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It is true that a loss of members who simply left the Catholic Church would not immediately show up in statistics that just measure deaths and new members (both infant baptisms and adult conversion). But it would be reflected in those statistics eventually, because people who leave will not have their children baptized.

Another point is that polls show that the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as “Catholic” has held very steady at about 25% for several decades. That would imply that the number who think of themselves as Catholic is increasing at roughly the same rate as the US population.

As far as people leaving the catholic Church at four times the rate taht they enter, that is somewhat misleading. Most of the exodus from the catholic Church in the US happened in the late 60s and 70s, when the Church was going through rapid changes and turmoil. There were also very few converts to the Catholic Church in that period. Things have stabilized a great deal since then. More people are coming in and fewer going out.

Right now it seems that the Catholic population in the US is growing slowly.

I don’t know about “decedent estates”. But it should be noted that Catholics in this country built entirely from their own donations a vast system of Catholic colleges, universities, hospitals, parochial schools, orphanages, and so on. There are over 200 Catholic colleges and universities. Moreover, many of these institutions were built at a time when Catholics were mostly poor immigrants. Just take one institution, Notre Dame. It has one of the highest rates of giving by alumni of all universities. This has allowed it to build up an endowment that is several billion dollars, one of the largest endowments among private universities. The Catholic hospital system is vast -— the largest private hospital system in the country by far. There are about 10,000 parochial schools in this country -— all supported by Catholic donations, not a penny of government help. It dwarfs in numbers all other religious schools put together.

Where do you imagine all the money came from to build these institutions? You have no idea of the scope of Catholic charitable and religious giving.

One major indicator of willingness to sacrifice is the size of families. To have a large family is a huge sacrifice financially. Some have estimated that it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to have an extra child over a lifetime. Why is it that Catholics have significantly larger families than Protestants, on average? This is based on both large scale studies that I have seen and my own observations. I rarely come across Protestants -— even evangelicals -— who have more than three children, whereas just among my Catholic professor friends I know many who have between five and ten children. Right here at my (public) university, there are two devout Catholic professors who are friends of mine and who have ten children, several who have four or five. Another friend of mine, a professor in my field but at another university, just had (or rather his wife did!) his sixth child. I just don’t see the same thing with Protestants, where the small family seems to be the norm.

You talk about deducting Catholic school tuition on taxes? Don’t get me started! The reason vouchers and tax deductions for religious schools have gotten nowhere (and these are big conservative issues) is historically largely due to protestant prejudice against Catholics. As someone who has paid so far in my life $500,000 in tuition and other educational expenses for my five children, with just one income (and that a professor’s), I can assure you that Catholics cannot deduct for Catholic schooling —— except for a tiny amount for college. What you fail to grasp is that Catholics are subsidizing everybody else’s children’s educations. We pay twice: we pay for our own children’s education in Catholic schools, and then we pay the same taxes as everyone else to support the public schools, even if our kids aren’t going to them. I have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes to support public schools over my life without taking a dime of such tax money for my own kids’ schooling. But the tens of billions of dollars that Catholics pay to educate non-Catholic children in this way is not going to show up as “charity”.

It should be mentioned that Catholics pay a lot for the Catholic education of their children, rather than sending them to public schools. I have spent about $30,000 to $40,000 per year for many years just in tuition at Catholic elementary school, High School and College. Doubtless that does not show up as “charitable giving”, but it represents a material sacrifice that many Catholics make for their faith and the faith of their children. Also, stats show that religious Catholics have substantially larger families than everyone except the Mormons and Orthodox Jews -— and this is across income levels. I have many Catholic professor friends who have five to ten children. That is quite common. I myself have five. These people could be buying big houses and having expensive vacations. But they forgo that. So before we start pointing fingers, all the facts should be considered. Moreover, statistics on “Catholics” tend to lump in nominal Catholics with ones who actually practice their faith.

I meant my last to be a reply to Nika not you. Sorry

I seem to recall a Christian teacher who said something about there being “neither Jew nor Greek” in Christ Jesus. But, then, what did he know: he was a Jew not a Greek! Orthodoxy is not helped by those who would turn it into a narrow, ethnocentric, sect. Ethnic pride may possibly have its place (though, personally, I find it infantile), but when it begins to corrupt the gospel of Christ it is a blasphemy.

