Catholics Come Home

[steve_bank]

The RCC must be getting desperate. For years they periodically run TV ads targeting lapsed Catholics, saw one recently.

Catholics Come Home | Welcome Home

Faith should touch every corner of our lives. We know it can be intimidating to walk through those doors, but we've been expecting you. Welcome home.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

In recent years, the RCC has lost large numbers of members. Overall the biggest loser of major Christian denominations.

.....
Those who have left Catholicism outnumber those who have joined the Catholic Church by nearly a four-to-one margin. Overall, one-in-ten American adults (10.1%) have left the Catholic Church after having been raised Catholic, while only 2.6% of adults have become Catholic after having been raised something other than Catholic.
.......

Leaving Catholicism

Revised February 2011* While the ranks of the unaffiliated have grown the most due to changes in religious affiliation, the Catholic Church has lost the

www.pewresearch.org

 

[ideologyhunter]

They're ahead of the Presbyterians, who are said to have lost 40% of their membership between 2000 and 2015, to have seen 15% of their churches close, and to be currently experiencing a yearly decline of 4.5% -- a lot of that due to older folks in the congregations dying off.

 

[Politesse]

If the Roman church still felt like "home", people wouldn't have left it.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Another factor, possibly: in the past 40 years the ratio of Catholics to priests has gone from 1900/1 to 3100/1. (That could be both a cause and a result.)

 

[bilby]

If the Roman church still felt like "home", people wouldn't have left it.

One of the many things that irks me about the Roman Catholic Church is their refusal to accept that people have left.

I don't call my first wife "lapsed", or suggest that she should come "home"; She chose to leave, and I respect her decision. She would be rightly angry if I were to go around talking about her as though her decision to leave was some kind of temporary aberration, particularly as it was a couple of decades ago, and she apparently has an adult son by her subsequent choice of partner.

And were I to deny her decision in that fashion, it would be reasonable for my friends and family to question my psychiatric health, as well as being a serious concern to my current and beloved wife.

But apparently, when the RCC does it, it's not creepy or needy at all.

I have never been a Catholic; But I am no less Catholic than someone who once was, and now isn't. If people can enter your organisation, then they can also leave - unless you're running a jail.

 

[steve_bank]

In Irish and Italian families having a Catholic priest in the family was once a source of pride.

The RCC for over 100 years has sought to maintain power, money, and control. It was modeled after the Roman system.

Any admission of problems undermines the image of the pope as the supreme agent of god on
Earth.

 

[Politesse]

In Irish and Italian families having a Catholic priest in the family was once a source of pride.

Very much true of my family, and indeed we are still fond of noting the singificant proportion of priests, medics, and educators on our branch of the Morton line. But it would take more than a bit of family pride to get me to Mass for any purpose other than research.

Any admission of problems undermines the image of the pope as the supreme agent of god on Earth.

This is really overstating things, at least from the perspective of most Catholics.

 

[steve_bank]

God speaks to pope, pope speaks to the world. Basic doctrine. In 8th grade catechism it was called 'speaking from the chair of St Peter'.

When speaking on church issues from the 'chair of St Peter' the pope was/is infallible.

Tjat is why when the pope said the church may recognize and perform gay marriage recently it sent shock waves through the Vatican theologians.

It is not just the child sex abuse cover up. The Vatican bank has had scandals and involvement with organized crime. Priest and nun sex scandals.

The RCC Vatican elite is a facade.

 

[bilby]

It is not just the child sex abuse cover up. The Vatican bank has had scandals and involvement with organized crime. Priest and nun sex scandals.

By comparison to the stuff the medieval popes got up to, this stuff is small potatoes.

Power corrupts; The papacy is far less powerful today than it has been for a thousand years previously, and is less corrupt as a consequence. Not because popes and vatican officials (and indeed the entire hierarchy down to the local priests) don't want to be corrupt and self-serving fucks, but because their ability to do so has been curtailed by their loss of influence.

 

[Tigers!]

I have never been a Catholic; But I am no less Catholic than someone who once was, and now isn't. If people can enter your organisation, then they can also leave - unless you're running a jail.

Or a crime gang ......

 

[ideologyhunter]

"Quando ergo eram foras, trahunt me in!"

("Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!")

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

It is not just the child sex abuse cover up. The Vatican bank has had scandals and involvement with organized crime. Priest and nun sex scandals.

By comparison to the stuff the medieval popes got up to, this stuff is small potatoes.

Power corrupts; The papacy is far less powerful today than it has been for a thousand years previously, and is less corrupt as a consequence. Not because popes and vatican officials (and indeed the entire hierarchy down to the local priests) don't want to be corrupt and self-serving fucks, but because their ability to do so has been curtailed by their loss of influence.

