Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, Christendom, disaster, Ecumenism, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, Papa, priests, scandals, secularism, self-serving, Society, the return, the struggle for the Church.
A commenter in my previous post already noted this, but I thought this a sufficiently huge topic to break it out into another post. That article I linked to that examined more details of the Pew religious attitudes survey goes on to paint a really bleak picture of the future of the Church. Based on present trends, and assuming they arrive at some equilibrium point in the future (and discounting certain factors like immigration), the author estimates the Catholic Church will wind up with only 6% of the total population of the US at some indeterminate future point (I did not see the article declare when this would happen, but I would guess, based on present trends, within 50-80 years – i.e., within the lifetime of my children). This data shows the Church has already essentially reached a point of near-total collapse, and is only coasting on the 59% of her prior membership who hasn’t left the Church for a sect or complete religious apathy. Once this generation dies out, the Church will be smaller, percentage-wise, than it has been since the early 1800s in this country (you have to go to the link for the tabular data, since its embedded in their html code for the article):
If conversions went on as they do today and all other factors were held steady, America would wind up with the religious demographics of the stable distribution.
Unaffiliateds would wind up modestly gaining ground (from 23 percent at present to 29 percent). And Christian denominations would drop a little (from 69 percent at present to 62 percent at equilibrium).
But there would be substantial redistribution among Christian groups, with evangelical Protestants gaining (26 percent at present to 32 percent) and Catholics losing more than half their current share of the population (21 percent to 8 percent).
Why do evangelicals wind up ahead of other Christian sects in this model? They’re better at holding on to the people born into their tradition (65 percent retention compared to 59 percent for Catholics and 45 percent for Mainline Protestants), and they’re a stronger attractor for people leaving other faiths. According to Pew’s data on conversion rates, 10 percent of people raised Catholic wind up as evangelicals. Just 2 percent of people born as evangelicals wind up Catholic. The flow between mainline and evangelical Protestants is also tilted in evangelicals’ favor. Twelve percent of those raised evangelical wind up in mainline congregations, but 19 percent of mainline Protestants wind up becoming evangelical.
This data only confirms what most of us already know: a very large number of people leaving the Catholic Church in this country (as well as many others) do so because they are spiritually starved, tired of being fed baby food and pablum in the form of happy-clappy liturgies and never-offending, never-challenging “catechesis.” And in my personal experience, it is these people who have already made up their minds that the Church has nothing to offer them that are the most resistant to any propagandizing in the name of the Faith. They have tried Catholicism, found it grossly wanting, and will not be back. Former Catholics, in point of fact, make up over HALF the growth seen in the evangelical sects – and, again, data from other countries shows that the situation is even worse there.
This data also shows it not just cultural changes that have been responsible for the destruction of the Faith in the lives of millions of souls. Some groups are growing quite rapidly, as are traditional Catholic communities. It is the banal, heck, spiritually dead product of Novus Ordo land – with its worldly focus, left-wing political bent, and its grave fear that it never, ever, offend anyone (except true believers) – that is driving souls from the Church en masse.
Just a few caveats: like all projections, this one is based on a limited data set, ignores important factors like immigration (little wonder bishops stress it so much, they probably have access to a lot better data than this), and is predicated on things staying just as they have. In fact, with regard to whatever positive growth areas it sees, I tend to imagine those are going to be under heavy stress as the prevailing culture becomes increasingly pagan and anti-Christian. Once being visibly, publicly Christian (of any type) starts to carry a heavy cultural cost, the numbers could become much worse than they show above.
Nevertheless, the data above shows the Church in a uniquely bad position. The Church is being accursed by low rates of retention of those born into her, the highest rates of flight out, very low rate of conversion, and, finally and most momentously, a very low birth rate for those within. That is why, cumulatively, the Catholic Church, based on the data above, may suffer an even greater collapse than the mainline protestant sects. Given how much those have imploded, that is beyond depressing, but, then again, when you model your corporate institution on a bad copy of an already failing one (mainline protestantism), should one be surprised that it fares even worse than the original? Especially when moderately well-formed Catholics can simply look to the recent past and say: “These things are not the same?”
So, the new evangelization has either massively failed, or succeeded beyond a modernist’s greatest hopes and dreams, depending on how you look at it.
