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Cardinal Raymond Burke has for the precipitous decline in priestly vocations upon the feminization of the liturgy. His assertion prompts two questions. What would qualify as “feminization”? Have we in fact done that to the liturgy? The question that the assertion should not prompt is, “Would a feminized liturgy actually cause young men to turn away from the idea of the priesthood, in indifference, perplexity, or bemused contempt?” For example, would a sight of two priests twirling a-tippytoe like big-bellied ballerinas at an Easter Vigil service, along with a troop of girls waving scarves and sashes, for six minutes and more, to Aaron Copland’s arrangement of The Lord of the Dance, have any natural appeal whatsoever to the overwhelming majority of boys and young men who know to what sex they belong? Rather, that sight would pretty much guarantee that those fellows would be stifling laughter, or staring at their knees while waiting for it all to stop, or glancing toward the doors. And just imagine if one of the boys had made the dreadful mistake of inviting a non-Catholic friend to the service, or someone wondering why anybody should take religious faith seriously.

I sometimes wonder whether we Catholics actually want vocations to the priesthood. It’s reasonable to judge people’s intentions by their habitual actions. If I do something experimental in one of my college classes, and a host of good students flee the course, I might, if I were stubborn, try it again in modified form. But if it still happens that the good students flee, and I persist in what is an experiment no longer, a reasonable observer may conclude that I don’t care if they leave. It won’t matter if I express my supposed intentions all the time, crying out, “This course needs far more students in it, and far more of the best!” Why, I might pray for those students to enroll and to stay enrolled, just as reasonably as I might pray that I could keep banging my head against the wall and not have headaches.

In fact, if my actions not only continue to fail me, but begin to hurt many others also, and I still persist, that reasonable observer may attribute to me more than incompetence or indifference. He may conclude that I really want the bad result; I am glad of it. Our summer diocese, serving more than one hundred thousand Catholics, has no seminarians. I mean that literally: not one. They have ordained two men in the last ten years, one of whom has left the priesthood to get married. Churches are closing everywhere. The stalwart priest who is our pastor has had to say Mass for five churches scattered over twenty miles.

The farther-flung diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, serving not quite one hundred thousand Catholics, has forty eight seminarians, at least two priests in every parish, no churches being shut down, and plenty of schools. The obvious question is, “Why doesn’t everyone try at least a few of the things they do in Lincoln?” Or, more properly put, “Why doesn’t everyone stop doing nine or ten of the things they never have done in Lincoln?”. Professional envy explains some of the resistance.

Stubbornness explains some more. Timidity and worldly political commitments might also play a part. But I have begun to wonder whether some of our leaders are animated by a death-wish for a Church in which they no longer really believe. Here, then, from what I have observed in the failing diocese—and we are in an excellent position to observe—are the things you should do if you want to kill vocations to the priesthood.

I will enumerate them in several categories: Dilute the faith. Fighters want something to fight for. Make sure there is nothing to fight for.

Do not preach the full doctrine of the Church. Never speak about the terrible sins of our age. Be more sensitive about offending a couple of the people who still show up for Mass, than about offending God. Cut the sixth commandment out of the ten. While you are at it, cut out the second, the third, and the ninth too.

Equate Christian “charity” with rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s, God’s, your own, your children’s, and your community’s. Assume that everybody who is not named Hitler is going to heaven, because some middling bit of natural pleasantness is enough to please the Almighty. “Be nice,” said Jesus, “even as your Uncle Ronnie was nice,” your divorced Uncle Ronnie who lived with his girl friend, but was good to dogs and small children that were not his to take care of. Lower the bar so that even a moral cripple could fall over it, and at the same time make it seem as if the cripple’s feat of acrobatics, rather than the grace of God, will earn him a place in heaven.

Never suggest that the faith is a matter of eternal life or death. Turn the Sacrament into snack time.

Get rid of any remaining altar rails. Make sure that everybody takes the Sacrament into his hands, like a fortune cookie. Tell the people to stand afterwards. Go as far as you can to prevent people from kneeling during Mass. Make it as difficult as possible for people to receive the sacrament of confession. Treat it as insignificant. If somebody does want the sacrament, roll your eyes and make sure that the penitent knows how much it annoys you.

Don’t take the penitent’s sin seriously. In fact, give the penitent the impression that he can go on and commit the same sin with impunity. In this way you will make it likelier that a moose will amble down Main Street than that a sin-burdened soul will seek you out, or that a healthy line of them will be making their way to the confessional. And, while you are at it, make sure there are no confessionals.

Turn them into closets for brooms, mops, and bleach. Strip the altars. Are there paintings in your church? Cover them with whitewash, or take them down.

Is there an old high altar in the back of the sanctuary? Chop it up and use it for fuel. Better still, tear down two or three old churches and build a new one in the shape of a gymnasium.

If you place the stations of the Cross on the side walls, make them so small and ambiguous that no one can tell what they are from more than ten feet away. Put the priest’s chair in the center, at the back wall. Get rid of any trace of genuine folk art, or of the great artistic heritage of the Church. Sing twaddle instead. Wet sloppy twaddle. Shut down your schools.

Give them away to the government to manage, as they have done in Canada. Hire secularists to teach there, or, better, Catholics who hate the Church. If you have an all-male high school, turn it into a co-ed school. If you have a boys’ basketball program, and you don’t have the money for a girls’ basketball program, shut it down. Put RCIA into the hands of laymen of dubious learning and piety. Do the same for religion classes in school. Try to make sure that your classes in history or English will be just like those taught anywhere else.

Make Catholic education into public education with holy water—as a stalwart in the battle to restore Catholicity to Catholic schools has put it to me most trenchantly. Be effeminate. Get rid of every single hymn that has anything to do with Christian soldiership. Castrate the rest of the hymns.

Or, better, favor hymns that make Jesus into a kind of safe sweet Boyfriend, with whom you can make out on the couch now and in heaven later. Let the music be led by women, especially women who like to be seen and heard performing it. Put the hand-raising cantor up front, to upstage the priest and Christ. Let girls do silly dance routines up and down the aisles. If you can, have five or six girls do that, in the company of one boy whose mother has obviously compelled his attendance, and who stands there gritting his teeth and fuming. Favor any musical instrument except the organ. Let the piano player tickle the keys like a hired performer at a bar, so that the communicants can, as they return to their pews, slip a fiver into the hat, right next to the long-stemmed champagne glass.

Use as many altar girls as possible. Discourage the boys from joining. Give them nothing important to do.

Use as many women lectors as possible. In fact, once Mass has become too bland for girls themselves, use the old ladies as acolytes, busying about the altar as if they were laying out the tablecloth and silverware for a party. Never suggest that the Church needs men for anything. Make “man” into an obscenity. Never suggest that fathers and mothers play complementary roles in the family. Never suggest that Jesus had something important in mind when He chose twelve men as his brothers.

Suggest instead that to be a genuine Christian, a man has to stop being a man. Buy the silly feminist notion that Christian women have been “oppressed” for nearly two thousand years. Then pray for vocations, after you have done your level best to make sure that you will never have any. Editor’s note: In the photo above, then Bishop George Niederauer, who later became Archbishop of San Francisco, celebrates Mass at Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City, along with girls who perform liturgical dances on the altar. By Professor Esolen is a teaching fellow and writer in residence at Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts, in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Esolen is a regular contributor to Crisis Magazine and the author of many books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Regnery Press, 2008); Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (ISI Books, 2010) and Reflections on the Christian Life (Sophia Institute Press, 2013). His most recent books are Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching (Sophia Institute Press, 2014); Defending Marriage (Tan Books, 2014); Life Under Compulsion (ISI Books, 2015); and Out of the Ashes (Regnery, 2017).

Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005.

In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent.

Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005.

Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph.

Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said.

“Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World.

Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Comparison between the MOST Religious Countries (Honduras, El Salvador) and the LEAST Religious (Sweden, Norway, Japan) countries in the World. Here below is what I got from the Internet. Religion in Sweden, Norway, Japan, Honduras, El Salvador: 1. Sweden: Despite the official numbers, religiosity in Sweden plays a limited role compared to the European average.

In a Eurobarometer Poll in 2010, just 18% of Swedish citizens responded that “they believe there is a god”, although a further 45% answered that “they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force”.[6] In a 2009 Gallup poll, 17% answered yes to the question “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”.[7] Less than 4% of the Church of Sweden membership attends public worship during an average week; about 2% are regular attendees.[8] Some scholars consider the nation to be a place where religion is regarded with “benign indifference”.[9] 2. Norway: In modern times, Norway – like many European countries – has seen a great decline in religiosity, at least among non-immigrant Norwegian endemics, and most Norwegians are irreligious: atheism and agnosticism are the most common metaphysical views according to Zuckerman. According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2010,[5] 22% of Norwegian citizens responded that “they believe there is a God”. 44% answered that “they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force”. 29% answered that “they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force”.

5% answered that they “do not know”. Phil Zuckerman, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College estimates atheism rates in Norway as ranging from 31 to 72%, based on various studies.[6] 3. Japan: Demographics on religious belief for the 20th century A 1952 survey by Yomiuri Shimbun found that 64.7% of Japanese believed in a specific religion.[32] That number fell to 35% in 1958 and continued to fall to 31% in 1963 and 1968 and 25% in 1973 before climbing back up to 34% in 1978. Dear romo1900, Looking back two months, I did not use clear words. I apologize for misleading you and maybe other readers.

You mistook me for one who thinks people should leave the Church; I think the contrary is true. Leaving the faith will put you in danger concerning eternity.

To be clear, I support those who leave an individual heretical parish (or priest) for a faithful parish (or priest). Second point: Concerning anything Catholic, HuffPo is not a good source. They do not give the Church a fair hearing. HufPo likes “dissenting Catholics” and dislikes faithful Catholics. Thus HuffPo’s posts are highly suspect. Do not take them at face value. Third point concerns polling: Do you know how and why most published polls produce false results, and how this occurs?

I’ll start you forward; 50,000 interviewed in 57 countries means about 871 per country. Do you know how the pollsters derived their sample? Is it representative of the Irish population? If you have been properly trained in statistical research methodology, then you can see the rest.

I urge you forward. You can figure out some useful things for yourself. Fourth point: Reuters as source? See comments on HuffPo above. Final point: I suggest you be very careful in using polls as research. The future of secularism and non-belief is paganism, which is hell on earth and maybe hell for eternity.

That is why the Church offers a way to avoid self-destruction. I wish you the best. But the Poll findings were NOT just published in HuffPo but in numerous other Publications. And the Pollsters involved are very Experienced and Respected around the World.

Maybe, you should NOT dismiss something just because it appears in one source. ————————————————– Here is something else that might interest you. The Bible WAS WRITTEN by MAN, whether you choose to accept it or Not. In fact, it was written by UNKNOWN MEN, whose names are forgotten in Antiquity. So it is WORSE that written by Man with Names.

At least the men in recent times have names and can assume responsibilities for their writings. Those Biblical writing do NOT even have names of Men whose names can assume the responsibilities of their works. YOU DO put your Trust in Man, because the Bible WAS ALL WRITTEN by MEN, whether you choose to accept it or Not. In fact, it was written by UNKNOWN MEN, whose names are forgotten in Aintiguty.

So it is WORSE that written by Man with Names. At least the men in recent times have names and can assume responsibilities for their writings. Those Biblical writing do NOT even have names of Men whose names can assume the responsibilities of their works.

You need to read this Book below: ———————————————- Biblical Nonsense: A Review of the Bible for Doubting Christians Paperback – January 19, 2005 by Jason Long (Author) ————————————————– Here are some examples of the reviewers of the Nonsense from the Bible Most Helpful Customer Reviews 277 of 307 people found the following review helpful This book is a must have for doubting christians!By Tim W. On August 17, 2005 After I had done much bible studying as a christian and became gradually overwhelmed by the lack of consistency, out of a desperate need for answers I decided to level the playing field and venture into the world of skeptical biblical scholarship including my study of the writings of former christians, ministers, and pastors who have left Christianity, including this book by Dr Long, Biblical Nonsense. I knew that if the bible is the remarkable document it is heralded to be, surely it can stand up to the most rigorous critical analysis. After pouring over thousands of pages of information from both sides of the issues including this book by Dr.

