprobate, however, have full-time jobs deliberately suppressing the obvious. As Christian apologist Francis Shaefer said, "If there was one button that you could push to shut out the knowledge of God, that is the button that fallen man would press continuously."
Or, as an even more influential writer, C S Lewis, put it in his children's novel The Magician's Nephew, "The problem with trying very hard to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you all too often succeed."
I'll have to give more thought to better nutrition and height; those seem to be good observations. And when you are sickly most of your adult life, as were people of the past, temptations to commit all kinds of sins would have been considerably diminished. One just didn't have the means and energy for sin.
That's terrible. I'd be up in arms. I refuse to donate to church building funds. Much of it is about the pastor feeling good about himself. I'll give my money to street pandhandlers first.
Stuff like this has made me think about converting.
As a free convert to Catholicism (I was received into the church before I knew any lay Catholics), I have a far different take on the Second Vatican Council than most of the cradle Catholics here. As uncharitable as it sounds, I would not mind if all of these whiners on both sides of the debate left the church! Go away, we don't need want you here! Catholicism is not a democracy, never has been, never will be. If you want to vote on issues of morality, authority, or music, turn in your Rosary and go become a Presbyterian. I don't care if you are a member of "Voice of the Faithful" or "SSPX", either way you just don't get it. Ours is a religion of assent.
Although everything touched by man will be affected by the scandal of the fall, we as Catholics are called to have faith that the Lord will not allow his Bride to die. Please don't misunderstand me, these crimes are among the most horrid imaginable and all of the perpetrators and collaborators should be punished to the full extent of the law. If any priest with in driving distance of me got away with molesting a child, I'd bury him myself (with no hyperbole implied). The distinction is that no entity (no nation, race, or religion) should be judged by the behavior of it's worst members. There have always been scandals in every organization and there always will be, it a direct result of Adam's error. Our duty is to respond to these tragedies with faith and justice. If this isn't for you, you will find that there are plenty other Protestant denominations for which you are better suited. They even have the best organists.
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