I’ll be blunt – the Church is being bled white by doctrinal indifference (and chaos), left-leaning politics, and managerial incompetence. The Church in this country as it exists today is likely to be a shadow of its former self in a few decades. Heck, it already is, but the process is only going to accelerate. And the thing is, many leaders in the Church, up to and including the past several Popes, are apparently fine with this. They are so taken in by the (I’ll say it) demonic lie of ecumenism that they probably see the collapse of the Catholic Faith as an OK thing, so long as it doesn’t happen too much in their diocese, and their finances remain OK. Which of the last several pontiffs has repeatedly presented a cogent explanation to the souls in their charge (that is, the entire world) why they must either remain, or become, Catholic? I seriously question whether our present Pope Francis would agree with the statement: “I undeniably did the right thing, and immeasurably increased my chances for salvation, in becoming Catholic).”
These men have been so taken in by their blind adherence to the ecumenical indifferentist modernist socialist materialist philosophy that they are allowing – no, encouraging, forcing – the Church to rapidly die on their watch. This is a tragedy of biblical proportions and almost forces me to conclude that we have to be well into the end times in order to comprehend their behavior and the death of faith in the hierarchy. As a local priest says, we are now deep into the passion of the Church, a passion prophesied by St. Paul, St. John, and others. Pope Saint Pius X, the last great Pontiff the Church has had (over 100 years ago), concerned over the perversion of so many priests and bishops he saw in HIS time (God was merciful to let him live and die when he did), wondered:
“whether such a perversion of minds is not the sign announcing, and the beginning of, the last times, and that the Son of Perdition spoken of by the Apostle (II Thess II:3) might already be living on this earth.”
And of course we know that Pope Leo XIII – who some consider to have been quite liberal compared to his predecessors – had a vision of satan being unleashed on the Church for 100 years in 1884. That doesn’t mean satan was unleashed then, it just means the vision happened then.
So sad……if this is not the end times, future historians will have to look on the Church from 1958 – ??? as the greatest mass suicide of an incredibly large, influential, and resilient cultural institution ever.
Yeah, I knew this post would get long with my ranting – there is so darned much to rant about – that’s why I did two posts on this subject. Do go to the link, there is more analysis and data there.
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Domestic Church, family, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, Holy suffering, sanctity, the struggle for the Church, Tradition, Virtue.
The number of children being homeschooled in the United States exploded between 2003 and 2013, increasing over 60%. Keep up the good work you good moms and dads, not all homeschoolers are faithful Catholics, but I haven’t met many homeschoolers who were not good people:
In the ten-year period from 2003 to 2012, the number of American children 5 through 17 years old who were being homeschooled by their parents climbed by 61.8 percent, according tonewly released data from the U.S. Department of Education.
At the same time, the percentage of all U.S. students in the 5-through-17 age group who were homeschooled increased from 2.2 percent to 3.4 percent.
Homeschooling is most prevalent in two-parent families where one parent works and the other does not, according to the DOE data. Among this type of family, 5.3 percent of all students are homeschooled.
There are also patterns in the data: The more educated the parents, the more likely they are to homeschool their children and middle-income parents are more likely to homeschool than poorer or wealthier parents.
Homeschooling outgrew the rate of increase of the school age population by nearly 2:1. The total number of children aged 5-17 only increased by 2%, whereas homeschooling grew by 3.4%. What that means is that the total number of kids in public and private schools remained almost totally flat over the decade, with homeschooling making up almost all the growth.
If present rates hold – which, they won’t, but what the heck – homeschooling will again be the predominate form of education for children in this country within about 60 years. Won’t that freak the teacher’s unions out (or maybe they’ll just keep getting paid the same amount with really good benefits for teaching classes of 8 kids?).
Just a short post with some good news. It is quite possible the number of homeschooling kids is underestimated, as some large states like Michigan and Texas do not require homeschoolers to register with the state. I have read estimates that the “real” number is over 2 million.
Either way, it is plain more and more parents are rejecting not only the leftist-dominated industrial school system, but also the entire sexular pagan culture. I’m also gratified to see more and more people cutting the cable and ditching their TVs. The main way – one of the only ways – the culture has of influencing us is through the mass media. If we check out on that, they’ve lost their prime means of control over us (short of using naked state power, which is why they’re probably increasingly turning to that).
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, Basics, disaster, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, paganism, Papa, priests, scandals, secularism, self-serving, Society, the return, the struggle for the Church.
I found a post that digs a little deeper into the Pew religious attitudes survey I covered last week. The news, if anything, is even more bleak for Catholics. I reported last week that the percentage of self-identified Christians had fallen by about 15% – that 15% of the overall population, whereas a few years ago 85% of Americans self-identified as Christians, only 70% do today.
