Posted on 12/28/2013 3:59:04 PM PST by NYer
According to recent demographic surveys, it seems there are presently 30 million people in the U.S. who identify themselves as “former Catholics.” That figure is both surprising, and, for Catholics, disheartening.
Over the past 50 years or so, a profound change, other than that effected by Vatican II, has taken place in the Catholic Church. It might be described as the phenomenon of “vanishing Catholics.” The Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, has identified four major challenges facing the Church today. First on his list is the exodus of young adults from the Church. According to recent demographic surveys, it seems there are presently 30 million people in the U.S. who identify themselves as “former Catholics.” That figure is both surprising, and, for Catholics, disheartening. It represents a little less than 10 percent of the total population of this country. It also means that had those persons remained Catholic, approximately one in three Americans would be identified as Catholic. Only two religious groups represent a larger percentage of the U.S. population: Protestants (cumulatively) and current Catholics.
This phenomenon is disheartening not only for bishops and priests, but also for faithful Catholics generally. Many older Catholics are saddened at the sight of their children and grandchildren abandoning the Church.
Questions naturally arise. What has caused such a massive defection? How might one account for this phenomenon? It hardly seems possible that any single factor could explain a phenomenon of such magnitude. Various reasons for people leaving the Church are well-known. Many of them have been operative from the earliest times of Christianity. In his first letter to Timothy, St. Paul reminds him that “The Spirit has explicitly said that during the last times some will desert the faith and pay attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines …” (1 Tm 4:1-7). In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks of dissensions and divisions among the faithful (1 Cor 1:10-16).
From the first centuries up to modern times, there have been doctrinal differences (heresies) which led to great numbers separating themselves from the Roman Catholic Church. Many others have left the Church for what can be described as practical reasons, rather than doctrinal differences.
Among the latter, there are many who separated themselves from the Church because of marriage problems. There are those who left because they became greatly dissatisfied with inadequate preaching, uninviting liturgy, and minimal hospitality in their parishes. It seems worth noting that expecting church attendance and public worship to be therapeutically satisfying often leads to disappointment and eventual alienation.
Not a few have left the Church because of real or perceived mistreatment by bishops or pastors. Reactions have a way of becoming overreactions. An overreaction to clericalism and paternalism in the Church resulted in autonomy becoming absolute. Evelyn Underhill offered a helpful analogy in this regard. She likened the Church to the Post Office. Both provide an essential service, but it is always possible to find an incompetent and annoying clerk behind the counter. Persons who expect all representatives of the Church to live up to the ideals proposed by the Church will typically become disillusioned and leave. Persons with such expectations would have left the Church of the Holy Apostles.
Most recently, a cause for many leaving the Church is the scandal of clergy sexual abuse. This has been a stumbling block not only for those directly affected, but for Catholics generally. Because of the questionable role played by a number of bishops, their moral authority is diminished. The time when bishops could command is past. Now, they can only hope to persuade and invite. Loyalty to bishops had been widely identified with loyalty to the Church. As the former loyalty diminished, so did the latter.
Clearly there are times when the Church is more of an obstacle than a help to faith. At Vatican II, the Council Fathers pointed out that the Church is always in danger of concealing, rather than revealing, the authentic features of Christ. Often enough, members of the Church’s leadership have been guilty of a sin typical of many religious teachers—namely, being more concerned about preservation of their authority than about the truth.
While specific reasons can be cited, it is helpful to recognize several underlying attitudes that are operative. (1) There is an anti-dogmatic spirit which is suspicious of the Church’s emphasis on fidelity to traditional teachings. (2) There is the widespread belief that one can be free to ignore, deny, or minimize one or more received doctrines without feeling compelled to break with the Church. (3) There is also the belief that, guided by their own conscience, regardless of how that matches—or fails to match—generally accepted Catholic teaching, persons can develop their own understanding of what it means to be Catholic. Someone has coined a phrase that describes persons with those attitudes, calling them “cafeteria Catholics,” i.e., those who pick and choose what to accept of official Catholic teaching and ignore the rest.