Long, I have learned that the average skeptic has a much deeper and broader knowledge of the Bible than most average people who claim to be Christians. An exhaustive reading of the comparative literature from both believers and former believers that is widely available in print and on the internet for all to see, proves this to be true. The real truth of the bible sceptic is that he is ultimately led by a search for the truth, not for the blatantly dishonest reasons parroted by the likes of JP Holding and other Christian apologists.

I have discovered for myself that Christian apologists will begin with the fundamentalist-driven conclusions or assertions (that the bible is inerrant, the bible is the spirit-written word of god, every word in the bible is true) and try to find any facts or evidence in support of these three assertions(and many others), conveniently ignoring strong and often irrefutable evidence that contradicts their haughty preconceptions. At the very least, this mannner of biblical analysis only seeks to support an intellectually dishonest and uncompromising foregone conclusion. Helpful to you? Yes No ————————————————– 195 of 226 people found the following review helpful Simply Irrefutable By Savanthar on October 19, 2005 This book is simply irrefutable. Jason Long does an excellent job in substantially proving the Bible is not the divinely inspired “Word of God,” but instead of mishmash of humanly inspired words attributed to a god.

Long does an excellent job refuting the Bible on many grounds and he does it in an easy to read style that would even penetrate the hard heads of Fundamentalists should they choose to accept the challenge to their faith by actually reading this book. Long attacks the Bible from scientific perspectives, logical perspective Christian claim that it is infallible.

He shows the Bible is rife with contradictions that haven’t been effectively handled by Biblical apologists, despite their reaching for straws and claiming otherwise. He also exposes several mistranslations of the original text that change the whole meaning of the commonly accepted scripture. These errors in translation are still evident in many Bibles to this day. To make the correction to some of these mistranslations would change all of accepted Christian dogma! So much for inerrancy. Some Bibles are translated more honestly than others and Dr. Long goes into this quite well.

This book lays it on the line and in my opinion will put Christian and Jewish apologists out of business. It is simply that good. Read it and find out for yourself.

I’m sure you won’t be disappointed in the sophistication of scholarship that went into writing and presenting this little gem of a book. Even the “great” Christian apologist J.P. Holding came here to put up a review on this book and his review couldn’t even come close to refuting Biblical Nonsense. It makes me wonder how these apologists stay in business and keep fooling the believing masses with their non-scholarly baloney slicing (B.S.) Dr. Read more ›8 Comments Was this review helpful to you? Yes No ————————————————- 181 of 213 people found the following review helpful This book will free you from illogical fears based on fantasies By Tim L on February 8, 2006 I am 38, have been a conservative Christian all of my life. This book was the first exposure to me of anything concerning the Bible other than what I have been conditioned to believe.

Long makes this simple to understand yet gives totally irrefutable evidence as to why the Bible is a man made fiction. The realization that comes with knowing that Hell is a myth created by men wanting to frighten people into certain behaviour is very liberating. I only wish I had the first 38 years of my life back to not waste on fantasies.

——————————————- If all that does NOT Convince you, you need to click on “Bible Nonsense” on the Internet and you will find galore that the Bible is the most DUMB and REDICULOUS book ever Written by Men. There are evidence Galore that shows that the Bible is SHEER NONSENSE!!! ————————————- •. Did you read? 2/3 (two thirds) of Catholics give up their Faith.

If Catholicism is so true, why do so many Catholic GIVE UP their FAITH???? Again, I ask you the SAME QUESTION?? Why do TWO THIRDS Catholics give up their Faith if Catholicism is so TRUE??????? Maybe the reason is that Catholicism is NOT TRUE, but is FALSE and people realize it!!

Read below: ——————————— I got this from the Internet under “PEW Research Centrum Forum on Religious & Public Life”. APRIL 27, 2009 Faith in Flux Revised February 2011* ———————-The reasons people give for changing their religion – or leaving religion altogether – differ widely depending on the origin and destination of the convert. The group that has grown the most in recent years due to religious change is the unaffiliated population. Two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated and half of former Protestants who have become unaffiliated say they left their childhood faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, and roughly four-in-ten say they became unaffiliated because they do not believe in God or the teachings of most religions. ———————Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change. Many people who leave the Catholic Church do so for religious reasons; two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated say they left the Catholic faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, as do half of former Catholics who are now Protestant. Fewer than three-in-ten former Catholics, however, say the clergy sexual abuse scandal factored into their decision to leave Catholicism.

———————————- Did you read? 2/3 (two thirds) of Catholics give up their Faith.

If Catholicism is so true, why do so many Catholic GIVE UP their FAITH???? Again, I ask you the SAME QUESTION?? Why do TWO THIRDS Catholics give up their Faith if Catholicism is so TRUE??????? Maybe the reason is that Catholicism is NOT TRUE, but is FALSE and people realize it!!

————————————– •. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close.

But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005.

In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005.

The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition.

Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said.

Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion.

We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought.

According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes.

According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist.

However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’.

Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said.

“Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING.

The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought.

According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes.

According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005.

Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’.

Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World.

Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought.

According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist.

However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005.

The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith.

For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity.

“Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion.

We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Savoring Mass (the only event of love, by love, & for love in the world) By Samuel A.

Nigro, M.D., 8-2-08 When you go to Mass, will you please mentally project yourself onto the altar and be at one with the priest throughout the entire celebration! Activate your self. Pay attention to all on the altar.

You will then recognize, celebrate and savor the experience of participating in the thousands of years old promotion of love—and Truth, Oneness, Good and Beauty! Ancient Secrets! Will you please attend, realize, embrace and encourage yourself and others in the only event wherein love has been promoted for millennia from start to finish! (For the short sighted and ignorant, “love” is not the same as sex – it never has been and never will be). As you participate intensely when with a live rock-band, do the same with the love-band i.e., the Mass. Use the Mass Mantra over and over: “Life Sacrifice Virtue Love Humanity Peace Freedom Death” –over and over to fill your mind spiritually when not reciting all the words read and heard in the liturgy. It is foolish to go to Mass expecting to be passively entertained when much more is going on.

Any entertainment is secondary to actively doing mentally, and even physically when possible, all that the priest does. Say to yourself or out loud all that he says. Say to yourself or out loud what is read or recited. Sing, or say as if singing, the songs which are always tranquil, loving and positive. Attend to and find the love themes in every element of the Mass—listen for them, search for them, say them for yourself, your family, your country and the world. Embrace the Mass totally by investing in all that goes on, watching the priest and doing all with him enjoying an elevated state, finding peace and transcendental oneness with all. It is love of self; it is love of family; it is love of community; it is love of humanity; it is love of the universe; it is the love of God.

Feel it, get it, and give it, at each Mass. Once a week is not enough, and there is no Sunday without it. All in the Mass is a metaphorical way of living above, beyond and in spite of the craziness of the world! At least think “Be nice to everybody” for a change and break the millennia old barriers of separateness between people–reach out, shake hands and wish peace to all, including strangers. Let the metaphorical realities of water (Life, the Father), wine (Pursuit of the Transcendentals, the Holy Spirit), and blood (Liberty, Jesus the Christ) fill your being at Mass filling yourself with Love and its automatic symbiotic Sacrifice.

And “Let His Blood (and Body) be on us and our children,” being certain there is a House of the Lord for every one of us. Recreate and relive the Divine Sacrifice for the love of sinners helping all change to a transcendental life by rejecting sin which is willful entropy or the willful increase of non-being. Give thanks for all including, not knowing any alternatives, the “Chosen People” who did what needed to be done. Participate in and experience the Sacrifice of Jesus – the metaphorical Reality of an ultimate sacrificial bloodletting separation from the body and partake of Love spending a few moments in an ecstatic Love Revolution ( a“Lovelution”) to sanctify the universe.

Taste and see how good the Lord is! LIVE THE LAST WORDS OF CHRIST—A POETIC EFFORT of sorts These are the eight ensoulment “plays” to win the “game” of life by following the “rules” of life. They constitute “LOVEOLUTION” (page 616)–the revolution/evolution brought by Jesus through the Church. Sacramental living is to participate in the pre-Big Bang Eternity. From Samuel A. Nigro, M.D.’s books ANCIENT SECRETS, SOUL OF THE EARTH and EVERYBODY FOR EVERYBODY: (One of the LAST WORDS OF CHRIST can apply to every activity Learn ENSOULMENT (the Anthropic Schema) of the basics of Christian living— Sacramental, universal, scientific, virtuous, transcendental {Therapeutic.

As existing in basic physics. (Otherwise, it is entropy.) [Mass Mantra: Life, Sacrifice, Virtue, Love, Humanity, Peace, Freedom, Death without Fear] “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” “Pater, dimitte illis, quia nesciunt, quid faciunt.” Confess into a unity spectrum giving hope and identity {Selective Ignoring. “spectrum”-a splitting of energy into position-time relationships. [ Humanity] “This day thou shall be with me in Paradise.” “Hodie mecum eris in Paradiso.” Holy Order into a dimension for Life (the Father) giving courage and being {Non-Reactive Listening. “dimension”-space coordinates (length, width,height) and time.

[ Virtue ] “Woman, behold thy son. World, behold your mother.” “Mulier, ecce filius tuus. Omnes, ecce mulier tuus.” Baptism into a dignity event giving faith and matter {Living Things are Precious. “event” –a point in space-time of something certain that happens. [ Life ] “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” “Deus meus, Deus meus, utquid dereliquisti me?” Holy Communion into an integrity field giving charity and truth {Subdued Spontaneity Non-Self Excluded. “field” –a matrix existing throughout space and time.

[ Sacrifice ] “I thirst.” “Sitio.” Matrimony into an uncertainty for Liberty (the Son) giving temperance and good {PersonhoodConscious of Consciousness (C2) for the Species. “uncertainty” –accuracy of position is inverse to accuracy of movement. [Freedom ] “It is finished.” “Consummatum est.” Extreme Unction into a spirit singularity giving justice and beauty {Detached Warmth and Gentleness. “singularity” –a point of space-time curvature infinity at gravitational collapse. [Death without Fear ] “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.” “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.” Confirm into an identity quantum giving prudence and oneness {Affect Assistance. “quantum” –the indivisible unit of giving and receiving energy.

[Peace ] “The earthquake finale.” “Il Terremoto.” Grace into a force Pursuing the Transcendentals (the Holy Spirit giving holiness and being. {Make that relationship count!

The Flag of Mankind and: “I pledge to treat all humanely by caring for and respecting other’s bodies; by understanding other’s minds but being true to myself without disrespect; and by accepting the emotions of others as I control my own. I will have mercy on others with gentle liberty and empathic justice for all.” (Check out PeaceMercy.com) “force” –that which affects matter particles—transcendental strings between human particles. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005.

In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent.

Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005.

The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’.

Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion.

We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! I live in Poland. From time to time I have to go ‘home’ to California – specifically the Dioceses of Oakland and Sacramento – and I dread it. I dread it because I attend Mass daily, and I know I will have to attend Mass that is totally feminized.

The priest cannot make himself say ‘Father’ about God, so he replaces ‘Father’ with the word “God.” Everything that might sound masculine is stripped away – and surprise, surprise, most of the people in attendance are women. I think this problem has more universality to it than the US, though it is acute here and perhaps throughout the west. We will see later this year, but it’s hard to imagine 3 million people here coming in passion to see the Pope like was experienced this past week. Of course, with more comments like don’t reproduce like rabbits we might not ever experience that. I lived in Italy for a year about a decade ago and I can tell you attending Mass was fairly sterile. People just seemed to come and go fulfilling an obligation without hardly any passion, and nobody talked much about it outside of church.

There seems to be something about the evolution of western culture and the accumulation of mammon that makes many people lose faith that God is in control. Benedict XVI was and is an excellent pope; his yes is yes and his no is no as the gospel advises us. Benedict XVI is an excellent teacher and priest; his multiple works on the Faith are a true treasures to the Faith. His three volume Jesus of Nazareth is a treasure. His short talks on the Fathers of the Church is unsurpassed.

