Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Rod Dreher's take on the Bishops and Holy Communion

This article is an indictment, not of all bishops, but, it seems to me, of the Church in the US. He states:
For an entire generation, Catholics in this country have not been taught the basics of the faith.
Actually, it is more than a generation - it is nearly two generations of Catholics who have not been taught the fundamentals of the Catholic Faith.
In a powerful essay published in The Wanderer, a conservative Catholic newspaper, Father Joseph F. Wilson writes that this communion controversy is taking place as if the church in America has clearly and forcefully taught its people what the Eucharist is, and why abortion is so morally repugnant. Nonsense, says the Brooklyn priest, who argues that parishes have fed their people a steady diet of noncontroversial, content-free "mommy religion" for so long that nobody should be surprised that Catholics don't understand what the church teaches, and why.

"They may come to Mass, but they are, sadly, never really fed, never really formed in the Catholic faith," the priest says. "And their attitudes and values morph into what we would expect of amiable pagans."
This is one reason why it is so important for the faithful to learn the faith and to teach others the truths of the faith. In far too many parishes, they will not learn the truth unless they learn from those who know and live it.

Article here.

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