The Future of the Church

I've written about my time among the Anglicans before. So I won't retread too much of it here. But it is interesting how and in what ways liberals want the Catholic Church to change.

The main reason I never joined up with the Episcopal church is because, first and foremost, the liberals had made a wreck of the place. At the time you couldn't readily identify a liberal wackadoo parish from a more traditional one. At least not by looking at it. That was the main reason I ultimately fell in with the Southern Baptists for all those years as I say. By and large, a church affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention could be assumed to be faithful and orthodox (by SBC standards, at least). The Episcopal church, meanwhile, was a lot more of a gamble.

As I type that, I'm remembering the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which, as discussed here, I and others interpret as the beginning of the SBC doing an about-face on LGBT issues. So in the future, you can generally be certain of most Episcopal parishes you come across while the future is very likely to be shaky and uncertain for the SBC. No, the irony of all this is not lost on me.

But I digress. The one thing that's clear is that the Episcopal Church has been completely remade in the liberal's image. This, we're told, is the gateway to Christianity's future. And, as the prevailing liberal sentiment goes, until the Catholic Church embraces these things, "young people" will continue abandoning her in droves.

But like anything else, the numbers tell a different story. Current polling figures are either unavailable or else are colored by ideologues from both sides. But as a preliminary, the Church appears to be stable in the United States even though news media are constantly presenting anecdotal data indicating people are leaving. Thus the stability could be from disaffected Protestants crossing the Tiber, an influx of immigrants (whether here legally or not) or other factors. But the currently numbers are either holding fast, and are possibly increasing.

I recently had occasion to meet with my priest and discuss the final details of my being welcomed into the Church. During our conversation, we veered off topic and he ended up mentioning that the pastors of most Catholic parishes are insanely outnumbered by their parishioners.

Father didn't mention specific numbers but he said that the Novus Ordo parish at which his FSSP parish is temporarily headquartered has something like 50,000 people attending. He said that a priest is supposed to be like a father to his parishioners (thus the title "Father"). But the situation a lot of priests are facing now is more akin to being the mayor of a small town. This, he says, is why most Catholic parishes have several priests on duty. There's simply too much to do for any one priest to hope to keep up.

This isn't a problem that erecting new parishes will necessarily solve either as there is a priest shortage right now. Demand far outstrips supply.

Meanwhile, if current social issues are anything to judge by, the Episcopal church is apparently the zeitgeist of American Christianity right now. It embraces everything the liberal naysayers argue the Church should. Less hierarchical authority, ordination of gay, female and married "clergy", acceptance of non-heterosexual unions, abortion on demand, birth control, divorce and all the other liberal sacraments.

With a formula like that, you'd think the Episcopal church must have nigh uncontainable growth. But the truth is it lost over 30% of its parishioners between 2001 and 2008. Fully one million people left the church during that time. And all signs so far indicate that it has lost even more in recent years as the old guard continues dying out.

During that same period, the Catholic Church posted growth of 7 million new members. In other words, they not only made up for what the Episcopal church lost, they had an additional 6 million new members as well.

Are the Catholic Church's numbers stable? Will they hold? We'll have to wait for newer and more objective polling data. But what's virtually certain at this point is that the Episcopal church (and Anglicanism in general) is in its death throes in the United States. In ten years, I think it's very unlikely that the Episcopal church as we know it will even exist anymore. Their "clergy" are still relatively young though so there's every possibility that the "too many chiefs, not enough Indians" problem the Episcopal church is currently facing will only get even more lopsided as time goes by.

Meanwhile, one has to wonder how long it will be before Catholic priests feel like the mayor less of a small town and more of a major metropolitan area.

Holy Week (or "More Evangelical Goofiness")

I've written before about how evangelicalism really is a stripped down, unglued, incoherent photocopy of the Catholic Church but it feels like it's about time to revisit the topic.

It's come to my attention that Southern Baptist Church #2 for the first time in their entire history is offering a service on Good Friday.

