Evangelicals Love the Catholic Church

Man, am I nailing multiple updates this week or what?

Anyway, so something that's captured my interest ever since I first started the process of joining the Catholic Church is the concept of Protestants making the switch. I think this is rather natural inasmuch as I was a Protestant. And I was making the switch.

Incidentally, I'm not a big fan of the term "convert" because I'm not switching from one brand name to another. In my mind, I've embraced the fullness of the Christian faith as expressed in and revealed through the Catholic Church. I'm filling in gaps that were always present in my religious acumen. Such an act isn't a "conversion"; it's a "completion".

What I've noticed though is a tendency to assume that "young people" joining the Church do so for the liturgy. I have no particular expertise on that subject. First, these are the same "young people" who support same-sex marriage in numbers approaching the ridiculous. So clearly they can't be too overly concerned with the Church's teachings. Second, I can't quite shake the suspicion of their fixation for liturgy as strictly novelty.

To wit: to whatever extent they're churched, they're predominantly familiar with worship services that are similar to U2 concerts. Any type of liturgy might be interesting to them because of the novelty factor. That doesn't necessarily make for an enduring conversion

In any case though, I came across an article less about the all-important Millennials and more about joining the Church point blank, particularly as it concerns older people in leadership positions within evangelicalism.

We dare not underplay the importance of that.

Do clergy leave the Church? Sure. Happens fairly regularly, I'm sure. But what's interesting to me is the concept of married evangelical pastors switching to Catholicism. In most cases, Catholic priests cannot be married. It's already costly for an evangelical to "convert" to Catholicism because implicit in that is the acknowledge that his previous affiliation was in error.

But the deeper issue is that many evangelical leaders and pastors and teachers who convert do so in the full knowledge that they'll have to find a new career, different ways to service in the Church and very probably live in a higher level of poverty than they might be accustomed to as relatively well to do evangelical ministers.

The importance of this is not to be underestimated. True, it may not be as flashy and impressive as refusing to recant the faith on pain of martyrdom. But I think we should bear in mind the prospects of a loss professional prestige, reduced income, unemployment and possible harassment when we consider what some evangelical leaders face in joining with the Church.

The other thing the article makes a special point of mentioning though is the intellectual reasons many converts to the faith have. I'd be the last one to deplore liturgy since I've written about it on many occasions. But at the end of the day, my reasons for joining the Church are because of history, reason and logic.

This is the Church founded by Christ. You can trace today's bishops in an unbroken line back to Our Lord Himself. The Church Fathers were CLEARLY Catholic. Catholicism offers the only intellectually coherent and logical case for salvation. Numerous other reasons too.

However, the same is not true in the inverse. Sure, evangelicals may join the Church for intellectual reasons. But Catholics leave the Church for evangelicalism for emotional reasons. It has nothing to do with the Protestants making a better case or presenting a stronger argument. In fact, you could reasonably guess that perhaps Protestantism itself isn't even the issue. Many Catholics leaving has more to do with the Church itself than it does evangelicalism.

So, to put it another way, evangelicals join the Catholic Church because of the Catholic Church. Catholics leave the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church.

I find this very fascinating.

More to follow.

Work Training, RCIA and The Kids Today

As I said before, I've started training for a new job. Also as I said before, that's eaten up most of my free time lately. When I get home from work, all I feel like doing is eating and then going to bed. This won't last forever but it's how things are right now.

Still, there have been a few interesting developments lately.

First off, in my last post, I mentioned I'm not sure what my future is with RCIA because it will conflict with my work schedule once training ends. Unfortunately, I don't know any more now than I did when I first posted it because the outreach director at my local parish has been kind of incommunicado lately. No idea what will happen here.

Frankly, it irritates me because how hard can this possibly be to deal with? Surely they have issues like this pop up all the time. You'd think I'd have more to show for myself after an entire week of waiting for answers. But you'd be wrong.

Every once in a while, articles like this one pop up that make it sounds like The Kids Today are starting to embrace liturgical worship, this is the way of the future, evangelicalism is dead, etc.

Now, more and more it's hard for me to take evangelicalism as a form of church worship seriously. I can't deny that. At the same time though, you can't really underplay evangelicalism as a cultural force. I don't dispute that either.