His encyclicals on Hope,Charity and Faith are inspiring especially his Spe Salvi. The constant insulting of Benedict done by the Francis Church is despicable. I remember a priest I know getting all teary eyed when he announced that Francis appeared on the cover of Time magazine; I replied to him that I thought appearing on the cover of Time magazine was not a good thing and most probably a bad thing. The NYT gave him good marks; the NYT is run by and for people who hate the very essence of the Catholic Church. The Americanized priests were shouting with joy for the ambiguity that is the Francis Church.

Thank God that the SSPX Society exists and thank God that Bishop Lefebreve kept the Faith. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought.

According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide.

Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said.

Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph.

Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), —- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!!

The COMPARISON between the MOST Religious Countries (Honduras, El Salvador) and the LEAST Religious (Sweden, Norway, Japan) countries in the World. Here below is what I got from the Internet. Religion in Sweden, Norway, Japan, Honduras, El Salvador: 1. Sweden: Despite the official numbers, religiosity in Sweden plays a limited role compared to the European average. In a Eurobarometer Poll in 2010, just 18% of Swedish citizens responded that “they believe there is a god”, although a further 45% answered that “they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force”.[6] In a 2009 Gallup poll, 17% answered yes to the question “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”.[7] Less than 4% of the Church of Sweden membership attends public worship during an average week; about 2% are regular attendees.[8] Some scholars consider the nation to be a place where religion is regarded with “benign indifference”.[9] 2. Norway: In modern times, Norway – like many European countries – has seen a great decline in religiosity, at least among non-immigrant Norwegian endemics,[ and most Norwegians are irreligious: atheism and agnosticism are the most common metaphysical views according to Zuckerman. According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2010,[5] 22% of Norwegian citizens responded that “they believe there is a God”.

44% answered that “they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force”. 29% answered that “they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force”. 5% answered that they “do not know”. Phil Zuckerman, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College estimates atheism rates in Norway as ranging from 31 to 72%, based on various studies.[6] 3. Japan: Demographics on religious belief for the 20th century A 1952 survey by Yomiuri Shimbun found that 64.7% of Japanese believed in a specific religion.[32] That number fell to 35% in 1958 and continued to fall to 31% in 1963 and 1968 and 25% in 1973 before climbing back up to 34% in 1978.

The TRUE message is that Christianity as a whole is DECLINING towards EXTINCTION!!! If you don’t believe me, just click on “Christanity decline” and see what you get on the Internet!! Even Christians/Catholics themselves admit that they are DECLINING World Wide and they are arguing whose fault it is and what they can do to stop the DECLINE. Fankly, I don’t think that the Catholic Christ ever existed.

And I have been finding MORE and MORE Christianity EXPERTS are agreeing with me. Bible EXPERTS who are in the KNOW have written Books and Books showing how Christianity and the Bibles are Complete LIES and FRAUDS! 1, The Bible manuscripts have NO Authenticity at ALL!!! During the first 300 years after the supposedly death of Christ, anyone can write anything they want and there were NO system to verify the TRUTH of the Writings or the VALIDITIES of the authors. Any “Tom”, “Dick”, or:Harry”, can write anything about Christ and sign his name a “Mathew”, “Mark”, “Luke, or “John”.

There were NO NEWSPAPERS or INTERNETS to verify or dispute anything that was written or the name of the Author that was signing his name to the manuscript. There were therefore Documents ABOUND about Christianity. None of any of these manuscripts can be in any way verified and in many cases, there were NOT even signatures or there were FAKE Signatures to these Documents. It was NOT until Emperor Constantine who lived some 300 years after the supposedly death of Christ that anything was done to try to systemize Christianity and the Bible.

He tries to use Christianity as a means of satisfying his POLITICAL Ambitions. That is why he called a Council of Nicea and have the BEST Scholars in the Empire together and tried to create a new Religion called Christianity. This Council of Nicea is the one that formalized the Bible. They threw away any document that seemed to contradict the DIVINITY of Christ. The basics of this NEW Bible is supposedly made to form a NEW Religion. Any Manuscript that shows Christ in an UNFAVORABLE Light or UNGODLIKE behaviour was THROWN away or DESTROYED.

That is why you have Unauthorized Gnostic Documents HIDDEN AWAY in caves, because the Emperor commanded those UNACEPTABLE Documents to be eliminated. Anyone keeping these unacceptable documents were in violation of the EMPEROR”S EDICT and therefore were subject to PUNSHMENT and DEATH. This is why there are NO TRUE Authenticity for the Bible.

They are an EDITED Collection of MANUSCRIPTS EDITED to SERVE a POLITICAL PURPOSE, NOT the seek the TRUTH of any TRUTH. This is why EVERYONE NEEDS to READ Bart D. Ehrman’s latest NEW BOOK. “How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee” Jesus was not God. He did not think he was God. The myth about Jesus being divine was later invented and got codified at the behest of the Roman Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.

Constantine, who converted to Christianity around 312 CE, wanted Jesus “made” divine so he could use Christianity as propaganda to keep his empire together: one emperor, one state, one God. Constantine instructed all other writings or Bibles be Destroyed so that there is only ONE Bible. —————————- So Christ was NEVER a god! He was made INTO a god by persons who lived 3 hundred years after the time of Christ to further their selfish political ambitions.

You should read the Book. It is FASCINATING and will BLOW your mind away and expose Christianity to the TRUTH.

These “TRUTHS” are confirmed by other Bible EXPERTS like, Dan Barker, Robert M. Price, Bishop John S. Spong, Earl J. Doherty, and David Fitzerald.

You can look up any of those names on the Internet to get ALL the Information about them and a listing of ALL their Books. ——————————————————- •. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005.

In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition.

Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity.

“Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close.

But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005.

The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith.

For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said.

Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World.

Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist.

The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent.

Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading.

“The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said.

“Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING.

The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! —————————– •. Did you hear the part of the interview where he tells his listeners that he “reprimanded” a woman who had had seven c-sections and was expecting her eighth child? Francis also said the the population experts think three is the correct number of children to have.

To hear the Pope use a derogatory comparison frequently used by those who oppose the Church’s teaching on contraception, and to hear him speak of people having “too many children,” makes those of us with “rabbit ears” wonder if he is in touch with the truths of the Faith. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close.

But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist.

However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available.

The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005.

Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland.

“The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING.

The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!!. Pope Francis shoots from the lip=it’s like he lacks self=control.I am struggling to TOLERATE this Pope.Neither Saint John Paul,Benedict nor Bl Paul VI needed a sematicist to “reinterpret what they said. When I was explaining Papal Infallibility to my son while I was Catechizing him and undoing all the New Age Catholicism taught in CATHOLIC SCHOOLS-I said only when the Pope speaks ex Cathedra are we obliged to recognize an Infallible Truth like the Assumption. On Faith and morals he must hold great sway over we Catholics,but I also told him we had VERY bad immoral Popes(they could NOT let the Gates of Hell to prevail because of Christ’s Promise and the ENFORCER-the Holy Spirit) I also told him if the Pope says a Blue Sky is PINK-he needs glasses.is drunk or is lying.Popes are sinners like the rest of us. And exactly what repercussions? Collateral murder of any “innocents” who just happen to get in the way? I was very disturbed by Donahue’s rather untimely comments.

His desperate need to point out that Charlie Hebdo did not deserve praise only served to justify the killing try as he may to disclaim this. I take great inspiration from the fact that Jesus Christ is more than strong enough to take insults and slurs from non-believers. By their actions, Islamists show their god to be weak and shallow.

I’d characterize that behavior based on my own experiences as one based on an abundance of insecurity coupled with a lack of self confidence in core beliefs. Kind of like what people in power do when they are trying to hide something they know deep down is wrong but are so driven to obtain or maintain their power that they kill anything out of fear that might implicate them if discovered. A lot of communist regimes have mastered this technique over time to become efficient killing machines of dissenters.

No cult of peace to be found, not even between “associates” always looking over their shoulder in fear. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist.

The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005.

The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith.

For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland.

“The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), —————- This true around the World.

Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity.

The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide.

Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005.

The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading.

“The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said.

Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World.

Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! ———————————- •. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005.

In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes.

According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available.

The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading.

“The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion.

We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought.

According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005.

In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide.

Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005.

The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition.

Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity.

“Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion.

We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! ——————————- •. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought.

According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide.

Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading.

“The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said.

Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), —- This true around the World.

Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought.

According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes.

According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition.

Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’.

Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity.

“Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ——– This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought.

According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide.

Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005.

The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading.

“The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said.

“Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought.

According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005.

In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent.

Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent.

In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said.

Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph.

Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING.

The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! ——————————— •. But then the manner in which Mass is celebrated these days is itself so “sterile” and emasculated.

If you were looking for spiritual sustenance, you have to keep repeating “Ex Opere Operato,” and remember how it was in a time long ago and far away. On the off chance that my own bishop, and many of his peers, should happen to read this article, he would instantly conclude that we needed another diocesan task force on the Status of Women in Today’s Church, etc., etc.

Of course, the liturgical abominations depicted in the video here would no doubt fill him and others with awe, and a desire to imitate what they saw. Actually, as it’s often been noted here, it is possible to celebrate Mass in the OF with appropriate decorum and reverence, ti’s just not done very much, for the same reasons that so many clergy are so vehemently hostile to the EF. They like being the host on Sunday morning and displaying their talents at repartee or making puns on scriptural passages, etc., etc. The difference is that in the EF, there are exactly zero options, and the fact that priest faces the altar makes him God’s instrument, rather than the congregation’s entertainer. And of course, Anthony is spot on about the effeminacy of the current liturgical style, which many men avoid by instinct.

But many clergy seem to think that’s a good thing: they’;re really responding to the “needs of our time,” etc/, etc., etc. Glenn, they’re really responding to the “needs of our time,” etc., etc., etc.

They’re really responding to the middle-aged, middle (mostly white) class women who dominate their parish. They are the ones they have to face every day when they first show up for the job. This is not to denigrate women, or middle class women, or middle aged women, by the way. Women have been the bedrock of the family and the Church for centuries. But the ones commonly found today in American churches are (like everyone else) Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, and highly secularized at that. And this explains why women, who were once the bulwark for tradition in the Church, have now become forces for change – change that reflects what’s happening in the larger society, conformity to which they crave the most.

It takes a well formed, determined, and patient (and holy) priest to go up against that and try to change it. And he had better have the support of his bishop. When a man apostasizes he walks out the door. When a woman apostasizes she sits in the pew and tries to corrupt parish life. Women like church in a social sense. What happened post Vatican 2 was a massive apostasy from the faith implemented by priests and religious. The men left the priesthood and middle-aged women apostates began to dominate parish life.

So we are left with limp-wristed old men in the priesthood and semi-Christian females controlling the liturgy and catechesis. There are a handful of believers left and in many places they are marginalized.

A vacuum in male leadership can also create a lot of underlying anger in young men. I’m certain that there are very valid reasons for this. I’ve seen this up close, boys angry at female authority when what they need is male authority to love nurture and strongly guide. If society doesn’t set aside a very important role for true men, women do take over in their efforts to fix everything and make it all better, as if only a woman’s touch is what’s needed. I’ve seen this so many times. We women are very valuable but not at the expense of a man’s. Many a time I’ve heard women say that they can do things better then men.

No wonder young boys and men aren’t all that interested in becoming priests. Why would they want their “mother” still calling some of the shots, controlling many things within the church and Church, basically emasculated them or at least keeping them under control. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005.

In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist.

However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading.

“The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph.

Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said.

“Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ——— This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!!

Read below: (we are talking about 5 different countriies which Catholicism/Christianity used to Dominate and which NOW Catholicism is fading FAST!!! None of them did Islam fill in the Vacuum. What filled in the Vacuum was Protestant Christianity and Secularism and Non Belief): ———————————————————————— Comparison between the MOST Religious Countries (Honduras, El Salvador) and the LEAST Religious (Sweden, Norway, Japan) countries in the World. Here below is what I got from the Internet. Religion in Sweden, Norway, Japan, Honduras, El Salvador: 1.

