A Recently Ordained Priest Gives His take On the Pew Study

I thought this was interesting and perhaps should be incorporated into our faults in the now much talked about Pew Study. Catholic Vision has his thoughts on the subject at Much Ado about Pew .

I agree with that a great deal. I think there are many segments of ex Catholics.

For example their are the cultural Catholics that Father talks about.

There are the ex Catholics that know the faith well and think it is just wrong.

There are ex Catholics that some personal incident caused them great hurt. I used to think this category was very much overblown. As I get older I am not so sure. Now I am not talking about Catholics that have severe drama. Like having to deal with something dramatic like a Sex abuser in the Clergy or such.

No just every day hurts that for some reason sticks. I ran across a blogger last week that had a post title something like " Ten Problems I have with the Catholic Church." She was as ex Catholic elsewhere or perhaps nowhere now. I could tell that part of her problem was bad Catholic education. However point nine of her ten jumped out with me. It was " Why did the Catholic Church deny my Grandfather a Funeral Mass on Easter Sunday- IS God's Time now the Churches time!!!!". Now this seems trivial and absurd that someone would leave the faith over this. However it hit me in the gut that perhaps this was major to her. However to be quite blunt I have to think all Faith Communities have to do deal with this even though we might run into it more as Catholics for various reasons.

I think though the lack of good Catholic education though has to be tied into what Father is saying.How can we learn the difference between " expression and principle" if the knowledge of the principle is quite frankly absent.

Father Andrew says:
"From Pope Benedict XVI illuminative speech, we can understand that the Council has wrenched us out of our comforts of form. Why? We must return to Jesus Christ in a truly radical way. Radical, meaning root. The crisis of these past 40 years is returning to our roots- Ressourcement. It seems that the Council forces us to let of the faith as sustainable cultural identity: I'm Irish so I drink Guinness, I'm Catholic so I go to Mass."

I think that is true to a certain degree. However what I don't think was envisioned by the Council was the entire hijacking of what it intended to be used for various agendas. When I converted this was still going on. I often think that Vatican II and more importantly the reform that came after surely did happen at a bad time. Of course that is from my earthly viewpoint. There was a lot going on. Communism, The Space Race, Advents in Technology outpacing our moral reasoning to use it, Civil Rights, Feminism, the Sexual Revolution , and a general chaffing at authority.etc etc. It seemed to me that "burn baby burn" was not just being shouted out in the streets but in the Church itself.

It just seemed that for a long time from Liturgy to belief that the Catholic faith was being used to advance various secular and even passing agendas. Again I am amazed that the damage was not worse. The Liturgy again was a prime vehicle of that and there seemed to be very little getting back to the "root". Even though that was proclaimed what was happening by Sister or Priest X as we did some liturgy based on the writings of FR Matthew Fox(Remember Him) and whatever was the rage that year in NCR.

So the Council wanted to us to engage the Christ and the World in a radical way but perhaps for a good bit of time the "world" was too busy engaging us. That is not say that all was dark and there were no fruits. However this our fate in Life as Catholics perhaps. In a great article that I repost from time to time The Threefold Witness of the Church: The Catholic Peter, the Orthodox John, and the Protestant Paul the author states:

Throughout her long and bumpy history, the Roman Catholic Church has been the church that has most fully engaged the world around her. While Orthodoxy withdraws and Protestantism divides, The Catholic Church wrestles and grapples and gets her hands dirty. She makes mistakes (lots of them) but presses on nevertheless—ever struggling and yet ever maintaining her integrity and her identity. Like Peter, she grows and learns without ever quite losing that rashness and impulsiveness that defines her. (45)

So perhaps nothing new under the sun. We do as human beings think we are the center of the most important time period in the history of the world. Thus we seem to over estimate our importance and events around us in the big scheme of things.

I know That Pope Benedict in his book Introduction to Christianity talked a little bit about what Father Andrew is discussing in the preface. Perhaps that will be my reading before I go to bed
Anyway good read by Father Andrew.