Posted on 07/20/2004 9:08:41 AM PDT by Salvation
Nearly one-fourth! No wonder the Bush administration is courting the Catholic vote!
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Sorry about the double ping!
How was your trip to Dallas?
That's up 587 over 2003. And that's net, since some deacons retire or die. Dioceses have three year programs, so not every diocese ordains deacons every year.
Do you consider this a good or bad thing?
Becky
Ordinations up about 7% in one year. And yes, that's after I removed the 61 Lake-Charles priests from the tally. Still, at this rate each priest would have to serve 100 years to maintain the current size of the Catholic priesthood (40,000), but given what has happened in the Church lately, I think it suggests that the call has gone out for the Calvary.
I was going to correct myself and write "Cavalry," but I decided the typo was more correct.
I wonder if the same reverse math is available for the priesthood. Priests are down but is the number of Bishops up? " Maybe too much administratin goin on out thar?"
Actually, voting Catholics should be courting Bush. He is more in line with Catholic teaching than our "Catholic" senators and congressmen.
**voting Catholics should be courting Bush. He is more in line with Catholic teaching than our "Catholic" senators and congressmen.**
Very well said!
While it is sad that the Catholics who vote do not always vote along the conservative lines that you and I would have them vote -- I do consider this a wake up call and a good thing that Bush is courting the Catholic vote.
Time to quote Mark Twain:
"There are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics."
Actually, CHURCH-going Catholics vote 68% Republican, according to Gallup/USA Today. The same percentage as church-going fundamentalists, IIRC.
>>The $64,000 question is this: where are they getting these numbers<<
Parish registration, for certain. Doesn't mean they go to church every week, but does mean they probably at least go for Christmas and Easter.
>> Secondly: are they counting all the illegal aliens from Central & South America who are overwhelmingly Catholic? <<
Not sure, but possibly. Certainly, immigration is fueling the growth in the numbers of Catholics. Most of the largest sources of immigrants certainly are nominally Catholic nations (Mexico, etc.), but some are very irreligious (Mexico, Central America, etc.) while others are very devout (the Philippines).
I have a friend just back from Honduras who reports that no-one in Tegulcipada was even familiar with the concept of a marriage, so I imagine immigrants from such places don't remain identified as Catholics very long.
In eastern Somerville, MA, the population is at least 70% Hispanic and Brazilian; but the Catholic Church is devoid of any worshippers. The only Christian influences are a few store-front Pentecostalist churches.
On Long Island, most of the Hispanic population is Puerto Rican; they tend to at least maintain ties to Church.
From what I hear, LA Chicanos are mostly Marxist with only peripheral cultural ties to the Catholic Church, while in Texas, although the churches themselves are polluted by a dominant liberation theology, the Tex-Mexes are still more faithful. (These would seem to be the Bush Hispanics?)
In my present parish, attendance is very poor, considering the large number of Hispanics. (The area is 50% Hispanic, and only 20% of Anglos are Catholic, yet the Spanish mass has room to sit, and the four English masses are SRO.) The response is of course to condescend, so the Spanish masses are a three-ring circus.
>> American citizens who are Catholic are contracepting, aborting, and sodomizing themselves to death in the sense that they now have a low birthrate. The ongoing nonsense in the church inspires most of them to stay home on Sunday, not contribute....much less do the young in any serious number want to commit their lives to the church as priests of religious.<<
That definitely aptly describes Boston, but not red-state Catholics.
Mark Twain was, of course, referring to what we now call "spinning." I don't detect any agenda or spinning in this article. Do you see anything that sounds deceitful, or are you just coming along to piss on everyone and everything?
This is a depressing piece, very depressing, because what it means is that the Traditional Catholics are a tiny minority, overshadowed by the cafeteria Catholic bishops, joined at the hip deacons, and their minions.
No thanks.
Parish registration, for certain. Doesn't mean they go to church every week, but does mean they probably at least go for Christmas and Easter.
I agree with much of your assessment, Though, from personal experience, many pastors will inflate the figures to make themselves look better to their chancery offices.
Assuming they are telling the truth, the white & black Catholic polulation is decreasing in proportion due to the vast growth off illegal Hispanic Catholics here. But - you are very correct to say that not all of them go to mass. Many are hardly devout, in any real sense of the word. Through Marxist influence in their homelands, they are "baptize, marry, and bury" Catholics - if that!
Many Catholic immigrants - from all countries - come here for freedom FROM religion. They are only cultural catholics back home, and are just here for the $$$. Filipinos are notable excpetions, as a group.
Traditionalism among recent immigrants is squashed by apostate priests, who purposely make Spanish masses into "alleluia ministry" with the maximum amoutn of noise, screaming, gross disrespect, etc. If you query these priests, they will tell you that "this is what the people like/expect". Well, of course - when that is the only menu offered to them!!!
Whatever genuine, orthodox, real Catholicism may exist in the hearts of recent immigrants, is being weaned away from them. So that they will fall away from the faith, and their children will follow suit. Voting? Well, that is obvious: do just what HolaMTV tells you to do!!!
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