From the Archbishop

Having taught theology for 20 years, my experiences in cateshesis bear out the Archbishop in the following:

The illiteracy goes beyond history and other academic subjects. Notre Dame social researcher Christian Smith and his colleagues have tracked in great detail the spiritual lives of today's young adults and teen-agers.[2] The results are sobering. So are the implications. The real religion of vast numbers of American young people is a kind of fuzzy moral niceness, with a generic, undemanding God on duty to make us happy whenever we need him. It's what Smith calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." Or to put it in the words of a young woman from Maryland, "It's just whatever makes you feel good about you." [3] As Smith observes: "It's not so much that Christianity in the United States is being secularized. Rather more subtly, either Christianity is [degenerating] into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, [it's] actively being colonized and displaced" by a very different religious faith.[4]

This is the legacy — not the only part of it, but the saddest part of it — that my generation, the boomer generation, has left to the Church in the United States. More than 70 million Americans describe themselves as Catholics. But for all practical purposes, they're no different from everybody else in their views, their appetites and their behaviors. This isn't what the Second Vatican Council had in mind when it began its work 50 years ago. It's not what Vatican II meant by reform. And left to itself, our life as a Church is not going to get better. It's going to get worse. So if we want a real renewal of the Catholic faith in Philadelphia, in the United States and worldwide, it needs to begin with us, right here and right now.

That leads me to my second point: what we need to do about the pastoral realities we face. In calling for a Year of Faith, Pope Benedict said that "the renewal of the Church is . . . achieved through the witness offered by the lives of believers." [5] That means all of us — clergy, religious and lay. We all need repentance, and we all need conversion. (The topic of my conclusion in my book!)

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Being Catholic is ALWAYS Fun

“ F ive years ago, I would have been afraid of saying anything like what the pope said in his [recent] interview,” the Rev. Tom Reese told Sally Quin . “I’m ecstatic. I haven’t been this hopeful about the church in decades....” “It’s fun to be a religion reporter again. For a while it felt like being on the crime beat. It’s fun to be Catholic again.” George Weigel has raised the question of whether or not Fr. Tom has been paying attention throughout the last quarter of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. Among his findings on the legacies of Pope Francis' predecessors: Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J. millions of adults have been baptized as or entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. new forms of campus ministry in the mold of JPII's "New Evangelization" have developed across the United States. Catholic-studies programs have bloomed on genuinely Catholic campuses across the U.S. the Church has produced the most c...

This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D: This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

"The Spirit of Vatican II"

My advice to one confronted with doubt sown by those who make reference to “correct interpretations of Vatican II” is to reflect closely upon the words of John Paul II: With the Council, the Church first had an experience of faith, as she abandoned herself to God without reserve, as one who trusts and is certain of being loved. It is precisely this act of abandonment to God which stands out from an objective examination of the Acts. Anyone who wished to approach the Council without considering this interpretive key would be unable to penetrate its depths. Only from a faith perspective can we see the Council event as a gift whose still hidden wealth we must know how to mine . In short, it is this abandonment, this interpretive faith perspective that is woefully lacking in many who would offer to explain what the Council taught in “the spirit of Vatican II.” Watch here to see what abandonment looks like!

From "The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God"

….At the close of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI remarked that Christianity, the religion of God-Incarnate, had encountered the religion of man-made God. He was of the opinion that much of the Council was given over to demonstrating the compatibility of Enlightenment belief with Catholicism. Several years hence, on June 29, 1972, Paul delivered another assessment of the state of the Roman Catholic Church since the close of Vatican II. As Cardinal Silvio Oddi recalled it (in an article first published on March 17, 1990, in Il Sabato magazine in Rome) the Holy Father told a congregation: We have the impression that through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: it is doubt, uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation. And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the...

Neomodernism's Attack on Religious Life- (continued).

