On any given day, the Internet is ablaze with articles and blogs predicting a schism between conservative and liberal factions within the Catholic Church.
Of course, the hottest of the hot button issues which inspires these frantic ramblings remains the Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, the post-Synodal document which has been the basis upon which a number of Bishops have begun to institute pastoral guidelines which would assist divorced and remarried Catholics who refuse to live in sexual abstinence to receive the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Communion.
I see the present state of affairs within the Church quite differently.
First, it is clear that most Catholics are ignorant of the heightened tensions presently existing among the hierarchy. Why? Because most Pastors and Bishops have been silent about the initiatives and reforms which Pope Francis has encouraged.
Let’s be honest. What Catholics know about the Faith and about the Church comes almost exclusively from the pulpits of their parish churches. Catholics, for the most part, do not engage in an ongoing regimen of adult education in the Faith, nor do they keep pace with what is happening by way of Catholic media.
The fact is that, by and large, Catholics are completely indifferent toward the Church's squabbles and disputes.
In the course of my lifetime and ministry, I have witnessed how previously devout and docile Catholics transitioned to a nominal Catholicism, largely in response to the reforms of Vatican II and the overwhelmingly rejected teachings of the Church regarding artificial contraception and family planning.
Over the years, quietly but steadily, these nominal Catholics transitioned to being liberal, nominal Catholics. Still somewhat regular in practicing the Faith, these Catholics assimilated the secular values of society and now find themselves accepting the popular mores of the contemporary culture. So that, today, a significant majority of Catholics seemingly have no problem with homosexual orientation, having same-sex marriages recognized by the state, abortion in cases of rape or incest, as well as a host of behaviors which, at one time, were characterized as deviant and self-destructive.
In recent years, these liberal, nominal Catholics have transitioned into becoming non-practicing, dissenting, liberal, nominal Catholics. When it comes to Faith and Morals, these Catholics not only refuse to impose Catholic values on others, they refuse to adopt those same values for themselves and their children.
This is all part of a religious-cultural milieu described in a recent Pew Study which notes: “The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing.”
The hardest-hit Christian body, according to that same study, is the Catholic Church, and, amazingly, “12.9% of American adults are former Catholics.”
For this reason, I believe there is no reason to fear a future schism with the Catholic Church, because I believe there has already been a quiet apostasy of millions of once-Catholic believers.
I am not one who regularly quotes Pope Saint John Paul II, but I do wish to note that, in his 2003 post-Synodal Exhortation Ecclesia in Europa, the Holy Father spoke of the spiritual condition of Catholicism’s heartland: “European culture gives the impression of ‘silent apostasy’ on the part of people who have all that they need and who live as if God does not exist.” (Paragraph 9)
Simply put, most people today have forgotten God.
I am also not one who regularly criticizes Pope Francis. Yet, the many comments he has made along with his intense outreach to non-Catholic and non-Christian faith communities certainly appears to advance the acceptability of an indifferentism when it comes to the salvation of non-Christians who live and die in their various religions — without the benefits of baptism and without the Divine and Catholic faith.
One wonders how that cannot but harm the Church’s missionary zeal. Will this not confuse Catholics themselves, who will wonder why they have to live the strict moral code of the Catholic Church when the rest of humanity can apparently be saved without it.
Archbishop Guido Pozzo, appointed by Pope Francis to be the secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei which is charged with pastoral outreach to traditionalist Catholics, recently stated: “... there exists today, unfortunately, the view — contrary to the Catholic Faith — that there is a salvific path independent of Christ and His Church.”
The pews of our Catholic churches are definitely emptier than they were a generation ago, a phenomenon that largely went unnoticed and un-addressed by a hierarchy largely out of touch with the ongoing secularization of society.
This quiet defection by millions will only continue should the in-fighting among conservative and liberal hierarchs become generally known to the Catholic laity.
If there is a solution to this crisis, it appears to remain hidden in the Divine Mind of the Holy Spirit to Whom we intercede on behalf of the millions yet to be born who may come into a world in which the Light of Christ has been dimmed by indifference and outright hostility.
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
No comments:
Post a Comment