Posted on 12/30/2010 10:20:14 AM PST by Alex Murphy
Tim Pereira was an altar boy and his father played guitar in the church's folk music group. The family often gathered in the church basement after Mass to drink coffee and eat doughnuts with friends in their tight-knit parish. They ate spaghetti dinners with the rest of the church, browsed church bazaars, and went on family retreats. Their priest was a caring man who oversaw a close congregation.
Pereira remembers only community and warmth from his childhood in the Roman Catholic Church. He has no horror stories of cold churches or abusive priests. So why is Tim Pereira, 30, now an evangelical?
Pereira joins the 10 percent of Americans who have left the Catholic faith. While some high-profile Protestant intellectuals, such as Richard John Neuhaus in the 1990s, have converted to Roman Catholicism, the overall trend seems to be in the opposite direction. According to David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, the Roman Catholic Church is "hemorrhaging members." The Pew Forum's 2007 "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" found that Catholics have experienced the greatest net loss of any American religious tradition. Although Latinos are now the church's most faithful and orthodox members, church leaders have been worried about their exodus for over a decade. The numbers show a more diverse—and if immigration slows, a smaller—Roman Catholic Church in the coming years.
Faithful immigrant Catholics have enabled the Catholic Church to keep a steady 25 percent of the American population, but as immigrants come in, young people and second-generation Latinos trickle out. In 1997, Andrew Greeley, a priest and sociologist, reported with urgency the news that one in seven Hispanic Catholics was abandoning the church. According to a Pew Hispanic Center study issued 10 years later, Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion, that number is now almost one in five for all Latinos, and it is 23 percent for second-generation Latino Americans.
Pereira, whose grandparents immigrated from Portugal, said his Catholic identity was "almost like a nationality." Chris Castaldo, author of Holy Ground: Walking with Jesus as a Former Catholic, echoes Pereira: "Catholicism is more than propositions that you believe. It's your culture. It's your identity. . . . It's hard to just walk away from that."
David Campbell told me that the breakdown of Catholic culture—the dissolution of tight-knit ethnic communities and the "hollowing" of Catholic education—is part of the reason the Catholic church is losing members. Latinos, like the Italian-American immigrants of decades ago, tend to congregate in ethnically and religiously homogeneous communities and see their religion as part of their ethnic identity. But as Latinos assimilate into American culture, they may cease to see their Catholic faith and cultural identity as intertwined.
Manuel Vasquez, professor of religion at the University of Florida, said that he expects Hispanics will continue the trend toward Protestant conversion, especially since more and more Latinos are encountering Protestantism in their native countries before they even immigrate. He believes that Latinos will continue to change American Catholicism with their vibrant, more charismatic form of worship. He adds, though, that it's unclear whether charismatic worship keeps young Latinos in the Catholic Church or pushes them toward Protestantism.
According to Campbell, most cradle Catholics who leave the church (roughly 60 percent) end up saying they have no religion, but the second-largest percentage (about 40 percent) turns to a more evangelical form of Christianity. Castaldo said that evangelical converts often mention that they feel a liberation from rituals and a freedom from a guilt that they are never doing enough to ensure their salvation. According to the Religious Landscape Survey, most ex-Catholics report that they simply "drifted away" from Catholicism, but those who become evangelicals say that the church was not meeting their spiritual needs. Ninety percent of Latino evangelical converts say that they were looking for a more direct and personal experience with God.
Pereira's spiritual life turned around in college when he listened to a tape by inspirational business speaker Robert "Butch" James. James said problems and answers preclude each other: If you have an answer, you don't have a problem. "So what happens if you have an omnipresent answer?" James asked, and Pereira began to wonder: "Is it possible to be OK with life no matter what's going on around you?" In what he too describes as "a drifting process," Pereira started searching for that answer in religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. He still went to a Catholic church but only intermittently and when he felt guilty.
Then a girl he liked (his future wife) took him to a Protestant Bible study and he kept coming, forming a friendship with the leader and finally finding an "omnipresent answer" to his quest for peace.
an annulment treats the marriage as though it never happened...hahahahahaah...
AND it makes it easier for them to remarry. That’s a one two punch...No Divorce “stigma”...and they can say they were never married...then remarry and slip into bed with someone else as a new bride!.....oh how sneaky is that!
Wonder if they can still annul if there are children? Humm...do they then say the children didn’t happen? Naw...they don’t do that with kids do they?
