Wednesday, December 14, 2005

The Unfinished Business of Vatican II

An article by Dr. Marcellino D'Ambrosio on TCRnews.com

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The decline in Mass attendance highlights another significant fact; fewer and fewer people who call themselves Catholic actually follow Church rules or accept Church doctrine.

For example, a 1999 poll by the National Catholic Reporter shows that 77 percent believe a person can be a
good Catholic without going to Mass every Sunday, 65 percent believe good Catholics can divorce and remarry, and 53 percent believe Catholics can have abortions and remain in good standing.

Only 10 percent of lay religion teachers accept Church teaching on artificial birth control, according to a 2000 University of Notre Dame poll.
And a New York Times/CBS poll revealed that 70 percent of Catholics age 18-44 believe the Eucharist is merely a "symbolic reminder" of Jesus.

Given these alarming statistics and surveys, one wonders why the American bishops ignore the profound crisis that threatens the very existence of the Church in America.

After all, there can be no Church without priests, no Church without a laity that has children and practices the Catholic Faith.

Yet at their annual conferences, the bishops gather to issue weighty statements about nuclear weapons and the economy. Then they return home to "consolidate" parishes and close down schools.

As Cardinal Ratzinger said, the post-Vatican II period "has definitely been unfavorable for the Catholic Church."

This Index of Leading Catholic Indicators is an attempt to chronicle the continuing crisis, in the hope that a compilation of the grim statistics-----in a clear, objective, easy to understand manner-----will spur action before it is too late.
-----Kenneth C. Jones, January 2003


Te Pope himself calls it a FAILURE.
What will it take for you to GET IT?