But now for the really bad news – it seems that of that 15% drop, nearly 3/4 of it has to do with Catholics falling away from the Church. Whereas nearly 1/3 of people surveyed responded they had been raised Catholic, only 21% now self-identify as Catholic (and what tiny fragment of those actually accept all the dogmatic beliefs of the Church? That in itself is a puny fraction).
O Glorious new evangelization, will your wonders every cease?!?
Look at those dismal, pathetic numbers! Which religious body has experienced the single largest hemorrhage of members? The Catholic Church. Which one has experienced the second smallest rate of conversion of new members into it? The Catholic Church, and the only one with a smaller influx are the historically black congregations, which are infinitesimal in comparison to the size of the Church, and yet, and YET – the difference is paltry. Relative to its overall size, the Catholic Church makes fewer converts than every other group identified above, and by a factor of at least 2-3, if not more.
And mind you, this is even with three decades of basically unconstrained (and morally dubious) illegal immigration from predominately Catholic countries! Without that influx the numbers would be even more pathetic, to the extent that it is quite possible that former Catholics would outnumber Catholics without it. No wonder the bishops are so irrefutably wedded to mass immigration no matter how many families are broken up, lives are ruined, how much economic damage it inflicts both here and in the countries suffering mass emigration, or how many Americans lose their jobs to low-paid illegal immigrants – it’s the prime, and quite possibly sole factor keeping their dioceses, by and large, somewhat afloat.
But here is the really important question – is this collapse simply the accidental result of the implementation of disastrously destructive post-conciliar novelties, or is it by design? Were those policies implemented in the sure and certain knowledge they would leave the Church prostrate?
We’ll likely never know the answer in this life, and I imagine it features a good deal of both, but either way, the entire “new evangelization” of soft liberalism, moral decadence, and catechetical chaos has resulted in the total implosion of the Faith in this country and many others around the world. If anything, this country remains a relative bastion of a stalwart faith in this hemisphere and in comparison to all of Europe, as surveys show an even greater collapse in the practice of the Faith in Latin America and virtually every European country. I am by no means a professional historian, but I’ve read far more than my share of Church history, and never in the history of the Church has their been such an across the board implosion of virtually every measure of the vitality of the Church as their has been in the past 50 years. Modernist ideologues, congratulations, I imagine you have succeeded beyond even your wildest dreams.
So….what next? The human leadership of the Church seems to have vehemently rejected even the mild restoration efforts of Pope Benedict in favor of the continued advance of the radical humanism and reflexive leftism of the immediate post-conciliar period. Hey, the political leaders demand it, the culture seems to be rushing headlong into the kind of barbaric paganism not seen in the West in a thousand years or more, and since the final collapse probably won’t happen on a particular bishop’s watch, why not just go along for the ride? Even more, a large majority of Church leaders remain so blinded by ideology that even if they cared about the fate of souls and the material state of the Church, they would be highly disinclined to do anything, anyways. For them, this is the realization of the vision of the left-wing anointed, and nothing will prevent them from seeing their ideological triumph set in stone, souls be damned (and they will).
Lord have mercy on us. We have surely failed in our prayers and penance to deserve prelates such as these. Have mercy on us and send us those we so desperately need, true shepherds of souls who know their sole duty is to save every soul they are given charge over, and who will make no compromises in that effort.
St. Augustine, St. Athanasius, St. Alphonsus Marie de Liguori, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Isidore of Seville, St. John Chrysostom, St. Peter Chrysologous, St. Hilary of Poitiers, St. John Fisher, St. Andrew Corsini, St. Anselm, St. Peter Damian, St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Peter and all the Apostles……..pray for us and our bishops! May your prayers for them work miracles of conversion that will result in all of our bishops emulating your superior piety and virtue in every respect!
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, Holy suffering, manhood, paganism, persecution, scandals, secularism, sexual depravity, sickness, Society, the struggle for the Church, Tradition, true leadership, Virtue.
And there was a particularly awesome picture that accompanied the article, too:
If one were to judge from the overall media coverage, one would think Archbishop Cordileone is veritably besieged in the chancery building, holding off crazed masses of whooping, dancing Catholics with a flintlock rifle and a bag of powder. Or, alternatively, using his iron hand of repression to destroy the lives of innocent teachers who just happen to oppose virtually the entire moral edifice of the Faith.
