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.
They’re hypocrites on so many levels.
When Joseph Kennedy, Bobbly’s oldest son, married for 12 years with children, wanted to divorce his wife and remarry, he got an annulment because...his wife was an Episcopalian.
Apparently when one of the spouses is not Roman Catholic, the marriage is not “legal” in the eyes of the church and it never took place. Therefore an annulment is a snap.
According to Wikipedia, Kennedy requested the annulment “on the grounds of ‘lack of due discretion of judgment,’ meaning that he was mentally incapable of entering into marriage at the time of his wedding.” lol
POOf1 The wife lived in sin for 12 years and the children were bastards. And the wealthy Roman Catholic is free to remarry at his leisure.
Yeah. That works.
While the Boston Archdiocese okayed the annulment, apparently Rome reversed that decision a few years later at the request of Kennedy’s first wife. However, he can still appeal that decision. No doubt he has and the result hasn’t been publicized. Evidence would be whether or not he still takes communion, etc.
Perhaps you ought to have a kind of . . . functional . . .
how to describe it . . .
roll of the dice or some such . . .
wherein you arbitrarily randomly decided or . . .
on the bases of your sense in your intuitor . . .
or some such . . .
that for 3 hours the most recently repeated posters on the thread needed to take a rest and give it a break. LOL.
But that would probably be hard to police.
Or a 3 HR GO SMELL THE FLOWERS time out for everyone who’s posted 3 or more times amongst the last 50 posts.
Sometimes it seems like we get into virtually addicted nose twisting . . . of course, construing it as missionary activity.
Sometimes, maybe it is.
Lots of times, I just think it’s merely compulsive nose twisting to score ego points.
At which point, probably the regular combatants ought to get outta da pool and at least dry off a while . . . take some deep breaths and smell the flowers.
At least to take a good long time to reload the verbal napalm.
On the other hand . . .
it’s a time honored FR recreational !!!!TRADITION!!!!
If we gave you the popcorn concession, you probably wouldn’t NEED a salary! LOL.
Understood.
It’s unenforceable and impractical.
They’d need a full time mod to just sit there and count posts and field all the abuse reports of people nit picking about minutes and seconds.
I think the mods have bigger fish to fry.
I probably should not have mentioned “He” in my post to Metmom without pinging that individual as well. One thinks they are simply having conversation with another poster and forgets to be cautious how they frame their posts, in order to abide by the rules. I had said...”some think” or such as then it would not have been personal.
Well, we are talking about Catholics on a Friday :P
Yeah, it's against the cultural standard.
Yeah, it's impolite.
Yeah, it's crass.
Yeah, it's cheeky.
So, consider the source and go on already yet.
Sometimes I still wonder if we shouldn't number some of these old very redundant and tiresome exchanges like the old numbered jokes joke.
YEAH, WELL, I'LL RAISE YOU A #43 TO YOUR #66 SO THERE!
There's enough mountains without trying to build them out of specks of lint!
But it’s not Lent yet.
Unless you’re old school Catholic.
You both make valid points. Sigh.
Do you see where that post landed following what sentence! LOL.
Yeah.
I had a much higher perception of Roman Catholocism before coming to FR.
LOL
presently no screen name:
I see you like to yell! and can’t respond to what I post. The Catholic Church and its doctrines are all grounded in the Sacred Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition as expressed by the Church Fathers starting with St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Justin Martyr, Ireneaus,.....St. Ambrose of MIlan, St. Hillary of Potiers, St. Augustine, St. Basil, St.Jerome the firs 4 Councils of the early Church [Nicea-325AD, Constantinopile-381AD, Ephesus-431AD and Chalcedon-451AD].
Every Protestant tradition at some level [some more than others] is nothing more than a system based on the theological opinions of 16th century men such as Calvin, Zwingli, Thomas Crammer, Martin Luther.
