A portrait of a Church in collapse August 19, 2013

Pertinacious Papist presents some highlights – or lowlights – from a long study Dr. Ralph Martin has done on the present state of the Church in the United States.  Citing data from one “large Midwestern Diocese” – almost certainly, Martin’s own Archdiocese of Detroit – Martin paints a picture of a Church that is in the advanced stages of total collapse.  He also posits some reasons for the collapse, which I will elaborate on.  All the words quoted below are from PP’s report on Martin’s much longer article (I add emphasis and comments):

I was forcibly struck by the table of statistics from the “Midwestern Diocese” offered on p. 59. The numbers are nothing short of catastrophic. The table shows that over the last decade (from 2000 to 2010):

• Infant Baptisms have decreased 42.4% (from 16,294 to 9,544)
• Adult Baptisms have decreased 51.2% (from 1,442 to 704)
• Full Communion has decreased 43.6% (from 1,713 to 960)
• Catholic Marriages decreased 45.3% (from 3,641 to 1,649)

This is in ten short years, folks. Some of us remember Y2K as though it were yesterday. What will the next decade bring? [This diocese, again, likely Detroit, is hardly an outlier. Similar data has been reported across the country.  The United States, even with the influex of Hispanics, is entering the end-stages of collapse which struck Europe 50 years ago.  Have the European bishops been willing to admit the truth, the failure of their indifferentist ecumenism and modernist catachesis, as major sources of this collapse?  Are you kidding?!  That would be apostasy from “englightenment” liberalism!]

Further, Martin cites sources showing that while “Hispanics now constitute nearly 40 percent of the total U.S. Catholic population (and more than 50 percent of the Catholic youth population), only 10 to 15 percent of the priests ordained each year are Hispanic” and “only 9 percent of the bishops are Hispanic.”  [Must be due to racism] The growth of Church numbers in the West is “largely due to Hispanic immigration, not to growth through evangelization,” and “the statistics about the outflow from the Catholic Church in second and third generation Hispanic Catholic immigrants are not encouraging.”  [And yet, the bishops of this country, at least officially, have prostrated themselves before the concept of totally unconstrained immigration, the better to continue pretending, at least until they retire, that everything is alright.  Unfortunately for them, due to the collapse in Mexico’s birth rate, we’ll likely never see such huge waves of immigration again, and, even worse from their standpoint, many of these Hispanic immigrants, and especially their children, subsequently leave the Faith. In point of fact, most Catholics in Central and South America are so horribly catechized that they make even your average American Catholic look like Bellarmine.  More below.]

Martin does not make the mistake of placing all the blame for this collapse on the secularization of culture. “Years of silence about those aspects of the gospel which the contemporary culture is hostile to — the truths about sin, about heaven and hell, about the need for repentance, about the real meaning of discipleship, about the supreme value of knowing Christ — have contributed to the metamorphosis of Catholicism in the minds of many into a comforting religious ritual of indeterminate meaning.”  [Yep.]

He also cites what Cardinal Ratzinger called a “catastrophic collapse” of catechetics…….

Martin cites the Catherine of Siena Institute in Colorado Springs, CO, which has interviewed tens of thousands of Catholics and their pastors and shown that “even among the minority of Catholics who come to Church somewhat regularly, fewer than 10 percent could be considered ‘intentional disciples’ who have consciously made Christ the center of their lives.”  [And that, my friends, is the sum total of this tragedy. Even among Catholics who assist at Mass regularly, the vast majority are only incidentally Catholic, at best, and they would never, ever, countenance exchanging the “primacy of their individual conscience” for the authentic Dogmas of the Faith.  They are invincibly convinced by heresy is every “Catholic’s” right, and the vast majority have come to that opinion after deliberate formation in that belief by some priest, brother, nun, and/or bishop.]

Finally, Martin hits the nail on the head with the following observation he makes on a strange phenomenon that many of us have, I am certain, long found troubling:

Cardinal Ratzinger remarked on a strange phenomenon he observed in conjunction with the collapse of the Church in the Netherlands after Vatican II. He pointed out that by every statistical measure the Church in the Netherlands was collapsing and yet, strangely, at the same time an atmosphere of “general optimism” was prevalent that seemed blind to the actual situation.

