Earlier today (see preceding post) Walt mentioned the long and complex process involved in canonizing someone -- making them a saint of the One True Church. I was talking about Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who died in 1979 and has only now been credited with the first of two miracles necessary to canonization.
Too bad that Archbishop Sheen wasn't alive today, as the Church seems about to relax the rules a little. Agent 36 alerts us to this report from the Onion.
VATICAN CITY—Alerting faithful around the world to changes regarding its process of beatification and canonization, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi announced today that the Roman Catholic Church will now bestow sainthood on any man or woman who attends weekly mass on a regular basis.
"After careful deliberation and prayer, the Church has elected to enter any believer into the Canon of Saints so long as he or she is pure of heart and shows up to mass once a week, or even three out of four times a month," Lombardi wrote in a statement distributed to all dioceses worldwide, noting that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints will promptly begin taking up the cases of any parishioner who arrives on time and stays for the whole thing.
"We are also waiving the requirement that individuals be dead before attaining sainthood. As long as you take Communion and stick around for a few minutes after the service, you're pretty much in. You can be patron saint of anything you want—good health, food, music, whatever—as long as you're sitting in that pew."
Lombardi said that in addition to revising canonization procedures, the Vatican would now allow anyone who attends mass to put on the priest's vestments at the end of the service and play the church's organ if they want.
It's satire, right?! But like all good satire, it's based on the truth. A new Pew Research Center survey has found that indeed, Holy Mother Church is having trouble putting posteriors in the pews -- this in spite of the rock star popularity of Francis the Party Pope.
According to the survey, 85% of American Catholics have a favourable view of the second of two living popes. That's up from 79% in September. The first of the two, Benedict XVI, was viewed favourably by 67% to 83% in the past. JPII got higher ratings than both of them, ranging from 91% to 93% in past surveys.
Dear Catholic readers, what lesson do we learn from this? Just about anyone who sits on the Throne of Peter is bound to be viewed in a positive light by the majority of Catholics, no matter who he is or what he does.
But will the same majority pay attention to his teachings? Errr, no. According to the same survey, 63% of Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly -- the candidates for sainthood mentioned above -- want the Church to change Her teaching on birth control. 72% want to allow priests to get married. 68% support women’s ordination to the priesthood. And 50% support same-sex "marriage".
The percentages are even higher among Catholics who attend Mass less than once a week. That whirring noise you hear underneath you would be the sound of real saints spinning in their graves.
Showing posts with label women "priests". Show all posts
Showing posts with label women "priests". Show all posts
Friday, March 7, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Univision poll shows world's Catholics deeply divided on moral issues
The Spanish-language network Univision has just released the results of a massive poll of Catholics in 12 countries with some of the world’s largest Catholic populations. The poll confirms that there are sharp differences of opinion amongst self-identified Catholics over Church teachings.
The poll of 12,000 Catholics, conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International, reveals a church dramatically divided between the developing world in Africa and Asia, which hews closely to traditional doctrine on issues such as same-sex "marriage", abortion and contraception, and the "Western" countries of Europe, North America and parts of Latin America, where there is considerable support for practices that the Church traditionally taught are immoral.
Recent pronouncements by Pope Francis have muddied the holy water on things like homosexuality, but we'll leave the party pope's pandering aside for now.
Catholics in developing countries are more accepting than their European and American counterparts of Church teachings on homosexuality and contraception. The poll found, for example, that 99% of African respondents oppose same-sex marriage, while in the USA only 40% think it's unnatural and disgusting. (OK, I admit to a bit of editorializing there.) 80% of Africans (polling was done in the Congo and Uganda) accept the Church teaching that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood, while only 30% of European Catholics agreed.
Should divorcés who remarry outside the Church be able to receive communion? Traditional teaching says not, but only 19% of Catholics in the European countries and 30% of those in Latin America agree.
Most disturbing to traditionalists was the finding that the majority of Catholics, worldwide, would allow abortion, at least in some circumstances. Overall, 65% said abortions should be allowed: 8% in all cases and 57% in some, such as when the mother’s life is in danger. The highest support for abortion is in European countries, then Brazil and Argentina, then the USA, where 76% said it should be allowed in some or all cases.
