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.
A large number of Catholics that leave the Church for other Christian groups do it because they cannot abide by the divorce/remarriage position of the Church. There are numerous reasons for someone to leave the Catholic Church, but this is the one that is always downplayed. While many Catholics disagree with the Church position on artificial contraception, they know they can hide that disagreement from public scrutiny; living with someone other than your spouse (by Church marriage) is much more difficult to conceal, so they leave citing any of the other seemingly less selfish reasons people may leave.
The Catholic Church will recover when the clercy & hierarchy believe in Catholic doctrine, when they assert that it is the true Church (and thus others are not), and when people are convinced that Hell is real.
“No one EVER leaves the Catholic faith. Once they are baptized, they are ALWAYS a Catholic and will remain a Catholic until the moment of their death.”
Does that apply to excommunicated members of the Church? Some actions (participation in an abortion, for example) incur automatic excommunication; they don’t sent you a letter or anything, you’re just out (and must go through a process to be re-instated in the Church).
The reality is that the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, have not remained focused on preaching the Gospel. The church is currently losing ground in the culture because we have allowed other things to get in the way. These things range from “social gospel”, faith in politics (government as the answer), “green gospel”, acceptance of evolution, disagreements over music style, disagreements over color of carpet in the church, etc...
People want to know the TRUTH and when the church decides that it will give the TRUTH without the extra strings attached that are not found in the gospel then more people will listen...
John 4:24 “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”
John 8:32 “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
Again...both Catholic and Protestant churches are going through a migration of membership with a large amount of the former members making the choice to believe in “no God”...this would tell me that how we are “doing” church is not working. I would think that a return to loving God first might help turn this around...
Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus said unto him, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
John 14:15 “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”
WorldviewDad:
I agree about the underwear. I promise, no more of that, it was just tongue and cheek:
The Catholic Church has not changed doctrines. What is happening is that secular culture, or the Individual is the determiner of what is truth is what is the more the issue. The Western industrialized world is now in many places a post CHristian relativist culture. Some individual priests and Bishops in the Catholic Church may not be doing the best job, on that point I agree. That is slowly changing with each retirement. My hope is that Pope Benedict has a long papacy well into his 90’s and gets to reshape the Bishops of the US.
However, the Catholic Church is still at the doctrine and dogmatic level faithful to the Ancient Creeds of the Church and to the orthodox doctrines and still defend the culture of life and traditional morality. So on that, the Catholic Church has not and will not move.
Individuals, many of them may no longer want to hear it and thus choose to leave and either find a church that coforms to their belief, which is nothing more than “idolatry” in my book because it makes the individual saying this is what I think is true and if something that has been taught in scrpture and tradition and defined by Mother Church does not suit me, I reject it and leave.
Ultimately, those who leave the Catholic Church, as the article shows end up in secularism and even those who move to Protestantism never really settle on any Tradition, they keep moving to what is the “Church that is happening now” and church shop the rest of their lives.
“The Catholic Church has not changed doctrines. What is happening is that secular culture, or the Individual is the determiner of what is truth is what is the more the issue.”
For me it was more an issue of where did the doctrines come from. You have stated that they come from... “if something that has been taught in scrpture and tradition and defined by Mother Church” and have referenced the “Ancient Creeds of the Church”. I would agree with it being taught in Scripture but have a problem with tradition, creeds, and “Mother Church” being on the some level as Scripture. The last three listed are things that at their earliest were decided upon by individuals or groups of individuals, and as such they can be wrong...just like they can be in Protestant churches. We should not be adding anything to the Scriptures as the standard that God has set. If we do then we are doing the same thing that the Pharisees had done...Matthew 16:5-12 and...
Matthew 15:1-3 Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread. But he answered and said unto them, “Why do ye also transgress the commandments of God by your tradition?”
Traditions should never be placed at the same level as Scripture whether it be Catholic or Protestant tradition.
