[Pastor Isaac Peters]

People who attend the Masses of the Roman institution increasingly reject the nonsensical "theology" of Rome (and quite frankly, can you blame them?). So what holds them to that "church"? This article provides the answer: Catholic "churches" are increasingly becoming social clubs where the fluffy bunnies go to enjoy one another's company and sometimes speculate about what their gods want from them.

Relationships create church, not loyalty to the institution

They disagree with the Roman Catholic Church’s stances on women, ordination, contraception, and gays and lesbians, but still, they remain faithful to their individual Roman Catholic parishes.

* * *

I received a helpful response to this question from a friend with whom I used to serve on the board of the Women’s Ordination Conference.

She wrote: “What do I have to lose? Relationships. Twenty-six years of sharing joys of childbirth, carrying the sorrows of death of parents, and now the beginnings of the loss of spouses. Relationships that simply could not continue in any practical way with the hundreds of people that I developed over all of these years.”

My friend speaks profoundly to the eucharistic spirituality of community that -- perhaps more than any other aspect of being Catholic -- keeps Catholics going to church.

* * *

Though church-going Catholics may be not be finding helpful answers to their deepest ethical and theological questions from the institutional church, they seem to still find meaning from their parish community.

* * *

In the course of our conversation it became clear that their deepest connection with God came in two experiences: in the moment of looking into the eyes of the communicant and in the meal that they would share with members of the congregation after Mass. (The parish was in New York City, so, true to the culture portrayed in Sex and the City, most folks headed to brunch after the 11:30 a.m. liturgy!)

So when these cafeteria Catholic fluffy bunnies get together to play church, they declare that the Roman institution has gotten its own doctrines wrong all these centuries and that their feel-good deity has anointed them to set the record straight. While the Romanists most certainly have gotten it wrong all these centuries, the answer is not to engage in the intellectual dishonesty of making up a new religion as they go along and calling it Catholicism. They might as well go the remaining 5% of the way and become atheists whose social outlets are purely secular. The answer is to stop guessing what God wants and start reading the Bible to find out.

[Samuel Coleridge]

This is why we are seeing an upsurge in the Unitarian movement. Much of it is coming from displaced Catholics fed up with the official policies of their church.

Yours in reaping the benefit of the Catholic Church's misfortunes,
Sam

[landoverlover]

It's interesting that Catholic women use contraceptives in the same proportion as women with no religious affiliation. The gals use a chinee menu approach - pick one from column A, one from column B..... Anything that doesn't suit their hedonism and ego is just tossed aside after some lame justification.

The demographics are interesting too. While the Catholic church is growing among ignorant, poor, starving third-world mud people who are easily led by the promise of a candy bar, their numbers are rapidly shrinking among people who are white and educated. The dwindling number of (white) Catholic priests in America are partially replenished, when they are replenished at all, by messicans.

I predict the slow death throes will go until it is mercifully extinct among people who matter.

[Pastor Isaac Peters]

Originally Posted by Samuel Coleridge

This is why we are seeing an upsurge in the Unitarian movement. Much of it is coming from displaced Catholics fed up with the official policies of their church.

How is that an improvement? By converting from Romanism to Unitardianism, they're just changing lanes on the broad way to hell.

[Bobby-Joe]

Originally Posted by Pastor Isaac Peters

How is that an improvement? By converting from Romanism to Unitardianism, they're just changing lanes on the broad way to hell.

Not Unitardianism's god is so nebulous as to make worship totally pointless. In there version God invents the world and then goes on permanent vacation after hiding His tracts. There is pretty much no reason why you can't go around killing anyone you want with Unitardianism since there is no after life. I know I would be thrill killing people if I believed that kind of nonsense. I even have a list already written of up the people I would kill if God didn't exist.