Who’s that on page 180 of that book? This is Sister Mary Benjamin, IHM. Sister Mary Benjamin got involved with us in the summer of ‘66, and became the victim of a lesbian seduction. An older nun in the group, “freeing herself to he more expressive of who she really was internally,” decided that she wanted to make love with Sister Mary Benjamin. Well, Sister Mary Benjamin engaged in this; and then she was stricken with guilt, and wondered, to quote from her book, “Was I doing something wrong, was I doing something terrible? I talked to a priest—” Unfortunately, we had talked to him first. “I talked to a priest,” she says, “who refused to pass judgment on my actions. He said it was up to me to decide if they were right or wrong. He opened a door, and I walked through the door, realizing I was on my own.” This is her liberation? How excited they were, to be delivering someone into God’s hands! Well, instead they delivered her into the hands of nondirective psychology. ...

Do Not Be Ashamed

T he demeaning and of Pope Benedict is quickening in combination with the growing exaltation of Pope Francis in the secular world and among the "progressive" dissidents within the Church. Thus I believe a little review of his Pontificate is in order, as the signs of the times required him to shoulder a heavy cross and suffer a quiet type of crucifixion due to his exceptional faith and courageous writings and actions. Pope Benedict took strong, long overdue and very necessary actions against moral corruption within the clergy, the religious orders and within Catholic aid agencies. He appointed many bishops faithful to the true Vatican II, and removed many who were a cause of scandal to the Church. He took actions on the liturgy and other issues that were not popular, but which he saw as essential to preserving Catholicism and Christian culture much as laid down in his The Spirit of the Liturgy. The full story of his papacy remains to be told. “And blessed is he who ...

Satan makes his way to us through the libido!

Let us take a great civilization historically devoid of pornography, and examine what happens once the door is opened a crack, for smoke to enter:

Popes are not Presidents...

John Allen of the Globe has opined today that there are two key words that capture why many church officials believe it’s so important to avoid what they regard as false expectations of swift change to the church’s ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion and the other sacraments: Humanae Vitae, Paul VI's 1968 document reasserting the church’s traditional ban on birth control. It rocked the world, Allen writes, "in part because the reforming energies of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) had led people to suspect change was just around the corner, in part because the pope himself had created a commission to study the issue." The o utcome of the Pope’s evential reassertion of the ban “soured public opinion on Pope Paul, in some ways inflicting a blow from which his papacy never really recovered. ” On matters related to marriage and the family, the Church has always seen the fertility of the husband and wife as a gift from God and the end ( telos...

My Intended Audience

I have written for those Catholics born and perhaps catechized before Vatican II or immediately thereafter who as yet are unaware of the true teaching of the Council. It should not surprise the reader that there are Catholics whose lifestyles do not differentiate them all that much from those who are not Catholic and/or Christian. Moreover, many Catholics of the “baby-boom” generation are alienated from the Church all together because their only exposure has been to a superficial, cultural Catholicism, impotent in the face of an American culture increasingly without faith. Conversely, many others have left the Church – hungrier, as they say, for a more “biblically-based church.” The book is also intended for young people of the “JP II” generation of Catholics, born long after the council but perhaps not fully aware of the turmoil spawned by dissent in the Church which, though on the wane, is still with us today. These young people, especially those in authentically Catholic college...

Parent Trap? No, Cohabitation Trap!

And here I thought people were wising up to the fact that living together in sin before marriage wasn't leading to human fulfillment and bliss, and then to come across Mr. Johnston'e piece: The Co-Habitation Trap GEORGE SIM JOHNSTON There's no such thing as a trial marriage. Recently, a college classmate told me that her 25-year-old son has a girlfriend about whom he can't make up his mind. The couple have been going together for two years. He is serious about the girl, thinks she'd make a good wife, but tells his mother that he's not sure about taking the plunge. Should he propose? Should he take more time to think about it? Maybe date other girls to gain perspective? The son is at a loss. My friend is generally a sensible person, and she gave her son what she thinks is good advice: why not move in with her and see how it goes? In other words, do a trial marriage. If the sharing of bed and board goes smoothly, then tie t...

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