Posted on 09/06/2018 12:16:20 PM PDT by SaxxonWoods
More Americans have left Catholicism behind than any other religion in the U.S., according to a new report. About 13 percent of American adults are former Catholics – people who were raised in the faith but now say they have no religion, or converted to Protestantism or other beliefs, according to a survey by Pew Research Center. At the other end of the spectrum, 2 percent of U.S. adults report converting to Catholicism.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Catholic history is replete with immorality and corruption from almost its inception.
And lay Catholics ARE bad when they defend or refuse to condemn, their priests who molest kids or the clergy that protects the molesters. They become complicit in the sin when they refuse to acknowledge it or speak out against it.
Any organization that calls itself a church that will respond to financial pressure and not respond to anything else, like doing what is right just because it’s right, doesn’t deserve the title of *church*.
If the only thing that’s going to pressure Catholicism to change is cutting off the cash cow, then they are in the religion business for the wrong reasons and should get out.
Obviously, money is their God, not the Creator.
I don’t get how lay Catholics don’t see a huge problem with the fact that their religion responds to financial pressure but not anything else.
It’s that much about money and it doesn’t seem to faze most Catholics as they are all on board with the action.
The sheep should not be leading the shepherds.
I think it’s important that people understand that they can leave the Roman Catholic church - as many of us have - without letting go of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith. THE church - the Bride of Christ - is so much more than one denomination. It is the individual believers who make up that spiritual temple of which Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. We are all members of His body.
We can only hope
Settling into my very best Scientology glare....
I’ll be yer auditorberry
That’s meant as a platitude but it’s true obviously
I must say I know a lot of lapsed Catholics
They didn’t leave over sexual abuse though
They either got less religious overall or were lured by charismatics
I agree but the onus is on the laity
They are the only ones who can force this
The same college of cardinals who gave the world Pope Francis sure won’t.
its odd that some old timey Catholics, fed up with the liberal clergy/pope and the dismantling of our foundational beliefs, quit and join some light weight Protestant feel good church with no demands..none...
I watch these threads and I’m struck by so many ex Catholics here like in the article
And by how the Catholic faithful always and I mean always mention the priests
Talk to your priest
Make sure your priest
Our priest only does this or that
That right there is so alien to this Baptist raised southerner ....now an old man
And before someone says well southerners don’t have Catholics...read the article I think we now lead the country with self professed catholics
We simply place so much less emphasis on the clergy
We loved Billy Graham and his son too but we don’t venerate them
It must really hurt to see priests they love so much be so fallen in such large numbers
I fear this is the worst modern crisis they’ve seen.....it’s the handiwork of he who we all should fear
There are easily ten times as many Scientologists outside the organization, as in it.
It really is that bad.
That's the problem with putting people up on pedestals.
Nor do non-Catholics Christians teach that their pastors have the power to determine their eternal fate.
Catholics are raised believing that the priest has the power to retain their sins or not, thus giving the priest ultimate power over one's eternal destiny.
These men are perceived to have this special in with God because they are highly trained in religious matters and are extra holy.
THAT is an awful intimidating factor and so when the priest says *Jump*, you don't even ask *How high?*, you just start jumping.
So people are told to ask a priest cause I guess the Catholic religion doesn't think people are smart enough to think for themselves.
In the wild, where the sheep have been scattered from the shepherds who have been feasting on their sheep, they flock to their protective rams!
There must be protective Rams that can keep the flocks safe while the “shepherding system” can be reconstituted.
Wild sheep flocks do have their Rams and woe betide the wolves and animals that come up against them!
The true wisdom of the church resides in the bulk of it’s people and timelessness of the Spirit. Your top shepherds have been found to be wolves in sheep’s clothing...the laity needs to protect themselves....gather to your Rams!
This is true.
They must(eventually) vote with their feet and their pocketbooks.
But they need a leader to focus their efforts to ensure they are just ridding themselves of one bad shepherd for another. Before this cascade of perversity hit the news and as a result of the declining numbers of Catholic priesthood, which was a concern but not a panic as it is now, I wondered if the solution would be to allow married priests?
Of course this “solution’ was before the Western world went insane and permitted gay “marriage”
Now that is a bandaid to the gaping wounds the Church has self inflicted itself with.
There is no easy solutions but getting rid of the PC “bible” and return to the original script is part of the cure.
But getting rid of “Frankie the Pope” and his band of miscreant cardinals would be a start.
Catholics are raised believing that the priest has the power to retain their sins or not, thus giving the priest ultimate power over one's eternal destiny.
These men are perceived to have this special in with God because they are highly trained in religious matters and are extra holy.
