Posted on 12/07/2018 8:54:49 AM PST by Salvation
Sadly, you are correct. I lived in Southern California for seven years and many laudable things about Mexican Americans are destroyed within a generation. The Dems get their hooks in the Mexicans and welfare destroys the family unit and the work ethic — both of which are strong among most legal and illegal Mexicans when they first arrive in the USA. Once the family and the work ethic are gone, their allegiance to the Catholic Church also goes — or may as well go because the Mexican Americans who remain Catholic become just another group the Catholic bishops use to justify bleeding the rest of us - in the Church and via taxes.
Ping!
Yup. Heard the same thing living in rural Northwest Ohio where many Mexicans had settled.
Immigrants themselves were hard-working, decent, traditional Catholic family people. First generation discovered there was this thing called welfare where the government pays you not to work (and even more to produce babies out of wedlock), and it’s all out the window.
Catholic Answers, the #1 apologetics site, hosts a daily radio call in show. Sometimes the program is focused on a theme but last night was an Open Forum, open to anyone from any faith, to call in with questions. CA has some of the top apologists like Jimmy Akin, Trent Horn, Fr. Trigilio, etc. and some of them are converts to the Catholic Church, having read themselves in via the Early Church Fathers. Last night, a young man named Hunter called in. He is a self professed atheist who is considering joining the Catholic Church. The reason he gives is ... the resurrection. As he explained, if this is true, then christianity is true. You can hear his question here.
This is not the first time I have heard such testimonies on that program. As you may recall, Mother Angelica established the first Catholic radio transmitter in the US. This program reaches many people across the US. New ministries, like street evangelization, have sprung up, as a result.
While the OVERALL picture, from our perspective, may seem bleak, listening to the callers to CA's daily radio program, provides insight into how God works in the hearts of souls. I recall one caller who recounted how he rented a car, turned on the radio and it was tuned to the CA program. He listened during the ride, got hooked and continued to listen after his return home. He is now enrolled in RCIA.
I’ve never listened to the program but I would browse their forums occasionally. Now that the board is unreadable, no more.
It didn't.....there is no corrupt ecclesiastical hierarchy at all....there are some few corrupt members in the hierarchy but you can't condemn all for the sins of a few. There are just as many, or more protestant clergy involved in scandal, but because the protestant parishes are largely independent of one another, there isn't the scandal involved....The Catholics, on the other hand, are all connected through their diocesan association.
Oh please....the "Fred Smith" decides to start a church movement is weird at best....we have several in our town and they are ALL strange at best...get back to the Catholic church ASAP
If that's the best apologetics site for Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholicism is in serious trouble.
It’s and “or” statement; not an “and” statement!
You mean...like those churches Paul started back in the day??
You must not be reading all the daily posts from one of your fellow Roman Catholics or you're head is in the sand.
Hasn't that been the role of the clerics in Roman Catholicism over time though?
7. Professional Catholics. For so long everything in the Catholic Church was done by the “professionals.” Priests, bishops, sisters and brothers were the ones who ran the parishes, dioceses, schools and colleges. They were the ones who were trained to do all the “church work.” Lay people were there to pray, pay and obey — or not. But this clericalism still dogs the Church. The people in the pew don’t take ownership and don’t feel it is their job to evangelize.
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/longenecker/10-reasons-why-catholics-dont-evangelize
Well, when Roman Catholicism has elevated their "Sacred Tradition" to be equal to and in many cases superior to the Bible one can understand why.
Plus, encouraging Roman Catholics to actually read the very book they claim to have given everyone is a relatively new idea only gaining support in the 1940s.
I like Catholic Answers but also like Call to Communion where Dr. David Anders answers the questions of non-Catholic. He does a lot of explaining, often citing Scripture, Early Church Fathers, the Catechism, saints, etc.
Good to see you, friend!
That’s a really twisted analysis. I don’t have time to discuss everything said here, but first, there are Bible-believing Protestant denominations and those that are Bible-rejecting. The rejecting ones are heretical denominations that grow worse and worse and their adherents prefer self-deception and thinking they’re destroying the Christian faith from within. There are people like Rob Bell and Rick Warren, but their leadership is examined in the light of Scripture. When Rob Bell rejected the Bible, he excommunicated himself from Bible-believing churches. Rick Warren is similarly regarded by many evangelicals as a globalist, secular humanist, opportunist “pastor.” Meanwhile, those sorts of people simply stay in the Roman Catholic Church and when in leadership, promote each other.
