"When tolerance becomes a one way street it leads to cultural suicide"--Rep. Alan West.
We need to engage in conversation about this idea, especially as it pertains to the Catholic Church, but not neglecting other Christian bodies as well. To be blunt, we live in the most intolerant times I have experienced in my life. There are those who will immediately scream about the Civil Rights Movement and how horrible we were, and use that to expostulate that we are more tolerant now than then. I will say to that: Balderdash! The civil rights movement succeeded precisely because we were more willing to be tolerant then than now. Has the American polity been unwilling, in it's majority, to practice racial tolerance, the Civil Rights movement would not have succeeded. In fact, some of the violent expressions of that movement would have resulted in violent repression of it. Instead, after waking up the majority of Americans to to injustice among us, we worked to correct that injustice, with both white and black Americans doing the work. But now, instead of a government that was willing to at least look at the problem, we suffer under a government that is fomenting the problem, playing to the growing Anti-Catholic and Anti-Christian prejudice among the intelligentsia.
It must be said that there is visceral prejudice against Catholicism that cuts across both class and educational lines, but I must also say that I have encountered much, much more Anti-Catholicism from upper middle class people, and those with college educations than I have among the working class. In the matter of Anti-Christian prejudice in general, that I have found only among the college educated. I have met many working class people who do not embrace Christianity, but these people haven't really expressed outright hostility to it. What I see is a rise of a class division, in which the upper middle classes are hostile to Christianity, or support a kind of Christianity which is based in relativism and an embrace of the current trends or fashionable causes. Oddly enough, the Denominations which are facilitating this seem oblivious to their own demise, the rapid hemorrhage of adherents and the loss of their youth. I read an interesting statistic a couple of years back that only about 2% of young people who were raised in the Episcopal Church identified as Episcopal or Christian. The idea of relativism and embracing secular causes and measures had destroyed their faith, and their very willingness to believe. The Episcopal Church has the highest per capita income of any denomination, and the highest per capita educational attainment of any denomination.
A university education seems to not only be the portal to economic achievement, with university graduates earning much more than non university graduates, but the entry to a form of tolerance that tolerates everything except traditional morality and Christianity, with Catholicism being singled out for especial contempt.
I think that this particular observation has special significance for Catholics, because we are the second most affluent Christian Group in the US, and the second best educated. The contempt in which the church is held in Academia has entered into our own body, like an infection that resists antibiotics. One sees this almost daily. The most famous example would be Nancy Pelosi, and her tendency to pontificate against the Faith, while maintaining her pose--and it is nothing more than a pose--as a 'devout" Catholic. A rich, educated person, infected in University with feminism, and the false tolerance which supports everything except traditional morality is waging a campaign against the Church, especially against the bishops, by obfuscation, and conflating sociology with theology, to the detriment of the latter and the glorification of the former.
This tendency has permeated the Church, especially in it's outreaches that are of necessity administered and dominated by university trained professionals. Health care is an example. This area is one of the biggest battle grounds we are engaged upon, and it's one of our weakest spots. WE have the example of Carol Keehan essentially abandoning the Church-- and Christ--to endorse a relativistic concept of what is right, while feeding the cause of those who will tolerate anything but Catholic Liberties. We also have the example of Catholic healthcare West who severed ties with the church so they could engage in the relatively high profit practices of abortion, sterilization and contraception. There are lower profile issues as well. The Baylor University study that found that half of "Catholic" hospitals are performing elective sterilization procedures comes to mind. Hospitals are disputing this, attacking the methodology of the study and it's conclusions. One of the strangest refutations I have heard is that the study relied on the diagnostic and procedural codes used in hospital records keeping, and that these codes might be entered by mistake. I find it hard to believe that 50% of Catholic hospitals are that sloppy in their records keeping. Clearly someone is lying here, or at least misrepresenting the facts, and my money is on the hospitals. Our Bishops, Priests and Laity have refused to enforce, teach or follow the Churches teaching on this subject for 44 years, and these are the fruits.
