A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Triumph of the Catechists! 60% of Camden Diocese thinks Jesus sinned May 7, 2012

Well, if you inculcate people in modernist, non-Catholic beliefs, it’s not surprising if they come to accept them:

Nearly 60 percent of practicing Catholics in South Jersey believe that Jesus sinned while he was on Earth, according to a study released by the Diocese of Camden.

That finding, which is contrary to the church’s fundamental doctrine, and others are both “disturbing” and “intriguing” to Bishop Joseph Galante, who spoke about the study Thursday morning. [What on earth is “intriguing” about a very large majority of your “faithful” apostasizing on one of the simplest, most foundational beliefs of Christendom?]

“The number of Catholics who have a very flawed, a seriously flawed, understanding of who Jesus is, that’s troublesome,” [I’ts not “troublesome,” it’s an unmitigated disaster and a searing indictment of your leadership and that of your predecessors] Galante said. “We’ve got to re-focus on how we teach and inform people. Jesus is the foundation of who we are as Catholics.” [More later]

“If we’re not getting that through to people, that’s part of the reason why we’re having problems.”

Those problems, Galante said, include low attendance at weekend Mass, the lack of an inviting and welcoming atmosphere in parishes, and the reasons why Catholics stay away from the church, are borne out in the faith survey.

So, here we are, presented with yet another source of data that shows the vast majority of Catholics know next to nothing about the Faith.  How can that be?  Well, let’s keep reading…….

“We teach our children that Jesus was human, that he was normal,” said Kathy Isherwood, director of religious education at Christ the King Parish in Haddonfield. “We tell our kids that Jesus had a childhood just like them. So they think that includes sin.” [This is a major problem right here.  Biblical guidance on the childhood of Jesus is scant, but what evidence there is and the guidance of the Fathers agree that Jesus was always self-aware of who and what He was in his Incarnate Form.  Through the hypostatic union, Jesus always, throughout His Life, held the Beatific Vision, that is the full contact or experience of God within Him.  So, while His childhood might be considered “normal” in some senses, merely stating blankly “Jesus was a kid  just like you!” is completely wrong.  He wasn’t like you, or me, or anyone, He was uniquely perfect and possessed of a twin nature – fully human, and fully Divine, and He was aware of this nature, but largely subsumed His Divinity until He was 30, the proper age for the beginning of a Jewish priesthood]

“So how do we teach the humanity of Jesus, but without the sin?” Isherwood asks. [Here’s a suggestion – stop using modernist formation materials]

“In effect, we focused more on moral teachings and bypassed the fundamentals,” [ha!] Galante said in regard to the Jesus-as-sinner issue. “Or we presumed that people knew the fundamentals, which was a bad presumption. We have to refocus and reteach.” [I have sat through numerous sermons homilies that taught next to nothing, or just feel good pablum.  Many people haven’t been taught much of anything]

The bishop said he would be alerting priests and deacons in the diocese of the importance of preaching about having a relationship with Jesus, in the hopes of bringing more people back to the pews.

The old fear factor approach — come to church or go to hell — will not work in today’s world, Galante said. [Here’s the modernist error – “Oh……we can’t possibly use the methods of the past that worked for millenia…..no, men are different today, so much more sophisticated, so much more educated(except regarding the Faith)…..we couldn’t possibly use those stuffy old Baltimore Catechisms that actually teach the Faith, we have to use watered down milquetoast paper cutting exercises that teach next to nothing!]

“Fear is not a teaching tool. It’s going to take a lot of time and effort, but we need to get people to go to Mass because they want to, not because there is a sword hanging over them. We have to be more inviting, more welcoming and more hospitable.” [I’m not saying apologetics should be totally fear-based, but reminders of the fact that missing Mass is a mortal sin, and that unconfessed mortal sins mean spiritual death and eternal damnation, have their place. Because, that is the reality. The problem today is that too many priests are either too afraid to remind people of these facts, or don’t believe in them themselves]

Reading the article and Galante’s comments, I get a sense of a group of people still playing by the 1970s rulebook.  We are so very fortunate that one man’s obstinacy, which seemed so maddening at the time, actually wound up working to this Diocese’s benefit.  In Galante, we dodged a bullet.

I will be so bold as to diagnose the situation a little differently than Bishop Galante.  The problem is that, for decades, catechetical materials and instructors have been used that are frequently childishly simple and more frequently contrary to the Faith.  In the terrible wake of the last council, many people really believed that anything pre-VII had to be thrown out, and with that went almost all traditional instructional methods and many – most – Truths of the Faith. This problem is incredibly widespread, 40 years after the fact. I hear stories all the time from students in RCIA, or their sponsors, or those who have kids in Catholic schools, or whatever, of the Faith being denigrated, of apostate views being put forward as “truth,”  of attacks on tradition and anything “pre-Council,” etc.  A local RCIA instructor told his class on the first day that “Luther had it right!”   Writ large, here is the exact problem of catechesis in the Church – modernist, apostate materials like Catholic Update, and modernist, apostate instructors.

This problem has persisted because that generation so enthralled of “peace and love” has conducted itself with anything but in terms of holding on to structures of power and positions of authority, so that young, far more orthodox Catholics have a very hard time advancing beyond basic levels, let alone upending this entrenched bureacracy of apostasy.  But, time is gradually running out for the “spirit” crowd.

The solution to the problem outlined above is simple.  Orthodoxy.  The real Faith, taught by people who really believe it, presented clearly and emphatically.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  It’s not difficult.  It does not require “[figuring] out ways to gather people and present the faith to them in ways that are meaningful.”  The ways have been figured out, they worked for century after century.  But many in authority today would rather DIE than use these old school orthodox sources.

Don’t believe me?  Tell the person in charge of First Communion at your parish that you’ve been using the Baltimore Catechism to instruct your kids, and watch them freak out.