Sweden: Despite the official numbers, religiosity in Sweden plays a limited role compared to the European average. In a Eurobarometer Poll in 2010, just 18% of Swedish citizens responded that “they believe there is a god”, although a further 45% answered that “they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force”.[6] In a 2009 Gallup poll, 17% answered yes to the question “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”.[7] Less than 4% of the Church of Sweden membership attends public worship during an average week; about 2% are regular attendees.[8] Some scholars consider the nation to be a place where religion is regarded with “benign indifference”.[9] 2.

Norway: In modern times, Norway – like many European countries – has seen a great decline in religiosity, at least among non-immigrant Norwegian endemics, and most Norwegians are irreligious: atheism and agnosticism are the most common metaphysical views according to Zuckerman. According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2010,[5] 22% of Norwegian citizens responded that “they believe there is a God”. 44% answered that “they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force”. 29% answered that “they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force”. 5% answered that they “do not know”. Phil Zuckerman, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College estimates atheism rates in Norway as ranging from 31 to 72%, based on various studies.[6] 3. Japan: Demographics on religious belief for the 20th century A 1952 survey by Yomiuri Shimbun found that 64.7% of Japanese believed in a specific religion.[32] That number fell to 35% in 1958 and continued to fall to 31% in 1963 and 1968 and 25% in 1973 before climbing back up to 34% in 1978.

Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent.

Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’.

Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph.

Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion.

We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), — This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! To which I’d only add the feminist nuns who usually have a bishop’s ear to tell him what he needs to know about “women’s issues.” I’ve seen some priests who are rock-solid and know how to navigate this mare’s nest, others who are intimidated and – if you will – don’t know how to be men.

They aren’t homosexuals, but far from masculine in the traditional sense and maddeningly “sensitive,” etc. Others are feminist true believers, and just try to make a point with one of them. They “get it, ” you see, and their mission is enlighten the likes of us. Unfortunately, that outlook is shared among many bishops. By the way Athelstane, nice to see that we both read some excellent web pages. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close.

But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005.

The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent.

In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland.

“The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!!

——————————— •. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close.

But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist.

The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist.

However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition.

Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity.

“Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————— This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! The COMPARISON between the MOST Religious Countries (Honduras, El Salvador) and the LEAST Religious (Sweden, Norway, Japan) countries in the World.

Here below is what I got from the Internet. Religion in Sweden, Norway, Japan, Honduras, El Salvador: 1. Sweden: Despite the official numbers, religiosity in Sweden plays a limited role compared to the European average. In a Eurobarometer Poll in 2010, just 18% of Swedish citizens responded that “they believe there is a god”, although a further 45% answered that “they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force”.[6] In a 2009 Gallup poll, 17% answered yes to the question “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”.[7] Less than 4% of the Church of Sweden membership attends public worship during an average week; about 2% are regular attendees.[8] Some scholars consider the nation to be a place where religion is regarded with “benign indifference”.[9] 2. Norway: In modern times, Norway – like many European countries – has seen a great decline in religiosity, at least among non-immigrant Norwegian endemics,[ and most Norwegians are irreligious: atheism and agnosticism are the most common metaphysical views according to Zuckerman. According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2010,[5] 22% of Norwegian citizens responded that “they believe there is a God”.

44% answered that “they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force”. 29% answered that “they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force”. 5% answered that they “do not know”. Phil Zuckerman, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College estimates atheism rates in Norway as ranging from 31 to 72%, based on various studies.[6] 3.

Japan: Demographics on religious belief for the 20th century A 1952 survey by Yomiuri Shimbun found that 64.7% of Japanese believed in a specific religion.[32] That number fell to 35% in 1958 and continued to fall to 31% in 1963 and 1968 and 25% in 1973 before climbing back up to 34% in 1978. Your Google skills are good, so what does that matter?

God sent his only son into the world the reveal his covenant, to Jews, Gentiles and eventually all of mankind. The story of man obtaining comfort and confidence then rejecting Christ while in this world is as an ancient one, even in the Old Testament. Despite all the great wisdom of the west, it crumbles from rot within as it turns it’s back. All the great minds can’t put it back together again.

Your life is finite Romo, what do you have faith in? I’m an engineer so I live by numbers, but those mean little to me.

Salvation through Christ is my passion and love, and concern for the spiritual well being of my fellow man, including you. Don’t wait until your last breath to come to know the one who knew you before you were formed in the womb, the one who truly loves you. You are living a SHAM!!!! The Christian Christ NEVER EVEN EXISTED!!!

You are living a COMPLETE LIE!!! And I can prove it to you in so many ways. Anyway, here is one way, and that is just the tip of an Ice Berg.

I can continue for hours, days, and even weeks, showing how your belief is a TOTAL LIE!!! —————————————————————————— The Bible WAS WRITTEN by MAN, whether you choose to accept it or Not.

In fact, it was written by UNKNOWN MEN, whose names are forgotten in Antiquity. So it is WORSE that written by Man with Names. At least the men in recent times have names and can assume responsibilities for their writings. Those Biblical writing do NOT even have names of Men whose names can assume the responsibilities of their works. YOU DO put your Trust in Man, because the Bible WAS ALL WRITTEN by MEN, whether you choose to accept it or Not. In fact, it was written by UNKNOWN MEN, whose names are forgotten in Aintiguty. So it is WORSE that written by Man with Names.

At least the men in recent times have names and can assume responsibilities for their writings. Those Biblical writing do NOT even have names of Men whose names can assume the responsibilities of their works.

You need to read this Book below: ———————————————- Biblical Nonsense: A Review of the Bible for Doubting Christians Paperback – January 19, 2005 by Jason Long (Author) ————————————————————- Here are some examples of the reviewers of the Nonsense from the Bible. Most Helpful Customer Reviews ——————————————————— 277 of 307 people found the following review helpful This book is a must have for doubting christians!By Tim W. On August 17, 2005 After I had done much bible studying as a christian and became gradually overwhelmed by the lack of consistency, out of a desperate need for answers I decided to level the playing field and venture into the world of skeptical biblical scholarship including my study of the writings of former christians, ministers, and pastors who have left Christianity, including this book by Dr Long, Biblical Nonsense.

I knew that if the bible is the remarkable document it is heralded to be, surely it can stand up to the most rigorous critical analysis. After pouring over thousands of pages of information from both sides of the issues including this book by Dr. Long, I have learned that the average skeptic has a much deeper and broader knowledge of the Bible than most average people who claim to be Christians. An exhaustive reading of the comparative literature from both believers and former believers that is widely available in print and on the internet for all to see, proves this to be true. The real truth of the bible sceptic is that he is ultimately led by a search for the truth, not for the blatantly dishonest reasons parroted by the likes of JP Holding and other Christian apologists.

I have discovered for myself that Christian apologists will begin with the fundamentalist-driven conclusions or assertions (that the bible is inerrant, the bible is the spirit-written word of god, every word in the bible is true) and try to find any facts or evidence in support of these three assertions(and many others), conveniently ignoring strong and often irrefutable evidence that contradicts their haughty preconceptions. At the very least, this mannner of biblical analysis only seeks to support an intellectually dishonest and uncompromising foregone conclusion. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No ——————————————————————- 195 of 226 people found the following review helpful Simply Irrefutable By Savanthar on October 19, 2005 This book is simply irrefutable. Jason Long does an excellent job in substantially proving the Bible is not the divinely inspired “Word of God,” but instead of mishmash of humanly inspired words attributed to a god.

Long does an excellent job refuting the Bible on many grounds and he does it in an easy to read style that would even penetrate the hard heads of Fundamentalists should they choose to accept the challenge to their faith by actually reading this book. Long attacks the Bible from scientific perspectives, logical perspectives and he challenges the common Christian claim that it is infallible. He shows the Bible is rife with contradictions that haven’t been effectively handled by Biblical apologists, despite their reaching for straws and claiming otherwise.

He also exposes several mistranslations of the original text that change the whole meaning of the commonly accepted scripture. These errors in translation are still evident in many Bibles to this day. To make the correction to some of these mistranslations would change all of accepted Christian dogma!

So much for inerrancy. Some Bibles are translated more honestly than others and Dr. Long goes into this quite well. This book lays it on the line and in my opinion will put Christian and Jewish apologists out of business. It is simply that good. Read it and find out for yourself.

I’m sure you won’t be disappointed in the sophistication of scholarship that went into writing and presenting this little gem of a book. Even the “great” Christian apologist J.P. Holding came here to put up a review on this book and his review couldn’t even come close to refuting Biblical Nonsense.

It makes me wonder how these apologists stay in business and keep fooling the believing masses with their non-scholarly baloney slicing (B.S.) Dr. Read more ›8 Comments Was this review helpful to you? Yes No ——————————————————————– 181 of 213 people found the following review helpful This book will free you from illogical fears based on fantasies By Tim L on February 8, 2006 I am 38, have been a conservative Christian all of my life.

This book was the first exposure to me of anything concerning the Bible other than what I have been conditioned to believe. Long makes this simple to understand yet gives totally irrefutable evidence as to why the Bible is a man made fiction. The realization that comes with knowing that Hell is a myth created by men wanting to frighten people into certain behaviour is very liberating. I only wish I had the first 38 years of my life back to not waste on fantasies. ——————————————- If all that does NOT Convince you, you need to click on “Bible Nonsense” on the Internet and you will find galore that the Bible is the most DUMB and REDICULOUS book ever written by Men. There are evidence Galore that shows that the Bible is SHEER NONSENSE!!! Christianity and the Bible is as FALSE as can be.

The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief. ————————————————————– •. You sound like an angry person Romo, I’m sorry to read of your anguish and inability yet to accept the limits of your mind and human finiteness. If you had a relationship with Christ you would have peace.

The Bible was not a project of dictation recorded by scribes, but a collection of books documenting history including much being the interpreted or inspired word of God to man. Your citations are as old as Ciaphus and the Pharises who saw but would not believe because of their own lust for power and control. Do you really believe modern men have anything new to reveal? Faith is a gift and a mystery.

Angry people still attack him today in disbelief, and people full of love and joy are devoted to him. The limits of your mind keep you from accepting that which you can not embrace tangibly. Don’t put all your faith in men who are fallen. Know Christ, know peace, know love. Did Christ EVER EVEN EXISTED?? Biblical Scholars SAYS NO!!! Did the historical Jesus exist?

A growing number of scholars don’t think so Posted on August 30, 2014 by DeltaV Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity. At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a “historical Jesus” became mythologized.

For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians—most of them Christian—analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth. Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach, distilling the scholarship for a popular audience.

Familiar titles include Zealot by Reza Aslan and How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman. But other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually “historicized mythology.” In this view, those ancient mythic templates are themselves the kernel. They got filled in with names, places and other real world details as early sects of Jesus worship attempted to understand and defend the devotional traditions they had received. The notion that Jesus never existed is a minority position. Of course it is!

Says David Fitzgerald, author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All. For centuries all serious scholars of Christianity were Christians themselves, and modern secular scholars lean heavily on the groundwork that they laid in collecting, preserving, and analyzing ancient texts. Even today most secular scholars come out of a religious background, and many operate by default under historical presumptions of their former faith.

Fitzgerald is an atheist speaker and writer, popular with secular students and community groups. The internet phenom, Zeitgeist the Movie introduced millions to some of the mythic roots of Christianity. But Zeitgeist and similar works contain known errors and oversimplifications that undermine their credibility. Fitzgerald seeks to correct that by giving young people interesting, accessible information that is grounded in accountable scholarship. More academic arguments in support of the Jesus Myth theory can be found in the writings of Richard Carrier and Robert Price.