I attended this and other Southern Baptist churches for several years and am here to say that basically anything related to Holy Week is pretty foreign to the evangelical model. But here once again we see evangelicalism swiping from the Catholic faith. It's almost as if they're beginning to understand that the faithful need time for sober remembrance of Our Lord's final words, scourging, crucifixion, death and burial prior to celebrating His resurrection. Also, it's not like SBC Church #2 is new to pilfering from the liturgical calendar.

But, why, that's crazy talk! Those are man-made traditions rather than God's Word!

The Coming Evangelical Collapse (Six Years Later)

"We're all Catholics now."
Mike Huckabee

The Coming Evangelical Collapse

You know, I've never been much of one to read the tea leaves. Generally speaking, I'm often the last one to get the memo about pretty much anything. I generally tend to believe in my own point of view until that awkward moment when reality rudely wakes me up.

But my record isn't all bad. Or even mostly bad. When I was teaching a small group at Southern Baptist Church #1, I saw first hand that modern Christianity was up against a lot of problems.

For one thing, it blew my mind how many of my supposed peers were absolutely ignorant of even the fundamentals of the faith. In the evangelical world, you are free to believe whatever you like about raptures and End Times and things like that but what's non-negotiable are big ticket doctrines such as the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and other things. I wasn't asking the group members to know the order in which David, Moses, Elijah and Abraham lived (although it wouldn't hurt). I merely sought to give them the core essentials of the faith.

The Catholic Church would say I was trying to catechize them.

However, my efforts were largely for naught. Many of them were incapable of explaining even the basics of what they believe or, heaven help them, why they believe it. The point came where I stopped wondering why they were even bothering to come to church at all and started wondering how long my (then) beloved evangelical Christianity could survive in the face of such alarming ignorance and apathy.

I needn't have worried, of course, because in short order it stopped being my problem. Getting fired publicly has that effect. People so ignorant of their faith and so eager to embrace (rather than engage) the culture couldn't long be counted upon to stand up for evangelicalism. Thus it would be fair to say that by the start of 2010, I was very scared of what evangelicalism might look in ten years' time.

Oddly enough, I ended up helping fulfill that myself what with my journey to the Catholic Church, but I digress.

Apart from not reading the tea leaves, I've also never been one to get swept away with hyperbole and doom-saying. Any fool can predict catastrophe because havoc and mayhem are the natural states of the world. Indeed, the market is strong for predicting future calamities.

Still, when the source article I linked to up top first caused a stir, it was completely off my radar. But I tripped over it not long after I joined the RCIA program about a year ago. And even though the late author freely admits to being no prophet, he outlines an oddly prophetic vision of the problems that have engulfed evangelicalism. It's easy to buy into because I glommed onto it relatively late in the game. Comparing this man's predictions to what has already come to pass, indeed, it is chilling how accurate his vision has been. At least up to now.

To wit: Twenty and thirty years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention pretty much ran the board on all or most social issues. Politicians crossed prominent evangelical pastors and leaders at their own peril. It would be fair to say that evangelicalism enjoyed a cultural and political hegemony that the first century Church could only dream of. And the SBC was not ignorant of this. On the contrary, they rather enjoyed their positions of influence.

Today though, your average sub-35 year old evangelical can easily explain the supposed merits and importance of gay marriage but fails miserably when the subject turns even to simple, no-brainer questions like the names of the four gospel writers found in sacred Scripture. I could end up being proved wrong but I suspect that's no recipe for building a future.

My point is that my generation was raised on dc Talk and told to vote Republican; our parents hoped that just about covered it. Meanwhile, secular (and I daresay more hostile) sources have used mass media to propagandize the youth on the entire liberal agenda and, in so doing, explained WHY those causes are to be protected, justified and legalized.

A good example of what I mean is Rachel Held Evans. She's part of the breed of hipster Christians ("I'm a Christian but not the George W. Bush kind of Christian,") who abandoned evangelicalism in favor of greener, more LGBT-friendly pastures. And what she ended up finding is the Episcopal church, naturally.

As aggravating and Christian-chic as Evans might be, she's hardly unique. Her parents' generation worried about winning that next midterm election while little Rachel and everyone else her age tuned in to the Daily Show. And now that her generation has grown up, what did anybody expect was going to happen?

