Here’s a surprise. In a poll of Boston-area Catholics, the Boston Globe finds that people who identify themselves as Catholic but don’t believe the fundamental teachings of the Church want a new archbishop who is “open to change.” Sure, the poll says most Boston Catholics like their pastors and the Pope, but then only the hardest of dissenters can’t see the Pope’s personal holiness. And since most pastors are nice guys who don’t your conscience to greatly on any given Sunday, what’s not to like about them.
For me, Margie iterates—like the Globe/WBZ poll of last year—the true scandal of the Church in Boston.
Most Catholics don’t participate even in Sunday Mass, which, as she points out, is obligatory. And yet these are the people who “speak for the Church.”
Again, the real problem with the Church in Boston, at least, is that the majority of Catholics are in the state of serious sin—or, more hopeful, as Margie puts it—lacking in grace.
The Globe story fairly screams out the, in my mind and I hope I’m wrong (but don’t think so) real elephant in the living room: the sad recognition of an “American Catholic Church.”
Yet, there’s so much to hope for, isn’t there?
To be able to be daily communicants; to have the privilege of Exposition, Adoration, and Benediction; of community Rosaries, of the (so far still protected) Sacrament of Reconciliation, and the like…my hope is that we use these privileges, in some way, to bring back the majority of Catholics who—well before the “scandal”—left the Church Jesus gave us.
Kelly <——seeing hope, for example, in Colleen!
Well said. Definition of modern activitism: forcing someone else to confront their many manifest sins. Deifinition of Christian activism: confronting your own sins and allowing Christ to transform the person in the mirror into a reflection of Hs never ending love.
Craig,
The point isn’t what’s popular or would increase the numbers of Catholics or make people feel better. The most important questions is “what is the truth?”
Craig,
No one claims that those things didn’t happen or that these things represent the Church’s teachings. The point is that these things are contrary to Truth.
But to address your other point, Truth is not arrived at by open debate or majority voting. It’s self-evident that human beings are flawed and sinful (hence the need for the redemption brought by Jesus Christ). So we must look for Truth in what God has told us. The Bible and the Teaching handed on by Christ through his Apostles to the Church are very clear in saying that we can rely on the Holy Spirit to preserve the Bishops (as a whole, in communion with the Pope) from teaching error on matters of faith and morality.
That’s not to say that everything is perfectly clear to them at any one moment, but that as Christians we rely on the Holy Spirit to guide them in rendering Divine Truth in a form we, human beings can grasp.
No one here has turned a blind eye to the problems confronting the Church, but discarding the Church’s teachings isn’t the solution. Adhering more closely to God’s will is.
Colleen (and I, too) wonder about an “American Catholic Church” and a formal split with Rome. I came across the following a few weeks ago. It speaks about “National Catholic Churches.” I don’t know how much credence to give it, but if it’s true, it’s pretty disturbing.
http://www.spiritdaily.org/Quickhive articles/nationalchurch.htm
By the way, I really do understand why people make statements such as “this is my Church,” or “this is our Church,” because the Church, after all, is made up of the Body of Christ, of which we are all members.
Yet the fact remains that it really isn’t my Church—it’s Christ’s.
Craig, right the Church needs change, but it doesn’t need to abandon the teachings given her by Christ.
You’ll have a hard time convincing me that anything the Church teaches contradicts Scripture, though.
RC,
I have a bulletin board on my site:
http://bettnet.dyndns.org/blog/forum/index.php
Feel free to post a topic there and continue the conversation. In fact, I’ll make that a request. If anyone wants to continue this conversation, they should do there and not here.