We tolerated deviance from the Faith among those charged with it's preservation and transmission. G.K. Chesterton said "Where orthodoxy is optional, it becomes forbidden", and that has been the trend. When was the last time you heard a priest preach about contraception? When, for that matter, was the last time you heard a priest preach about Chastity? We have in the name of "tolerance" or "harmony" ceased to teach these things, and now among a great many Catholics they are ridiculed. And the lack of adherence to our own Faith has become ammunition for those who would silence us, and declare us marginal. To the point that the "progressive' regime that is dominating our republic seeks to evict us from the public square, to banish us to a Ghetto of Faith, that is only as free as what ever is kept in the four walls of the Church building itself. Cardinal George has noted that under the current regulations, there will be no Catholic Hospitals in the US in two years. We have already been driven out of the adoption services in many states, and our schools are being pressured to teach secular morality, under the guise of tolerance. All fueled by the heretics and apostates who haven't the honesty to leave the Church.
There are however, two statistics that we can keep in mind. The Church of Sweden, a Lutheran body, claims 70% of Swedes as members. About 2% of their members go to Church on Sunday, and most are atheists, who consider the Church a cultural institution, where one goes to get married and to get buried. The famous Scandinavian tolerance has rendered the Church there irrelevant and impotent in cultural discourse. Yet in Russia, where the Church had seen nothing but persecution and oppression between 1917 and 1991, 71% of Russians attend services on Sunday. Unlike Scandinavian Christians, American Christians are trying to resist, to fight back, and the ideologues in Government will push harder. They will use kangaroo courts and biased trials against our bishops--as in Philadelphia--and misrepresentations and lies against the faithful, as on TV now to oppress us. I believe that this oppression while being a Chastisement from God for our lukewarm faith and practice, will in the end give the Church in the US strength and vitality so at the end of it, we will emerge with great vigor, and become once again the salt of the Earth.
We need to engage in conversation about this idea, especially as it pertains to the Catholic Church, but not neglecting other Christian bodies as well. To be blunt, we live in the most intolerant times I have experienced in my life. There are those who will immediately scream about the Civil Rights Movement and how horrible we were, and use that to expostulate that we are more tolerant now than then. I will say to that: Balderdash! The civil rights movement succeeded precisely because we were more willing to be tolerant then than now. Has the American polity been unwilling, in it's majority, to practice racial tolerance, the Civil Rights movement would not have succeeded. In fact, some of the violent expressions of that movement would have resulted in violent repression of it. Instead, after waking up the majority of Americans to to injustice among us, we worked to correct that injustice, with both white and black Americans doing the work. But now, instead of a government that was willing to at least look at the problem, we suffer under a government that is fomenting the problem, playing to the growing Anti-Catholic and Anti-Christian prejudice among the intelligentsia.
It must be said that there is visceral prejudice against Catholicism that cuts across both class and educational lines, but I must also say that I have encountered much, much more Anti-Catholicism from upper middle class people, and those with college educations than I have among the working class. In the matter of Anti-Christian prejudice in general, that I have found only among the college educated. I have met many working class people who do not embrace Christianity, but these people haven't really expressed outright hostility to it. What I see is a rise of a class division, in which the upper middle classes are hostile to Christianity, or support a kind of Christianity which is based in relativism and an embrace of the current trends or fashionable causes. Oddly enough, the Denominations which are facilitating this seem oblivious to their own demise, the rapid hemorrhage of adherents and the loss of their youth. I read an interesting statistic a couple of years back that only about 2% of young people who were raised in the Episcopal Church identified as Episcopal or Christian. The idea of relativism and embracing secular causes and measures had destroyed their faith, and their very willingness to believe. The Episcopal Church has the highest per capita income of any denomination, and the highest per capita educational attainment of any denomination.
