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Jay,
It is interesting that you would post this topic since yesterday I read an article from ABC news from last April on the views of U.S. Catholics versus what the Church teaches. Have a look:

"...the share of Catholics who say they've attended church in the past week has fallen dramatically, from 74 percent in 1955 to 45 percent last year."

"...17 percent of Catholic voters in the 2004 exit poll called "moral values" the top issue in their vote"

"In an ABC News/Washington Post poll last month [March], 57 percent of Catholics said the next pope should change church policies to reflect the attitudes and lifestyles of Catholics today; fewer, 41 percent, preferred maintaining traditional policies. Among churchgoing Catholics there was a 48 percent to 51 percent division on the question — only a tepid call for tradition from the most faithful."

"In a weekend Associated Press poll, 63 percent of Catholics said the next pope should give the laity a greater say in how the church is governed. And a weekend Gallup poll had results on church policy much like we've seen for years: Seventy-eight percent of Catholics said the church should "allow birth control," 63 percent said it should let priests marry, 59 percent said it should ease doctrine on stem-cell research and 55 percent said it should open the priesthood to women. (All were lower, but not insubstantial, among weekly churchgoing Catholics.)"

"...in a more detailed ABC/Post poll in October 2003, 60 percent of Catholics — including 54 percent of weekly churchgoing Catholics — said their local church officials better represented their religious and moral views than did John Paul II. Indeed, 62 percent of Catholics said the church is "out of touch" with the views of American Catholics. (Fewer weekly churchgoers, 44 percent, agreed.)"

"...again in the 2004 exit poll, Catholic voters were more permissive than non-Catholics on the issue of legal recognition of homosexual relationships, and roughly equivalent on abortion. (Twenty-nine percent of Catholics opposed legal recognition of same-sex couples. And 53 percent of Catholic voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as did 56 percent of non-Catholics.)"

Now I know that there are lies, damn lies, and there are statistics:) ...but this may be a fairly accurate take on many U.S. Catholics. That being said, and given that our society that prides itself on materialism, I find it hard to believe that many of our Catholic (and non-Catholic) brethren would rather give up their comfortable lifestyles for the sake of the Christian faith--and in this case the Catholic faith. This further demonstrates that the Catholic Church is not a man-made institution. If it were, the Church would either vanish or would be just another in a series of schismatic denominations.
Matthew

This reminds me that I had read somewhere about the "silent masses" held in the Irish glens to avoid the King's men and death. It was regarding a book on why Catholics in America don't sing...a leftover from the Irish ancestors of American Catholics.

In Love

when we were one

I was under the impression that many Protestants also found religious conditions in England too harsh and fled to North America - with the intent of making sure that the government allowed people of all faiths to participate in government. As far as I know, this was the original intent of "separation of Church and State". Today, it is coming to mean that people of faith are prohibited from participating in government.

Ironic that the meaning of the phrase "separation of Church and State" has changed sufficiently that it is now bringing about the same tyranny that it was designed to alleviate.

Let's not forget that Campion's regrettable execution comes only twenty years after Queen "Bloody" Mary Tudor who during her short reign brought England back into communion with Rome, executing almost 300 non-Catholic Christians for their beliefs along the way. Stones and glass houses and all of that.

During the 16th century, the Church of England bore a much closer resemblance to the Church of Rome than it did to a Reformed faith. In fact, the Puritan movement arose in the 1500's in an effort to "purify" the Church of England of its Roman Catholic elements. This tension erupted some time later in the English Civil War. Many Puritans at that time abandoned their hopes of reforming England and instead set sail for the New World, where the freedom to practice religion would be unabridged by the state.

Given that the sitting president is an Evangelical Christian and he just installed a Roman Catholic justice to the Supreme Court, I don't think Christianity is exactly in full retreat in the good 'ol US of A. And it is very interesting that the typical evangelical is closer to Rome on the hot-button issues of abortion and homosexual unions than are Catholics themselves!

Matthew, concerning the deplorable statistics, what I would like to see is how the numbers fare when you restrict the sample to any one of the following groups:

1. people who go to confession at least once a year
2. people who go to confession at least three times a year
3. people who go to confession at least once a month
4. people who say that using contraception constitutes a grave sin
5. people born after Pope John Paul II became Pope
6. people who have been to world youth day
7. members of Catholic Christian Outreach

I think you would get very different results.