Two questions arise in the face of the phenomenon of “vanishing Catholics.” One question is of a more theological and ecclesial level: are those departed to be considered heretics or schismatics? A second question arises at the practical level: how can those who have left be reunited with the Church? Regarding the first question, it is worth noting that, while speaking of dissension and division among the faithful, and of separation from the community of believers, the New Testament does not make a distinction between heresy and schism. Since the definition of the Pope’s primacy of jurisdiction, it is difficult to see how there can be a schism that is not a heresy.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2089), heresy “is the obstinate, post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or it is, likewise, an obstinate doubt concerning the same.” Schism is “the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff, or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” The Theological Dictionary, compiled by Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, defines heresy as “primarily an error in matters of faith. The heretic takes a truth out of the organic whole, which is the faith, and because he looks at it in isolation, misunderstands it, or else denies a dogma.” “Schism occurs when a baptized person refuses to be subject to the Pope, or to live in communion with the members of the Church, who are subject to the Pope.”
In any case, given the variety of reasons for people leaving the Church, the degree of separation, and especially assuming good will on the part of those leaving, it is difficult to classify them as heretics or schismatics. Church authorities have the right and the duty to take measures against heresy and schism when those become evident. Clear denial of a dogma cannot be tolerated. But between this and a purely private, material heresy, there are many shades. Not every challenge to accepted theology is heretical. There are many partial non-identifications that endanger faith and unity but do not rise to the level of schism. Nor does every act of disobedience to human laws in the Church imply schism.
While speculative questions about heresy and schism are significant and need to be addressed, they pale in comparison to the practical question of how those departed can be reunited with the Church. That question is as complex as are the reasons for people leaving the Church. That question is further complicated when one addresses the question of the underlying attitudes that are operative.
Obviously, the Church must work at removing any obstacles to reunion. With Vatican II, that work was begun. The Council recognized the Church is semper reformanda, always needing to be reformed. The actual return of individuals requires something more than an adjustment in Church practices or new programs. It is a matter of God touching the individual with his grace.
A final question that can prove troubling is how the massive defection from the Church is to be reconciled with God’s providence. This is simply one of many instances in which we are challenged to believe in an omnipotent God, who is also a loving, provident Father. Providence is not an occasional, intrusive, manipulative presence, but one that is with us both in tragedy and in joy, in the joy that consists not so much in the absence of suffering, as in the awareness of God’s presence. To find the strength to experience calmly the difficulties and trials that come into our lives is a tremendous challenge. If, however, we are able to do that, every event can be “providential.” In a sermon on the feast of the Ascension, Pope Leo the Great said: “For those who abandon themselves to God’s providential love, faith does not fail, hope is not shaken, and charity does not grow cold.”
There can be a very subtle, almost imperceptible temptation to think we know better than God how things should be. We can be like the naive little girl, who, in her prayers, told God that if she were in God’s place, she would make the world better. And God replied: “That is exactly what you should be doing.”
Almost any word in the English language can be found in the Bible. You might as well claim that English is Scriture fulled.
The claim that mass is Scripture filled is bogus. There are only 2-3 readings from a limited portion of the Bible and simply reading them and that's that does not give anyone the time to study it, understand it, meditate on it, or in any other way let God use it to effect a change in that person's life through it.
Y'all Catholics who keep telling us that we don't know what the mass is about do need to keep remembering that many of us former Catholics grew up in the RCC and could recite the mass in our heads as it went along. When you hear the same thing aside for the change of the Scripture readings, week after week, month after month, year after year, you do tend to recall it.
Matter of fact, when I have occasion to be in a Catholic church for a funeral or wedding, I can STILL after these 35+ years, recite along with parts of the mass.
And in all that time I was sitting in the RCC hearing mass, none of the Scripture ever made any sense to me. It was not taken in context nor was there was any continuity, no connection relating the passages to each other. One from the OT, one from the Epistles, and one from the Gospels and not related to each other at all.
And the homily rarely expounded on the meaning of the passages.
The problem then becomes that it's not the mass that causes the change but the faith of the person who believes that the change is happening.
If the change in the bread and the wine is as Catholics say, then it happens because it happens, independent of which setting it's in, which church.
It's going to happen independent of the faith of the people around because it would be a truth that stands independent of man, as the truths of Scripture are.
If the non-Catholic interpretation is correct, that the elements are simply bread and wine REPRESENTING Christ's body and blood, then all the hand waving and muttering of any priest is NOT going to change that.
So in essence, the Catholic ritual of the mass is not needed.
“The Catholic Church’s Mass is totally biblical.”
I realize you believe that, but of course you have to.
The rosary is beads in a string. It has no “powers”.
The Orthodox Churches, stalwart in their retention of Tradition, are also leaking membership. The problem is, as Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out, the "isms" prevalent in contemporary society.