A university education seems to not only be the portal to economic achievement, with university graduates earning much more than non university graduates, but the entry to a form of tolerance that tolerates everything except traditional morality and Christianity, with Catholicism being singled out for especial contempt.
I think that this particular observation has special significance for Catholics, because we are the second most affluent Christian Group in the US, and the second best educated. The contempt in which the church is held in Academia has entered into our own body, like an infection that resists antibiotics. One sees this almost daily. The most famous example would be Nancy Pelosi, and her tendency to pontificate against the Faith, while maintaining her pose--and it is nothing more than a pose--as a 'devout" Catholic. A rich, educated person, infected in University with feminism, and the false tolerance which supports everything except traditional morality is waging a campaign against the Church, especially against the bishops, by obfuscation, and conflating sociology with theology, to the detriment of the latter and the glorification of the former.
This tendency has permeated the Church, especially in it's outreaches that are of necessity administered and dominated by university trained professionals. Health care is an example. This area is one of the biggest battle grounds we are engaged upon, and it's one of our weakest spots. WE have the example of Carol Keehan essentially abandoning the Church-- and Christ--to endorse a relativistic concept of what is right, while feeding the cause of those who will tolerate anything but Catholic Liberties. We also have the example of Catholic healthcare West who severed ties with the church so they could engage in the relatively high profit practices of abortion, sterilization and contraception. There are lower profile issues as well. The Baylor University study that found that half of "Catholic" hospitals are performing elective sterilization procedures comes to mind. Hospitals are disputing this, attacking the methodology of the study and it's conclusions. One of the strangest refutations I have heard is that the study relied on the diagnostic and procedural codes used in hospital records keeping, and that these codes might be entered by mistake. I find it hard to believe that 50% of Catholic hospitals are that sloppy in their records keeping. Clearly someone is lying here, or at least misrepresenting the facts, and my money is on the hospitals. Our Bishops, Priests and Laity have refused to enforce, teach or follow the Churches teaching on this subject for 44 years, and these are the fruits.
We tolerated deviance from the Faith among those charged with it's preservation and transmission. G.K. Chesterton said "Where orthodoxy is optional, it becomes forbidden", and that has been the trend. When was the last time you heard a priest preach about contraception? When, for that matter, was the last time you heard a priest preach about Chastity? We have in the name of "tolerance" or "harmony" ceased to teach these things, and now among a great many Catholics they are ridiculed. And the lack of adherence to our own Faith has become ammunition for those who would silence us, and declare us marginal. To the point that the "progressive' regime that is dominating our republic seeks to evict us from the public square, to banish us to a Ghetto of Faith, that is only as free as what ever is kept in the four walls of the Church building itself. Cardinal George has noted that under the current regulations, there will be no Catholic Hospitals in the US in two years. We have already been driven out of the adoption services in many states, and our schools are being pressured to teach secular morality, under the guise of tolerance. All fueled by the heretics and apostates who haven't the honesty to leave the Church.
There are however, two statistics that we can keep in mind. The Church of Sweden, a Lutheran body, claims 70% of Swedes as members. About 2% of their members go to Church on Sunday, and most are atheists, who consider the Church a cultural institution, where one goes to get married and to get buried. The famous Scandinavian tolerance has rendered the Church there irrelevant and impotent in cultural discourse. Yet in Russia, where the Church had seen nothing but persecution and oppression between 1917 and 1991, 71% of Russians attend services on Sunday. Unlike Scandinavian Christians, American Christians are trying to resist, to fight back, and the ideologues in Government will push harder. They will use kangaroo courts and biased trials against our bishops--as in Philadelphia--and misrepresentations and lies against the faithful, as on TV now to oppress us. I believe that this oppression while being a Chastisement from God for our lukewarm faith and practice, will in the end give the Church in the US strength and vitality so at the end of it, we will emerge with great vigor, and become once again the salt of the Earth.
1 comment:
Well said, Redneck! Thank you!
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