Reasons why Catholics lapse...

[Assisi]

Perhaps it is that we all have lost our " first love " .. as John writes in Revelation chapter 2 & 3 .

I completely disagree that the Vatican has written us off, look at where the World Youth days have been held, out of the twelve, only two have been held outside the first world - It's always been my perspective that the first world is the Vatican's no. 1 priority, spiritually speaking.

I heard that part of the reason our Pope chose to be called Benedict was because Benedict is the patron Saint of Europe and he is worried about the Spiritual state of Europeans in particular. I don't think we've been written off. I just think that Western culture is a particularly difficult challenge. The Spiritual death in Western culture can, should, must be followed by a resurrection.

We must continue to live our faith. People will notice us, and see Christ.

 

[gentlestorm]

I think one of the big reasons people are falling away is a loss of an appreciation for ceremony/meditation/magic in their lives. (They either fall away completely, or find something 'better' or 'intriguing' to fill that void, like non-Catholic Christianity, other religions, New Age, Buddhism, etc., and that's partially due to poor catechesis, like Dom Aelred Graham says in Zen Catholicism.) This is a reason that one of my highschool teachers expressed to me back when I was a kid (or am I still one?) and I agree with him. There's a loss of mysticism, loss of myth, loss of transcendental experience (not pantheistic; don't go bananas on me), etc. that is often pushed out by a technological, imperical mindset. If I can't sense it or turn it into something concrete, it's not worth it.


Religion isn't about what I know, but what I believe. It's the belief that makes religion worth it, and the ceremonies, the mythology, the cosmology, the magic, the liturgy, etc., taken for what they are in and of themselves, is the way to go, in my opinion. How else can you accept transubstantiation? And like a_ntv was saying, I also think prayer is absolutely essential.

I agree. Ironically from the other side of the issue.
I see the last few centuries of Catholic theology doing just what you decry. "Transubstantiation" for example, do we need to nail it down like this? It takes away the mystical.
Papal Infallibility is another. Do we need to nail everything down? Scholasticism is afoot...and always at the expense of the mystical.
Pretty soon it looks very corporate and lacking all the highs and lows of dynamics.

 

[TheListener]

What are the "liturgical abuses after Vatican 2" as mentioned by the OP?

I'll bump my question as it seems to have been forgotten...

 

[Assisi]

I'll bump my question as it seems to have been forgotten...

I have no idea...

 

[Virgil the Roman]

Everything else in life is about you and what you are getting for your money/time. The most common reasons I hear are 'I don't get anything out of it' and 'the sermon isn't any good'. I think people lapse because they are used to thinking in terms of what they receive in the moment. Is it value? From a material standpoint, Mass is not value. We are not entertained, we are not paid, we are not getting anything out of it. Eternal life, the Body of Christ, and worshiping the Lord are not high up on the agenda of many.

We are also used to getting what we want quickly. Catholicism creates a problem here because we do not believe that salvation is easy. Accepting God's grace is hard and time consuming. It requires us to look at ourselves for what we really are and see our inadequacy. No one wants to do that!

From the position of the world, it's crazy to be Catholic. We will be poorer, have difficult lives, know truths about ourselves which we don't want to believe exist, and spend a lot of time on things which won't advance our wellbeing. It's just not attractive, and many are turning to the world, or at best to 'instant salvation' and 'prosperity gospel' churches.



I agree with both a_ntv and QuantaCura. I think it isn't surprising that people who neither know God nor love God aren't all that keen on serving God, nor particularly worried about eternity. We need to pray for these people

I was like this once. I had the "didn't get anything out of the mass"-type problem. I eventually realized after alot of research, and prayer, that it's not about me and how I "feel", I'm there to worship the Lord God and give him his due, not to pander to my own selfish reasons and cravings for satisfaction, for that uppity happy high, that people desire so badly in today's modern culture. That's deplorable and sadly many adhere to this line of thinking, completely ambilavalent to the fact that we must give God his due, not pander to our own senisbilities.

 

[Caedmon]

I personally don't think the need for mysticism has diminished in the West.

I don't think the need for mysticism has diminished either. What I was trying to say was that the diminished desire to pursue Catholicism and her mysticism has been caused by poor catechesis, scandals, misunderstandings, and a general negative attitude about Catholic (or any form of) hierarchy.

 

[Globalnomad]

I read an interesting book a year or two ago--"The Next Christendom" by theologian Philip Jenkins.



http://www.amazon.com/Next-Christen...=pd_bbs_2/102-9097898-1484968?ie=UTF8&s=books

One reason why European and American Catholics are becoming lapsed is that what European and American Catholics think or need is absolutely irrelevant to today's Church. Maybe the Church should make some changes to become relevant in the post-modern era to post-modern man....

But they don't need to, because they have hordes of believers in the Third World who are untouched by technology, prosperity and modernism who are very traditional and unquestioning in their beliefs.

And so, basically, they've written us off. The Cardinals in the Third World will be calling all the shots in the future, the Third World will have most of the growth, and what we in the Northern Hemisphere need for our spiritual growth will be completely irrelevant to them.

That was a sad, almost bitter post, Fantine - and I agree with you to a large extent - but let me give you the sunny side of it. My personal spiritual experience is that we - I - can live with it. We can live with this quaint, traditionalist Church, and love it and belong to it - and find additional spiritual sustenance either outside it, or on its "suspect fringes". And realise that if it was the other way around, the "unquestioning traditionalist" part would be far worse off than we are, now. So I am content with the situation as it is, and I suspect that it is pretty much as Jesus would want it (well, with some notable exceptions...)