Welllllllllllll
they evidently came up with a magic tea or a magic white hanky
that renewed Mary’s virginity daily . . .
Lots of things seem to be possible for
The Vatican Alice In Wonderland School of Theology and Reality Mangling.
I'm sure that complex concepts are beyond the capacity of some to comprehend, but if the conditions and prerequisites marriage are not met the marriage is void.
Call it buyers remorse? The new model is shiny and runs faster so the old contract must have been invalid. yipeeeeee.
No wonder Catholics want to defend it. It's a nice little system they have set up that they can avail themselves of any time they want.
But you can't fool God. Divorce by any other name would still be divorce.
The mental gymnastics Catholics go through to defend this is like watching the Olympics. This is Olympic grade rationalization of sin.
editor-surveyor:
Well, that is your explanation. I think it goes beyond that. In my town the largest Presbyterian church just left for another one. I know many Baptist churches around here that don’t do missionary and fellowship with other Baptist churches [and by definition, Baptist churches are independent of each other] because of King James vs. NIV, because some have different eschatalogical views [most of which are all heretical anyway], the health-welfare Gospel preaches some crazy stuff, and none of at the doctrinal level agrees, don’t get me started on the various types of pentalcostalism because by claiming the Holy Spirit speaks directly to the individual, anyone can come up with something different and start there own little Pentecostal church and like minded followers will go.
You can try to spin it all you want. The Gordon-Comwell Seminary study, and I will add it is a well done scholarly work is a historic Reformed-Calvinist seminary and there data does not seem to pick any noses.
One of their links talks about 9,000 denominations that they have detailed data on [I could not get to the data as I am not a member of their site].
The reality is Protestantism will always continue to fragment into more and more and more groups because the authority rests with “me” not a Tradition that was passed from the Apostles down to the Early Church Fathers, expressed in the early Liturgy of the CHurch, the Creeds and the Councils.
Are there some Catholics who reject teachings and dissent? Of course, I would be ignorant to say otherwise, but they are “dissenting” because there is at the Doctrinal and Dogmatic Level, a clear teaching on theological and moral issues so a bad Catholic and one who says they believe in women’s priest, or think abortion is not a sin, or believes in same-sex marriage or believes in euthanasia or believes in some nonsense about the Trinity or who Christ is, denies the resurrection of the body, etc, etc, etc, is a dissenter and in some cases, depending on what is being rejected, a heretic.
In Protestantism, not the case as in the end, even if one says well the Bible says this. All you get is someone telling you, well I think the Bible means this so what do you get with this Protestant notion of stressing the “individual priesthood of all believers” apart from the COmmunon of the Church, is every Protestant theoretically can become their own Pope.
Natural Law:
It is funny how many of these Former Catholics, who profess to be so happy, all seem to be so angry. Why is that? It has been my experience that there was something they did in their early life and some Protestant group comes along with “cheap grace theology” and that leads them to bash the Catholic Church. No more need to examine ones conscience because I have a “get out of jail card from monopoly” to go straight to heaven.
The Protestants who become Catholic don’t bash their former tradition they just see it as a place where the Christian faith was first learned and lived but see their move to Catholic Full Communion as the historic expression of CHristianity and thus they are now in communion with all believers down thru the centuries.
Norman Geisler, I think is how you spell it, was quoted on some Catholic Blog that I read when he was asked about all of the Theologians and Pastors, etc from Prosetantism becoming Catholic:
His Answer was something to the effect that: Yes, the Catholics are doing a good job with attracting the intellectual eggheads as it is a much richer, historical and intellectual tradition.
On the other hand, we are getting larger numbers and while those larger numbers tend to come from the “bottom of the barrel of Catholicism”, that bodes well for us.
I found that interesting. It basically says that Evangelical Protestantism is a dummed down theology that is attractive to the “bottom of the barrel types”, i.e. in this case, bottom of the Barrel Catholics.
Geisler’s statements kind of support what most Catholics know, that poor catechesis starting in the late 60’s and 70’s and poor formation led to many Catholics ignorant of the basic tenants of the Faith and without the intellectual and philosophical formation to see evangelical theology for what it is, cheap grace and Christianity lite or 101 and unforunately, some of those “bottom of the barrel Catholics”, as Geisler refered to them, embraced it.