Now, I confess that I still carry a certain amount of anger and resentment toward evangelicalism because of my negative experiences from 2010. To deny that would be a transparent lie. And in just a few weeks, I'd become obligated to confess that lie. So I'll instead freely admit that part of me can't help feeling (A) partially vindicated for all the fears and concerns I had for the movement's future back in 2009 and 2010 and (B) a little happy that so many of these puffed-up evangelicals are being humbled.

They fell in love with the world. This is what they deserve.

What might that mean for the Catholic Church though? Honestly, I have no idea because, frankly, I've always found it a bit hard to believe that the young people really enjoy liturgy and more traditional expressions of Christianity. Or if they do, it's primarily a superficial fad. What will they do and where will they go when the novelty fades?

Well, the deceased blogger speculated that evangelicalism's inevitable collapse has at least short term benefits for the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. And he may even be right; I wouldn't know. But I could sooner envision the Liberal True-Believers dropping out of Christianity entirely rather than attending churches who have staked their credibility on the sinfulness of homosexual relations, the impossibility of female ordination and other liberal hot buttons.

No matter the outcome, all that's really happening in my view is that Christianity isn't "shrinking" as such so much as the Nominals and In-Name-Only's are abandoning a religion they never truly believed in anyway.

Assuming that process completely or mostly wipes evangelicalism out, the only real player on the table will be two choices- Catholicism and, to whatever degree of viability, Eastern Orthodoxy.

I must admit that it's quite possible that there'd some penitent evangelicals who might come home to the Mother Church in Rome. However, that process would involve a lot of thoughtful consideration and no small amount of pride-swallowing.

Since both of those things are abjectly foreign to most evangelicals, I suspect the immediate beneficiary could be Orthodoxy. And part of me would be okay with that. I don't know what the Church's official position regarding Eastern Orthodoxy is but the Orthodox seem to have valid Orders and valid Sacraments. Is Orthodoxy the full expression of Christian truth? Perhaps not. But it's a lot closer to the mark than the Southern Baptist Convention was on their best day.

Assuming evangelicalism truly does collapse and that it happens in the relatively near future (and, at risk of saying "me too", that appears to be something of an inevitability), I see it as a good thing, ultimately. Christianity in the United States is shrinking, as I said, but what we're losing are those who were never truly invested in the faith to begin with. And they're leaving behind a more obedient and committed Body. And this would likely be a body more unified in faith, purpose and Sacrament than any time in America's history.

Whatever growing (or more aptly shrinking) pains could lie in store, in the end, isn't that a basically positive thing?

Altar Rails

One of the things I came to adore when I spent that year slumming it with the Anglicans is the altar rail.

To be honest, it took a little time for this recovering Calvinist to grasp the concept of what an altar rail is and the purpose it's supposed to serve. I was still viewing the world through Southern Baptist-colored glasses and the idea of some sort of "barrier" in the place of worship... it just bothered me.

What eventually soaked through my thick evangelical skull, though, is the sanctuary itself is a symbol of heaven. Contrary to everything Luther argued, the assurance we have of salvation comes from obedience to the Church. Heavenly citizenship is a hard-fought prize. It is guaranteed to nobody.

The altar rail beautifully symbolizes the divinely-guided and inspired Church feeding the flock. There IS a barrier between us and heaven. At least for right now. And the Church is the intermediary showing us the way.

Of course, the obvious flaw with all that is how seldom you see altar rails in a lot of Catholic parishes. Many of the New Mass parishes simply never had them. And a lot of old parishes actually had theirs removed.

However, the Anglo-Catholic moderately-High Church ACNA parish I attended that year had an altar rail and the realization of all this is why I can halfway see the argument that the Anglicans are (selectively and inconsistently) "more Catholic than the Catholic Church" on certain minor issues.

No, I don't buy that theory. At all. But I don't want to belittle it or the people who subscribe to it.

