Monseigneur Pope has an excellent article discussing St. Paul’s freeing of the sooth-saying slave girl and how that relates to widespread cowardice in the Church today. A snippet:
And what of us today? We have gone through a long period during which the faith could be lived quietly and generally fit quite well into the world in which we lived. Harmony and “getting along” were highly prized. Particularly here in America, Catholics wanted to reassure the general populace that our faith in no way hindered us from being full participants in the American scene and that we could fit right in and be just like everyone else. With the election of the first Catholic president back in 1960, we could say that we had finally made it and had been fully accepted. Finally we fit in.
Of course the culture was not in such disrepair in those days and there was a fairly wide moral consensus rooted in the Judeo-Christian vision. Now that we have finally “made it,” the fire of our distinctively Catholic culture seems to have faded away. At the same time, Western culture has also largely died. (Is it a coincidence?)
In recent years, so-called Catholic universities and other institutions have been caving in to pressure. They are affording marriage benefits to same-sex bedfellows and succumbing to the HHS mandates to provide contraceptives and abortifacients. This is sad, pathetic, wrong, and cowardly—hardly the revolutionary faith that got Paul arrested.
And now we are coming full circle. We must rediscover how revolutionary our Catholic faith truly is to this world gone mad. And as we proclaim healing and profess an allegiance to something other than this world, we will become increasingly repugnant to the world around us.
I would encourage my readers to read the entire article.
Donal Graeme 
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And now we are coming full circle. We must rediscover how revolutionary our Catholic faith truly is to this world gone mad. And as we proclaim healing and profess an allegiance to something other than this world, we will become increasingly repugnant to the world around us.
Indeed, and this will be the ultimate test that separates the churchians from the true Christians. Much as it pains me to say it, I think I know what the ratios are going to look like…
It really is shocking how quietly accepting of evil the Church has become. The Church isn’t called to wield secular power but being our leaders’ conscience is a practice going back to Christ Himself.
So, there’s a good starting point for us. Call evil by its name.
But what would happen if the Church were to start preaching unabridged Christianity effectively? Of course the answer is that we, like Paul, would be (and are) under attack.
RC are 1/4 of the US population. Were the bishops to start preaching the gospel (including the hard parts like male headship, divorce, birth control) and excommunicate or refuse communion to CINOs (bringing the church down to say 1/8 of the US or even less)…this would actually make a huge difference in the broader culture. But that would be just too hard. Too much rocking the boat. Too much loss of revenue.
Pope would have more credability with me here were he to stop falling back on easy targets like porn and drugs and abortion mills and start hitting those less-than-popular but more unknown issues. But I’m not holding my breath. Oh, I know all the excuses: you have to meet people where they are at, more flies with honey, yada, yada.I think it’s all BS. The prelates of the RCC in the West has bought it, and now they get to own it, and are getting cold feet.
But we will only be effective if we preach the unabridged faith
Trads have never stopped preaching the hard parts. But I won’t fast waiting for Pope to start. I don’t wish to starve to death.
It is a mistake to look to a denomination to correct itself and become relevant again. Evangelicals have followed Lutherans have followed Catholics into the dustbin of denominational history. God never stands still, and it is a mistake to look at bureaucratic institutions to become agile promoters of the faith.
Large organizations lack the will and the impetus to accomplish the wholesale renovations required to become what they once were. The Catholic church is no longer a denomination as much as it is a government. A government of a belief rather than of a nation, but it has all the properties and attributes of a sclerotic, irrelevant government agency, long having forgotten their mission, but busy as bees making and interpreting rules, and impressing itself with its own pomp and pageantry.
I grew up Lutheran and became more or less a “free church” attendee for a while. I am, however, intimately familiar with Catholic doctrine and church functions to a greater degree than most Protestants. Now, however, I must protest both the self-declared universal church as well as those who protest it.
I expect Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Evangelicalism to fade away to near nothing within my lifetime. I eagerly wait on God to see what He replaces them with. God never circles back.