Then you look at predominantly Catholic heritage areas of this country, and they’re usually very racially segregated. White Catholics so often want their “brotherly love” towards African-Americans, who are mostly Protestant, to be at a considerable distance.
**That’s a really twisted analysis. I don’t have time to discuss everything said here, but first, there are Bible-believing Protestant denominations and those that are Bible-rejecting. The rejecting ones are heretical denominations that grow worse and worse and their adherents prefer self-deception and thinking they’re destroying the Christian faith from within. There are people like Rob Bell and Rick Warren, but their leadership is examined in the light of Scripture. When Rob Bell rejected the Bible, he excommunicated himself from Bible-believing churches. Rick Warren is similarly regarded by many evangelicals as a globalist, secular humanist, opportunist “pastor.” Meanwhile, those sorts of people simply stay in the Roman Catholic Church and when in leadership, promote each other.**
Thank you for your honesty.
I pass by more than twenty churches (all of them Protestant) that have been closed in the past decade.
13 These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.
14 These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.
15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
16 And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
17 For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.
Actually, this description much apples to the Western RC church, whose members testify to being more liberal than conservative (and her Bible scholarship much reflects that), in contrast to "fundamentalist," "Bible Christians ," and it is no surprise that the declining mainstream churches tend to be those closest to Rome.
The experience of the Catholic parishes on Capitol Hill has not been ideal, but it is better, and we can survive collectively. There are reasons for this.
#1. We do not like to admit we are losing many members, or that we count even very liberal public figures as members in life and in death. And contrary to what pope conveys, the number of RCs has decreased substantially in the West.
#2. We have more money to keep RC churches open.
#3.
The drop in the Christian share of the population has been driven mainly by declines among mainline Protestants (7.8% decline from 2007 to 2017) and Catholics (3.1% decline from 2007 to 2017). Each of those large religious traditions has shrunk by approximately three percentage points since 2007. The evangelical Protestant share of the U.S. population also has dipped (0.9), but at a slower rate, falling by about one percentage point since 2007. (unaffiliated grew 6.7%)
The new survey indicates that churches in the evangelical Protestant tradition – including the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God, Churches of Christ, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Presbyterian Church in America, other evangelical denominations and many nondenominational congregations – now have a total of about 62 million adult adherents. That is an increase of roughly 2 million since 2007, though once the margins of error are taken into account, it is possible that the number of evangelicals may have risen by as many as 5 million or remained essentially unchanged - http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
In 1988, there were 19,705 parishes in the U.S., while there are now 17,483, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University.
The current number of parishes is about equal to the number that existed in 1965, even as the number of self-identified U.S. Catholics has risen in the past half-century, from 48.5 million to 76.7 million between 1965 and 2014, according to CARA’s data. However, the share of U.S. Catholics who reported attending Mass at least weekly fell by nearly half – from 47% to 24% – between 1974 and 2012, according to the General Social Survey (GSS). http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/06/the-number-of-u-s-catholics-has-grown-so-why-are-there-fewer-parishes/
Catholics' Church Attendance Resumes Downward Slide - Gallup News
Map [MA]: Catholic Church closings in the past 10 years - WWLP.com
Pittsburgh diocese to reduce 188 parishes to 57 - Crux Now
'It's All About Church Closings': Catholic Parishes Shrink In Northeast
Archdiocese May Close Nearly 100 Churches in Next 15 Years
Between 2015 and 2060, the world’s population is expected to increase by 32%, to 9.6 billion. Over that same period, the number of Muslims – the major religious group with the youngest population and the highest fertility – is projected to increase by 70%. The number of Christians is projected to rise by 34%, slightly faster than the global population overall yet far more slowly than Muslims. As a result, according to Pew Research Center projections, by 2060, the count of Muslims (3.0 billion, or 31% of the population) will near the Christian count (3.1 billion, or 32%) http://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/#global-population-projections-2015-to-2060
Catholic Answers, the #1 propaganda site, with mods which seem to be longing for the days and means of the Spanish Inquisition. site
some of them are converts to the Catholic Church, having read themselves in via the Early Church Fathers
Which is quite telling. For rather than Scripture being determintive of what the NT church believed (including how they understood the OT and gospels), as the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative source for that (in which distinctive RC doctrines are not manifest ), instead it is the uninspired words of men. And which testify to an increasing infiltration of false beliefs and traditions of men.
Actually, the RCC itself fosters faith in herself, and looking to its leaders above Scripture, and thus insofar as they goes South, so do their followers.
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