The problem is that churches will always be affected by these isms, and always have been, and all too often they are used as an easy excuse. We do not want to see our own failings, and far too many of us are deeply vested in the modernisation of the Church. Did Vatican II lead to a hemorrhaging of the faithful from the Church? No, we are told, that is just a coincidence. It was the free love movement that did it. Sorry, but I just don't buy that. It is all too convenient and simply absolves the hierarchy and the Church from all mistakes. There have always been movements and societal changes, but the Church was able to resist them by being true to its own message, and offering real spiritual food to Catholics. But, today, that is different. We have utterly abandoned all sense of Catholic identity and thrown out any traditional forms of faith. The people who are drawn to a Catholic message are therefore left with nothing, and look instead to more comfortable choices. It is human nature. Do social movements and developments affect the Church? Yes, but we can do little about that as things stand now. What the Church can do is protect the treasures of the faith, including the ancient traditions it has been heir to, and that will help retain the core true believers that should be the major concern of any church.
As for the Orthodox I think they have some rather different issues at play, many arising from some semi-caesaropapism in their approach. However, as I said above, in this period of history I would expect some loss of members. What is important is giving substantive care and guidance to those who are your bread and butter, so to speak. Here in the USA we seem obsessed with numbers; how much money is being collected, how many are in the pews, and how much money is being collected. What should be of greater concern is the quality of the pew sitter. Most of our local Catholic churches are filled with indifferent barely interested people who come because of some social reason more than worship. Those who really cared, and felt the faith in their soul, have found it harder and harder to continue going. It is painful to see the Mass mocked by silly antics and sacrilege every day. They drift away, and it is their loss which is most felt. If the Orthodox can hold onto the real believers then it really is not such a bad thing that the indifferent and lukewarm fade away. They will do as they feel, and that is neither good nor bad in itself. And that is just what is wrong with the Catholic approach of today, which is entirely driven by drawing in the indifferent, and simply trusting that the orthodox believers will persist in the face of constant heresy and heteropraxis. That is the strategy of Anglicanism, and we all know how that works out.
Sure I did.
But it wasn't until I CHOSE to accept Him as an adult that He entered my life.
All those years of taking communion never affected the kind of change in my life that surrendering to Him did.
So tell me this. If eating Jesus is the way to have Him in your life, why the need to repeat it all the time? God promised He would never leave us or forsake us.
Add me to your Catholic Ping List. I tried to private reply but I guess the Mods won’t give me that privilege.
Your grief is not good, as is it is more sophistry. We are comparing how much of Scripture a person gets in services, not how much via redundant readings. And as sourced before, even over a two-year cycle of Sunday Masses and Major Feasts only 3.7% of the Old Testament (plus Psalms) is read. Over 2 years! And most RCs do not attend weekly, let alone daily.
And even that is far more than before V2, and the place Rome historically gave to literacy in Scripture when she could control access to Scripture.
And RCs are among the lowest in personal Bible reading, thus they typically are among the most Biblically illiterate.
More propaganda will not help your polemic.
That is more propaganda, as in fact the modern evangelical movement was due to a shared commitment to commonly held core truths, like as RCs must assent to.
These core truths includes the truths expressed by the apostles creed, and the supremacy of Scripture as the wholly inspired and basically literal Word of God, versus liberal revisionism such as seen sanctioned within Roman Catholicism.
Thus evangelicals have been the foremost defenders of such doctrines as the Trinity, the Divine inspiration of Scripture, salvation by grace, etc., as well as against the inventions of Rome.
And evangelicals yet testify to more unity in conservative moral values and core truths than their Catholic counterparts.
And thus both liberals and Rome (most of which consists of liberals) have treated evangelicals as their greatest threat.
If there was not common assent but were as you describe them, then this could not be the case, while there is great diversity in beliefs among those whom Rome counts and treats as members in life and in death, and which is what Rome effectually conveys sanction of.
Yes, Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares.
And thus she only is the supreme judge, who cannot be judged by others.
And with that presumption, you have teaching such as that "And God himself is obliged to abide by the judgment of his priests....The sentence of the priest precedes, and God subscribes to it." – Dignity and Duties of the Priest, St. Alphonsus Ligouri (whose writings were declared free from anything meriting censure by Pope Gregory XVL (1839) in the bull of his canonization), Vol. 12, p. 2. http://www.archive.org/stream/alphonsusworks12liguuoft/alphonsusworks12liguuoft_djvu.txt
Likewise with the Eucharist, "The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows His head in humble obedience to the priest's command." (John A, O'Brien, >I>The Faith of Millions, Our Sunday Visitor (1938), p. 235; has Nihil obstat & Imprimitur)
And they wonder why we see cultic devotion to Rome, as to an idol.