What bothers me about articles like this is (A) the superficiality of them and (B) the abject lack of distinction between short term trends and long term cultural transformation.

Yeah, sure, The Kids Today might find liturgy interesting... today. But that doesn't say anything about what they've preferred over the past several years or where they're likely to stay in the years to come. It's simply right now that they dig going to Catholic Churches or high Lutheran places.

As interesting as that may be, it says nothing about what's happened in the past, what's likely to occur in the future and possible causes for this sea change in worship style.

It's just kind of there. And that's about it.

More to follow.

I Am the Ten Percent

Cruised the Fox News homepage a while ago and found this little gem- Is religion making a comeback in American popular culture?, a segment from The Five news/commentary show.

Based upon the success of The Bible TV miniseries, the pending theatrical release of Noah and growing church attendance, The Five unanimously believe that the trend is toward deep religious commitment in America. They don't do much to rationally argue their case, you understand. They simply posit that based on a few media factors and interpretation of statistics, religious adherence in general and Christian affiliation are growing in America.

I am skeptical.

Why? Well, for starters, the Protestant mainline is absolute smithereens. While a few may be true believers, those denominations have been engulfed by liberalism to the point where their churches are predominantly occupied by pot-smoking hippies and transgender "clergy".

Evangelical Christianity, specifically the Southern Baptist denomination, appears to be growing. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, there were approximately 33 million adult Southern Baptists in America in 1990 and 2001. That number rose to 36 million adults in 2008 (the most recent year for which we have data).

As for the Catholic Church, there's been a steady up-tick in numbers there as well. 46 million adults in 1990, 50 million in 2001 and 57 million in 2008.

The number of non-denominational Christians have risen as well. 194,000 in 1990, 2.4 million in 2001 and 8 million in 2008.

However, I submit to you that the numbers are incredibly misleading.

Dr. Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has been quoted as saying that only about 10% of Southern Baptist churchgoers are truly committed to the gospel.

Oddly enough (or not) that number is echoed by Fr. John McCloskey, who has reported that only about 10% of Catholics are "with the program". That is to say only that number will attend Mass on a regular basis, participate in confession at least once a year and other activities.

Those remarks tally fairly well with a 2008 Barna Research Group poll, which indicated that only 9% of those polled identify their relationship with God as the most important thing in their lives. To put that in perspective, 45% said family matters most while 17% said their money and career was most important.

So how do we account for the disparity between committed believers both among the Southern Baptist and the Catholic Church and the people who apparently are checking their bank accounts during the homily?

Rather easily.

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. ... Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
-- St. Matthew 7:14, 21 (KJV)

Incidentally, mainliners/non-Catholics/non-SB's may be bothered by the fact that they were virtually ignored through this entire discourse. But the reason for that is, as per the above, the Protestant mainline hasn't so much declined as completely atrophied. The Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians/Anglicans and others are simply not viable denominations anymore.

Not saying they'll disappear tomorrow. Even now America has a memory of what those denominations have meant to the country over the years. But the days of them being a real force in American life have come and gone. Soon the denominations themselves will be too small to even measure in most polls. They're simply not relevant anymore. They will only be less relevant as time goes on.

In fact, the obvious conclusion here is that Christianity in America is becoming increasingly polarized between the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention. Children born today probably won't considering mainline churches as viable options for church attendance when they come of age. In point of fact, the Protestant mainline may well be consigned to the history books by that point.

Nature abhors a vacuum. The mainline long ago negotiated away Truth and Authority to accommodate the culture. The dwindling numbers are their just desserts.

Also, consider the breakdown of numbers. 76% of those polled by the American Religious Identification Survey identified as "Christian". Of those, 25% identified as Catholic. 51% identified as non-Catholic Christian.

However, the Southern Baptist Convention's contribution to that 51% figure is 16%. Subtract their number and you're left with 35%. These are all other denominations most of which either don't even have churches in your local area or won't in ten years.

The Catholic Church is not only the largest single Christian tradition in the United States, it's the only one experiencing any type of growth. We may all be Catholics before this is over.