I agree. I am amazed at the comments here, and at Christmastime, no less. Anyone who has mocked or said vicious things about this unfortunate woman has no right to call himself a Christian. Disgusting. Many ordinary people had their life savings wiped out through no fault of their own. And this leads to jeers instead of sympathy. I imagine some of these heartless people go through the week thinking of themselves as followers of Christ. For shame. They haven’t the slightest clue what the gospel message means. A disgrace to conservatism, a diosgrace to the human race.

That is an absurd claim, which reveals an inability to understand numbers. It is based on comparing a 2007 study that showed 64 million Catholics with the 2008 Pew study that supposedly showed 54 million. However, the Pew study did NOT show 54 million Catholics. It showed that 24% of Americans are Catholic. Since the US population is about 306 million, that translates into about 74 million Catholics. The 54 million figure is presumably the number of ADULT Catholics. The Pew study itself says explicitly that the percentage of the US population that is Catholic has remained constant over recent decades -— which is in fact the case, as many studies have shown. The Pew study does not say that the Catholic population has declined -— it explicitly says otherwise. They do say that over the last several decades many Catholics have left the Church. But they also say that this has been offset by a combination of higher birthrate, immigration, and conversions to Catholicism, so that the Catholic percentage of the population has remained steady for the last 40 years. The Protestant percentage of population, on the other hand has shrunk dramatically.

As far as why the Southern Baptists have started to decline, the answer is probably pretty simple: low birthrate. Everyone knows that the “mainline” Protestant denominations have declined drastically in large part because of extremely low birthrates. What is less well-known is that even most “evangelical” groups have low birthrates -— and this includes the Southern Baptists, who are slightly older on average that the US population. According to the Pew study -— readily available online -—the great majority of Protestant groups have low birthrates. The high-birthrate exceptions are the Pentecostals, the non-denominational evangelicals, and black Protestants. The Catholics have pretty healthy birthrates, even leaving out the hispanics. The Catholic Church in the US continues to be one of the few “denominations” with steady growth year after year.

Wow, it seems you really have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to Catholicism! If someone is interested in whether the Catholic Church puts Mary on a par with Jesus, a good place to start would be to attend mass. There one would find that in the prayers of the mass the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are addressed or mentioned probably several hundred times more often than is Mary. In fact, in the present version of the mass, Mary is only mentioned once or twice: (1) in the Creed it says that Jesus was “born of the Virgin Mary”, and (2) in the prayer called the “confiteor” she is named in a list of those we ask to pray for us that includes all those present at the mass. In the old pre-Vatican II version of the mass, Mary was probably mentioned a few more times, but only a few. The overwhelmingly dominant focus of attention of the mass is God. This is true also of the other rites and ceremonies of the Church. It is absurd to think that Catholics would think anyone baptized in the name of Mary.
Yes, the Church honors Mary. And this is reflected in popular devotions such as the Rosary, in religious art, in a number of feast days in her honor, and so on.
However, Mary figures far more in debates between Protestants and Catholics than she figures in the actual worship and prayer life of the Church. Because in these debates so much is said about Mary, it is easy to get the impression that Catholics spend all their time thinking about Mary. It is probably not much of an exaggeration to say that I hear a more about Mary from Protestants complaining about her than I hear from Catholics in their ordinary religious devotions.
Protestants are so unused to honoring Mary or hearing about Mary in their own religious devotions and practices that any mention of her seems to rivet their attention as something very jarring and shocking. But to Catholics, hearing the name of Mary is no more shocking than hearing the names of St. Peter or St. Paul, or John the Baptist, or Moses, or Abraham, or the angels. All these figures are unique and important parts of the story of how we were saved. A Catholic no more thinks of worshipping Mary as God than he thinks of worshipping Peter, Paul, or John the Baptist as God. We have feast days for Mary, but we have feasts for Peter, Paul, and many others. We also address prayers to them on occasion -— asking for THEIR prayers.
There are some people who make it their business in life to take offense. Some “civil rights spokesmen” smell secret racism everywhere. Even the most inoffensive remark is analyzed for traces of it. The same with some Jewish organizations, who see anti-Semitism around every corner. The hypersensitivity of some Protestants, which leads them to see mariolatry, statue worship, etc. lurking everywhere, strikes me as the same kind of maniacal fixation.
Is there not room in the human heart for more than one kind of love? I love my five children. I’d run out in front of a truck to save any one of them. I think about them a lot. I ask THEM to pray for me. I have pictures of them in my office. Does that mean I worship them? I love my wife.
I love my country. Does loving God AS GOD, mean we cannot love any creature AT ALL? God is a jealous God in that he will not tolerate any WORSHIP of any lesser being. But does he will that no love AT ALL be directed toward anyone but Himself? Quite the contrary. He says that in loving our neighbor we also love Him. The more we love God, the MORE we will love our fellow man, and that would include most especially God’s holy ones.

