It's a phenomenon that I wish more Catholics in the USA would join into since, in my view, it is the ONLY way that any change might be forced on the fossilized bitter old queens that run the Vatican. Namely, stop attending and supporting the Church and allow membership to plummet and hit the Church hierarchy where it hurts the most - in the checkbook. True, the bitter old men in dresses view the third world and Africa in particular as their new "promised land," but without money flowing from the USA to the Vatican, their efforts to prey upon less educated societies and spread a 13th century mindset across that continent will be rendered much more difficult. As I have said before, I am no longer going to set foot in a Catholic service for any reason - even to please my mother when I visit her. Catholic readers need to encourage their families and Catholic friends to stop supporting a reactionary and corrupt institution. There ARE other options including the Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church which provide mass services nearly identical to a Catholic mass - and which usually have friendlier congregations than the Catholic churches I have attended over the years. Here are some highlights from the Herald on the situation in Australia:*
HUNTER-based Catholics are shunning Mass in droves, with irrelevance, abuse at the hands of clergy and disagreement with the Church's teachings on sex among the main reasons. According to research carried out by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, only 10.2 per cent of Catholics in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle attend Mass. The national average for Mass attendance across the Church's 28 Australian diocese was 13.8 per cent.
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Maitland-Newcastle Diocese vice-chancellor for pastoral ministries Teresa Brierley said the figure was of significant concern. . . . The most common reason was that people felt it was no longer "required" to be a committed Catholic, followed by disagreement with the Church's teaching on sexual issues and disillusionment due to sexual abuse revelations.
HUNTER-based Catholics are shunning Mass in droves, with irrelevance, abuse at the hands of clergy and disagreement with the Church's teachings on sex among the main reasons. According to research carried out by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, only 10.2 per cent of Catholics in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle attend Mass. The national average for Mass attendance across the Church's 28 Australian diocese was 13.8 per cent.
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Maitland-Newcastle Diocese vice-chancellor for pastoral ministries Teresa Brierley said the figure was of significant concern. . . . The most common reason was that people felt it was no longer "required" to be a committed Catholic, followed by disagreement with the Church's teaching on sexual issues and disillusionment due to sexual abuse revelations.
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With the U.S. Catholic Bishop's release of their "pastoral letter" on marriage, the stage has been set to perhaps help drive more American Catholics out of the pews - or so one can only hope.
1 comment:
I'm not sure how they measure the attendance rate in Australia, but here in the US this is how it is done. Every year, usually in October, ushers count the number of people actually attending. This is done on one or more Sundays. If done more than one Sunday, the result is averaged. This number is then compared to the number of persons registered in the parish. Thus, if 300 people are counted, and the parish has 900 people registered, the attendance rate is said to be 30%.
Now, here is the interesting part: not all Catholics are registered in a parish. Canon law says that everyone who is baptized Catholic is Catholic. But there really is no way of knowing how many baptized Catholics there are. They can only count the people who are registered. Now, if 30% of the registered people go to Mass, the actual attendance rate is much, much, lower, since the unregistered aren't even counted. An attendance rate of 10% in Australia is likely to be in reality half that, or less.
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