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PDF versionA splintering church?
by Maureen Fiedler on Oct. 31, 2011
For those who know the Catholic community, there is not much startling or new in the new survey of American Catholics, led by Bill D'Antonio, Mary Gautier and Michele Dillon. It is solid research that confirms the trends we have long known are in motion.
But every time I look at the data, I wonder if the bishops pay much attention to these surveys. As reported in the past, Catholics are paying less and less attention to the teachings enunciated by the hierarchy -- especially with respect to the "bedroom issues" (contraception, abortion, divorce/remarriage, same-sex marriage) -- and are relying on their own consciences for moral decision-making.
On intra-church issues, they are strongly in favor of optional celibacy for priests and the ordination of women as priests or deacons. And when it comes to weekly church attendance, Catholics are looking more and more like mainstream Protestants, with declining numbers on Sunday mornings.
Bill D'Antonio, whom I interviewed about the survey for this week's Interfaith Voices, said many researchers are now wondering if monthly Mass is the new norm.
Bill is also concerned that the same church structures that sustained earlier immigrant Catholic generations are no longer there to help the growing numbers of Hispanics, who are almost one-third of the Catholic Church in America today, and growing in number.
Looking at all this, I have a different concern. I can't help but wonder if we have a "splintering" church. We have progressive church reformers on one hand, strong Latin-loving conservatives on another, and average but dwindling parish church attenders in another spot. Add to all this the growing number of Hispanics with a distinctive culture, and we have a diverse church with a plethora of issues that sorely need the attention of church leaders.
And what has the bishops occupied? New Mass prayers with awkward phrasings. That preoccupation will likely ensure that "monthly Mass" really is the new norm.
even the Spanish speaking
even the Spanish speaking church is splintered seriously between the poor (and the most vulnerable legally, financially and in every area of resources), and the elitist escrivists (originally supporter's of the dictator Franco's Spain) and the Legionists (Marcial coming out of Mexico's elite), both groups strong on wojtyla and weak on liberation from poverty
best thing is head to the Spanish Mass in the poorest and most forgotten neighborhood you can find, and read Jon Sobrino SJ
for starters.
but those bishops better learn some Spanish, not Latin, and not Republican.
FIXING OUR CHURCH .......
FIXING OUR CHURCH ....... Please stay optimistic, Maureen.
Please note the NCR comment and crosslinks to Maureen Paul Turlish's excellent column under the comment heading, "KIDS & 2012 ELECTIONS", accessible by clicking on at
http://ncronline.org/blogs/examining-crisis/accountability-transparency-... .
Dear sister Maureen, this is
Dear sister Maureen,
this is not just happening in the US, is global. In my country, churchs are empty, the clergy is getting older and older, the vocations are null - with just a big excepction: the Jesuits. Can I ask you something that keep intriguing me? Why were they marginalized during the two last pontificates?
The last two years, the
The last two years, the Dominicans in one province had 33 men enter, many more than all the Jesuit provinces combined. Do reseach and you will see that there is a spike in seminary enrollment. Boston, with all its preoblems has sixty men studying for the priesthood for Boston
Dear Anonymous, I was making
Dear Anonymous,
I was making a remark about my country, a part of Europe. There is faith life beyond the USA. That's why Catholic means Universal.
Jesuits increasing in number?
Jesuits increasing in number? I think the precise opposite is the case. Who wants to join an organization that discriminates aginst loyal, orthodox Catholics?
Please, read my comment to
Please, read my comment to Anonymous.
And if you'll have to make a history of missionaries, educators and evangelizers you will find the Jesuits always in the first rank. Perharps the "orthodox Catholics" self-excluded themselves from the Church of Jesus. And, certainly, they don't know History.
Anyone who reads this blog
Anyone who reads this blog should be outraged that Ms.Fiedler classsifies abortion, the killing of the unborn as a "bedroom issue." There should be many comments protesting today's column.
Pope Benedict has said many times that the Church of the future will be a smaller Church but more fervent. Does Ms Fiedler not understand, especially after observing the ages of the "reformers" that attended the Detroit meeting that the young want no part of her envisioned church. Seminary enrollment is up twenty percent, and did she miss the almost two milion young perople praying and celebrating their faith in Spain?
I don't recall any of the
I don't recall any of the Church Father's, or it's most distinguished saints, both male and female, or it's foremost and highly regarded theologians, both male and female, ever suggesting or even promoting in their writings or their preaching the concept of a "smaller Church but more fervent". I always thought that according to Jesus we were charged with the mission to go out an invite even those not dressed for the wedding feast. Yes, I was under the impression the Catholic Church welcomed those who were outcasts, that the Church was always a place of welcome and inclusiveness. But alas according to some, no. Unless you agree with the party line, unless you are "blindly" obedient, unless you are unwillingly to accept the status quo, well then, there is no place for you in the Catholic Church. If that were the case then some of the Church's greatest thinkers, preachers and teachers had no place in the history of the Church. My God with a thinking such as this you just threw out Copernicus, Galileo, Catherine of Sienna, Chardin, Rahner and John XXIII.
When you fear change and thus refuse to allow it to occur then you ultimately die from within....that includes a change in doctrine!
Lastly, I dispute your statement that seminary enrollment is up 20%.
in fact we always professed
in fact we always professed our belief in the one holy catholic and Apostolic Church
Catholic meaning for all; apostolic meaning we will reach out in love to all.
This fascist few thingie just ain't catholic at all.