But at the same time, I do see merit to the idea that certain practices and symbols (however minor) are better preserved through (admittedly heretical) traditions than in today's Catholic Church. And there's nothing wrong with cultivating an appreciation for those things.

For me, the best example I can think of is the altar rail. Yes, it's a small detail. But sometimes little things can speak volumes, and rather eloquently at that.

Remembering Pope Pius XII

One of my blind spot's as a Catholic is the popes. Not so much the legitimacy of the papacy, you understand. Of that much, I've long been persuaded.

No, I mean the papacy as an historical subject. My ignorance here is easy for a non-Catholic to justify. It's hard to be invested in a subject which has no bearing on you. But as a Catholic, I'm coming to believe you owe it to yourself to know at least a little bit about the popes. So I've been trying to check through all that lately.

Still, one Pope who's always captivated my attention is Pope Pius XII. Yes, sure, Pope Pius X is probably the most famous of the Pius Popes, especially in recent decades. But somehow, Pope Pius XII is the one who always draws my interest.

For starters, he seemed to have a very intellectual faith. It's not like I knew him personally or anything; that's just my reading of the guy. He seems like a man who wanted to plumb the depths of the Church's rich history and tradition.

My journey to the Church is not a completely intellectual proposition. There's a lot of heart-felt conviction about it. But at the same time, I won't lie and tell you that it's not partly (or even that it's not mostly) based on my rational faculties. The Catholic Church has so much to offer in terms of theology, history and other things that it feels like I've finally found a place to park the car for the rest of my scholarly life.

For seconders though, no analysis of Pope Pius XII's reign is complete if you don't mention World War II. He inherited a world in crisis, possibly an existential one. He knew as well as anybody and perhaps better than most what the future might bring if mankind slid back into barbarism. And as much as he could, he acted to preserve peace and justice... which, during those dark years, were practically mutually exclusive concepts.

That's not a burden I'd wish upon anybody.

He led his sheep through the darkness as well as he could and comported himself during a time of major international upheaval in ways that many of his predecessors couldn't hope to equal even when facing relatively smaller conflicts.

My view of Pope Pius XII was that he was an extraordinarily intelligent man of God doing all in his power and with relatively few resources to be a light in the darkness.

What an example to aspire to!

Victory vs. Mercy- A Recovering Evangelical's Point of View

I've gone to pains to emphasize the evangelical roots from which I come. It's hard to completely remember now how I used to think. I know I'm not especially proud of some of my previous political and religious opinions in the past. But it's hard to remember exactly what I would've thought of [insert touchy news item here] in evangelical, to-the-right-of-God days.

But every now and then, I get a little bit of a reminder.

In a statement released on their website they proudly proclaim, "You will understand the importance of this place for our evangelization in the area. So the Sodom bar will become the pub of Mercy."

They are that type of old-school Catholics who actually care about the souls of those caught up in the gay lifestyle. You know, what we used to call mercy but is now often demeaned as judgmental.

Source- ncregister.com Basically, some traditionalist Catholics purchased a gay bar that went out of business. They're planning to in effect open a pub there intended to reach out to the homosexual community. They want to use it to give gays a place to be cared for. It'll still be a "gay bar" but not in the "hook up" way as before; it won't be a den of sin anymore. Instead, it'll be a haven of mercy.

I truly believe at least 99% of evangelical would've started an international fundraiser to purchase the bar for likely top dollar and turn it into an evangelical youth center. The pious "Bible-Christians" would've proudly thumped their chests over conquering "Satan's bar" as if it somehow proved something. Meanwhile, the previous owners of the gay bar laughed all the way to the bank and set up shop someplace else.

In the end, nothing would've changed, except maybe for the worst.

The Catholics didn't do that. They bided their time, bought the building for a song and found a way to use the bar to care for people in need of mercy rather than lord their "victory" over the "vanquished". And their humble, merciful, forgiving attitude means they don't even need to turn out even one convert at this point to be considered successful; they've already succeeded in their witness. Everything else from here is gravy.

I say all of this to say that I know very clearly which of those courses of action I would've taken back in the old evangelical days and I'm so grateful to be on a much better path now.