This article is by a liberal who wants to believe that the positions of the Democratic Party are more consistent with Catholic social teaching than are Republican positions. That is simply not the case. In the first place, BOTH Parties accept the need for SOME amount of social welfare spending. It is question of how much and how it is spent. The Church has no teaching on such detailed questions, which are matters of prudential judgment. Similarly, BOTH Parties contain pro- and anti-death penalty people. And while the bishops would like to see the death penalty’s use severely restricted, the question of how much it should be restricted is also a matter of prudential judgment, and both the Pope and the bishops have said that Catholics can have differing views on the death penalty and remain Catholics in good standing. The same goes for war and peace. While lots of bishops don’t approve the war in Iraq, that does not make opposition to this particular war a matter of authoritative Catholic social teaching. The bishops, the Pope, the Catechism all emphasize that decisions about particular wars also lie in the area of prudential judgment on which Catholics can have legitimate disagreements. Moreover, while some bishops and the Pope spoke out against the original decision to invade Iraq, they do not take the position NOW that an immediate withdrawal is called for. In fact, they have said that a precipitous withdrawal that would leave Iraq in chaos would be wrong.

On embryonic stem cell research, it is true McCain has a bad position, but Clinton and Obama have the same bad position or worse. And the fact is that opposition to embryonic stem cell research is far higher among Republican politicians than Democratic ones. So this issue certainly breaks FOR the Republicans. As do, of course, the other life issues of abortion and euthanasia. The bishops have also said that the issues of abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem cell research, since they involve matters of “intrinsically evil” acts, are of greater weight in making political choices.

The liberal Catholic Joe Feuerherd, who wrote an article in the Washington Post about a week ago saying that the U.S. bishops had taken a “lurch toward the right” politically, idiot though he is, at least has a more realistic grasp of the political-theological landscape than this guy.

I think Deal Hudson is misinterpreting the data. It has nothing to do with Catholics as such. The Catholic population in this country is more Hispanic and White than the general population and less Black. Since Blacks are strongly pro-Obama, and Hispanics tend to be pretty strongly anti-Obama, it would explain the result.

St. Paul in First Corinthians 7 extols the spiritual value of celibacy: “It is good for a man not to marry. ... I wish that all men were as I am.” Paul explains why: it is so one can serve the Lord single-mindedly. Jesus speaks of men who “become eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.” In the Book of Revelation 14:4, it says, “These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.”

Jesus was celibate, as were John the Baptist and (according to Christian tradition) Mary. There is ample evidence that celibacy was highly esteemed in the early Church, and that in the first centuries those in ordained ministry were expected either to be unmarried, or if already married to give up sexual relations with their wives. By the year 400 or so, this was a Church law throughout most of the Western Church. In the Eastern Church, the rule of celibacy was weaker: bishops had to be celibate, but the lower orders of clergy could be married -— but if single when ordained they had to remain single.

Chaput is anything BUT a “liberal Democrat archbishop”. He is one of the most staunch bishops in the country on the life issues and is one of the more conservative bishops around.

One of the things that disheartens me is the decline of conservative conversation on the web. When I started following and participating in on-line discussions about religion 14 years ago, I found, much to my delight, that the conservative Catholics were better informed, more intelligent, more articulate, and more charitable toward their opponents than their liberal Catholic opponents. That is still true, but one finds more and more instances of shoot-from-the-hip, ill-informed, uncharitable commentary.
Maybe it is a new generation. I guess I am just an old fuddy-duddy who sees decline all around him.