That is not what the Lord meant to say, but what He did say, that He would not longer be physically present with them, thus It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. (John 6:63)
And which is entirely consistent with John and the rest of Scripture. Thus here are some questions you must answer if you want to defend the literalism your compel in Jn. 6.
1. Since you take this to refer to literally consuming Christ body and blood, "Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day," (John 6:53-54)
then you must conclude that those who do not believe in the "Real Presence" are spiritually dead and do not have eternal life. Is this correct, and if not, then how can you hold these versus to be about literally eating the physical body and blood of the Lord?
2. How does one become alive within in the rest of the NT, by believing the gospel or by taking part in the Lord's supper?
3. Where in Scripture are souls made alive within by consuming anything physical?
4. Is Scripture your supreme basis for doctrine, and source for full assurance that the Eucharist is the real body and blood of the Lord?
5. Where is John 6:53-54 or the rest of John 6 infallibly interpreted by your church?
6. Why do you scoff at the metaphorical understanding of eating and drinking here, but not when David states that water is the blood of men (2Sam. 23:15-17), or in numerous others places such as mentioned in a previous post above?
7. Do you see metaphor in John 6 as consistent or inconsistent with John who,
• In John 1:29, records John stating that Jesus is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” — but who does not have hoofs and literal physical wool.
• In John 2:19 records Jesus presenting as the temple of God: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” — but He is not made of literal stone.
• In John 3:14,15, records Jesus likening Himself to the bronze serpent in the wilderness (Num. 21) who must “be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal” (vs. 14, 15) — but He is not made of literal bronze .
• In John 4:14, records Jesus as providing living water, that “whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (v. 14) — but which was not literally consumed by mouth.
• And again in John 4:34, records Jesus is the Son saying His “meat” is to do the Father’s will, whose commandment is life everlasting (Jn. 12:15) — but He did not literally eat the Father’s physical flesh.
• In. Jn. 6:57, records Jesus telling us that by eating Him we live by Him as He lives by the Father, by His every word, and which was the Scriptures. (Mt. 4:4) For as referred to above, Jesus did not live by literally eating the Father’s physical flesh, but by keeping His every word according to Scripture.
• In John 7:37 records Jesus as the One who promises “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” — but this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. (John 7:38)
• In Jn. 9:5 records Jesus saying He is “the Light of the world” — but who is not blocked by an umbrella.
• In John 10, records Jesus as saying He is “the door of the sheep,”, and the good shepherd [who] giveth his life for the sheep”, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” vs. 7, 10, 11) — but who again, is not literally an animal with cloven hoofs.
• In John 15, records Jesus as teaching that He is the true vine — but who does not physically grow from the ground nor whose fruit is literally physically consumed.
All for now.
“..decades long plan to disrupt and conquer institutions such as the Catholic Church abnd others...”
You are correct. Read the book AA-1025, Memoirs of the Communist’s Priests Infiltration of the Catholic Church. A nurse in France who attended the death and came into possession of a briefcase of one of the priests with the infiltation mission. You can order it through your library.
Also Father Malachi Martin’s Windswept House is thinly (purposefuly) disguised fiction about this exact matter.
It is real and happening now as Obama has just downgraded the Vatican’s status as an NGO. The only thing standing between one world government is the Catholic Church which has been watered down to barely be able to resist.
Goodbye Good Men by Michael S. Rose is a must read.
I agree that Salvation is wrong to be passing judgement on other Catholics and declaring them “ex-communicated”.
x
Honoring God is not aggrandizement.
“...the more I read of scripture the bigger difference...”
“..excuses for leaving the Catholic church .. unconfessed sin...”
Unconfessed sin is festering and brining this fallen world closer to hell.
Scripture is the Catholic position.
Luke Chapter 23 Verse 47 is particularly clear on this point
And that penance and remission of sins should be preached in his name, unto all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
"Honoring God is not aggrandizement."
I guess it is becoming clear that Ted Kennedy played a much larger role in Catholicism than most of us knew. It is easy to see why most Catholics support the democrat party.
New York is getting new Bishops. Hang tight for the time being.
It’s the Bishop that counts, and San Francisco finally got a good one, Archbishop Cordileone — his name means “heart of a lion.
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