The State of Catholicism from a US Perspective
John Allen Jr. gives an interesting overview of the state of Catholicism from a US perspective.
American Catholicism Test
Even though I consider myself an agnostic, when I believed in God this is a pretty accurate description of how I used to be.
You scored as Traditional Catholic, You look at the great piety and holiness of the Church before the Second Vatican Council and the decay of belief and practice since then, and see that much of the decline is due to failed reforms based on the “Spirit of the Council”. You regret the loss of vast numbers of Religious and Ordained clergy and the widely diverging celebrations of the Mass of Pope Paul VI, which often don’t even seem to be Catholic anymore. You are helping to rebuild this past culture in one of the many new Traditional Latin Mass communities or attend Eastern Catholic Divine Liturgy. You seek refuge from the world of pornography, recreational drugs, violence, and materialism. You are an articulate, confident, committed, and intelligent Catholic.But do you support legitimate reform of the Church, and are you willing to submit to the directives of the Second Vatican Council? Will you cooperate responsibly with others who are not part of the Traditional community?http://saint-louis.blogspot.com – Rome of the West
What is your style of American Catholicism? |
Diversity in Roman Catholicism
I have created a diagram that represents as best I can (given my time constraints) the way in which a number of organisations fit within the scope of Roman Catholic belief. I have drawn an arrow up top to show increasing ‘conservatism’ from left to right. I have not used a precise definition of conservatism in this case and the organisations on the far right are not conservative as the term is normally used because they actually want change, just in the opposite direct to those on the left. The centre represents the current hierarchy and the arrows on the bottom of the diagram represent the direction of change that the organisations advocate – either liberalisation of doctrine or ‘reversion’ to previous doctrine and practice.
I have put each organisation into it’s place based upon my general understanding of each one, their public comments and their own professed beliefs. I may have gotten some of them wrong but I only intend to paint a general picture or trend. I am not trying to convey whether each organisation is right or wrong but merely where they sit in relation to the current hierarchy. The organisations are displayed in relation to the present hierarchy in the Vatican rather than the bishops as a whole worldwide or most of the laity. Some are lobby groups, some are support groups, some are educational groups and some are religious ministries.
It’s probably most informative to see the organisations as broadly fitting into three categories: change in the direction of further liberalisation, acceptance of the status quo, and change in reverse direction to the pre-Vatican II state of Catholicism.