The basic job of cardinals is to elect popes, but they have other functions as well. They advise the pope, and many of them are heads of various offices in the central administration of the Church (the “curia”). So it is obviously a good thing to have cardinals from all over the world, so that the leaders of the world-wide Church know what’s going on in different places. There is also the symbolic importance. Having cardinals from all over shows in a very visible way the supra-national and universal character of the Church. Another consideration is that the Church in regions where it is a small minority or under persecution or otherwise threatened can be strengthened by having their local leader be a cardinal. That tells the dictator -— or whoever -— that what they do to the Catholics is not going to go unnoticed in the wider world. That is why, for instance, the top clerics in Communist countries were often made cardinals. Similarly, the top bishop in Nicaragua was made a cardinal when there was all the trouble with the Sandinistas. That also gives these bishops more visibility when they denounce oppression.
(On the other hand, there are practical reasons to have a lot of Italians in the curia. There is a long tradition of Italians running the Church, and so a lot of experience there. Moreover, many Church institutions are located in Rome -— seminaries, heads of orders of nuns and monks, colleges, etc. -— and so a lot of the business of the central adminsitration of the Church is done in Italian.)

Note, that Paul said those words at the very end of his life, as he awaited execution, after he had “finished his course”. In other places he warned against being too confident “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall”. In fact, the text where Paul says “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith ...” really proves the OPPOSITE of eternal security. Implicit in that statement is the idea that some will not fight the fight to the end, will not finish the race, will not keep the faith till the end. But Paul, having reached the end, awaiting death, knew that he had in fact persevered. He did not do his victory dance till he reached the end of the race, unlike many eternal security folks who are doing it halfway through the first lap! No one of us is entitled in the middle of the race to apply St. Paul’s words “I have finished the course” to himself as if they proved that he himself could not possibly not falter or backslide.

Anyway, none of this has any relevance to Mother Teresa. Her “dryness” and experience of God’s absence lasted for many years, not merely intermittently. But that does NOT mean that her doubts of God’s existence lasted continuously for many years. On the contrary, if you read the article, you see that there were only one or two passages in all those those writings where she confessed experiencing a doubt of God’s existence. Those doubts were intermittent, it seems. What WAS continuous and unabating was an anguish, and feeling of spiritual dryness and God’s absence. Doubtless it was the feeling Jesus expressed in his anguished cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus was obviously not doubting the existence of God! He was expressing an anguish and sense of foresakenness. Mother Teresa’s “way of the cross” seems to have lasted for decades.

There has been a lot of nonsense written about the CDF statement. It is remarkable, after 40 years of dialogue intended to improve mutual understanding between Catholics and Protestants, that intelligent Protestants and even highly placed Protestant leaders show ZERO understanding of the Catholic view of the nature of the Church.
The word “church” has two meanings in the Catholic understanding: (a) there is the universal (or “Catholic”) Church, i.e. the one Church of Christ, and (b) there are local or “particular” churches, i.e. the churches of particular regions or groups.
The “particular” churches are bound together to form the one universal Church by various bonds: holding the same teachings, having the same sacraments and priesthood, and having a common structure of authority into which each particular church is integrated. An example of a particular church would be a diocese or a collection of dioceses forming a province, say.
The pope is saying that the “eastern Orthodox” churches are indeed particular churches and are “sister churches” of the Roman Catholic particular churches. They have the same faith and sacraments. Because they do not recognize the authority of the pope, their integration into one organized body with all the rest of the particular churches is impaired. So there is an impaired unity between the eastern Orthodox particular churches and the Roman Catholic ones.
The Protestants are in a different situation. Protestants, considered as individuals, are certainly Christians. But the denominations to which they belong are not “particular churches” in the same way that eastern Orthodox and Catholic dioceses are. They do not share the same faith and sacraments and do not have the sacramental priesthood of bishops, priests, and deacons.
What is new here? Absolutely nothing! This is what Vatican II taught, and what the Catholic Church has said for the last forty plus years. Only, it seems a lot of people were not listening. Many people read into the statements of Vatican II what they wanted to hear, both liberal Catholics and non-Catholics. It is because of these misreadings that the CDF felt a need to clarify what the Catholic Church’s teaching has always been. It was not meant as a “put down”, but as a clarification of what a “church” is, as the Catholic Church understands it.

