PJB: An Index of Catholicism's Decline

WorldNet Daily ^ | 12/10/02 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[ninenot]

As the Watergate scandal of 1973-1974 diverted attention from the far greater tragedy unfolding in Southeast Asia, so, too, the scandal of predator-priests now afflicting the Catholic Church may be covering up a far greater calamity.

Thirty-seven years after the end of the only church council of the 20th century, the jury has come in with its verdict: Vatican II appears to have been an unrelieved disaster for Roman Catholicism.

Liars may figure, but figures do not lie. Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis has pulled together a slim volume of statistics he has titled Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II.

His findings make prophets of Catholic traditionalists who warned that Vatican II would prove a blunder of historic dimensions, and those same findings expose as foolish and naive those who believed a council could reconcile Catholicism and modernity. When Pope John XXIII threw open the windows of the church, all the poisonous vapors of modernity entered, along with the Devil himself.

Here are Jones' grim statistics of Catholicism's decline:

• Priests. While the number of priests in the United States more than doubled to 58,000, between 1930 and 1965, since then that number has fallen to 45,000. By 2020, there will be only 31,000 priests left, and more than half of these priests will be over 70.

• Ordinations. In 1965, 1,575 new priests were ordained in the United States. In 2002, the number was 450. In 1965, only 1 percent of U.S. parishes were without a priest. Today, there are 3,000 priestless parishes, 15 percent of all U.S. parishes.

• Seminarians. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700, a decline of over 90 percent. Two-thirds of the 600 seminaries that were operating in 1965 have now closed.

• Sisters. In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns. By 2002, that had fallen to 75,000 and the average age of a Catholic nun is today 68. In 1965, there were 104,000 teaching nuns. Today, there are 8,200, a decline of 94 percent since the end of Vatican II.

• Religious Orders. For religious orders in America, the end is in sight. In 1965, 3,559 young men were studying to become Jesuit priests. In 2000, the figure was 389. With the Christian Brothers, the situation is even more dire. Their number has shrunk by two-thirds, with the number of seminarians falling 99 percent. In 1965, there were 912 seminarians in the Christian Brothers. In 2000, there were only seven. The number of young men studying to become Franciscan and Redemptorist priests fell from 3,379 in 1965 to 84 in 2000.

• Catholic schools. Almost half of all Catholic high schools in the United States have closed since 1965. The student population has fallen from 700,000 to 386,000. Parochial schools suffered an even greater decline. Some 4,000 have disappeared, and the number of pupils attending has fallen below 2 million – from 4.5 million.

Though the number of U.S. Catholics has risen by 20 million since 1965, Jones' statistics show that the power of Catholic belief and devotion to the Faith are not nearly what they were.

• Catholic Marriage. Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one-third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments has soared from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002.

• Attendance at Mass. A 1958 Gallup Poll reported that three in four Catholics attended church on Sundays. A recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that only one in four now attend.

• Only 10 percent of lay religious teachers now accept church teaching on contraception. Fifty-three percent believe a Catholic can have an abortion and remain a good Catholic. Sixty-five percent believe that Catholics may divorce and remarry. Seventy-seven percent believe one can be a good Catholic without going to mass on Sundays. By one New York Times poll, 70 percent of all Catholics in the age group 18 to 44 believe the Eucharist is merely a "symbolic reminder" of Jesus.

At the opening of Vatican II, reformers were all the rage. They were going to lead us out of our Catholic ghettos by altering the liturgy, rewriting the Bible and missals, abandoning the old traditions, making us more ecumenical, and engaging the world. And their legacy?

Four decades of devastation wrought upon the church, and the final disgrace of a hierarchy that lacked the moral courage of the Boy Scouts to keep the perverts out of the seminaries, and throw them out of the rectories and schools of Holy Mother Church.

Through the papacy of Pius XII, the church resisted the clamor to accommodate itself to the world and remained a moral beacon to mankind. Since Vatican II, the church has sought to meet the world halfway.

Jones' statistics tell us the price of appeasement.

[ninenot]

Chastisement--the Church as the New Israel

[ninenot]

Ping

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Moral beacon to mankind? Hardly.

Try "example of what happens when a society of authority gathering men (many of whom are closeted yet sexually active gays) make the rules for a thousand years". Eventually the culture becomes poisoned.

The conditions during the Reformation must've been 10 times worse than ever represented - the entire structure of the church should be thankful that Europe was largely composed of peasants then - they'd have been crushed and repressed by everyone. If it weren't for all the info available, we'd never know.

[anniegetyourgun]

The same problems exist in most mainline Protestant denominations. Compromise with the world and on the Word of God never can never lead to anything good.

[LadyDoc]

I hate to tell Mr. Buchanan, but Jesus didn't just say "go out and convert all americans". He said "all nations".

For all the hype, American Catholics are still there, although only about one quarter of those listed as "catholics" are still catholics.
And where there is orthodoxy, the church is thriving in the US.

And the Catholic church is thriving in other countries. Luckily, Jesus considers a Filippino peasant or an African coal miner as just as valuable as a rich white yuppie like Buchanan

[oldironsides]

One note on the Catholic schools in this area. True the schools in some areas are struggling but the move to the suburbs brought new schools that fill up quickly. A new Catholic high school in Chester County Pennsylvania needs an addition. The new elementary schools just opening are full with wait lists. The schools are built with less money, individual pledges and no government meddling.

[arthurus]

Not to mention the privateCatholic schools that have sprung up in reaction to the modernizing of many of parish schools.

[Mr. Lucky]

This article makes no effort to establish any cause and effect. Everything bad which has occurred subsequent to Vatican II must be the result of Vatican II; by the same logic, wouldn't everything good also be the result of Vatican II? Golly, prior to Vatican II, the Church was illegal in half of Eurpoe; now east Europe is free, ergo Vatican II is responsible for the fall of Communism.

[Alberta's Child]

When Pope John XXIII threw open the windows of the church, all the poisonous vapors of modernity entered, along with the Devil himself.

This statement is incorrect. The only thing that changed since the 1960s is that the church's scandals are all exposed to more intense scrutiny.

As someone pointed out on another thread last week, most of the depraved freaks in the Catholic clergy who are involved in these homosexual scandals were ordained BEFORE Vatican II.

[yendu bwam]

Pat Buchanan is right - the Church is wallowing in its now decades old swampy and morally limp accommodation to the world - now at its nadir (we dare to hope) as we contemplate the homosexual molestation of thousands of teenage boys by Catholic priests. And can it go any lower - after so many members of the Church's hierarchy have forgotten what they stand for to the degree that they have turned against children themselves? And certainly, we can see that so many of our priests do NOT seek to follow the way of Christ - who sought to bring souls to salvation and to persuade mankind to turn from sin - and who was fearless in rejecting the temptations of the world (pride, sexual perversity, arrogance, money, etc. etc.). But perhaps, just perhaps, we are turning the corner. For as the Church wallows in the depths of perversion and child torture, many Catholics are rediscovering their faith, returning to seek knowledge of their Bibles and of Tradition, considering Catholic schools for their children (though many Catholics are unsure, myself included, whether society in general or the people running the Church represent a greater threat to our children), and fighting for a return to orthodoxy and truth and an end to the modernist, sinful gobbledygook that we so often hear from our priests and bishops. This is a common historical cycle, and we are often sad that we were born into a pathetically morally weakened Church. Yet we can be excited that we can be part of the moral renewal of Catholicism, and that we can participate in the fight (and a holy fight it is) to bring our Church back to the way of Christ.

[tm22721]

Declining ?

Not fast enough IMHO.

BUMP

[Salvation]

Bookmarked even though I don't agree with some of the premises in the article.

[Stingray51]

The only thing that changed since the 1960s is that the church's scandals are all exposed to more intense scrutiny.

It is true that Vatican II was not a spontaneous event. It was the culmination of decades and centuries of the modernist heresy that prior popes had warned against. But the changes since then go way beyond exposure of scandal. The liturgy was changed, not just translated but stripped of much of much of its mystery and content (and guitars replaced organs, applause at Mass became common, communion rails were removed, confession pretty much died off, and annulments became common).

Perhaps more importantly, important doctrinal changes (or obfuscations) were imposed such as in regard to the necessity to one's salvation of being a Catholic (I am talking about the documents on ecumensim and religious liberty). If it isn't necessary for non-Catholics to become Catholics, then many Catholics reached the conclusion that it wasn't necessary for them either. It also might have caused many to question the entire history of the Church's missionary activities (what was the purpose of all those missionaries sacrificing their lives to convert Indians who did not need to be converted?).

What Buchanan is pointing out, correctly I believe, is that homosexual priest scandal is part of a larger milieu of ill discipline and relativism that is very much related to the spirit of Vatican II. Yet, Pope John Paul II himself still goes on about how great Vatican II was, which perhaps explains why he has been so ineffective in addressing the current scandal. As for the comment about the Devil entering the Church's windows when they were opened to the world, Pat is obviously alluding to Pope Paul VI's comment that the "smoke of Satan" had entered the Church.

[kidd]

This article is chock full of logical fallicies:

1. There is no connection between the cause and the effects. I could just as easily blame all of the statistics that were mentioned on the rise of feminism or Johnson's Great Society.

2. Only United States statistics are mentioned. Vatican II wasn't tailored to fit Americans. I could easily provide some rather rosy statistics on the rise of Catholicism in Africa.

3. There is no analysis of what would have happened had Vatican II not been enacted. I suspect that things may have been somewhat worse in the US.

4. And most importantly there is no discussion of the biblical basis for Vatican II - only a dry statistical discussion.

[kidd]

guitars replaced organs, applause at Mass became common, communion rails were removed, confession pretty much died off, and annulments became common

1. I haven't seen a guitar in church since about 1975.
2. I only hear applause when a convert is introduced - usually only at Easter.
3. The basis for the communion rail goes back to rural dark ages Europe, where it was introduced to keep farm animals off the altar. Hardly a problem nowadays.
4. I go to confession at least once a month - no one is stopping me and many are encouraging me.
5. As one who has received an annulment, I can assure you that the process is quite lengthy and quite painful. It took me two years to complete the process, it involved locating people who knew of me before I was married and convincing them to prepare an essay, and several hearings. It was hardly a "rubber stamp" and was at all times based on church teachings. It is common simply because divorce is more common - Vatican II did not change that.

[Desdemona]

The premise of this article is off base. Vatican II didn't cause all this stuff. The orders and other clergy adopting the socialist "social justice" norms, and teaching it when there was and is clear evidence that socialism is NOT fair and does not promote honest work-related justice did as much damage.

And all those ideas and concepts were in the wind long before Vatican II.

As I learn more about it, Vatican II was a convenient excuse to introduce more humanly justified behaviors into God's house. There were people out there itching to do it too. It's not easy being Catholic. In the US, as a Russian friend of mine put it, making things easy is the American Way. I never thought of it in that way before, but when you think about it, she has a point and that mentality did worm its way into religious thinking.

[Stingray51]

I am not questioning your entitlement to an annulment. But I do believe the number granted per year, 50,000, is an enormous scandal and that the vast majority of marriages annulled were in fact valid, which is another way of saying it has in fact, in the United States, become a form of "Catholic Divorce". You can disagree and there is really no way to prove the point. Either you have confidence in the annulment process or you do not (I do not).

I don't know where you've been going to Mass but if you haven't not seen a guitar since 1975 it is a very unusual place indeed. I travel quite a bit and see them frequently (“on eagles’ wings” and all that).

Unfortunately, I have experienced applause much more frequently (for example, after a particularly spirited musical performance).

As for going to confession once a month, that's great. I suspect, however, that you are in a tiny minority of Mass-goers.

[ninenot]

ahhh...I don't believe that the article warrants an attack on PJBuchanan--arguably the most intelligent RC on the political scene, and possessed of a VERY fine sense of history.

BTW, he's correct, your curious comments about Africa and the Phillipines aside.

The fact that he happens to agree with SSPX and FSSP (among hundreds of thousands of OTHER, N.O. Faithful) is simply a matter of recognizing truth. It hurts. Too bad.

[Loyalist]

PING Should we really mourn the declining numbers of faithful laity and religious, if it means that the liberal and heterodox deadweight is being filtered out, and the faithful remnant left behind?

A smaller but purer Church will be in a better position to re-evangelize the West than one bloated by dissenters.

[Desdemona]

1. I haven't seen a guitar in church since about 1975.

What diocese are you in? We didn't get rid of the guitars until the late 80's only to have them replaced with pianos. And it just doesn't work in church, IMO.