I received the following mail from a friend in Norfolk, Virginia, United States. I quote it with his permission. My reply will be the next post
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I came across your blogs via verveearth. As a former Catholic, I was intrigued by some of your posts, especially your thoughts about re-energizing the Church in the West. From my perspective, you are battling a losing cause for a number of reasons. A recent survey showed that 10% of the U.S. Population consists of "former Catholics." In my own family, other than my elderly mother and one sister, everyone has either joined a different denomination - e.g., Lutheran or Episcopal - or no longer attends church services at all. In my own case, I have joined the Evangelical Lutheran Church where I enjoy the same mass each Sunday without the morally bankrupt and falsely sanctimonius hierarchy and non-stop anti-gay propaganda. Here are a few reasons for the Church's decline in the USA:
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I came across your blogs via verveearth. As a former Catholic, I was intrigued by some of your posts, especially your thoughts about re-energizing the Church in the West. From my perspective, you are battling a losing cause for a number of reasons. A recent survey showed that 10% of the U.S. Population consists of "former Catholics." In my own family, other than my elderly mother and one sister, everyone has either joined a different denomination - e.g., Lutheran or Episcopal - or no longer attends church services at all. In my own case, I have joined the Evangelical Lutheran Church where I enjoy the same mass each Sunday without the morally bankrupt and falsely sanctimonius hierarchy and non-stop anti-gay propaganda. Here are a few reasons for the Church's decline in the USA:
First, I believe until the Vatican does a thorough house cleaning of the members of the hierarchy who enabled and/or covered up sex abuse - and by house cleaning I mean complete removal from office - there will be a continued exodus of people from the Catholic Church. Simply removing the guilty priests and doing nothing to those who shuffled them from parish to parish and/or intimidated victims and there families to stay quiet will not cut it and shows from Benedict XVI on down that the hierarch is morally bankrupt and have no legitinate authority to dictate to anyone what is morally right.
Second, with the increases in medical and mental health knowledge concernig homosexuality, the Church's continued anti-gay stance will only drive away the younger generations. One study with in the last year found that 58% of those under 30 years of age viewed orthodox Christianity negatively in large part because of its homophobia.
Third, an educated population that has access to information on science and any number of other topics will not blindly swallow what the Church is peddling, particualr in light of the two previous issues. Thus, it is no surprise that the Church is growing predominately in countries with low levels of education and knowledge.
Michael
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