No wonder the Church is losing respect and influence

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, must be shedding rivers of tears in Heaven as she looks with profound sorrow on what has become of Her children in the last half-century. Two news stories this month confirm that the Church no longer has any significant influence on the morals and lives of the majority of people in two nominally Christian countries -- the United States of America and the once ultra-Catholic Republic of Ireland.

On 12 May 2015, a new study by the respected Pew Research Center revealed that in just seven years under Popes Benedict XVI and Francis, the number of self-identified Catholics in the USA has fallen from 23.9% (in 2007) to 20.8%. And now, for the first time, the "Catholics" are outnumbered by those claiming no church affiliation.

The study says that nearly a third of American adults (31.7%) reported being raised Catholic. The bad news, for the mainstream Church, is that fully 41% of that group no longer identify with Catholicism. This means that 12.9% of US adults are former Catholics, while only 2 (two) per cent of US adults have converted to the Church from another religion. No other religious group in the study had such a lopsided ratio of losses to gains.

Meanwhile... In Eire, what Patrick Buchanan called "the long retreat in the culture war" continued, as over 60% of Irish voters -- over 90% of whom would have been baptized Catholics -- voted in a binding referendum to legalize "gay marriage".

Irish bishops had urged them to vote "NO", but Pope Francis sat out the campaign, refusing to make any definitive pronouncement. Walt suggests Catholic voters read more into the Pope's silence -- "Who am I to judge?" -- than the appeals of their own church leaders.

Not that the Irish bishops were very strong in their condemnation of the abomination that is homosexuality. Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, pointedly refused to preach on this one of the Four Sins that Cry to Heaven for Vengeance, singled out in the Holy Bible (Genesis 18:20-21). Following the vote, Abp. Martin told the Irish state broadcaster RTE: "We [the Church] have to stop and have a reality check, not move into denial of the realities.... I appreciate how gay and lesbian men and women feel on this day. That they feel this is something that is enriching the way they live. I think it is a social revolution."

What Abp. Martin is really saying is: since the secular humanists and pushers of perversion disagree with God's commandments, God's Church must change the rules to follow the prevailing "morality". Here's a commentary from St. Peter's List on that astonishing proposition.

The “Sin of Sodom” is described as "carnal sin against nature, which is a voluntary shedding of the seed of nature, out of the due use of marriage, or lust with a different sex." Given modernity’s substitution of God and Nature with the will of the individual as an autonomous moral universe, sodomy – more specifically active homosexuality, not orientation – has become part of the new post-Christian norm. Neither Divine Law nor Natural Law form an external guide for the modern man; thus, the only boundary of autonomous individual is the autonomy of another. The boundary for what is and is not moral appears to be consent. Consequently, moral dialogue has been flattened to mere platitudes, e.g., this isn’t hurting anyone, it’s my body and my choice, love is love. Many often comment on the modern West’s apparent lack of morality, but few comment on the fact the West has lost the vocabulary to even discuss on morality.

Walt wonders if the Holy Father was properly instructed in the Catechism of the Church. "Who am I to judge?" he asks. And it seems he was a great fan of the notorious gay activist, radical priest, Michele de Paolis, with whom he is seen here concelebrating the Novus Ordo Mass.

Father di Paolis openly rejects Christian morality, pontificating: "Homosexual love is a gift from God no less than heterosexual." To claim that God is the author of evil is blasphemy, a damnable sin against the First Commandment. Moreover, Fr. De Paolis is a well-known promoter of the "anarcho-Catholicism" of the extreme left, which has been dominant since the 1970s in parts of Italy and South America, from whence comes Pope Bergoglio.

Getting back to the Irish vote... One could also interpret the vote in favour of "gay marriage" as a rejection by the Irish people of the Church that tolerated and covered up the perversions of sinful priests and religious who for decades assaulted Irish children in the most vile ways. So hostile had Eire become to the predations of the clergy that in 2010 its prime minister warned Benedict XVI not to include the Republic (or Northern Ireland) in a proposed tour of the "British Isles" because his safety could not be guaranteed.

But it's not just the paedophile priests who are to blame for the increasing rejection of the Church. Nor is it the lay gay Catholics or LGBT secular humanists outside the Church who are hell-bent (literally) on wiping out the Christian religion. No, dear Catholics, it is the Gay Mafia in the Vatican, and the Popes themselves! They are the stars pulled down from Heaven by Great Red Dragon, who stood before the "Woman clothed with the sun", when she was to be delivered, that he might devour Her son. (Apocalypse 12:1-4).

There is something seriously wrong -- dare we say immoral or even unChristian -- with the leadership of the mainstream Roman Catholic Church. It should come as no surprise, then, that people who once looked to the Church for guidance, direction and a moral code by which to live, are now deserting in droves.

Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady Help of Christians, Queen of the World, pray for us!

Further reading:
"Commentary on the 4 Sins that Cry to Heaven for Vengeance", St. Peter's List, 1 February 2014.
"Pope Francis’ meeting with homosexual activist Fr. De Paolis: the unanswered questions", LifeSiteNews, 28 May 2014.
"Papal Silence: The Most Decisive Factor in Ireland's Same-Sex 'Marriage' Victory" by Roberto Mauro, in Catholic Family News, 27 May 2015.