Posted on 04/20/2011 12:07:28 PM PDT by AnalogReigns
As a practicing Catholic, I really dont understand how Catholics can be happy switching to a Protestant church. I’ve been to 100’s of Protestant services and they just dont compare to what is experienced at Catholic Mass. I know it’s just me and my experience but I’ve logically tried to compare and I just dont understand it. I can better understand those who leave the Church and dont join any Christian affiliated church.
I would say the number one reason is poor catechesis.
Number two is the execrable state of liturgy in 99% of catholic parishes today.
These two form deadly duo together; without understanding the faith, the laity are left with a protestant-like service (the Novus Ordo), only with bad music and bad preaching.
Who, under these circumstances, wouldn’t leave for better preaching and better music?
“Thus, both as believers and as worshipers, Catholics who become Protestants are statistically better Christians than those who stay Catholic. We are losing the best, not the worst.”
Uh oh. I know nothing about this author. What I do know is that he’ll be smeared somehow in just a few short minutes. lol.
We don't need more dumbed-down liturgies catering to teenagers or doctrinally mushier church. We need beautiful, reverent liturgies celebrated according to the mind of the church (not the whims of liturgists) punctuated by solid, content-filled orthodox sermons.
“The number of people who have left the Catholic church is huge.”
Ya don’t say?
Pings to cauci...
And let us KEEP IT CHARITABLE FOLKS....IT IS HOLY WEEK!!!
Don't pay attention much, hmm? He's quoted frequently by the MSM needing a priest of their liking, when they're not quoting MacBrien.
It's not a smear to say that he's liberal, and well-known to be such.
Hmmmm, somehow I don’t think the Latin Mass will bring ‘em back.
This author speaks to BOTH the liberal and the conservative Roman Catholic explanations...finding them BOTH inadequate, when people who’ve left are actually asked.
The article treats Protestant as one large umbrella. There is a huge difference between leaving Catholicism to join the Southern Baptists or orthodox evangelical churches and leaving to join say ELCA.
The TLM and "a reverent liturgy celebrated according to the mind of the church" aren't synonymous in my mind. (You can have the second without the first, and sometimes even the first without the second.)
What isn't going to bring people or hold on to them is a faith dumbed-down to the 8th grade level, both liturgically and doctrinally. And that's what we've got in most parishes today. (Not mine, thanks be to God)
More like seconds Inv.....just seconds.
“You realize this is a liberal, writing in a toxic liberal mag, proposing (except for his comment on Scripture study, which is fine), that the solution to the problems caused by liberalism over the last 40 years is ... [drum roll] ... even more liberalism?”
Reese is a Jesuit, what do you expect? He taught at the Jesuit high school that I graduated from. We called him Peewee.
The author is liberal. National Catholic Reporter is a liberal, dissident publication. And the Pew Foundation is also notoriously liberal.
There certainly has been some drift away from the Catholic Church, but the reason is the opposite of what this author pretends.
The reason is liberal dissidents, who have seriously damaged the Church in America in numerous ways.
It’s still the true Church, however bad some of its bishops and pastors and catechists may have been over the years of the Countercultural Revolution of the late 60s, which has undermined everything in the West, including many Catholics.
If "massive Bible education" is a "liberal" position to traditional Roman Catholics....I guess that makes me a communist....
Exhibit A: Notre Dame right to invite Obama, per Reese
He’s a liberal Jesuit priest writing for a heretical rag that has the temerity to call itself “Catholic”.
Religion meets consumerism.
IOW, "the product" was more appealing, attractive, enjoyable.
Implicit in this concept, is the idea that we ought to somehow "tailor" or modify the product which we provide to meet customer demand.
I'd argue that this is at the very heart of our spiritual problems, today. When I say "our" I don't just mean Catholic. I mean the entire western world.
It's all about me.
As an aside, Phil Lawler has a nice little response to perpetual naysayer Reese. While Reese engages in some faux handwriniging over the number of Catholics who've left the Church, Phil wonders if he's similarly concerned with the drastic drop in members of Reese's own order, the Jesuits, who have declined in numbers by two-thirds since the '60s.
What's Resse's explanation for that, I wonder.
I already said that was the part with which I agreed.
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