The word “corporation” comes from the Latin word “corpus”, meaning “body”. The Church is indeed a “body”, as St. Paul taught -— “we are many members, but one body”. Salvation is not just a one-on-one, me-and-God-only relationship with God. That is a modern individualistic conception of faith. Faith is indeed personal and individual, but it is also communal -— or if you will, “corporate”. One is saved with, in, and through a community of faith. By being “incorporated” into the Body of Christ, we are joined to God and to each other in bonds of love and fellowship. Even in the Old Covenant, God chose a people, not just individuals. Is the “Body of Christ”, i.e. the Church, “man made”. It pleases you to assert that; but it is the same Church in which the Apostles ministered. One cannot find any break or discontinuity between the Church of the Apostles and the Church of today.

Anyone who has read any significant amount of St. Augustine, knows he did not deny the genuine freedom of the human will. Canon 4 of session 6 is not inconsistent with Augustine’s views on grace and freedom, nor with Aquinas’s. Give the bishops at Trent and their theological advisors a little more credit: they were deeply knowledgable about Scholastic theology on grace. They would not have drafted an article that was patently inconsistent with St. Thomas’s teaching, and they didn’t. This R. Scott Clark seems to be as naive about the internal operations of the Catholic Church as about the theology he discusses. OBVIOUSLY, Vatican II did not repeal the dogmatic decrees of Trent! One does not have to go to the Catechism of the Catholic Church to prove that. The dogmatic decrees of Ecumenical Councils CANNOT be repealed or abrogated or reversed. Once a dogma, always a dogma. And anyone who has read Lumen Gentium 25 from Vatican II knows that Vatican II explicitly taught the infallibility of the dogmatic decrees of Ecumenical Councils, including those of Trent. So it is silly even to talk about whether Vatican II did or any future Council could undo the dogmatic decrees of Trent. This R. Scott Clark is strictly an amateur on these questions. As far as unity goes, no one has ever claimed that the Catholic Church ever had or will have unity in the sense that there are not disagreements about important points of theology or jurisdictional disputes. From the Book of Acts, the squabbles that St. Paul had to deal with, the dispute in Corinth that prompted the Letter of Clement in 97 AD, the ferocious controversies over the nature of Christ in the 3rd to 6th century, and down through the ages, there have been innumerable disputes. However, there is a difference between husband and wife arguing and even throwing pots and pans at each other and them divorcing, and separating from bed and board. The Church has been given the power to resolve disputes and settle controversies. However, she does not do so immediately as soon as they arise or even pre-emptively. The controversies have to come to a head before any definitive action is taken. It takes the Church time to make up her mind, so to speak, but make up her mind she can and does. Jurisdictional disputes also get resolved in time. Abuses get reformed in time. The Church is a living body. Living bodies are subject to ailments, but they have powers to heal, to counteract the pathogens, to vomit out the poisons, to repair the torn ligaments and tissues and broken bones. And the bones heal stronger than before: we will not have to refight the Arian controversy or the Pelagian controversy again. There will be new controversies and challenges, however. I would not want to live in a family where there was no room for argument or disagreement of opinion. But I also would not want to live in one where the arguments were allowed to mortally threaten the peace unity of the family and lead to family breakup. One needs an active ministry of authority in a family that is neither tyrannical nor weak and permissive.

The Catholic Church does not say that it takes miracles to become a saint. The word “saint” comes from Latin “sanctus”, which means “holy”. One can apply it to everyone who is holy, living or dead. There is a narrower meaning of the term, namely “those who are in heaven”. That is presumably a vast multitude. In the Catholic Church there is a “Feast of All Saints” celebrating and honoring all those in heaven. Finally, there is the narrowest meaning of the term, which is those who are held up by the Church as examples of sancity -— the “canonized” saints. The Catholic Church believes that the “canonized” saints are a tiny subset of all the saints in heaven.

If that was gamecock’s point, it is not a good one. Even if I thought Mormonism was Christian, which I don’t, it would make no sense to refer to Mormons (when one wants to refer to them SPECIFICALLY) as simply “Christians”. In the same way, if one wants to refer SPECIFICALLY to squirrels, one does not say “mammals”.

There is a denomination called “the Church of Christ”. It is a proper name. If I referred to that Church I would refer to it as “the Church of Christ”, even though I do not grant, as a matter theology, that that denomination is THE Church of Christ. I call Orthodox Christians “Orthodox”, because that is the term that they use, even though I do not grant, as a matter of theology, that they are in fact orthodox. They are 99.9% orthodox. One cannot please everybody; but, normally, one tries to apply to people and institutions the proper names they give themselves, and one avoids terms that are generally regarded as hostile, unless, of course, one is attempting to express hostility.