Longer term, The Catholic Church will be the much better for it because it will have the ability to withstand the forces of secularism and rationalism and actually challenge it. Protantism, with its divided groups will not be able to and continue to fragment as it has since the 16th century when you had basically 3 Protestant Groups, the Anglicans, the Reformed-Calvinist and the Lutherans. There is way more than just those 3 now and the Prots here can spin, pound their hands on the table, shout, etc, etc, it doesn’t change the fact.
You now have the opportunity to try again.
The hypocritical thing is to assume it is the Church that is doing all of the deceiving. Do you really believe that you were the first or only person to lie to or deceive the Church or misrepresent yourself or to break your vows?
Oh? When did I lie to or deceive the church? To whom did I misrepresent myself and when? What vows are you accusing me of breaking?
Why are you speaking as if these things are a fact?
It looks like wmfights was right, that you are accusing me of something.
On what basis, pray tell? What do you think you know about me that causes you to make those statements? Or better yet, those accusations?
It's silly Natural Law, if the people don't understand those "complex concepts" then the church should not marry them in the first place.......No matter how the church twists the issue of divorce vs. annulment. It is still divorce. Making it "softer" by calling it annulment once again frees people of their natural guilt and opens the way for further abuse of that system.
BTW How many annulments are allowed for an individual?
It really is quite amazing the more one learns about Catholicism. I can certainly understand why so many catholics don’t adhere as the vatican requires... there are plenty of escapes Rome offers even when they do so....thus they are under a system which condemns...but then hands them a ticket out....which does not go thru Christ...rather the churches determination if there is even a penalty at all!
Yes, if you throw away the scriptures, and turn to man’s imaginative ‘traditions’ there is no limit to what you can dream up.
That is why the Holy Spirit seems biased to bringing the Lord’s children to protestant churches.
.
It would appear so. Round and round it goes when one misses the mark, man so wants to avoid guilt...and when he attempts to do so he only sinks further.
Sola Fide
At one point almost all marriages were arranged.
Married *against one’s will* a reason for an annulment?
I don’t think so.
Again, if the Catholic priest doesn’t catch in his Pre-Cana classes that the persons who intend to marry are:
-unwilling (can’t find out by talking to them separately?)
-13, 10, or 8 years old (Really? He missed that one? How? Does he need new glasses?)
-lacks the mental capacity to comprehend the concept of marriage ( He can’t figure that out by talking to them?)
-brother and sister, mother and son, father and daughter? (The last name being the same doesn’t give a clue?)
-Even if neither party knew it at the time of the marriage? (That’s such a common problem. Happens all the time)
-never intended to have children and did not disclose that (He never asked that in counseling either? Is there a Scriptural basis for that exemption? Didn’t think so...)
-if either of the parties was already married
This is the only one that he could get a pass on not figuring out. But then, I don’t think anyone would recognize it as a legal marriage and then the annulment wouldn’t be necessary.
In the rest of the cases, the priest did NOT do his job and the marriage should not have been done by the Catholic church in the first place.
But 8 years old? Really? REALLY? Is there no end to the absurdity of examples someone will go to to justify a doctrine like that?
Oh, I agree. I went to a Christian high school, and was able to sing sacred classical music in the choir. I love my church, but we purposely arrive late to avoid the music. They seem to have a phobia about singing a *gasp* hymn.
We went to the Christmas Eve service, and I nearly walked out because they were singing some new garbage-y “Christmas carols” instead of REAL Christmas carols.
And what’s the point in the congregation singing if they are drowned out by people with microphones? That’s another reason we avoid the preliminaries, they are SO LOUD, and my son and I are very sensitive to loud noise.
All the churches I have been to in the last 15 or so years have been like this, too.
Can you tell you hit a sore point with me? :)
I wasn't referring to those who had been illegitimately married in the Church I was referring to those anti-Catholics who can't or won't understand the Church's position. Frankly, I couldn't care less if you agree with the Church's teachings, I only care that you don't continue to misrepresent it as you and your posse so often do.
That's how I see it. Why have premarital meetings with a Priest, to ask the appropriate questions and investigate for the truth. I suspect many marry people because they would simply find someone else who would, regardless of the conditions.
Count me in on that one as well.
If you’d like a really nice well done Christmas carol CD, get Mitch Miller’s Christmas Sing along with Mitch.
http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Sing-Along-Mitch-Miller/dp/B0000025SL
It had to have come out in the 60’s because I grew up listening to it (on record). It’s fantastic. Real Christmas carols. VERY well done. It goes on in my house the day after Thanksgiving.
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