On this thread many people seem to have called attention to prominent hypocritical Catholics, like Pelosi and Biden, as driving them away from the Church. Another group point to the sanctimony of other less powerful people whose judgmental attitude is to blame. Both of these, however, really fail to see the bigger picture. The fault is not in any particular group of Catholics, per se, but rather with the Church itself. It is a living contradiction now, and until it comes to terms with what it is, what it really is, it will only get less and less relevant to the people who need spiritual food.
The real problem subsists, to use a good Catholic word, in tradition. Naturally, as a revealed faith it is one founded on tradition, but in Catholicism this goes even further. Other western Christian churches exist specifically by rejecting traditional elements of the Catholic faith, and therefore tradition becomes the point of contrast with other churches. Tradition, therefore, is really the lifeblood of the faith, and it is also the bane of the modern, and modernist, Church.
Catholicism is at war with itself. The Church today seeks to divide up tradition into some kind of arbitrary 'big t' and 'little t' concepts which, frankly, do not exist outside of ideological innovations seeking to remake the Church into some new and novel form, or those apologists who cannot accept the failure of this approach. Some desire to strip out all of what keeps the faith in direct connection with the historic Church, and to do this they invent these ideas. Unfortunately, more traditional people who cannot accept that an error was made, for whatever reason, fall into this pollyanna mode of excusing and excepting everything that was done and this just enables the innovators and plays right into their game. In all of this the faith suffers, and those who are struggling to work out their salvation are deprived of the tried and tested supports of the Church which helped form saints for centuries.
We now have churches which have no notion of the sacred. The music is profane and banal, with nothing of tradition about it. The language used is equally banal and ugly, and are performed and carried out without any regard for traditional notions of the sacred. The art is gone, or is unrecognizable in any sense of Christian meaning. There is no incense, because it is old fashioned. Basically, there is no beauty at all. We worship just as we do anything else, which means it is not worship at all because it requires nothing of us. It also gives us nothing. We come and go without any regard to anything but whether what we are doing is entertaining or at least not terribly inconvenient, and that is because it is no longer of any real substance to us. The Holy Name is flung around with disregard, and the altar is trampled by children during the rituals. Nothing done in our churches today is about God at all, and rather is all about us. And it is because it is no longer tied to any notion of tradition whatsoever. By defining tradition in such a way as to make it entirely optional we reduced our entire faith life to that which is least demanding to those involved. And this made it pointless for anyone who would either have benefited from it, or contributed to it in any meaningful way.
And this is the real dagger in the back of the faith. People who feel drawn to Catholicism, whether born to it or coming from without, do so because they, at some point in their being, understand the fundamental necessity of tradition in a revealed religion. Looking for the living Christ of history they, naturally, feel the necessity of a faith which is itself a participation in that history. And, that is as much as to say, they are looking for a faith which is traditional. But, of course, that isn't what the modern Church is anymore. That is a thing of the past now. And, for that reason they eventually drift away to other more comfortable, and perhaps less sanctimonious, innovations. The Catholic Church cannot continue to tout its historic foundations while simultaneously jettisoning everything historic about itself and continue to expect people to simply play along. Either the Church will wake up and realise it is killing itself with its anti-traditionalism or it will continue on the path to utter irrelevance.
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.
Excellent summation. This sad trajectory will continue until the confusion unleashed as a result of Vatican II is dealt with. Since it was a Pastoral rather than Dogmatic council, the documents need to be revisited, clarified and reconciled with Tradition in order to eliminate the errors that have resulted from the ambiguities they contain. Ralph Martin has written an interesting book on this subject (Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New Evangelization) which is a study of “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus”.
Of all the responses on this thread, yours spoke to me and rang true. Thank you for putting into words that which I too have felt but was unable to clarify.
In reality, and as a former RC who become manifestly born again while still attending Mass weekly, and remained in it 6 years after, evangelical radio much feeding me all the while (i left more to find fellowship with souls who also experienced the conversion i had and desire to share it), the difference is btwn institutionalized and errant faith and that of the Bible.
The historical roots of core evangelical faith extend to Abraham and the prophets and the Lord and His apostles, all of which were in dissent from those who had a historical tradition but which was contrary to the Word of God, or fell from faithful Scriptural tradition.
Under the Catholic model, in which the stewards of Scripture are to be submitted to, and those it rejects are to be rejected, the church itself would be rendered invalid, as it began by following an Itinerant Preacher in dissent from those who were the stewards of Scripture, and who sat in the seat of Moses.
But who established His claims upon Scriptural substantiation in word and in power. This will always be a remnant, and which elitist Rome excludes as existing in a valid church!