THAT is an awful intimidating factor and so when the priest says *Jump*, you don't even ask *How high?*, you just start jumping.
One problem: most of the things Protestants associate with Roman Catholicism are common to all the ancient historical churches that existed and continue to exist in the original chrstian heartland and the original chrstian ethnic groups.
There are at present four ancient historical liturgical traditions. Catholicism (both Roman and Eastern) are only one of those four. The other three are Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and Nestorianism. Every one of these ancient churches has a priesthood, the sacraments, "the holy sacrifice," bishops who are venerated, rituals, rites, ceremonials, and of course good works, since every one of them pre-existed the Reformation invention known as penal substitution.
I'm sorry, but monks did not suddenly appear from nowhere in the mountains of Ethiopia in 313 because of Constantine. All the ancient manuscripts are products of these ancient communities and are written in their languages.
The Armenian Church became a state church in 301, seventeen years before chrstianity was so much as legalized in the Roman Empire (it didn't become the official Roman state religion till much later in the fourth century). The Armenian Church is not Protestant.
There were already monks and nuns long before Constantine. The pre-Constantinian Egyptians started monasticism. The Egyptians were also praying to Mary in the third century (before Constantine).
The apostle Thomas is supposed to have founded the chrstian community in southwestern India in the year 52. Guess what? When they were discovered by the rest of the world in the fifteenth century they had sacraments, priests, rituals, commandments, "the holy sacrifice"--the whole schmeer. There are Protestants among them now, but only because they were planted there after the Reformation.
Listen, I grew up believing the "Constantine founded baptized heathenism" thing too, but history simply does not bear this out. There is absolutely no record of their being anything even remotely similar to a Protestant church in the ancient, pre-Constantinian world. I'm sorry. It's not there. The only reason so many people believe it is because they are convinced the "new testament" was meant to contain absolutely everything one would ever need to know--a blatant and unexamined assumption. It is thus held for purely dogmatic reasons, and although I hope everyone understands that I respect dogmas and dogmatism, this is simply a dogma that began in the sixteenth century.
Still, both Catholics and Protestants like to pretend it's either one of them or the other.
Every single one of the ancient churches--Copts, Syrians, Ethiopians, Georgians, Armenians, Ethiopians, Indians--has a web presence and may be studied online.
I know everyone gets tired of me saying these things, but, believe it or not, it's because I love Fundamentalist Protestants and hate to see them wear themselves out in a vain cause while the rest of the world laughs at them (simply for believing things they all used to believe). But no one will understand this unless it is G-d's mysterious Will.
So people are told to ask a priest cause I guess the Catholic religion doesn't think people are smart enough to think for themselves.
That's funny. I thought Catholics were all geniuses (do you ever get tired of hearing the boasting about how intellectual and rational they are?), so much so that J*sus had to, in his mercy, provide Fundamentalist Protestant churches for poor anti-intellectual schnooks who weren't smart enough to match wits with an illiterate Guatemalan peasant.
Oops! Left out the Assyrians! Mustn't forget the Assyrians.
Their Nestorian Church developed completely outside the Roman Empire, so Constantine certainly had nothing to do with them, yet the only thing they have in common with Protestants is that they don't use images.
New York and New Jersey Launch Investigations of Sex Abuse in Catholic Church
Daily Caller ^ | 9/7/18 | Joshua Gill
Posted on 9/8/2018, 2:00:20 PM by Roman_War_Criminal
New York and New Jersey have launched new probes into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in light of Pennsylvania’s recent grand jury report.
New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, moved by the Pennsylvania report on child sexual abuse, subpoenaed all eight dioceses in the state for information and documents regarding any allegations of sexual abuse, payments to alleged victims, and church investigation findings. Gurbir Grewal, the attorney general of New Jersey, meanwhile, announced the formation of a special task force assigned to investigate the way seven dioceses have handled sexual abuse allegations. (RELATED: Main Org For Catholic Business Owners Cut Vatican Off From Tithes)
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3685962/posts
I mean you’ve got to have your head DEEP into the sand to not have noticed all the sex scandals over the past 10 years or longer with the church...
And btw, Jesuits ARE communists.
This is a mistake in thinking.
The formula of absolution used in the Latin Church expresses the essential elements of this sacrament: The Father of mercies is the source of all forgiveness. He effects the reconciliation of sinners through the Passover of his Son and the gift of his Spirit, through the prayer and ministry of the Church:
God, the Father of mercies, through the death and the resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
My head isn’t in the sand.
BTW, there are good Jesuits and bad Jesuits, just like with regular people.
LOL! There were more Catholics to begin with.
This is misleading......compare in percentages, please.
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