We're all pretty good at that. However, when the religious institution makes it a major dogma . . . it's pretty serious.
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.
You rail against the concept of Papal infallibility but would have us believe that you extend that principle to the lowly parish priest when it suits your argument? Further, you would have us believe that a priest should possess the ability to read minds to ascertain whether he has been lied to? Come on, you aren't tat duplicitous or stupid are you?
Well if they were "illegitimately " married by the Priest, who is responsible for checking things out which they profess, then he holds some degree of guilt for marrying them in the first place. Therefore the Priest should be instructed by the Vatican further and or at least addressed.
A priest who can’t SEE an underage participant in a pre-cana class doesn’t have the mental capability to be a priest in the first place.
Nobody is talking perfection here, but most of the examples you provided are ludicrous, falling more into the *excuses* category than any nearly legitimate reason.
Annulment is a farce. It’s divorce relabeled and repackaged to make it more palatable.
About those other accusations you made against me. Come up with an answer for them yet?
So, now the Catholic church is performing illegitimate marriages? Why?
Isn't it part of their responsibility to NOT do that?
I found it interesting he would refer to Priests who marry them them as “illegitimate”. But acccordinly to this that is what they are indeed doing.
Ooh. I love Christmas music. Thanks!
My favorite is a certain version of the Harry Simeone Choir’s Little Drummer Boy. Lots of classical songs, and spectacular presentation. I listened to it hundreds of times as a child on my Mom’s records, so it’s got the nostalgia thing built in, too. :)
Of course it is, but neither the priest, the participants, nor the process is error proof. In those rare cases where errors are made a remedy is required. That remedy is annulment. Per the tenets of Canon Law those should be extremely rare.
You are of course free to believe what ever you like and even free to say what ever you like, but rest assured when you lie or misrepresent the teachings of the Church you will be corrected.
I never referred to the priests as illegitimate. That only took place in your own personal reality.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
We're all pretty good at that. However, when the religious institution makes it a major dogma . . . it's pretty serious.
What about NL’s post 78 where he responded to my post 77, quoted my comments, and did not ping me to the response?
And 139 where NL accused me of lying to or deceiving the Church, misrepresent myself, and breaking my vows?
I asked him what he was referring to and he never got back to me with an answer on either of them.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
It is enough for you to admonish a poster once for mentioning you without the courtesy of a ping. Be sure to ping me when you do.
My favorite Christmas carol is “O Holy Night”. It’s the only one outside the really traditional ones that I grew up listening to that I really like.
There is another one that is very touching that I heard long ago from a group called Naphtali. Here’s the link to the words. It has beautiful music to go with it.
http://www.fischtank.com/ft/inthetankcomments.cfm?reference=522
It seems to have lots of convoluted bells and whistles, alright.
penney whistles.
I don’t think Heaven recognizes the magicsterical, however,
. . . except as black humor.
The selective outrage is running thick this morning. Post 185 from CAWW to METMOM was in reference to a post that I had made and neither bothered to ping me. Did it bother me, no. Is it blatant hypocrisy, yes.
That’s my favorite, too, although I consider that traditional. It’s SO much fun to sing.....
Alrighty then.
I fear you are right. Some are too damned stupid to comprehend the actual teachings of the Church. Others are too damned hateful and prejudiced to care. Both use this solely as an opportunity to participate in their favorite sport, Catholic baiting. A pox on all of them.
Now, all of you, stop making this thread "about" individual Freepers.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do NOT make it personal.
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