So which Tradition is more “the teachings of a man” who elevated their own personal opinion to Dogmatic Truth. That is the Protestant groups and sects.
editor-surveyor:
I understand your view but I disagree. From my view, it is more the reality that Protestantism is “each person and their Bible” and elevating ones own theological opinions to the level of Doctrine and Dogma.
The Catholic Church and its doctrines are all grounded in the Sacred Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition as expressed by the Church Fathers starting with St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Justin Martyr, Ireneaus,.....St. Ambrose of MIlan, St. Hillary of Potiers, St. Augustine, St. Basil, St.Jerome the firs 4 Councils of the early Church [Nicea-325AD, Constantinopile-381AD, Ephesus-431AD and Chalcedon-451AD]. It is also in line with the great Creeds of the Church [Apostles, Nicence and Athanaisian], etc.
Every Protestant tradition at some level [some more than others] is nothing more than a system based on the theological opinions of 16th century men such as Calvin, Zwingli, Thomas Crammer, Martin Luther. Modern day Protestants in my view are continueing the legacy of those 16th century men.
So which Tradition is more “the teachings of a man” who elevated their own personal opinion to Dogmatic Truth rather than what the Church has always taught, that is the Protestant groups and sects.
Those men went back to Scripture alone for the foundation for their faith.
The teachings and dogmas of men are things like placing *holy tradition* in the same level as Scripture, indulgences, annulments, fables about Mary, praying to anyone besides God, to name a few. All of which the Catholic church advocates, none of which Scripture supports.
The Catholic church is just basing itself on older traditions than it's accusing Protestantism of being based on. Age doesn't make right. Scripture does.
It's hypocritical to accuse Protestantism of being a false religion for being based on traditions of men when the Catholic church is based on the traditions of men itself. Just because they're older, doesn't mean they're right.
Religon Moderator:
I can’t read your mind so I will pose a question. Are you are you a Moderator or a Calvinist or Some Other Protestant Cheerleader?
Moderators, at least I have always thought, are suppose to be impartial.
If you all do not want Catholics bo be here, and the religion forum to be a Protestant message board, then so be it, just ban us all from posting in it.
I see no anti-Catholicism is post 202, so what are you talking about?
You keep on repeating all the refuted rubbish, while the Holy Spirit keeps leading God’s children away from the darkness that your posts drip with.
Do you ever tire?
Oh come on! What cheese would you like with your weak whine? Perhaps you could share the momronism apologists’ fetid whine.
metmom:
Hmmm, well the Bible you quote from is the Holy Spirit working thru that same Church in the period from 100AD to 400AD and the 27 Book NT is the Catholic Church exercising its God given authority and the Holy Spirit working thru that same Church that defined the NT Canon at the various Councils at the end of the 4th century.
So that same Catholic Church that you are bashing here is the one that defended the Apostolic Tradition from every conceivable heresy starting with the Gnostics, Marcionites, Modalist, Adoptionist, Arians, Manicheans, Donatist, Nestorians, Mono-physites, the Iconoclasts, etc, etc, etc.
Every doctrine about the Trinity, the Person of Christ, the Creeds, the Biblical Canon is God working thru the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, bot the Latin-Roman West and the Greek-Bzyantine East, united togher.
It is not hypocritical, as you say, for me to accuse Protestantism of being a false religion, I did not say it was “totally false”, I said it departed from historic Apostolic Tradition, and on that I am factually Correct. So it has a less degree of the Apostolic Tradition than the Catholic Church and for that matter, the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church went into schism in 1054 AD. The 2 Churches are very close and the only thing that keeps us from being in Full Communion with each other is well, we are not in Full Communion. The Eastern Orthodox Church looks at Protestantism the same way.
It is Protestantism that is the novel tradition and the anomaly. Not the Catholic or Orthodox Tradition.
You may have left the Catholic Church, for whatever reason, and you may be happy with the First Baptist, Methodist, Presbyerian, Pentecostal, etc, etc, or the 2nd of those, etc, etc, Protestant church. That is your business and you are entitled to believe that. But you are not entitled to your own history and facts.
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