Want to see how the other side sees the Church. Here’s a surprisingly even-handed article written by someone who doesn’t like the Church. His thesis is that Church attendance, and thus perceived membership, is dropping because the Church is becoming less likable by closing parishes and taking unpopular stances on things like gay marriage. Of course, he’s wrong in the aggregate, but he makes a few interesting points.
Yes an interesting read, Dom. And of course, the inevitable charge of ‘fundamentalism’ – a pejorative term to slam any attempt at a return to orthodoxy.
In the secular world we often hear the term “to get back to the basics” – always a noble enterprise and something everyone is invited to get behind.
That is what we – the Church – need to do about our Faith: get back to the basics of Catholicism. It will be an uphill battle and we will be ridiculed for it – just as our Founder was – but there is no other way.
…opting instead for a small apartment behind Holy Cross in the South End…
I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen this wacky non-factoid. There IS no apartment behind the Church, small or otherwise. There is a LARGE rectory in one of the priciest, and most sought-after sections of Boston. That’s where the Bishop lives.
Nothin’ to do with the points made here, but I hate when stuff is repeated so often it becomes gospel.
You said it, Mr. Bettinelli… The Church has become like a “hippy parent.” I couldn’t agree more. One of the great rays of hope is the finding, now widely publicized, that those Christian denominations who hold fast to Christian morality (as tough as it is) and true Christian faith, are growing rapidly, while the liberal ‘hippy’ churches, are declining rapidly. The right way to bring millions to the Catholic faith is the preach the Gospel of Christ unapologetically and unafraid – and to use, rather than hide, the beautiful encyclicals and guidance from our Popes – and to inculcate our young with all the beauty and richness the Church has to offer. If people come to understand that Christ’s message is one of true love – the love that wants what’s best for us in all ways and in which we are meant to be – vocations will grow, people will flock to Church and to confession, and sin and degradation will be cast aside. But to start out on that course takes a lot of courage, for in the short term there will be whines and wails and screams… (Just like when Christ cast out demons…) We are just starting to hear those wails and screams now – from dissenting priests, from radical feminist nuns, from abortion-loving politicians, from heterodox theologians, from sodomy-lovers within the Church… It is good to hear, but given the degradation within the Church, it should be much, much louder…
Thank you for the clarification, Kelly! Now that I know the difference between South End and South Boston, the reference to a ‘small apartment behind Holy Cross’ evinced renewed confusion…
I had images of a monastic cell constructed ‘on spec’ in the Cathedral grounds (assuming it has grounds on which to construct same…).
Ah, newspapers! All the confusion that’s fit to print…
The funny thing is—well, maybe, not so funny, but it seemed at the time humorous in a rather macabre way.
Anyway, during the really bad days when mobs surrounded the Cathedral on Sundays, demanding the Cardinal’s head on a platter, and the Globe was demanding that the Cardinal sell his house and live in a hovel, something coincidental happened.
Some realtor in the South End set up a tiny, shabby trailer right behind the church, in order to facilitate making appointments to show the latest condos on the market.
One day after Mass, in the coffee room, I pointed through the window at the trailer and joked: “Hey, there it is…the Cardinal’s new home…think he’ll like it?”
The silence was deafening. I couldn’t figure it out, since my jokes generally draw appreciative laughter.
As I looked up, I noticed everybody else was looking down. And so I looked down too…at a pair of shoes that hadn’t been there seconds before. As I raised my eyes, I knew whose I was about to meet.
Sheesh.
At first His Eminence looked, understandably, a bit shocked. But then his mouth twitched a bit and pretty soon everybody in the room was cracking up. This lasted for about a half a minute. Then things went back to normal. The Cardinal got in his car, the mobs ran after it, pounding on it with their fists and signs…and those of us left had nothing much else to do but to have another cuppa coffee and further speculate fancifully on the “trailer-turned-residence.”