On a personal note...I left the Catholic church after a discussion with a priest and a bishop that came down to them telling me that we did not have to follow the Scriptures but instead we should follow whatever the church through them taught me. Part of that teaching was that Jesus was not enough to get me into heaven...I also had to do certain things through the church to help earn my way into heaven. Whether this is “official doctrine” or just the teachings of these two men...I knew that it did not line up with Scripture and left the church. And I actually left with the “blessing” of a different priest who told me and my parents that this was the path that God had laid out for me and that they should not stand in God's way.
There are several areas that I tend to agree with the teachings of the Catholic church over the teachings of most Protestant churches...such as birth control. I do not view myself as an “anti-Catholic” because I left the church but as somebody that is following God's Word as best as I can through His Holy Spirit. I have stated the Scriptures in Protestant churches to point out errors in teaching just like I had in my discussions with the priest...this is not a Catholic / Protestant issue...but a sinner (human) responding to God issue.
So to close I will refer back to...
Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus said unto him, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
thanks for the ping Salvation. I just wanted to point out the quote you posted to me was not me writing it. It was another FR contributor. Just mentioning if you intended to respond to them. I am in agreement with you and appreciate your post.
Post tenebras lux.
Ninety percent of Latino evangelical converts say that they were looking for a more direct and personal experience with God...
Pereira began to wonder: "Is it possible to be OK with life no matter what's going on around you?"
In a nutshell.
True Christianity preaches peace with God; we belong to Him and therefore "no matter what's going on around you," Christ is with us.
Percentage-wise, the RCC is also losing the most members.
So why is Tim Pereira, 30, now an evangelical?
Papist to American evangelical may be just one step on the road to completely irreligious.
Read Julia Duin's Quitting Church.
Her reporting is (mostly) anecdotal, and I find her recommendations appalling. But, worth a read.
Sad, but predictable.
The article quotes Pew as saying 60% of American ex-Catholics become non-believers while 40% become Protestant.
The latter statistic is clear progress, and the former statistic may simply mean some people have to hit rock bottom before they can see any light at all.
Well this explains the advertising campaign on TV to try and get ex-RC's to return. It's to bad that so many that leave don't go to a Bible believing church.
I really pin a lot of hope on 1 Corinthians 3. Paul fed some of the fledgling flock with milk because they were still “babes in Christ.” But he was still confident that those who matured in faith would eventually answer “yes” to his question: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”
Those in Rome are being fed lies. Those in the Protestant mega-churches are being fed milk. When God gives men a hunger for meat, He will direct their steps to a stronger, more Scriptural church. Our job as members of those churches is to “speak the word without fear” and to remind men of the “sweet savour of Christ.”
Be sure to tell that to the Kennedys and thousands of other married-with-children Roman Catholics who obtain church-sanctioned annulments of their marriages.
These conversion wars are interesting. From my perspective it comes down to two types of people. Those who seek liberation and freedom as explained above and those who are looking for an infinite expression in the finite, ever changing world. For those looking for the latter, the Romanist Church sells them on their institution as meeting that need as somehow having eluded any flux over time. Of course it's all a constructed facade and so their worship is mired in mysticism and symbolism as a means to cloud the facade.
Abraham Kuyper wrote on this as, "An overflow of mystical sensations darkening the mind. A general bluntness and dullness, rendering both the conscience and consciousness dim and obtuse; and the distance between the lower and higher classes wide and sharp. The laity overruled by the clergy. All vital energy broken. And the spirit of liberty and independence quite crushed down."
That’s a remarkably ignorant comment.
And all of those "Journey Home" conversion stories. It's funny - you'd never suspect that everyone who converts to Catholicism is a professional writer!
The percentage of numbers lost is really higher than it appears, considering the number of actively practicing Catholics.
There's your twice a year group, and people like my f-i-l who I just found out was Catholic and I don't recall that he EVER told us he was or darkened the door of a Catholic church, until he died.
Then he got a Catholic funeral mass.
....or that anti-Catholic hacks post articles supporting their theories...
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