Carrier, who has a Ph.D. In ancient history uses the tools of his trade to show, among other things, how Christianity might have gotten off the ground without a miracle. Price, by contrast, writes from the perspective of a theologian whose biblical scholarship ultimately formed the basis for his skepticism. It is interesting to note that some of the harshest debunkers of fringe Jesus myth theories like those from Zeitgeist or Joseph Atwill (who tries to argue that the Romans invented Jesus) are from serious Mythicists like Fitzgerald, Carrier and Price. The arguments on both sides of this question—mythologized history or historicized mythology—fill volumes, and if anything the debate seems to be heating up rather than resolving. A growing number of scholars are openly questioning or actively arguing against Jesus’ historicity.

Since many people, both Christian and not, find it surprising that this debate even exists—that credible scholars might think Jesus never existed—here are some of the key points that keep the doubts alive: 1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef. In the words of Bart Ehrman: “What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? As odd as it may seem, there is no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references – nothing.

In fact, if we broaden our field of concern to the years after his death – even if we include the entire first century of the Common Era – there is not so much as a solitary reference to Jesus in any non-Christian, non-Jewish source of any kind. I should stress that we do have a large number of documents from the time – the writings of poets, philosophers, historians, scientists, and government officials, for example, not to mention the large collection of surviving inscriptions on stone and private letters and legal documents on papyrus. In none of this vast array of surviving writings is Jesus’ name ever so much as mentioned.” (pp. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts.

Paul seems unaware of any virgin birth, for example. No wise men, no star in the east, no miracles.

Historians have long puzzled over the “Silence of Paul” on the most basic biographical facts and teachings of Jesus. Paul fails to cite Jesus’ authority precisely when it would make his case. What’s more, he never calls the twelve apostles Jesus’ disciples; in fact, he never says Jesus HAD disciples –or a ministry, or did miracles, or gave teachings. He virtually refuses to disclose any other biographical detail, and the few cryptic hints he offers aren’t just vague, but contradict the gospels. The leaders of the early Christian movement in Jerusalem like Peter and James are supposedly Jesus’ own followers and family; but Paul dismisses them as nobodies and repeatedly opposes them for not being true Christians! Liberal theologian Marcus Borg suggests that people read the books of the New Testament in chronological order to see how early Christianity unfolded.

“Placing the Gospels after Paul makes it clear that as written documents they are not the source of early Christianity but its product. The Gospel — the good news — of and about Jesus existed before the Gospels. They are the products of early Christian communities several decades after Jesus’ historical life and tell us how those communities saw his significance in their historical context.” 3. Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts. We now know that the four gospels were assigned the names of the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not written by them.

To make matter sketchier, the name designations happened sometime in second century, around 100 years or more after Christianity supposedly began. For a variety of reasons, the practice of pseudonymous writing was common at the time and many contemporary documents are “signed” by famous figures. The same is true of the New Testament epistles except for a handful of letters from Paul (6 out of 13) which are broadly thought to be genuine. But even the gospel stories don’t actually say, “I was there.” Rather, they claim the existence of other witnesses, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has heard the phrase, my aunt knew someone who.... The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other. If you think you know the Jesus story pretty well, I suggest that you pause at this point to test yourself with the 20 question quiz at ExChristian.net.

The gospel of Mark is thought to be the earliest existing “life of Jesus,” and linguistic analysis suggests that Luke and Matthew both simply reworked Mark and added their own corrections and new material. But they contradict each other and, to an even greater degree contradict the much later gospel of John, because they were written with different objectives for different audiences. The incompatible Easter stories offer one example of how much the stories disagree.

Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons. They include a cynic philosopher, charismatic Hasid, liberal Pharisee, conservative rabbi, Zealot revolutionary, nonviolent pacifist to borrow from a much longer list assembled by Price. In his words (pp.

15-16), “The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time.” John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar grumbles that “the stunning diversity is an academic embarrassment.” For David Fitzgerald, these issues and more lead to a conclusion that he finds inescapable: Jesus appears to be an effect, not a cause, of Christianity. Paul and the rest of the first generation of Christians searched the Septuagint translation of Hebrew scriptures to create a Mystery Faith for the Jews, complete with pagan rituals like a Lord’s Supper, Gnostic terms in his letters, and a personal savior god to rival those in their neighbors’ longstanding Egyptian, Persian, Hellenistic and Roman traditions. In a soon-to-be-released follow up to Nailed, entitled Jesus: Mything in Action, Fitzgerald argues that the many competing versions proposed by secular scholars are just as problematic as any “Jesus of Faith:” Even if one accepts that there was a real Jesus of Nazareth, the question has little practical meaning: Regardless of whether or not a first century rabbi called Yeshua ben Yosef lived, the “historical Jesus” figures so patiently excavated and re-assembled by secular scholars are themselves fictions.

We may never know for certain what put Christian history in motion. Only time (or perhaps time travel) will tell. Original article:. —– —— See, I believe in Studying Christianity and the Bible like a Scientist, rather than like a Blind Faith Believer.

What you lack Romo is objectivity which is not a good trait in science. You should know that even today with all the marvels of modern technology, people can still walk out of a room and report the “facts” of what they just witnessed or heard differently. Nothing you have regurgitated is new or original, what you lack in your mission is faith and love, or misplaced faith. You yourself are Christ’s creation, as is the world around you. Spread joy and enjoy it while you are in this world Romo. Science is empirical, it only theorizes what is observed and new facts come up all the time that challenge our preconceived notions. I realize that is your point also in attempting to refute, but my point is not to put too much faith in it.

If your mind is made up before you start your journey as to where you will end up then of course the things you pick up along the way will be sure to get you there safely. If you open your eyes and are objective then you might just see that there are multiple paths. Open your eyes to the path that leads to heaven Romo. Believe it or not, I too shared similar doubts and gravitated towards those things as you today, but I ultimately chose another path and to get off the one I was on. I can’t make Christ come sit next to you to convince you, it does take some faith.

But then, Caiapas had that and chose not to relenquish his worldly power so for some even that would not be enough. What is the point of citing numbers. If you never had true faith then you didn’t really lose it. Calling yourself something doesn’t make you that. I see Christ in everything in the world around me, as well as I do Satan trying to poison. You put your faith in so called experts, men of finite minds trying to prove what they already believe to be true who lack objectivity.

Your struggles are as old as man’s existence so I hope you appreciate that you are hardly original though they may new thoughts for you. Men are fallen Romo, including many who answer the call to Holy Orders, and even you and I. You would be surprised to learn of my advanced educational background as well but I’m not going to get into that because it’s of no point in the discussion. Faith has nothing to do with it. If you only seek what you think you are looking for you will find it, if you open your eyes and heart though you might just be surprised how much more there is to discover about the mystery of life, and faith. Religious People Branded As Less Intelligent Than Atheists In Provocative New Study The Huffington Post By Macrina Cooper-White Posted: 3:48 pm EDT Updated: 11:47 am EDT That’s the provocative conclusion of a new review of 63 studies of intelligence and religion that span the past century. The meta-analysis showed that in 53 of the studies, conducted between 1928 to 2012, there was an inverse relation between religiosity — having religious beliefs, or performing religious rituals — and intelligence.

That is, on average, non-believers scored higher than religious people on intelligence tests. What might explain the effect? Scientists behind studies included in the review most often suggested that “religious beliefs are irrational, not anchored in science, not testable and, therefore, unappealing to intelligent people who ‘know better.’” But the researchers who conducted the new meta-analysis say the answer is a bit more complicated.

They suspect intelligent people might have less of a “need” for religion. “Intelligence may also lead to greater self-control ability, self-esteem, perceived control over life events, and supportive relationships, obviating some of the benefits that religion sometimes provides,” study co-author Jordan Silberman, a graduate student of neuroeconomics at the University of Rochester, told The Huffington Post in an email. So if you’re a believer, does this mean you’re a dope? I’m sure there are intelligent religious people and unintelligent atheists out there,” ilberman said in the email. “The findings pertain to the average intelligence of religious and non-religious people, but they don’t necessarily apply to any single person. Knowing that a person is religious would not lead me to bet any money on whether or not the person is intelligent.” The researchers acknowledge the limitations of the meta-analysis. It did not look at type of religion, for example, or at the role culture might play in the interaction between religiosity and intelligence.

In addition, The Independent pointed out that the researchers used a narrow definition of intelligence. In the paper, intelligence is defined as “the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.” This excludes other forms of intelligence, like creative and emotional intelligence. The meta-analysis was published in Personality and Social Psychology Review. ——————————————— Quick Poll What do you think about the study’s bold claim?

I’m a total believer in the study –it makes a lot of sense. Gta 5 Hack Tool Ps3 Download No Survey. 56.22% I have no faith in the study’s findings — believers are just as smart as non-believers. 15.81% It’s just researchers playing with statistics — it doesn’t apply to individual people. 27.97% ———————————————— •.

The War Report Cnn Downloading. Of course the Bible was written by man, what a silly statement nobody refutes. But men none the less who were inspired by and recorded their interpretations of their interactions with God, and their stories of Jesus which were passed down originally through oral tradition. But that means little to one who is not open to the Holy Spirit. You will someday though, and I pray it is not when you breath your last breath and you have overwhelming feeling of regrets.

Accept Christ into your life, stop looking for “gotcha” issues and come to know the joy of love like those of us who have relationships with Christ do. Now you are finally getting the message! The TRUE message is that Christianity as a whole is DECLINING towards EXTINCTION!!!

If you don’t believe me, just click on “Christanity decline” and see what you get on the Internet!! Even Christians/Catholics themselves admit that they are DECLINING World Wide and they are arguing whose fault it is and what they can do to stop the DECLINE. Frankly, I don’t think that the Catholic Christ ever existed. And I have been finding MORE and MORE Christianity EXPERTS are agreeing with me. Bible EXPERTS who are in the KNOW have written Books and Books showing how Christianity and the Bibles are Complete LIES and FRAUDS! 1, The Bible manuscripts have NO Authenticity at ALL!!!

During the first 300 years after the supposedly death of Christ, anyone can write anything they want and there were NO system to verify the TRUTH of the Writings or the VALIDITIES of the authors. Any “Tom”, “Dick”, or:Harry”, can write anything about Christ and sign his name a “Mathew”, “Mark”, “Luke, or “John”. There were NO NEWSPAPERS or INTERNETS to verify or dispute anything that was written or the name of the Author that was signing his name to the manuscript. There were therefore Documents ABOUND about Christianity. None of any of these manuscripts can be in any way verified and in many cases, there were NOT even signatures or there were FAKE Signatures to these Documents. It was NOT until Emperor Constantine who lived some 300 years after the supposedly death of Christ that anything was done to try to systemize Christianity and the Bible. He tries to use Christianity as a means of satisfying his POLITICAL Ambitions.

That is why he called a Council of Nicea and have the BEST Scholars in the Empire together and tried to create a new Religion called Christianity. This Council of Nicea is the one that formalized the Bible. They threw away any document that seemed to contradict the DIVINITY of Christ. The basics of this NEW Bible is supposedly made to form a NEW Religion. Any Manuscript that shows Christ in an UNFAVORABLE Light or UNGODLIKE behaviour was THROWN away or DESTROYED.

That is why you have Unauthorized Gnostic Documents HIDDEN AWAY in caves, because the Emperor commanded those UNACCEPTABLE Documents to be eliminated. Anyone keeping these unacceptable documents were in violation of the EMPEROR”S EDICT and therefore were subject to PUNSHMENT and DEATH. This is why there are NO TRUE Authenticity for the Bible.

They are an EDITED Collection of MANUSCRIPTS EDITED to SERVE a POLITICAL PURPOSE, NOT the seek the TRUTH of any TRUTH. This is why EVERYONE NEEDS to READ Bart D. Ehrman’s latest NEW BOOK. “How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee” Jesus was not God. He did not think he was God. The myth about Jesus being divine was later invented and got codified at the behest of the Roman Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.

Constantine, who converted to Christianity around 312 CE, wanted Jesus “made” divine so he could use Christianity as propaganda to keep his empire together: one emperor, one state, one God. Constantine instructed all other writings or Bibles be Destroyed so that there is only ONE Bible.

