This is the story of Catholicism in America today.
This is the story which the recent General Assembly of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) should have heard but lacked the willingness or courage to do so.
This is the story of a shift in contemporary American Catholicism.
It is not pretty!
Secularism is a powerful cultural truth about the American people and American Catholics as well.
Indifference (perhaps even a growing hostility) toward traditional Catholic values as well as increasing numbers of those who have abandoned the practice of the Faith appear to reinforce the conclusion that American Catholics are evolving (devolving?) into materialistic and self-centered persons more concerned about their quality of life rather than their eternal redemption.
What cannot be denied (but what the American Bishops clearly and willfully choose to ignore) is the fact that more and more Catholics are turning away from the Church.
For all the defensive cries from neo-conservative reactionary Catholics who see the Pontificate of Pope Francis as a rejection of their romantic and pseudo-nostalgic infatuation with the "traditional" Church, the fact is that the allegiance declared by many Catholics in the past was rather shallow.
In former times, people readily identified as Catholics or members of Christian denominations. But, practically, this did not mean very much.
The reality was that more and more Catholics had ceased attending Mass or confessing their sins, and more importantly, had ceased assimilating Catholic teachings and morality in the course of living out their daily lives.
What the Bishops seem loathe to admit is that there has been a critical cultural shift away from Judeo-Christian values, and even more specifically away from Catholicism itself.
True, Catholics still represent the largest Christian denomination in America, but the fact is secularism and the disturbing rise of practical-atheism has found and is finding growing resonance in every part of the country as well as across all age and ethnic groups.
The number of those who identify themselves as atheists is almost double what it was a decade ago. And it is not just the young and the healthy who are turning away from God; it is growing numbers of aging “baby boomers” who are increasingly discovering that death is at their front door.
The American Bishops are reluctant to admit the fact that, at their core, growing numbers of Catholics are not believers, let alone true believers.
While this has been no secret in the more liberal venues of the East and West Coast, the growing rise in secularism and self-professed atheism is progressing faster and becoming more entrenched in the heartland of the country.
Catholic census reports indicate that the number of practicing Catholics who have abandoned the practice of their Faith grows with each passing year.
Then again, I have always thought that the census numbers were bogus.
There is simply no practical way to what number of “official" Catholics on the books actually practice their Faith.
The Universal Church boasts “billions of souls" by virtue of Baptismal records. But there is no official record of the fallen-away, who are increasing willing to admit that they have definitively left the Church.
Other Catholics identify themselves as such as a kind of “default” position, not out of personal conviction, but simply because are at a loss or just hesitant to tell census-takers what they really think.
There is little doubt that Americans in general, and a goodly number of Catholics among them, are increasingly a secular people living “in the moment”, not caring about future consequences in this life or in the next.
Contemporary American Catholics are less inclined to accept any call to sacrifice or the postponement of personal gratification now for a greater reward at a later time.
In the face of these realities, the Bishops persist in “navel gazing”, concerned with such nonsensical topics as the precise vernacular translation of Latin rituals in the performance of exorcisms!
For goodness sake!
The entire leadership of the American Catholic Church, gathered this week for the manifest purpose of offering guidance, encouragement and support to those entrusted to their spiritual care.
The fact is that few, if any, Catholics will listen to anything they say.
Instead, they will turn on their TVs or surf the Net as they are prone to do, looking for truth from the tube or wisdom from the keyboard.
In reality, Jimmy Kimmel, CNN, the Huffington Post all have more relevance in forming moral attitudes and beliefs these days than than any of the American Bishops.
American Catholicism is going the way of European Church, giving way to materialism and secularism.
Sadly, so sadly, the Bishops of this country appear to be among the least able and effective at stopping the hemorrhage of souls abandoning the truths of the Gospel as well as the powerful grace of the Holy Spirit.
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