Will he ever shut up?!?!

Funny Article...(not funny "HaHa)

They don't seem to want to even consider an idea that a portion of those who have left the Catholic church have become Born Again, or turned to protestant churches. Never mind the thousands of Restoration Mega Churches that are popping up around the country. It's as if they would rather people just think that low attendance in the Catholic church, would indicate these people left the Christian faith all together. Maybe slightly motivated by all of the "Moral Values" talk of late.

There's a fundamental difference between many (not all) Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers. Boomers did/do things (sometimes blindly) out of tradition. "That's the way we were raised...That's just the way we've always done things.". Whereas X'ers tend to question merit more proactively. X'er: "Why we doing this?", Boomer: "That's just the way we were raised.", X'er: "But that isn't right!", Boomer: "Well that's the way we've always done it.", X'er: "Well that's stupid...I'm not going to do it that way.".

This attitude...combined with the FACT that the Catholic Church has always believed and practiced "Exclusive Faith" rather than "Evangelical Faith" has spelled out the imminent collapse of this church.

Let's look at this more practically...I own a chain of stores that sell widgets. Fine widgets, that were invented back in 1940's. All my customers, aging though they are, have been with me from the get go, and love my widgets. But some of these new widget stores have been coming along with these new fangled widgets that are, I admit, more practical for the new century. But golly, my widgets are still valid...they still work...kinda. And if I started selling those new fangled widgets, my old customers that have been around since 1940 might become intimidated and stop buying my widgets. Nope, I can't have that...no new widgets here by God!

What's more...is recently, these different "People"...you know, folks not like us...they've recently moved into the neighborhood. Since they're not like us, and I don't want to scare off any of my loyal customers, I think we'll NOT serve them. They can find some other widgets elsewhere.

Flash Forward 20 years...

Well I got some bad news...I have to shut a few of my widget stores. See, I recently found out that some of my stock boys and even a couple of my floor managers were molesting little boys, sons of some of my best customers as bad luck would have it. Instead of owning up to it and throwing every last one of these guys in jail, I thought I'd just pay out some money to their parents, and maybe the problem would go away.

Huh! Go figure, turns out people don't want to shop at widget stores, where there are unrepentant child molesters. Well O.K....Fine then. I guess they'll just have to go with out my outdated, exclusive, rusty widgets. Yep, their loss!

Flash forward 10 more years...

Hey...What's with all these old people dying!?!? If these old widget customers of mine keep dying, I'll be out of business for sure. You know, being with out a plan for the future...not opening my doors to all customers...not reaching out and advertising [read evangelism here] to bring in new customers...and refusing to update my old and irrelevant widgets, may not have been a good business plan. Huh! Who da' thunk it!?!?

No...the truth is, the Catholic church is in the process of reaping what it has sown. There are sooooo many scriptural examples of this I can hardly sit still. (Not to mention the whole common sense side to it). Yet that article would rather you believe people are becoming less faithful. I couldn't disagree more. In fact I think (and the election would attest to it) that the country is infact becoming more conservative...more faithful. I think people are reassessing their world views, and rather than keeping "religion" and politics seperate...they are voting their beliefs. They are acting on their discomfort and personal values, and getting up out of those Catholic churches that say one thing and do another...that outwardly contradict scripture...that are more interested in protecting their own false image, then doing what they preach and owning up to and repenting of sins.

I would bet that if you took the exact numbers the Catholic church has declined by, and the exact numbers that Non-Denominational and Protestant churches have grown by (minus new converts), that number would be awfully, awfully close. In my Tuesday night bible study alone...of 16 adults, there are: 6 raised Protestant, 8 former Catholic and two raised in non-faith homes.

OK...I'm going to stop now before I say something bad. Anyhow...Just thought it was all interesting.

Peace...Eventually,
K~