Walt recommends reading the entire article in the Washington Post: Pope Francis faces church divided over doctrine, global poll of Catholics finds
Towards the end of the piece the writers raise a question with grave implications for the future of Church doctrine. Now that the Church is run by a man whose ambition is to be the most popular pope ever -- even more popular than JPII! -- is Church doctrine to be altered according to the tides of public opinion?
"Since the liberalizing and divisive Second Vatican Council," they write [Walt's emphasis], "Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II appeared to approach the gap [between dogma and public opinion] with an explicit plan: Narrow it. They emphasized doctrine and called for institutions that wanted to call themselves Catholic to follow the rules.
"So what is Pope Francis’s plan, if he has one? Critics say his solicitation of opinions wrongly gives the appearance that Catholicism is a democracy.... Jose Casanova [a sociologist of religion at ultra-liberal Georgetown University] said it’s not clear what Francis plans to do with the research, but the approach 'fits with his idea of the church going out into the world and encountering the world as it is, not expecting the world to come to it.'
"The Church 'may be in a period of moral evolution,' he said."
Moral evolution, eh... That's a pretty ominous phrases. Walt wonders if it really means what's right and wrong is subject to change without notice, depending on the results of the latest poll. "If people don't like what the Church teaches, then the Church will teach what they do like." Lord, save us!
The poll of 12,000 Catholics, conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International, reveals a church dramatically divided between the developing world in Africa and Asia, which hews closely to traditional doctrine on issues such as same-sex "marriage", abortion and contraception, and the "Western" countries of Europe, North America and parts of Latin America, where there is considerable support for practices that the Church traditionally taught are immoral.
Recent pronouncements by Pope Francis have muddied the holy water on things like homosexuality, but we'll leave the party pope's pandering aside for now.
Catholics in developing countries are more accepting than their European and American counterparts of Church teachings on homosexuality and contraception. The poll found, for example, that 99% of African respondents oppose same-sex marriage, while in the USA only 40% think it's unnatural and disgusting. (OK, I admit to a bit of editorializing there.) 80% of Africans (polling was done in the Congo and Uganda) accept the Church teaching that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood, while only 30% of European Catholics agreed.
Should divorcés who remarry outside the Church be able to receive communion? Traditional teaching says not, but only 19% of Catholics in the European countries and 30% of those in Latin America agree.
Most disturbing to traditionalists was the finding that the majority of Catholics, worldwide, would allow abortion, at least in some circumstances. Overall, 65% said abortions should be allowed: 8% in all cases and 57% in some, such as when the mother’s life is in danger. The highest support for abortion is in European countries, then Brazil and Argentina, then the USA, where 76% said it should be allowed in some or all cases.
Walt recommends reading the entire article in the Washington Post: Pope Francis faces church divided over doctrine, global poll of Catholics finds
Towards the end of the piece the writers raise a question with grave implications for the future of Church doctrine. Now that the Church is run by a man whose ambition is to be the most popular pope ever -- even more popular than JPII! -- is Church doctrine to be altered according to the tides of public opinion?
"Since the liberalizing and divisive Second Vatican Council," they write [Walt's emphasis], "Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II appeared to approach the gap [between dogma and public opinion] with an explicit plan: Narrow it. They emphasized doctrine and called for institutions that wanted to call themselves Catholic to follow the rules.
"So what is Pope Francis’s plan, if he has one? Critics say his solicitation of opinions wrongly gives the appearance that Catholicism is a democracy.... Jose Casanova [a sociologist of religion at ultra-liberal Georgetown University] said it’s not clear what Francis plans to do with the research, but the approach 'fits with his idea of the church going out into the world and encountering the world as it is, not expecting the world to come to it.'
"The Church 'may be in a period of moral evolution,' he said."
Moral evolution, eh... That's a pretty ominous phrases. Walt wonders if it really means what's right and wrong is subject to change without notice, depending on the results of the latest poll. "If people don't like what the Church teaches, then the Church will teach what they do like." Lord, save us!
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