As per usual, the Vatican is incapable of any real self-reflection

Why the lack of priests? We'll mention the abuse scandals, sure, but it's really "secularism's fault." Celibacy? Nope that's everyone else's problem. Not allowing women to be priests? Nope, not at all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/vatican-blames-lack-of-priests-on-secularism-abuse-parents/2012/06/25/gJQAooBP2V_story.html

Instead, they've hired a former Fox News reporter and (current) Opus Dei member to run PR:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/world/europe/vatican-hires-fox-news-correspondent-as-media-adviser.html?_r=1

 

Prepare for much much more pissing and moaning about how the mean evull libbburral media is out to get them.

And probably a world-class conniption fit if the M.N. is reelected, something they have been incessantly thundering against from the pulpits since early 2008 on orders from on high.

 

This caught my eye in The Guardian: "The Vatican today made the "attempted ordination" of women one of the gravest crimes under church law, putting it in the same category as clerical sex abuse of minors, heresy and schism."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/15/vatican-attempted-ordination-women-grave-crime

 

Ugh. Just revolting.

 

Anybody know a priest under 35? I'd like to know where they get recruits in America.

 

They don't. They're importing them from overseas.

 

Second Mile?

 

Cardinal Law . . . please come to the white courtesy phone . . . if you can tear yourself away . . .

 

The political scene the past few years seems to come straight from some Ludlum novel.

Vatican City--2012. A shadowy cabal of billionaires, their puppets in Congress and the Catholic Church have joined forces to crush the tide of progressivism they claim is overtaking the globe. With a right-wing media mogul leading the way, the cabal will stop at nothing to achieve its goals. Can the one man standing in their way, a mild-mannered former professor, win the day?

Find out when The Patriots' Paradigm hits bookstores this November.

 

The Vatican is writing off America as a lost cause. Here's an interesting survey:

http://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/files/2012/05/ARISGENX2012.pdf

The link looks at Gen X trends in church attendance. Unlike previous generations, they are LESS likely to attend church the older they get (also, they tend to become more Democratic with age, unlike previous generations). The interesting number to me was that the vast, vast, vast majority -- almost all -- of the church attendance decline among Gen X is related to people leaving the Catholic Church:

"Generation X’s shift away from religion can be attributed to defections among Catholics. Self-identified Catholics declined from 33% in 1990 to 26% in 2008.

"Generation X’s Catholic population fell by 700,000 identifiers during 1990-2008. The loss of 1.7 million white Catholics was not offset by the addition of one million Hispanic Catholics."

Not all left churches completely. Some went to nondenominational Christian churches. But most left completely. Our UCC church is made up of mostly ex-Catholics, but the problem in getting them is that the ones who leave the church are so fed up, they're not likely to consider ANY church.

 

You know what would be cool? If the Vatican had an Olympic team.

 

Why WOULDN'T it?

My question is, how can one person under 70 be involved with the catholic church?

What percentage of american adults believe in no birth control? 2%? 4%?

So every other person walking into a catholic church - how do they reconcile that?