Evangelicals keep Christ in Christmas...except on Christmas Day?

True dat. We're singing Christmas Eve candlelight service and then back in at 9:30 for rehearsal and regular Sunday service, at which I'm singing a solo. Christmas - always lucrative for musicians.

 

Yup. Maybe the Church will finally allow female and married priests when they realize that its relevance in this country depends on it, but I'm not hopeful.

 

Don't expect any changes with this Pope, he is ultra conservative.

Christmas on Sunday for Catholics actually kills two birds with one stone. We'll probably go to midnight mass after dinner and call it a weekend.

 

Given the Catholic Church is the largest religious organization in the U.S., I don't think it's really concerned about compromising long-held principles to gain more relevance.

 

At some point very soon, they won't have anyone left to say mass.

 

I'm not an evangelical, but your post seems full of the pre-conceived bias that one *must* go to church on Sundays to fulfill a religious requirement. Many churches believe that Saturday night services are fine, or have no such requirement at all.

I understand that certain self-proclaimed Christian politicians seem to be antithetical to many people's understanding of moral living, but a church that hosts "15 Christmas Eve services in five locations" on Christmas Eve is hardly worthy of scorn.

 

Will that still be the case when the Baby Boomers are worm food though?

 

Indeed. It's already a huge problem in my area, there are hardly enough right now.

 

That's definitely a problem. Importing even more priests is obviously only a partial solution.

But the idea that the Catholic Church is going to be irrelevant in the U.S. is hyperbole. Even if parishes close, the most committed Catholics will travel to Mass on Sundays and continue with their beliefs. And those Catholics represent an important demographic in U.S. politics.

To begin, let's start with today. Examine the leaders of the country: President, VP, Speaker, Senate Majority Leader, Nine SCOTUS Justices.

Of the 13 most influential people in the U.S.: Eight are at least nominally Catholic (Biden, Boehner, Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor). Three are Jewish (Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan). One is Mormon (Reid). One is Protestant (Obama).*

Now, let's look at the most important religious demographic in swing voting in the past 5 elections: Catholics mirror the general population almost exactly each time. If you win the Catholic vote, you win the swing vote, you win the election.

That translates into political power. For example, the Obama administration's slow-play with the proposed HHS regulations: Catholic bishops and the minority of Catholics who don't believe in contraception complain about the requirement that Church-connected organizations will have to fund contraceptive services, and Obama quietly but quickly starts walking away from his support for the rule.

There's no religious organization in the United States that has as much pull as the Catholic Church, and it's in large part because the Church (contrary to popular belief) is not rigidly partisan. It's pro-life and anti-death penalty. It's anti-gay marriage and pro-immigrant. It's pro-environment and pro-public displays of prayer. The Catholic Church is pretty liberal on economic matters, on matters of immigration and crime.

The vote of young Catholics who are regular churchgoers, particularly, is decidedly pro-life, but is often to the left on most other issues. These are voters who are almost always up for grabs in presidential elections. Swing demographics don't get marginalized. They get courted.

Just from a crass political perspective, the Catholic Church isn't in any danger of losing its relevance.

Being able to spread the Gospel? That's a completely separate question.

*If you want to throw in minority leaders of both houses, you add one Protestant (McConnell) and one Catholic (Pelosi).

 

Cross Point church in Nashville....I've been there. They have this TOTALLY awesome Halloween drama depicting a kid's trip into hell. The technical stuff makes it a Hollywood type production with scenes going from room to room with rotating actors and actresses. It also helps that some of the big wigs at one of the local Nashville TV stations are members of the church. There's a scene where the parents are watching TV in a bedroom when there's a news bulletin of a shooting at a Nashville teen club made especially for this production. Very real scenes.

But as far as Christmas, this does point out a flaw in the megachurch system. It's not like you can reduce the service to a smaller chapel on the property. But with 20,000 members, you'd think you could recruit enough people where the burden wouldn't exist.

Our church seats 1,500 and I didn't realize for months that guys who wonder the halls during the service are providing security and watching for thefts. Someone once raided the entire food pantry during a regular Sunday service. I could only imagine the staff required to put on a service for 20,000.

 

This problem will be eliminated as soon as sharia law takes hold.

 

4 p.m. Mass on Xmas Eve, two birds one stone. Sadly, it's the highpoint of the weekend.