—————————- So Christ was NEVER a god! He was made INTO a god by persons who lived 3 hundred years after the time of Christ to further their selfish political ambitions. You should read the Book. It is FASCINATING and will BLOW your mind away and expose Christianity to the TRUTH.

These “TRUTHS” are confirmed by other Bible EXPERTS like, Dan Barker, Robert M. Price, Bishop John S. Spong, Earl J. Doherty, and David Fitzerald.

You can look up any of those names on the Internet to get ALL the Information about them and a listing of ALL their Books. ——————————————– •. Your thoughts and scepticism are not original Romo, non believers have clung to reasons to doubt for 2000 years. You might do well to read more unbiased material in your quest to validate your preconceived notions.

Some of the “facts” you raise are true about events, but ascribing motives is the art of speculation and fantasy. You might start by taking a journey of introspection, thinking about your own soul, the finiteness of your life, the temporal, spatial and material infinite nature of the universe, and ponder what it is that you hate so much in accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Even though you have a rebellious heart, he still loves you. Can ypu prove that the Catholic Jesus even existed??? I and so many Bible and Christian Experts greatly doubt it. This below is very interesting.

What do you think? Read this below: ———————————————– Why Are Educated People More Likely to Be Atheists? Religion works more through the emotions than through reason. Post published by Nigel Barber Ph.D.

On Feb 19, 2014 in The Human Beast The more education a person receives, the more likely they are to become atheists (1). Non belief also increases with intelligence and income. Residents of more educated countries see religion as less important in their daily lives (2). Why are highly educated people more likely to be atheists? There are two categories of explanation.

Either religious people lack a capacity for skepticism, or they choose to make a blind leap of faith and subscribe to the belief system adopted by their religious community. The Santa Claus Analogy According to a deficient skepticism view, educated people are more capable of critical thought. They subject the claims of religious teachers to more intense skeptical inquiry.

This is rather like older children asking themselves how a fat man can navigate a 9-inch chimney flue, magically reemerging next to the Christmas tree with packages measuring more than a foot in three dimensions. Older children connect these absurdities with a pattern of suspicious movements by parents and draw the inevitable conclusion that Santa Clause is a charade perpetrated by parents on children. Younger children are more trusting and less skeptical. Logical though the rational-capacity explanation for atheism is, it is not entirely satisfactory for different easons. Rational capacity does not always translate into religious skepticism, as noted for the distinguished scientists of past eras who were rabidly religious for the most part.

Similarly, in religious countries, people may well stop believing in Santa Clause when they grow up but still hang on to their religious belief system. So it takes more than skepticism to separate people from their religious faith. Why do religious people trash some implausible beliefs but keep others. Perhaps they get something out of the beliefs they keep.

Once a person grows up, their parents no longer shower them with gifts during the holiday season so that they have no particular reason to sustain their credulity concerning Santa Claus, although they do pass on the belief to children. If religious beliefs do not yield tangible benefits for adults, they may yield emotional rewards. The emotive aspects of religious belief can persist despite development of improved reasoning ability. Religious beliefs and rituals may continue to help adults to feel good.

Belief and disbelief are more a matter of feelings than of reason. Why elevate the emotional aspects of religious belief over the cognitive, or intellectual ones? One possibility is that religion functions as a form of emotion focused coping. It provides a defense against life’s difficulties and disappointments. The Emotional Hook If religion is essentially a mechanism for dealing with unpleasant emotions, it is most useful whe disease-ravaged poverty-stricken sub-Saharan Africa and least useful when the quality of life is good, as is true of godless Europe.

In less educated countries, the general standard of living is poor. There is a lot of chronic illness and early death. Infant and child mortality are high.

The population is highly vulnerable to droughts, famines and natural disasters. Most people find it miserably difficult to make living.Governments are weak and corrupt and ordinary people get pushed around by gangsters and warlords. Of course, there may also be little religious freedom so that if there are any agnostics they are forced to keep a low profile. Lacking any objective solution for their many problems, residents of less developed countries turn to religion for answers. The clearest evidence for this Is the fact that in poor countries where the standard of living is low virtually everyone sees religion as important in their lives. As the standard of living improves, there are fewer unpleasant situations over which people have no control and therefore less of a market for religion. With improving quality of life in developed countries, the importance of religion declines.

Looking into the future, this predicts a radual shrinking of religious belief as the standards of living around the globe continues to improve fueled by rapid economic development. Lynn, R., Harvey, J., & Nyborg, H.

Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations. Intelligence, 37, 11-15. Why atheism will replace religion: The triumph of arthly pleasures over pie in the sky. E-book, available: —————————————- •. A thousand years ago was a different time.

Even 100 years ago is a different time. Augustine lived over a thousand years ago. He did not have the data that we have today, If he did, he would probably renounced Catholicism as so many have done today. It is always dangerous to use someone who lived so long who accepted one belief and assume that if he is living today, he would believe in the same thing. A thousand years ago or even 100 years ago, it was a different World. A thousand years ago, there was NO EVOUTION. Even 100 years ago, there were NO Skeptics.

Like Bart D, Ehrman and his numerous books (translated into 27 languages) attacking the Validity of the Bible. There are NO Robert M Price, Bishop Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris, with their numerous BEST SELLERS NON BELIEVER books. According to Richard Dawkins, “We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” Catholicism is DECLINING ALL OVER, with the only exception of Backward Africa. However, once Africa catches up with the rest of the World, It will abandon Catholicism like the rest of the World.

—————– Again, if St. Augustine and GK Chesterton were living today, they would probably REJECT Catholicism TOTALLY. Once they read all those Ideas and Writings of Contemporary Non Believers, they would realize how DUMB and Illogical those Catholic Ideas are! ——————————- •. Your journey sounds not too different than my own Romo, at least in the doubting sense. It makes me laugh to read about the faith placed in pseudo intellectualism and education. The first wrung on the ladder fools take in believing in their own self determination and away from the comfort of Christ.

You have yet to get to the fork in the road where you must make a choice for eternity, I pray for you it is not a moment of cataclysm. The good news for you is that your creator is both patient and forgiving because he ultimately wants you to chose wisely of your own accord to be in a loving relationship with him. I know it’s hard to accept the finite nature of your being and knowledge, but it is a gift of life. There is NO Personal Relationship with god or Christ. You NEVER had a personal Relationship with Christ. You are using Christ as an “Imaginary” Friend.

Most of us had an imaginary friend when we were growing up. It makes life less lonely.

However, in the back of our minds, we knew that it was Imaginary and so after a while we outgrew this Imaginary Friend. However, in your case you used Christ as an Imaginary Friend, so you NEVER outgrew him. However, NOW you must remind yourself that Christ is NOT real and only imaginary. Again, this Christ is Imaginary only and is NOT REAL. I just wonder if you even realize how much problems the Catholic Church has?? I think that the Catholic Church is perfectly aware of their problems, but is helpless in being able to do anything about it.

IN fact, the Catholic Church has TONS and TONS of problems. Here is just one of their problems. Did you read? 2/3 (two thirds) of Catholics give up their Faith. If Catholicism is so true, why do so many Catholic GIVE UP their FAITH????

Again, I ask you the SAME QUESTION?? Why do TWO THIRDS Catholics give up their Faith if Catholicism is so TRUE??????? Maybe the reason is that Catholicism is NOT TRUE, but is FALSE and people realize it!! Read below: ———————- I got this from the Internet under “PEW Research Centrum Forum on Religious & Public Life”. APRIL 27, 2009 Faith in Flux Revised February 2011* ———————- The reasons people give for changing their religion – or leaving religion altogether – differ widely depending on the origin and destination of the convert. The group that has grown the most in recent years due to religious change is the unaffiliated population. Two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated and half of former Protestants who have become unaffiliated say they left their childhood faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, and roughly four-in-ten say they became unaffiliated because they do not believe in God or the teachings of most religions..Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change.

Many people who leave the Catholic Church do so for religious reasons; two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated say they left the Catholic faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, as do half of former Catholics who are now Protestant. Fewer than three-in-ten former Catholics, however, say the clergy sexual abuse scandal factored into their decision to leave Catholicism. ————————— Again, did you read? 2/3 (two thirds) of Catholics give up their Faith. If Catholicism is so true, why do so many Catholic GIVE UP their FAITH???? Again, I ask you the SAME QUESTION?? Why do TWO THIRDS Catholics give up their Faith if Catholicism is so TRUE???????

Maybe the reason is that Catholicism is NOT TRUE, but is FALSE and people realize it!! —————— And this is JUST THE TIP of the Iceberg!!

The Catholic Chhurch is losing adherents in South America, Europe, and the rest of the World. They are Declining almost all over the world.

The only place that they made any gains in the World is in Primitive Africa. But once those people acheived some education, wealth, stability, and sophistication, they will abandon the Catholic Church like the rest of the World is doing. For example, Catholicism used to be 99% of Latin America, now their numbers are down to something like 60% and continuing to decline. Most the the people become Protestants, “Nones”, and even Non Believers, Atheists. The same is true with Europe. The Ex- Catholics there become Unaffiliated, None, Non Believers, Atheists, Agnostics, Etc., Etc. I went to the Catholic Church Websites about some of these Problems and do you know what the Catholic Website did?

They NEVER even bother to give any good answers at all. They just deleted all my comments and CENSORED me. In other words, they COVERED UP their problems and hid under their beds.

This is what they have gotten used to doing, just like all those Child Molestation cases around the World. The Catholic Church don’t have Solutions to their numerous Problems except hiding under their beds. Since you have great faith in your mind, ponder this thought. Most psychologists would rationalize the behavior you are exhibiting (coming to Crisis to dissent) as being defensive in nature, in the clinical realm of trying to justify what you don’t subconsciously believe.

Despite your rebellious soul and mind I welcome you here though, I view the fact that you are here as reason for hope. You site facts and opinions as if they are original ideas but the struggle you have is timeless and eternal. Since you appear to put your trust in science and don’t yet grasp the finite nature of your mind, start by having honest introspection asking yourself these questions. Despite all the wonderful things we have learned through high energy particle physics we will never know where matter came from, and each new particle we discover will never reveal what it itself is made from, the most basic building blocks. Despite our observation about an expanding universe (first made by a priest), we will never come to understand what happened before the singularity which has been ascribed the name “big bang”, itself compatible with the Genesis concept of creation. The human mind is not capable of understanding the infinite temporal and spatial dimensions of the universe, and for good reason.

If science is your gospel, then why are old “indefensible theories” being discarded daily as new information comes to light and changes our way of thinking about things. I smile Romo because I understand more about your rebellious soul than you probably do yourself, having had one myself. Which brings me back to my original discussion point, the fact that you are here is confirmation that you can not yet reconcile that which you can not touch, feel, see, smell and taste, but it is as real as your body and your world. Someday when you are ready to receive him, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and put your restless soul at peace. Know ye not that God’s thoughts are not man’s thoughts, and God’s ways are not man’s ways.

It is the mystery of faith, and God loves you even though you do not yet fully understand that love. Did you read? 2/3 (two thirds) of Catholics give up their Faith. If Catholicism is so true, why do so many Catholic GIVE UP their FAITH????

Again, I ask you the SAME QUESTION?? Why do TWO THIRDS Catholics give up their Faith if Catholicism is so TRUE??????? Maybe the reason is that Catholicism is NOT TRUE, but is FALSE and people realize it!! Read below: —————————————————————————- I got this from the Internet under “PEW Research Centrum Forum on Religious & Public Life”.

APRIL 27, 2009 Faith in Flux Revised February 2011* ———————-The reasons people give for changing their religion – or leaving religion altogether – differ widely depending on the origin and destination of the convert. The group that has grown the most in recent years due to religious change is the unaffiliated population. Two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated and half of former Protestants who have become unaffiliated say they left their childhood faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, and roughly four-in-ten say they became unaffiliated because they do not believe in God or the teachings of most religions. ———————Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change. Many people who leave the Catholic Church do so for religious reasons; two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated say they left the Catholic faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, as do half of former Catholics who are now Protestant. Fewer than three-in-ten former Catholics, however, say the clergy sexual abuse scandal factored into their decision to leave Catholicism.