Check Wikipedia, Unum Sanctum of Pope Bonafice VIII. The biggest power grab of the Papacy. Bonafice announced outside of the Catholic Church there was no salvation. And that as head of the Church, the Pope outranked all secular powers and leaders. Hilarity ensued. It did not exactly have a happy ending. This all started with a power struggle between the papacy and the French crown. And check out Pope Gelasius I. The Pope that among other claims pronounced the Roman Pontiff was head of the Catholic church. Another great power grab.

 

[Thomas II]

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If the Roman church still felt like "home", people wouldn't have left it.

I never "joined," just quit doing what my parents had me doing from birth.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The RCC Vatican elite is a facade.

It's just another business for all intents and purposes. It preys on people who never really grow up.

 

[Elixir]

The RCC Vatican elite is a facade.

It's just another business for all intents and purposes. It preys on people who never really grow up.

EXACTLY!
Totally an expensive charade. It is becoming less and less lucrative, and soon it will scale back or go into liquidation mode to keep up appearances and remaining loyalties. For a small Country it has a big international business, and literally more money than God, but if it becomes a money losing enterprise it will change real quick.

 

[rousseau]

If the Roman church still felt like "home", people wouldn't have left it.

One of the many things that irks me about the Roman Catholic Church is their refusal to accept that people have left.

I don't call my first wife "lapsed", or suggest that she should come "home"; She chose to leave, and I respect her decision. She would be rightly angry if I were to go around talking about her as though her decision to leave was some kind of temporary aberration, particularly as it was a couple of decades ago, and she apparently has an adult son by her subsequent choice of partner.

And were I to deny her decision in that fashion, it would be reasonable for my friends and family to question my psychiatric health, as well as being a serious concern to my current and beloved wife.

But apparently, when the RCC does it, it's not creepy or needy at all.

I have never been a Catholic; But I am no less Catholic than someone who once was, and now isn't. If people can enter your organisation, then they can also leave - unless you're running a jail.

That's when you realize that the Catholic church in it's current form isn't much different from a corporation. Spirituality is the product. They have no more control over their message than any other business, the message is whatever helps them survive.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Spirituality is the product.

The RCC is certainly an organization, a business based on supply and demand. There are lots of people who demand woo and demand that their woo be recognized. Calling the product spirituality, well, what exactly is that? Is it behavior? Is it obedience? Is it financial support? Is it loyalty? Is it liking your prayer book? Is it believing in miracles? Is it a fictional history directly linking you to the great all powerful Oz himself? My youngest sister thinks it's wrong to not practice the religion of your parents, that not doing so is disrespectful. Maybe she's confusing respect with obedience. Fact is if we knew our family religious histories back to the dawn of religious invention we'd see the many different religions our actual ancestral parents and families and communities all practiced. It would be a sobering observation. And considering human history we can make some pretty good guesses that those past "true" religious identities are all over the board.

At its best the RCC like other organizations is a vehicle for the transmission of ideas and values. Some of those ideas and values are good and some are shit. I think the RCC owes its existence to its historical exercise of brutality and the fact that lots of people feel comfortable with their place in an imposed authoritarian hierarchy.

I'm a lapsed kindergartner, a lapsed grade schooler, a lapsed high school student, a lapsed student at university, a lapsed bachelor, a lapsed member of the military, a lapsed athlete, even a lapsed practitioner of woo. And now all my children are lapsed members of my immediate household, My life is a fucking disaster! Clearly I need to return to kindergarten, grade school, high school ....

 

[bilby]

It's interesting to note that the idea of personally choosing ones own religion is a relatively modern phenomenon.

In the early modern period, religion was a matter for ones rulers to decide on your behalf. As an aristocrat, you could reasonably agonise over whether to be a Catholic, or a Protestant; And in the latter case, which Protestant sect to follow. But the majority of people were simply told - by their lord, or their king - and did as they were told.

An ordinary peasant (who probably had far more immediate concerns, such as how to feed, clothe, and house his family) would rarely have a different religious opinion from that imposed by his lord; And when his lord switched allegiance (or was deposed and replaced), so the peasant would switch.

During the Thirty Years War, much of Europe (particularly the area that's now Germany) changed many times from Catholic to Protestant, or vice versa, depending on which army was locally dominant. The peasants were far to busy trying to stop the soldiers from raping their wives and daughters, and/or from stealing their entire stock of food, to even consider arguing against the edicts about which church to attend on Sunday, or worrying about the form the worship would take when they got there.

Certainly in Christendom, religion wasn't something you chose, it was something you were told to do. Of course there were always a handful of (usually wealthy and/or powerful) people who tried to buck that system - often because they'd genuinely swallowed the bullshit and really believed that it mattered to their eternal souls - but these exceptions were rare, and frequently died (and were declared martyrs) for their positions.

The idea of tolerating having neighbours who don't share your religious practices is very novel. Catholics have only recently accepted that they're not allowed to set people on fire for merely disagreeing with them; Protestants, by contrast, typically hanged or beheaded those who refused to agree.