The nuclear bomb which not only splintered but disintegrated our One holy catholic and apostolic church exploded upon the tarmac of the the Augusto Cesar SAndino Airport in Managua, when the arriving wojtyla wagged a wooden scolding digit above the beaming and genuflecting holy head of the Reverend Father Ernesto Cardenal, later denying this holy man, and his brother Fernando Cardenal SJ and the Reverend Father Miguel D'Escoto MM (former editor of Maryknoll magazine in its best day, and later president of the UN General Assembly) and others the right to publicly offer the holy sacrifice of the MAss, because wojtyla's extreme fascist totalitarian politics did not jibe with their liberation of real justice for the poor and right to survival.
It all fell apart from that moment on.
wojo wagged his finger in condemnation of this holy and true priest just after boozing it up with the genocidal, CIA directed fascist, nun killing hoodlums slaying poor Catholics wholesale under US orders in El Salvador, the same who killed Monsenor Oscar Arnulfo Romero and many other CAtholic religious and clerics (Rutilio GRande) and later the great Jesuit theologians like Father Ellacuria, without a whimper from the right wing wojo-ratzo Vatican
not a splintering of our church but the total annihilation of our best and brightest future of our all embracing, all compassionate, all loving, all merciful, all worshipful One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Instead we get this intolerant, unloving, unmerciful, unholy "smaller Church but more fervent"
They were mighty fervent at the Nuremberg rally as well.
But look where wojo was back then, the collaborationist double agent, and ratzo, the Nazi Youth . . .
splintered? we got splattered by a jack boot, like bugs on a rug.
Charles, that image is still
Charles, that image is still ingrained in me as well....the pope, Vicar of Christ on earth, shaking his finger at someone, publicly chastising anyone, let alone a brother priest, nah, that doesn't remind me of Christlike behavior at all. I often wonder to this day how involved he was with Solidarity in Poland....what's good for the goose is good for the gander! He did his work behind a curtain and had many to do his bidding, Ernesto Cardenal did not have those luxuries.
the generic umbrella term
the generic umbrella term "bedroom issue" gathers a wide variety of troublesome issues, apparently of varying gravity in your relativist moral theology, or do you really not know that the seed of abortion is very often sown in a bedroom, if not at a rape scene, or between incestuous sheets, mortal medical extremities, etc.
As far as I know we have had only one Immaculate Conception, with its kind and gentle Annunciation most often depicted far from any bedroom.
"Pope Benedict has said many times that the Church of the future will be a smaller Church but more fervent." His predecessor and himself kicking our best and brightest, our poor and huddled masses yearning to be free, out of "their" increasingly totalitarian, fascist, tinier, cramped space spells a serious setback for our Church (and the unseemly, unjustifiable rush to canonization of the corrupt and cunning Karol a great sin against our hagiography, an infinite offense against our Communion of Saints in which we for now may yet believe)
paid claquers are still paid claquers no matter how many can dance on the head of a pin in Madrid. We do not hear of the many protestors, and refuse to hear the cry of the poor, the cry for justice, the cry for liberation, as the voice of the voiceless cries out in the desert, waiting to be made known, while we raise our walls against her with your false statistics.
those vocations, how many come to completion, and under what quality of guidance when none was left, erased by the wojo-ratzo junta?
It's PELVIC issues. Ms
It's PELVIC issues. Ms Fiedler was just trying to not offend you by saying PELVIC.
a comment out of Austin under
a comment out of Austin under an earlier, recent article in this series calls them "pelvic issues" so perhaps we are lucky to view the euphemism here.
We don't have a splintering
We don't have a splintering church. We have a splintered church. Time to recognize it and try to figure out how to retain communion. Or go other ways.
Seminary enrollment is one thing. Ordination and 5 year out retention rates are very much different.
"Catholics are ... relying on
"Catholics are ... relying on their own consciences for moral decision-making.""
What Fielder does not mention is that most of those consciences are seriously malformed thanks to the efforts of dissenters like Charles Curran, Richard McBrien and, yes, Maureen Fielder.
In countries where people a
In countries where people a getting poorer and getting a job becomes harder, the number of vocations go up. The reason for this is simple - job security for a priest and good money with it. And this is definitelly an American case. One could ask about the authenticity of these vocations...
NCR which dissents on a
NCR which dissents on a constant basis and cannot find a heresy it won't give voice to, is now surprised by the very environment it helped create. Perhaps if there was more correction in these pages and less sniping at "the hierarchy" things wouldn't be splintering.
I'm not certain that you are
I'm not certain that you are aware of one of the most important laws of nature, which is, there is no growth in life without tension, resistance and often times pain. To expect any institution, especially the Church to remain uniform and identical in it's teachings for centuries is to promote eventual intellectual suicide. I never cease to be amazed by those who are utterly terrified of change as if it was evil....Thankfully the NCR is a forum that allows "other" voices to be heard rather than the continuous recitation of unchallenged beliefs. Recall the Church once held the world was flat and the center of the universe, that slavery was acceptable, that some of of it's greatest saints were theologically suspect. Until John Paul II ordered the Vatican to review Mother Faustina's previously suppressed writings, I am quite confident we would never have heard of Divine Mercy Sunday. Imagine that!
wojo and ratzo created it in
wojo and ratzo created it in smashing our Church like their Krystal Nacht raids, like massive book burnings, not this sturdy NCR who holds us ever in our Faith, On the Road to Peace, with Essays in our Theology, Bulletins from the Human Side, Grace on the Margins, a Peace Pulpit (what other must there be?), from where I stand . . .
Yes, Maureen, for once I
Yes, Maureen, for once I agree with you on something. The new mass translation will not help Mass attndance. The previous translation was also not much better. Lutheran, Episcopalian and other scholars should have been brought in to help produce an intelligent, dignified translation that doesn't demand a dictionary in order to be understood. Inculturation is not nnecessarily unorthodox.
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