"For example, many (I do not know how to put this delicately) left the Church when they wanted to remarry after a divorce, and the conjunction of their remarriage and their enlightenment is too convenient for me to accept the latter at face value."
How true this is. I've seen friends and family members fall away precisely for this reason. In some cases, the people who have fallen away have astonished and saddened me.
sitetest
The second is an unwillingness to live the Catholic life, leading to a desire to blame the Catholic Church rather than admit this.
Desdemona notes that most of the people who left were baby boomers. That would not surprise me. Baby boomers were raised in an orthodox catholic church. One fasted from midnight (only water) if receiving communion. Sunday's High Mass was long ... very long. Children were expected to attend the 9am mass and sit with their classmates and their teacher (always a nun). The point I am making is that as children, we were exposed to strick discipline. Then Vatican II blew open the doors and windows. It was sudden and dramatic (albeit traumatic). Some catholics could not weather the change.
For example, when catholic school closed its doors for summer break, the nuns were in full habit. When the doors opened in September, only a few "holdouts" still dressed that way. The other sisters doffed the heavy drapes in exchange for lightweight suits and short veils. Eventually, even the veils were abandoned. And this was just the beginning. If you never experienced communion before Vatican II, it must sound like some mythological tale. One knelt at the communion rail and waited for the priest and altar server. The altar server was ALWAYS a boy; he carried a patten to catch the host, lest it fall. The ONLY person who could touch the host was the priest.
Imagine experiencing this as some cast in concrete truism! Within a few weeks, we had Eucharistic Ministers with heavily perfumed fingers, dipping into the chalices and placing the host into our sweaty palms. That change alone was enough to send minions of catholics walking. The clamored long and loud enough to restore the Tridentine mass.
The trouble with using this kind of argument on Modern Evangelicals is, you'd likely get no answer but a slap in the face.
Admittedly playing "martyr" for a second... I know from personal experience that -- to offer one example -- if one suggests to the average "Social Gospel" Modern Evangelical that the Government Schooling system is foundationally predicated upon a violation of the Eighth Commandment ("Thou Shalt Not Steal"), the adversarial reaction from the pseduo-christian "brother" or "sister" to whom you present this argument is going to be intensely personal and vitriolic.
If "Social Gospel" Modern Evangelicals would react so violently against simply proposing the direct application of the Ten Commandments to the open courts of their school boardrooms, just how open-minded do you think that they would be towards a confrontational argument to apply an indirect extension of the Ten Commandments (the anti-contraceptive argument) to the privacy of their marital bedrooms?
You might get your teeth knocked out, that's how "open-minded" they would be.
It is almost as if you and I are off in a corner-room somewhere, arguing a heated dispute over the nature of Christian Authority; meanwhile, outside the corner-room, the Anti-Nomists of both "traditions" rage, admitting of no authority at all save their own vain imaginations. Deep down, Anti-Nomist Romanists don't really care if you "win" the point that Rome is the Authority, they have no intention of obeying the Canon Laws of Rome anyway; and deep down, Anti-Nomist Protestants don't really care if I "win" the point that the Bible is the Authority, as they have no intention of obeying the Theonomic Laws of the Bible, either.
If I were sufficiently Graced to be able to "win" my argument by hammering through to you first thing tomorrow morning that James (and not Peter) is clearly recognized in Biblical and Traditional citations as the "Synod President" of the early Church's ruling Jerusalem Council... it would not matter a hill of beans. To the heart of the Anti-Nomist Modern "christian", the proper identification of Christian Authority is almost a silly argument, only of concern to those who are stuck 500 years in the past. They are modern "Christians", and have neither desire nor willingness to submit to Christian Authority at all.
(OP snorts derisively) yeah, right. If Jesus Himself employed His own typically-confrontational communication style to rebuke any "modern christian", Roman or Protestant, about their Apostasies against the law of God...
...they'd probably crucify Him.
My experience in Chicagoland is quite the opposite. (Is Chicago like other areas?) Each local Catholic parish has extremely narrow demographics. As My wife and I frequently moved, we visited many Catholic churches and were told bluntly that we did not belong in that church. Then another parish was named as the right church for our demographic group. We were always sent to a parish at the lower end or our mixed marriage.
Because small evangelical denominations do not have a large number of churches close by, their congregation of 100 has more diversity than a Catholic parish of 5,000.
In 1964 I did a research paper on upward mobility of people in the inner city. The research discovered that the church was the major vehicle for upward mobility. Evangelicals had more upward mobility than Catholics. In the Catholic church, only activity in a regional Knights of Columbus or similar group provided a vehicle for upward mobility. But these groups attracted few young adults so they did not provide a vehicle when it counted.
But small evangelical denominations had strong ties between churches in poor, middle class and wealthy areas. Joint meetings were frequent. An unemployed person would openly pray for a job, or a better job because his wife was expecting. The pastor/evangelist would openly pray the same for him, lay on hands, etc. In the congregation would be a supervisor, foreman, union steward or senior employee who knew of an opening at his place of work. Miracle of miracles. God answered the prayer. Read Horatio Alger again. Thats it!
Moving from the area of the poor church to the area of the middle class church was the next step. I have closely followed housing and housing choices. Ask any nominal Catholic who only attends on Christmas, Easter and his nephew's baptism where he moved to. More than any other answer, he will name the parish he moved to, not the village. (The public school also gets frequent mention.)
There is a climb from pentecostal/Assembly of God to Baptist; to Evangelical Free; to non-evangelical mainstream Methodist or Presbyterian and then to secular. The climb may take generations.
For Hispanic Catholics, the climb is from Catholic to Pentecostal to Baptist and back to Catholic. My parish had a discussion in Spanish about Priests and sex abuse. The attitude gap was startling.
The white upper class Catholics who minister to the Hispanics described the problem in the psychobabble of illness and treatment. The Hispanic Catholics talked of sin; good and evil; right and wrong. The Hispanics were concerned that many Catholic Hispanics would switch to Pentecostal/Assembly of God due to the scandal.
The whites were concerned the scandal would be a setback to the reforms of Vatican II. These white Catholics do not want to associate with lower class Pentecostals and Baptists. They favor of Ecumenicism and Unity ...but only with upper class Methodist, Presbyterian, UCC and Universalist churches.
A few years ago, when my wife finally found this Catholic church that accepted our mixed marriage I converted to Catholicism, which for me is like changing from Baptist to Evangelical Free. During the confirmation process they refused to recognize my fundamentalist baptism. They would welcome a Universalist or Christian Scientist equivalence, but not a fundamentalist Chritian Missionary Alliance. But their ecumenicism insisted there be only 1 baptism. Catch 22: I could not be baptized again. The result was they winked (literally, they squinted one eye) and gave me a provisional baptism that was only a baptism if my fundamentalist baptism was not a baptism. But if my fundamentalist baptism was a baptism, then this Catholic baptism I had never happened.
And you wonder why some of us are confused?