Kaff,

The entire situation in England during those centuries was regrettable, but simply pointing to the reign of "Bloody Mary" as a sort of justification for the persecution of Catholics that followed her reign isn't fair to England or history. Mary's actions, while completely wrong, had been provoked by what had proceeded her reign and many historians have pointed to the fact that out of the three hundred some could have been tried for treason, but such was not the case and Mary tried and executed them as heretics. Also Mary decision to execute non-Catholics (Archbishop Cranmer and those associated with him), was strongly discouraged by Cardinal Pole, the Papal Legate during her reign. It was not a Church approved or ordered action.

The persecution that followed her reign was brutal. The total number of Catholic men and women, priests, monks, etc., who suffered death between the years 1535 and 1681 for their faith was over six hundred. This does not even take into consideration the reigns of William and Mary (1689-1702) and Queen Anne (1702-1714) when the most violent measures (Penal Laws) were passed and strictly enforced against Catholics.

It should not surprise us that those Protestant rulers of England didn't receive the same treatment that Mary did (i.e. receivng the title "Bloody"), for although some of them carried out the same type of executions as Mary, they remained protected by the religion of the land, namely Protestantism. That's not a Catholic throwing a stone it's simply a historical fact.

Again, it was all unfortunate and a great tragedy. May we all work to build unity and avoid any such persecutions in our generation and in the generations to come.

In Christ,
Joe

Hi Joe,

I beg of you, do not think that by bringing up Queen Mary that I am attempting to justify the persecution of Catholics in any circumstance. If history teaches us anything here, it is that scrambling together secular and religious authority makes for a bitter omlette indeed.

I wonder how many Catholics today agree with these words from Boniface VIII's Papal Bull issued in 1302 AD, the Unam Sanctam, which arranges the two "swords" of secular and religious power:

[...] Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.

However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. [...]

In Him,
Kaff

Broken Record,
I too would like to see a poll of the items on your list. I couldn't help but get the feeling that whoever wrote the article had an axe to grind with the Church for whatever reason--and we know that there are many people out there like that. Personally, I would also like to see two things in regards to their polls. 1)the number of people sampled, 2) how the questions were asked. These two things make a world of difference in compiling statistics and making an accurate extrapolation of the data. Regardless, those stats do not change what the Church teaches, nor should it. Truth requires us to respond to make a change and unfortunately there are many who would rather take the Burger King mentality to "have it their way." May all them come to know the fullness of truth.
Peace,
Matthew

You guys may be interested in another book called Communion of Immigrants by James Fisher. It surveys about 4 centuries of American Catholicism, and gives you a pretty good sense of what it would be like to be a Catholic in the American colonies.

Hi.

I've have had a Catholic school education for a while, and once in a while, i hear about various Protestant groups. I saw on this site somewhere Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists? Not many people I know really know anything about those religions, so I'm curious to see if you can answer my questions. Are those considered cults, and if so why? What makes something a cult, and would the think of the Catholic religion as a cult?

DC

Indeed the definition of cult is hard to grasp. The Romans considered 1st century christians to be a cult. But just because you were considered a cult and grew into the Catholic Church doesn't mean all cults will grow such.

I think your question may be...how do we know that we are not a freaky offshoot of reality and are the real cult? I would suggest reading about the early church. As I have posted before, my favorite resource is a book a couple years old by evangelical Baptist Rod Bennett called Four Witnesses where on the advice of Luther, Calvin and Wesley, the early church was considered pure before the Catholics got to it...see what he found. The head of Oxford's seminary, John Henry Newman when he was a Protestant also reviews church history in order to support his church and eventually converts to become a Cardinal after years of research on the ancient manuscripts...you can check his stuff. Here I see that quite a few references Jergens' Faith of the Early Fathers that is supposed to be awesome too. EWTN has a library of early church writings.

In Love

when we were one

A cult, I think, usually represents a violent redirection, rather than a fulfillment, of previous teachings. Sometimes the violent redirection is necessary, in which case the violence masks the fulfilling power of return to truth. Rationalism has convinced us that intuitions and common sense are suspect, but when a teaching comes along that seeks to undermine common sense (and by common I mean common to humanity) and our intuitive understanding of right and wrong, we can safely say that it is a cult. I don't buy the argument (often used even by Christians) that ethics are relative and change with time. If you've ever had the chance to read C.S. Lewis's excellent book, *The Abolition of Man,* he's got an appendix of sayings from throughout history as to different teachings and religions that spoke to what we all know to be true. The cult seeks to fulfill what the worst part of ourselves *wishes* were true, and does not speak to what we all have in common.

Tobias

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