———————————————————- Did you read? 2/3 (two thirds) of Catholics give up their Faith. If Catholicism is so true, why do so many Catholic GIVE UP their FAITH???? Again, I ask you the SAME QUESTION?? Why do TWO THIRDS Catholics give up their Faith if Catholicism is so TRUE???????

Maybe the reason is that Catholicism is NOT TRUE, but is FALSE and people realize it!! ———————————————————- •. There might be other reasons too, like they never had abiding faith and were lulled by the false sense of security that the world is offering to them today. I know this will shock you too Romo, but I absolutely believe in Satan and his tentacles are everywhere in the world. He is the master of cunning, deceit and vanity, and knows well how to make you embrace decisions that you feel are your own with lies and obfuscation based on a little bit of “knowledge”. You know the old saying about being dangerous. Don’t be so bitter trying to prove in the material realm what you can not either.

I don’t mock you because I have empathy for you and I well understand the finite cage your mind is trapped in. My prayer for you is that you find the way to unlock it and release your full potential before the end of your days. You do not yet have what those of us do who love Jesus Christ with all their hearts and souls. Someday maybe you will when your eyes and heart are open. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity.

The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent.

Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005.

Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’.

Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland.

“The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————- This true around the World.

Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! I’m afraid that it will only get worse. Pope Benedict XVI tried to put reverence back into the Mass and Church by asking that the Tabernacle be moved back to the center of the altar and should be the focal point instead of hidden in another room or off to the side.

Then, he asked that we get back to genuflecting in respect of Our Lord in the Tabernacle when entering a pew or passing by the Tabernacle. Then, he formed committees to better translate the liturgy. Then he asked that the “Amen” be prayed after the Our Father and that every head should bow at the name of Jesus. Also, the noise factor should be lessened and “no texting in church”. He also recommended that the “Peace of Christ” part of the Mass be eliminated or shortened to the person to the right or leftIt has become overwhelming with noise which waters down the solemnity of the moment. However, not too many have listened or have adopted the reverence. What a shame that the author of life is so badly treated!

Simple question: How many of your kids became priests or nuns? Up to somebody else, was it? Blame it on the parish, but something else is going on. That said, abut 1/3 of the people attending daily Mass in this parish are men. There are seven Masses in this parish.

Several of them are full. The 12:00 Spanish Mass in this big new church has people standing all around the back. You have to go to confession if you missed Mass on Sunday? Let’s recall the old Baltimore Catechism definition of a mortal sin. 1) Serious matter. 2) Full knowledge that this action will separate you from God and your brothers and sisters.

3) With full knowledge, you give full consent and accept hell as a consequence. Holy Moley, Batman, how many people do two and three?

Especially three? Trivializing mortal sin does not make the world a happier place. Sounds like you are picking a fight with someone who has genuine, sincere concerns about what she has witnessed at Mass. What’s the point? What do you hope to accomplish with sarcasm and mean-spiritedness?

What does how many of her children went into religious life have to do with anything? That is completely irrelevant and proves nothing — she could comply with every criteria you think she should to produce children who take up a vocation, but if they are not truly called by God, then none will take up a vocation it’s not about whose responsibility she thinks it is; it’s about being called. I think Nel was the one who was sarcastic and mean spirited.

I asked her how many of her own children became priests/religious because a lot of research shows that the person who seems to play the largest role in priestly vocations is the mother! Somehow that worked well in my family. My mother never pushed me to be a priest, but she supported me in a really strong way.

I would also mention two other factors that I have observed in myself and some of my brother priests. 1) Strangely, a lot of us come from really disfunctional families. 2) No priest took me aside and said, “I think you should be a priest.” But I did see strong examples of love and generosity in the strong example of priests I knew, and they gave me the time of day. Today, in the middle of the vocation crisis, no priest would dare do this. By the time I was nine, I knew that I wanted to be a priest. First, thank you very much for answering the call to your vocation and for your ongoing commitment to it. I have no illusions about the importance of priests without them, we have no church, period, end of story.

So, I am incredibly grateful for your service. Secondly, I guess the emotion of the written word can sometimes be difficult to discern, but I honestly thought Nel was distressed and concerned.

Perhaps others, like you, read it differently. Third, is 1/3 of those in attendance at Mass being men a good thing? I couldn’t tell if it was or not.

To my way of think and my way of doing math, we need to do better that means there are twice as many women as men. No doubt, we men out here need to do better at providing a good example for our children and for other men who’ve drifted away from the faith. Lastly, I think we can all agree there is work to be done to address the priest shortage and that all of us, men, women, laity, and religious have a part to play. Over the long years, by my lonely observation, the vast majority of people who attend weekday Mass are women. 1/3 is actually a higher than usual number. I did find Nel’s long complaint extremely insulting. Most of the priests I know are trying as hard as they can to serve their people.

They do it differently, according to their personalities, their understanding of theology, especially ecclesiology, and within the realities of each individual parish. When I was a young priest, I arrogantly wanted those old geezers to get out of the way so we could solve all the problems with our Vatican II view.

Well, they got out of the way and I found myself face to face with the problems that proved more difficult than I had imagined: Reaching the youth, religious education for the children, trying to help families, ministering to the sick, sacramental preparation, and on and on. And in the middle of it all, served by my weakest talent, the endless requirements of administration with a staff, and the struggle to make financial ends meet. Along the way, I began to realize that, among the priests, there was a lot of disagreement about ecclesiology, how to apply love and mercy to the weak and fallen, the larger requirements of the bishop and his office, how to cooperate with other parishes, and etc. And then in the middle of this, the vocation crisis, with fewer and fewer of us doing more and more. Finally, I was pastor of three different parishes sixty miles apart.

Whew, what a burden. Then along came the John Paul II priests who wanted me to get the heck out of the way, along with the other Vat. Well, we did. And now they are going through the same struggles we had to go through, and not a whole lot more successful. The vocation crisis has gotten worse. The Vat II priests are not doing as well on vocations as we did.

(We have nine seminarians, from a high of about thirty). Anyway, the laity do have a larger and larger role to play, and I am amazed at the way they step in. Now, in my old age, I get to be the senior priest who shows up at the office once in a while, prepares some classes, works with several parish groups, celebrates some Masses, ministers to the sick. I like to agitate on Crisis once in a while, but in general, I am content. Over the long years, by my lonely observation, the vast majority of people who attend weekday Mass are women.

I think for the typical parish, that’s my experience as well – though it does depend on what time the Mass is scheduled for. Many of them became pastors of large parishes with only five or six years experience. They have a steep learning curve. The vocation crisis has gotten worse. Your last sentence gives the explanation for the former – the collapse in priestly vocations over the last fifty years means that dioceses have little choice but to assign relatively young priests (and more of them) to serve as pastors. You work with what you have.

And the bill is coming due now. If you are not facilitating vocations, you’re going to have this problem. And for many years, too many bishops, chanceries, parishes were either indifferent to this problem, didn’t understand the problem, or, in a smaller number of cases, actually didn’t want vocations.

I can’t speak for most dioceses, but for the last thirty years or so, my diocese has poured huge time, expense, and prayer into searching for vocations. Our best younger priests have been vocation directors. But the struggle goes on. One thing that is not discussed, of course, is the fact that we are fishing in a small pool. In my family, there were seven kids.

Two became diocesan priests, one became a Holy Cross Sister. But now, with only one or two or three kids, families are reluctant to let go of grand kids. And this is because we are looking for vocations among unmarried young men, in college or just beyond, who are willing to forgo a family for the sake of the priesthood. After that, most men are married and we say they no longer have vocations.

I cannot help but contrast this with the Protestant ministers who have been friends and colleagues over the years. Most of them discerned their vocations after they were married. And many were the children of ministers, who were often the children of ministers. Looking back, I cannot say they were holier than I was, or worked any harder than I did.

It was tough on their families, but, as I said, several had a father who was a minister. Remember, at one time, a couple of popes were the sons of bishops.

Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist.

The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes.

According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith.

For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland.

“The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!!

The moment of freedom is the moment a person performs the action, or fails to. A person can look back and say, Oh, I missed Mass on Sunday, it must have been a mortal sin.

Or he can say, I missed Mass on Sunday because I was sick, because I was traveling, because I was tired, or because I just didn’t feel like it. Only not feeling like it approaches any kind of sin, but it lacks the depth of knowledge and freedom a mortal sin would require. Afterwards, he can say, “I should have gone to Mass.” But it is still not a mortal sin, unless he says, and I know it separates me from God and I deliberately choose this course. And I still think this is rare. One of the things that bothers me is adult Catholics who still think like moral children.

The Church has always taught that it is a mortal sin to miss Mass on a holy day of obligation, unless there are valid, “grave” reasons for doing so (there literally is none within reach, necessity to work, or you o a family member in your care is ill). Attending Mass on holy days of obligation is the first precept of the Church – and it is something we should want to do, joyfully.

Desire to avoid mortal sin – which you apparently do not believe exists! – is not scrupulosity, and you do the teaching of the Church grave disservice by suggesting as much. Excessive scrupulosity does exist, but what you are describing is not it.

If what you are saying is true, how do you separate a venial sin from a mortal sin? In the traditional Church teaching so beloved on this site, we turn to the basic teaching of the Baltimore Catechism, which said: Serious Matter, full understanding, full consent. If one of these is missing, it is a venial sin. Not that I take venial sin lightly. I think it is responsible for most of the moral tragedy of this world.

Compare it with marriage. You can do many things that are incompatible with your relationship. You should not take these lightly, but hard words, lack of attention, selfish moments are against the relationship. Marriage counselors note that if these patterns are unchecked, they can break a marriage down. And yet, at the moment these actions happen, they are not deal breakers, like physical or severe mental cruelty, or adultery. In the same way, venial sins go against our relationship with God or we could not call them sin.

They can break us down. This opens us to the moment when we choose some kind of deal breaker between ourselves, God, and our neighbor.

Full understanding and full consent do not (necessarily) mean that I have to intend to break off my relationship with God. I may simply intend to have a good time or get more sleep or whatever. The three things you listed from the catechism do not include intention. This is not the same as scrupulosity.

Your distinction reminds me of the “fundamental option” theory from the 1970s, which I thought was laid to rest a long time ago. You seem to be saying that missing mass is not really “serious matter” – it’s more like a “lack of attention” in a marriage rather than abuse or adultery.

Yet the Church, with the authority of Christ, has said that it is serious. Of course one can have a good reason for not going, but this does not negate the objectively serious nature of the obligation. Actually, I think we agree. Attending Sunday Mass is always a serious matter. But like you said, more often than not, people do not attend Mass because they are doing something else, or want to get more sleep, or whatever.

We are into the area of human weakness, not spiritual revolt, and I honestly think God is gentle with that. I have had people confess missing Mass on Sunday because they were sick, because they forgot, because they were traveling and could not locate another church, because they were all tied up with family, and on and on. These are NOT mortal sins, but they often think they are.

Usually, I just sigh and don’t say anything, because my sense is I am dealing with someone with a child’s conscience, and confession is no place to straighten that out. Scrupulosity was a much more serious issue in the past, but I see it especially when people are agonizing over their sexual sins. When a basically good person is going to confession every other day, filled with stress and anguish, that person is in trouble. I see this a lot with young men and their struggles with masturbation. They are not mortal sinners. They are in an emotional/psychological/spiritual crisis and both their minds and freedom are seriously compromised.

In this kind of situation, view the whole thing under the category of mortal sin is not very helpful. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005.

In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes.

According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available.

The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith.

For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland.

“The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said.

“Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ——- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought.

According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes.

According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent.

Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S.

Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith.

For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said.

“Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), — This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING.

The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close. But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity.

The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide.

Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent.

In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland.

“The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————- This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING.

The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! Excellent post. The decline of religion worldwide is proof that Catholics cannot dump the blame on Vatican II. There are wider reasons to consider.