I thought to myself: what would one say of a businessman whose accounts were completely in the red but who, instead of recognizing this evil, finding out its reasons, and courageously taking steps against it, wanted to commend himself to his creditors solely through optimism? What should one’s attitude be to an optimism that was quite simply opposed to reality? (Ratzinger, Op. cit., pp. 30-40)

“In the United States, “official optimism” has been quite strong in the midst of radical decline.

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Of course they maintain denial, to do otherwise would be to admit failure, and to commit the greatest sin possible for an American prelate – to criticize, even by implication, one’s brother bishop. Remember that brief flurry of Catholic orthodoxy we saw from a handful of bishops last summer in response to the HHS Mandate?  That got stamped out pretty quick, didn’t it?  It got stamped out, because it made more progressive bishops look bad (and maybe even the sin of sins, it made them feel bad), and the pressure of USCCB collegiality was applied behind the scenes, shutting the bolder bishops up.

I had two very illuminating experience on Friday.  I had a coworker come by and ask me if I’m Catholic.  Now, this guy has an Italian name, so I figured he was.  But, to even ask was kind if ridiculous. If you look at the attached pics, you’ll realize I’m “that guy.”  I’m that guy that just throws all his life out for all to see.  My cube is wallpapered with Catholic stuff all over the place.  So, he likes to talk, really, much too much, and he started telling me how he was raised Catholic, but hasn’t been to Mass in about 30 years (30!!), and how he got turned off by Pope John Paul II, who was so different from the Franciscans who formed him in school back in the 60s and 70s, really wacked out liberals, apparently.  And they basically formed him to be an enlightenment deist, whose vision of “Christianity” is limited entirely to doing “good works,” and who find any form of doctrinal orthodoxy which is counter to the sexular pagan zeitgiest repellant. He just found JPII and Pope Benedict way, waaaaaay too……..Catholic, but………he is very excited about Pope Francis!  He might even condescend to return to Mass……in some distant, indeterminate date (which, I wouldn’t hold my breath about).

The other data point came during a lovely dinner we were invited to at a friend’s house.  The wife of this couple is from Peru, and she was telling me how people in Peru and other South American countries call themselves Catholic, and exist in the rump of a nearly dead Catholic culture, but they aren’t Catholic in any practical sense at all.  For instance, even satisfying the Precept of the Church to receive the Blessed Sacrament annually is a rarity.  They go to Mass every week, but it is strictly a social function and, vernacular be damned, they get very little out it.  They don’t know or comprehend the Real Presence, the Ten Commandments, or anything else of substance.  They are so terribly catechized they are easy pickings for protestant sects, even nutty ones (or especially nutty ones) like Jehovah’s Witness, whose spiel, long tailored to go after soft Catholic targets, just bowls them over.

So, what is to be done?  Do we wait for the hierarchy to finally get it?   As individual Catholics, we certainly can, and must, pray, fast, witness, evangelize, and catechize, but we would be doing amazingly well if we managed to play a role in the conversion of a few dozen in our lifetimes.  Amchurch loses that many from one Diocese, every day, before breakfast.  I think the answer lies in beginning to speak, more and more strenuously, truth to the currently entrenched progressive power.  Pope Francis advised Catholics at World Youth Day to “make a mess,” and perhaps we need to do so.  I’m not sure how that plays out, but I think we’re past the point of applying the usual methods. I think its time for more drastic action, like Marian Processions around the Chancery, Rosary vigils outside the Turtle Creek mansion, etc., etc. i know such would be uncomfortable for many. But think of the torment all those souls falling out of the Church and into hell are experiencing, or will experience.  We must have love for them, and demonstrate that love by keeping others from their tragic fate.

Pertinacious Papist also had this, which is utterly apropos:

From the Prayer of Azariah [deuterocanonical text following Daniel 3:23 in Catholic Bibles]:

[6] For we have sinfully and lawlessly departed from thee, and have sinned in all things and have not obeyed thy commandments;
[7] we have not observed them or done them, as thou hast commanded us that it might go well with us.
[8] So all that thou hast brought upon us, and all that thou hast done to us, thou hast done in true judgment.
[9] Thou hast given us into the hands of lawless enemies, most hateful rebels, and to an unjust king, the most wicked in all the world.
[10] And now we cannot open our mouths; shame and disgrace have befallen thy servants and worshipers.