I expect Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Evangelicalism to fade away to near nothing within my lifetime.
Er, no. RC encompasses many high-breeding cultures. At a billion, it will not “fade to near nothing” in your lifetime (nor in the next 2,000 years). In fact, RC is currently growing Yes, mainline prots are toast, but they’re merely ex-Catholics, finished as soon as they split (division begets division). Evangelicals? Not even a denomination, and so don’t exist even now.
@Jack
It’s also irrelevant. The question is: “Will your local church be corrected, by who, and how?”
The question that needs to be asked is that old liberal chestnut: “What are you doing about it?”
Waiting for the fools to stop thrashing about.
mdavid – You seem to think this is about quantities, it is not. The Catholic church is already quite hollow. I do not count the vast quantities of superstitious mexicans who also have their day of the dead celebrations and so forth. To point to number is a weak argument. I have no doubt that the population of nominally “Catholic” persons might grow into very large numbers. How many of them would even qualify as holding Christian doctrine? Look at all the Catholics in the US that vote hard-left and are lovers of abortion and such?
Catholicism may stay around as a belief-government, but it gets more hollow all the time. Not to kick a dead horse, but the handling of the pedo-priest affair proved to all concerned that the church exhibited every attribute of a face-saving government bureaucracy. The handling of that situation was disgraceful and a shameful stain that in my mind is still on the Catholic church. The lies, and protection of their “own people” is nauseating.
It’s just a government, that is all.
QED:
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/206813/
The leftist Pope cannot wait to empower Israel’s enemies. If God Almighty was still at the head of the catholic church, we would not be seeing this.
If God Almighty was still at the head of the catholic church, we would not be seeing this.
“Still” at the head of the Catholic Church? We’ve had a few awful Popes in the past, and the Church survived. God is still there. This too shall pass. It’s not over until the very end, when the Lord comes again in all His Glory. Just you wait and see.
jack ok. I get it. RCC = dustbin of denominational history even though it is universal & more numerous than ever. Thanks for enlightening me.
okay, i get it … just because you have a lot of people that call themselves something, that automatically means that the something is:
a. good
b. consistently applied
c. relevant
The lutherans are becoming obsolete faster, and the evangos are making bigger fools of themselves.
Does that ease your butthurt a little bit?
It is not very encouraging that you make continuous appeal to the the virtue of quantity, without so much as a mention of quality.
Once again, the RCC systematically protected child molesters. For years.
= DUST. BIN.
The people can be forgiven. The organization, not so much. I’m not sure why the Lutheran church never had a bunch of perverts in it, but maybe it is mostly because their is no centralized hierarchy that can protect them when they turn up. The evangelicals were once very close to the true faith, but have become parodies of themselves. One thing I will say about them is they don’t usually hesitate to throw a sex offender or scam artist in jail. Again, probably due to the lack of centralized faith-think government goons.
Your church FAILED to protect the innocence and health of many, many children. If that is not proof enough that the institution is a hollow shell, nothing will.
If the RCC is not growing as a direct result of people wanting to attain the redemptive power of the cross, then any growth is attributable to meaningless factors. Sure, growth in numbers may make some people feel better about themselves, or allow them to see themselves as more “right” than everyone else, but that is nothing but a crutch for insecurity, in my view. And somewhere along the way, the RCC became the Church of Mary and her son, rather than the ministry of Christ to His people.
Strength in numbers, to be sure. Apparently there is also pride in numbers.
jack, I’ve offered no opinion here on the merits of RC. I merely corrected your false claim. You clearly have issues, so I’m signing off.
jack,
The Church has had imperfect messengers who were far worse than any you decry in the last few generations. And survived. A quick study of history and you will find readily find them. You do Her too little justice. Understand there will always be imperfect messengers because we are all fallen people. But the Church survives our imperfections because the Message, the Good News is the important thing. That is all I have for ye of little faith…