Among Catholics, the sex abuse crisis is surely one. But there is also the impact of secularism.

Remember, along with the sex-abuse crisis, before the financial collapse in 2009, Ireland was wallowing in wealth, and if I remember correctly, the collapse in religion was already present. The seminaries were already empty. So, talk about the impact on capitalism, with its relentless drive to turn us into cogs in the economic system, consumers rather than persons. There are a few problems with that. One is that’s not always an option. I would, in a heart beat, do exactly that. Except that I don’t have the means to drive the four to seven hours to the closest “traditional and reverent parish” then drive the four to seven hours back.

So I content myself, for now, a different option. Maybe part of the problem is that many of us do find a more traditional and reverent parish, rather than staying. Maybe if more of us stayed, gave a parish our time and talents and took positions of authority we could begin changing things from within. Though, to be perfectly honest, that is easy to say when one doesn’t have children.

When faced with raising children in the Church I have to admit that I would rather move to a different diocese than take them to any of the parishes in my current one. God bless you! When I think back on the long,long years that I attended Novus ordo Masses and felt so sick inside without knowing why, I feel for you. It wasn’t until an FSSP priest almost died, made a miraculous recovery and I attended his first Mass afterwards that I felt a huge burden lift off my heart. Now I attend Latin Mass once a week and during the week, a local N.O. I can’t afford the gas for daily Latin Mass but I don’t want to miss out on the Holy Eucharist, and I think of what you have written when I attend. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close.

But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist.

The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent. However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide.

Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent. Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent.

In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition. Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading.

“The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said. Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said.

“Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), – This true around the World. Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! “my experiences with CA are identical.

I think the official state religion is Mother Earth, their idea of going to church is being outdoors on Sunday, and a hymn is anything Grateful Dead.” This is not my experience, and I live in the SF Bay Area. I’ve worshipped at many parishes: St.

Mary Magdalene, St. Joseph Basilica, Holy Spirit, St. John the Baptist, St. Augustine, Christ the Light. I have NEVER witnessed a parish singing the Grateful Dead or any songs other than sacred hymns.

I have NEVER witnessed a parish going Gaia, worshipping Mother Earth. How very Catholic and loving and holy of you to bash all Catholic parishes in not just the Bay Area but all of California. And to think you actually call yourself St JD George. God bless you. You will kindly note that I prefaced my reply with my experiences which is hardly a reflection of a universal experience.

Of course there are and I’m am ever thankful for people like you who are a shining light for others. There were also clearly many loving people I encountered at the Shrine I attended in Santa Clara while there. Still, relative to experiences at home, I would say that statistically there seem to many more Californians who are self absorbed than there are absorbed in Christ.

The edition of the Divine Liturgy with propers and commons was prepared for use in the Byzantine Ruthenian Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh by the Intereparchial Liturgical Commission and Intereparchial Music Commission. The text was translated from the Greek original, compared with Church Slavonic. The translation sought to be consistent in rendering biblical and technical terms, faithful to the vocabulary and thought of the text’s original context in the patristic period, but also accessible to the contemporary American congregation. In a few instances, textual criticism based on the witness of manuscripts guided the translation. The translations of biblical quotes and allusions required fresh translations to capture the distinctive readings of the Septuagint Old Testament and to accommodate the new context of these biblical texts in the Liturgy.

In general, translations of biblical quotes comes from the NAB Bible 1970-1991 and The Psalms (The Grail, 1963). The musical settings are based on Ruthenian tradition that has been handed down from one generation to another. After extensive research, discussion, and detailed comparisons of various written and oral sources, the Intereparchial Music Commission compiled the plainchant settings. The musical renderings of historic, scholars have been carefully adapted to accommodate the new English translation provided by that Commission. I happen to go to a beautiful Byzantine Catholic Church and to be very honest, love everything about it. The Liturgy is heavenly as are the other services as well.

And there are no abuses either. I would strongly suggest checking Eastern Catholic Churches out and going to a Divine Liturgy. You just might find your heart and soul there. I went to Poland a number of times during martial law. So many years later, I still vividly remember the Masses. They moved me very deeply. I drove a van with donated clothes, chocolate, oranges and basic medical supplies to the boyhood parish of my crazy Polish friend.

(We drove from England.) The lesson I learnt is that the most generous givers are always the poor. After returning from Auschwitz-Birkenau with a Jewish friend, a Polish friend gave me a statue of Christ wearing the crown of thorns. She told me how, as a teenager, she and her family could smell the ovens.

She told me, “This is Poland. This is the Lord of history. Remember he has us in His care.” She had seen and suffered too much through the long years of Nazism and the craziness of Communism to be sentimentally pious.

Nel, I am from Ireland, a traditional Catholic Country, but believe me, it is the same for me when I ever have to return home and go to my family’s parish. To be fair, it is worse in the U.S. Where I live now, more so in the coastal areas but thankfully we live near a church where the Parish Priest allows the Latin Mass. I’ve been to Poland a couple of times.

I’ve seen how people attend Mass and their reverence, (80 year old women kneeling on concrete floors), the breathtaking beauty of the churches and cathedrals – all of it imprinted onto my soul like a beautiful wound that has never healed. One day I hope to return again. Religiosity Plummets In Ireland And Declines Worldwide; Atheism On The Rise The Huffington Post By Dominique Mosbergen Posted: 6:05 pm Updated: 12:11 pm Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland has been struggling to keep its members close.

But this week, a new global survey on faith and atheism has revealed that the crisis of faith in Ireland may be much worse than previously thought. According to the poll released by WIN-Gallup International, the traditionally Catholic country has seen one of the steepest drops worldwide in religiosity. The poll — which was based on interviews with more than 50,000 people selected from 57 countries — asked participants, “irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.” In Ireland, only 47 percent of those polled said they considered themselves religious — a 22-point drop from the 69 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in 2005. In addition, 10 percent self-identified as atheist. The only country that registered a steeper decline in religiosity was Vietnam, which saw a 23-point drop from 53 percent to 30 percent.

However, Ireland and Vietnam were not unique in this dip in faith, Reuters notes. According to the global index, there has been a notable decline in religiosity worldwide. Current data shows that the number of people worldwide who call themselves religious is now 59 percent, while 13 percent self-identify as atheist. However, according to trending data, religiosity has fallen by 9 points globally since 2005 and the number of people who identify as atheist rose from 4 percent to 7 percent.

Note that only 40 countries were polled in both 2005 and 2012, so there are two different sets of data available. The U.S., France and Canada joined Ireland on the top-10 list of countries to have experienced a “notable decline in religiosity” since 2005. The number of people in the U.S. Who self-identify as religious dropped 13 points to 60 percent. In addition, 5 percent of Americans declared themselves Atheists, an increase of 4 points since 2005. Yet, despite this global decline in faith, the focus at the moment seems to be on Ireland, where Catholicism has had a long and rich tradition.

Since the poll results were made available to the public, many have lamented the drop in Ireland’s religious feeling, with one Guardian writer calling it “the end of Catholic Ireland.” However, some Irish Catholic officials and organizations are insisting that the poll may not show the full picture and have cautioned against taking the index as a comprehensive indicator of Irish faith. For example, a spokesperson for the Catholic Communications Office told the Belfast Telegraph that the language used by the poll may have been isleading. “The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” he said.

Indeed, the same Guardian writer who hinted at an impending collapse of Catholicism in Ireland also noted that though “the traditional structures of “religion” [may be] weaker, there remains a strong deposit of “faith” among the people.” Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the global index has undoubtedly highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic Church in Ireland. “The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. Sinead Mooney, deputy managing director of RED C Research — the company that conducted the Irish poll — told Reuters that there were two factors that likely contributed to Ireland’s sharp decline in religiosity. “Obviously, there were all the scandals in the Church over that period — that was massive,” she said. “Also, as countries get richer, they tend to lose some sense of religion. We did become richer — at least at the beginning of that period.” According to the poll, the most devout region of the world is Africa — and the countries where most people self-identified as religious were Ghana (96 percent), Nigeria (93 percent) and Macedonia (90 percent), ————————————————- This true around the World.

Catholicism is DECLINING and DECLINING. The Future is in Secularism and Non Belief!!! I can’t say for sure, but the Mass I attended over Christmas in N.C.

Was presided over by a middle-aged effeminate priest. It was one of the most beautiful, spiritual Masses with an excellent homily. This man is a gift to his congregation (both English and Spanish). He prayed aloud reverently; he sang with everyone loudly; he met each and every one on the way out, eye to eye, clasping their hand and thanking them for worshiping with the congregation and wishing them a Merry Christmas.

Effeminacy had nothing to do with whether the Mass is prayed, celebrated, offered, or not. Both servers were young ladies in cassocks, the Deacon was obviously a man, the choir was composed of men and women. The parish loves this MAN.

Since you are calling for disqualifying people from certain vocations for something, it might be helpful if you could provide a clear, unambiguous taxonomy of “palpably effeminate” so it could, even in theory, be made into policy. How much of a lisp is so severe that you can be certain God did not call them to the priesthood, for instance? What range of body mass index and how soft of features? How does one distinguish a manly appreciation for the beauty of nature from an effeminate appreciation of it? Is it the particular plants or animals that the viewer finds aesthetic? What pitch of speaking voice is beyond the pale? I am not (merely) criticizing your position.

These are also real, practical questions that would need to have answers to successfully implement the policy recommendation you made. The Catholic Church is big enough to have a place for all personality types, as Joe so aptly provided an example of. The vocation of the priesthood isn’t exclusively for big manly men, it’s for WHOMEVER IS CALLED TO IT, be they big, small, masculine, “effeminate,” loud, soft-spoken, good at singing or bad, and so on. Effeminacy might be a defect, but so is baldness.

So is having a grating voice. So is being unable to carry a tune. So is being ugly.

So is liking wine just a little too much (even when care is taken not to drink to excess). Likewise with food. There are many traits that are distinctly less-than-perfect, but which are not, nor should they be, disqualifiers from the priesthood. Those called to it are called, and if God chooses to call a man who can’t sing to a vocation that occasionally involves singing, I’m not going to grumble and moan about it, I’ll rejoice that he followed his calling despite it being embarrassing on occasion. In the Diocese of Lincoln, with our success mentioned above, we don’t have a culture of discouraging certain personalities or whatever merely because some people take issue with them aesthetically. I would personally speculate that it’s part of why we’re successful.

We don’t try to second guess God when he calls a man with lisp or slender physique. We don’t try to rule out sections of the population from having any real vocation, instead we help them to very carefully discern what their vocation truly is and help them to live it. Many of the Apostles were fishermen with boats in the 1st century. These guys had to be physical specimans.

Pulling in nets, rowing boats. Jesus was trained as a carpenter and above average hieght in his day. These were dudes. The Sanhedran sent a small army to gather up Jesus and Peter had a sword, we know there was at least one other sword in the group.

DiVinci’s last supper sickens me, making John look like a woman, please!!! The kid probably looked like an all state middle weight wrestler. Most priest and bishops today couldn’t carry the apostle’s water. Effeminate is not the same as feminine. Feminists are not feminine either.

I am not sure Cardinal Burke means the Mass has been made feminine. Lacy altar linens, candles, and flowers were present before all this happened. Feminists are people who are vulgar and not reverent. Women who claim to be “oppressed” by the church and are angry at men in general are the ones who have made the mass into a mockery of what it should be.

We are called to serve the Lord. Men can serve the Lord.

Women can serve the Lord. But we are different from one another. Not one is better than the other. Stomping around loudly and imposing your view on others does not make you a man, or like a man. “This statement leads me to believe you have an agenda” Glad for you your experience has been great. Your cynicism about my “agenda” is your issue not mine. My quest to find the Roman Catholic Church as I’ve read about Her in antiquity and the best authors put me in contact with dozens of churches over the past 20 years.

I’ve met some good, grave and serious priests. I also was struck with how often I encountered effeminate priests. It’s a fact of life. If you think for a moment there’s not a masculinity crisis in the RC communion, you’re blissfully ensconced and I wish you Godspeed.

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