Obviously, the situation is not so one-sided. While it is difficult to discern from this distance just how “divided” actual believing Catholics are over Cordileone’s insistence on a bare minimum of doctrinal integrity from the teachers in the Catholic schools in that afflicted city, hundreds of Catholics rallied to his support recently, and I would wager that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It is well past time for Catholics, and especially the leadership, to start making public distinctions between those who call themselves Catholic, but who reject all manner of belief and practice, and those who truly do accept the Faith whole and entire. The latter should receive the praise and thanks of Church leadership, while the former should – must – be told in no uncertain terms that their lack of faith is not only disturbing, but places them outside the Church and on a path towards eternal suffering.
Yeah, I won’t hold my breath, either, but a man can dream. The report:
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone smiled for photos, blessed the faithful and accepted thanks from many among the hundreds of Bay Area Catholics who showed up for a picnic Saturday in San Francisco in support of the religious leader.
For months, the archbishop has been the target of demonstrations by teachers, students, parents and others who disagreed with changes he has proposed for the staff handbook and high school employee contracts atRiordan and Sacred Heart Cathedral high schools in San Francisco, Marin Catholic in Kentfield and Junipero Serra in San Mateo that defined adultery, masturbation, homosexual relations and the viewing of pornography as “gravely evil.”
“He’s like a rock star,” said Eva Muntean of San Francisco, who organized Saturday’s “family picnic day” at Sue Bierman Park near the Ferry Building in support of the archbishop, as she watched Cordileone try to inch his way through the throng of well-wishers. [OK, the ‘rock star’ comparison may be a bit disordered. Move on]
Muntean, who started the website sfcatholics.org, said she organized the event because she believes many Bay Area Catholics feel their support of the archbishop isn’t being heard. [And I’m quite certain that’s true. Did that effort to run an ad supporting Archbishop Cordileone in the San Fran newspaper ever succeed?]
The archbishop appeared to have felt that support Saturday. “I’m just here to thank my supporters,” Cordileone said to a reporter, declining to comment further. He did not speak before the crowd at the picnic.
Cordileone became the center of controversy in one of the country’s most gay-friendly cities for requiring that staff at archdiocese high schools “affirm and believe” what many Catholics say is simply the tenets of their beliefs: that marriage is between a man and a woman, that sexual relations outside of marriage are wrong and that certain types of reproductive technology and surrogacy are against the teaching of the church. [See how the media tries to twist this into a “he said, she said” kind of situation. The Church, even today, even with all the confusion and demonic chaos, does not hide the Doctrine of the Faith. Few prelates and priests convey it whole and entire, and fewer laity accept it, but it still stands, in spite of decades of heresy run amok, in spite, even, of destructively opaque papal statements]
Adele Lindberg of Danville said she wanted to support the archbishop because she feels he’s being “demonized” for being faithful to the church’s doctrine.
“Nobody’s saying you have to be Catholic or that you have to send your children to school,” said Lindberg, 59. “But don’t change something that has stood for more than 2,000 years just to meet your agenda.”
Many in the crowd said the controversy was not about hate or disapproval of gay people or others but rather about loving others despite differences and following the teachings of the church……
…..A small group of protesters stood on the edge of the picnic waving a rainbow flag and holding signs. [It was about 3 or 4 rather pathetic older gentlemen. They held signs saying “Why aren’t gay families welcome here?” which were pregnant with error and demonic oppression. Of course everyone is welcome, but your sin remains a sin, and until you give it up, you continue to place your eternal soul in grave jeopardy. This life is short, eternity is forever, and your existence does not have to revolve around your loins]
It appears Cordileone, in a rare display of episcopal backbone, plans to stick to his guns, which makes Bishop Vasa’s collapse in nearby Santa Rosa Diocese all the more pathetic. I certainly pray he continues to do so. Who knows what heavy pressure he is experiencing behind the scenes, not just from well-heeled San Fran Katholycs who have grown very accustomed to having things their way for decades, but also from his fellow bishops in the USCCB, many of whom are as aggrieved as the San Fran sicko community over +Cordileone’s stand. Which, go figure, right, I’m sure not a one of them has a personal stake in this matter, right?
Stay strong, Archbishop Cordileone. No one can make you do anything. It’s all up to you. Serve God, and not man. And let this not be a single step, may this be the first of many in restoring sanity to the Church and world. One man can make an enormous difference. One man can literally change the world. Keep being a man, brother!
A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics 