Posted on 04/07/2015 3:13:37 PM PDT by Legatus
It is easy to say that it is just this day and age but it is not.Win, place and show. People of my parents' age and older consistently say their fathers didn't attend church regularly, didn't seem concerned about religion or their eternal destiny. (My own grandfather, an old Orangeman, worked the night shift on the railroad and spent the days drinking in the basement with his cat.)
I haven't heard anything like that firsthand about someone's father (or husband, or someone like that), but I've read some similar things in a relatively recent piece. The part in question discussed tendencies in the United States roughly around the time of what seems to be Your Parents' Age and Older.
Forgive me for my vague memory, but the topic of this part was at least about regular church attendance, if not also about men's concerns about "religion or their eternal destiny." The discussions quoted from that earlier time might have been more specifically about concerns about the effects of a man's non-attendance and non-observance on the rest of his family. The piece may have also mentioned specific measures that were intended to counteract this tendency, but here my memory is especially vague.
I've also tried looking online for more specifics, with little success, but I did find this:
We usually think of the 1950s as an era when just about everyone went to Church. But the cover from the 1959 Saturday Evening Post at the right indicates that even at that time there were already trends underway that indicated not all was perfect in paradise. It is a long and unfortunate trend that men have often left the spiritual upbringing of the Church to their wives and stayed home on Sundays.
The increase in crime was engineered. The USHA pursued a policy of bringing Southern blacks into the ethnic neighborhoods, while the FHA pursued a policy of keeping blacks out of the suburbs. This was a carrot-and-stick policy to drive the ethnic Catholics out of their old neighborhoods out into the suburbs.
In the background, the mother, two girls, and a boy (who may be noticing his father) are dressed in their finery and are holding little dark-colored books. Presuambly they are heading off to church, with the door somewhere off stage right. In the foreground, the father is slouching in his chair; he is still in his bedclothes and is holding a newspaper and a cigarette (oh, no, how horrible, a cigarette!).
This piece also links to another piece elsewhere: "Sunday Morning: Deconstructing Catholic Mass attendance in the 1950s and now." It's a source for that cover. Among other things, it gives more information and talks about some parts of the apparent spiritual life of Norman Rockwell.
Cardinal O’Connell of Boston was in the closet. As was his successor, Cardinal Cushing, and his succressor Cardinal Medeiros. That covers from ca. 1900 into the 1980’s! Don’t know whether Law is/was gay, but his coddling of perverts of all kinds is certainly suggestive. O’Malley is extremely gay-friendly—with gay-friendly parishes, gay Masses, etc. So that’s about 115 years of non-stop gay or gay-friendly Cardinal Archbishops.
In New York, Spellman was gay. O’Connor did not lift a pinky to clean up the gay priests’ network. Dolan is, of course, gay-friendly.
Washington has Donna Wuerl, and the last really courageous archbishop of Washington as Patrick A. Cardinal O’Boyle—who was the only bishop in the U.S. who suspended dissenters from Humanae Vitae.
I wonder how Judaism is faring without all the extra help Christians get - if they are doing better then it is possible that not holding man accountable is what is doing the damage.
Then there is the issue of that other prophet Mohammed who is creating a revulsion towards any God, as are the demands of the Gay community who have their own churches - MAN is the problem.
My father was an altar boy at St. Patrick's Cathedral in the 1940s as his parish, St. John the Evangelist, had the privilege to send servers to the cathedral.
He explained to me he was actually an altar boy at one of the side altars, Holy Family, I think. It's since been removed and replaced by something else, much like his parish church, removed and replaced by an office building.
On holy days when the cardinal offered mass, he performed the role of sanctuary boy, along with a lot of other boys, to add to the solemnity of the occasion. I once asked him what it was like. He made a face and said, "they had their favorites." Apparently, a shiny dime went to the boy who hit all his marks. He said it seemed like the same 3 or so boys always won the prize. I was pretty young when he told me this but I figured out what was going on.
Again, I keep hearing claims that Michaelangelo was gay. No evidence. Abraham Lincoln was gay (no real evidence). Alexander Hamilton. Thomas Jefferson. On, and on and on.
Unless there’s REAL evidence I see no reason to assume any of those rumors are true.
That's a perception that I had not considered before. I'll have to mull this over for awhile!
Michelangelo was definitely very pious and prayerful, and lived chastely. I’m not sure there is “no” evidence he had SSA.
Twenty years ago when I was "investigating" Catholicism there were "lots" of elderly people who told me something similar to "they said the Church was never changing then they changed everything", some were still practicing but most had long since stopped. That lost generation is mostly gone now...
Thanks for the information. People “my parents’ age and older” are in their 70s and up. The people I know are very active in our church, so it surprised me to learn that so many of their fathers were non-practicing Christians.
Thank you, vladimir.
The Curcillo movement was created after WW2 to bring men back into the Roman Catholic church in Spain and it spread to become Via de Cristo for Lutherans, Walk to Emmaus for Methodists, and Presbyterian Pilgrimage for Calvinists.
ACTS is the Catholic outgrowth from the Curcillo movement. ACTS is an acronym for Adoration, Community, Theology, and Service, and is patterned after the description of the early Church in the Acts of the Apostles (ACTS 2:42-47).
ACTS started in a suburb of San Antonio, TX, in 1987, and has spread to many parishes all over Texas. In 2002, the ACTS Mission Board brought ACTS to two parishes in St. Louis County, MO, where it has spread to several other parishes in the area as well as in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio.
More information on ACTS Missions retreats can be found here: http://www.actsmissions.org/2013-03-06-20-32-25/history-of-acts
I never heard a whisper of that; I did hear that once in addressing a gathering of priests he said, "If you have to break your vows, at least do it with a woman!"
Thanks for sharing that. It looks like they just updated Curcillo to create ACTS. I like that becuase Via de Cristo needs a similar makeover, but the old guard are resisting change and by the time they all die, no one will be left to reboot it. I’ll show them ACTS and explain that if the RCC can handle the change, so can we.
Well, it’s true.
The bishops need to know that their personal sins are no longer off-limits. Concealing corruption does not “prevent scandal” and it does not “promote the good of the Church.”
Someday, we will have a Pope who, when a appointing bishops, will ask: Is this man a sodomite? Is this man a Catholic? We haven’t had such a Pope for a long time, and we don’t have one now.
Yeah, because I spell stuff wrong in every post.
And use words incorrectly.
like an imbecile.
In a special way.
LOL!
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