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Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
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Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...se/582658/

Article on a Catholic bishop who has been the leader on trying to reform the Catholic Church on issues of sexual abuse and his difficulties in getting change through the bureaucracy. My reaction to these things is that the church is more concerned about its reputation than its parishioners.

"A few years after seán o’malley took over the Archdiocese of Boston in 2003, at the peak of the clergy sexual-abuse crisis in America, he led novenas of penance at nine of the city’s most affected parishes. At each church he visited, he lay facedown on the floor before the altar, begging for forgiveness. This is how O’Malley has spent his life in ministry: cleaning up after pedophile priests and their apologists, and serving as the Catholic Church’s public face of repentance and reform....


Perhaps the most pressing problem for the Church is how it deals with failures at the very top—and in other countries where abuse cases are only now beginning to surface. “The lacuna in the Charter is around accountability of bishops,” O’Malley said. This is the first in a long list of problems that have bedeviled Church leaders and exacerbated mistrust among survivors and parishioners. Bishops, whose leadership role in the Church is supposedly modeled after Jesus’s apostles, often serve as the highest-ranking Catholic officials located in a given area. But even senior clergy have little ability to exercise control over one another. Currently, there is no formal mechanism in place for punishing or removing one of the thousands of Catholic bishops across the world when he is accused of wrongdoing, short of the intervention of the pope....

<and the article also describes how reluctant the Vatican is to get involved in local issues>

The dysfunction in how sexual-abuse issues are handled within the U.S. is multiplied at the global level, even on seemingly simple questions. In 2014, Pope Francis put O’Malley in charge of the newly formed Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors—a special Vatican group dedicated to developing sexual-abuse-related reforms. One of the group’s recommendations was simple: If any Vatican office receives a letter from a survivor, that letter must be acknowledged. Even though the pope approved this measure, at least one Vatican department, the influential Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, apparently declined to cooperate, arguing that local priests were better suited to address victims’ concerns. In 2017, the prominent sexual-abuse survivor and advocate Marie Collins resigned from the commission in protest. “I find it impossible to listen to public statements about the deep concern in the Church [for abuse victims],” she said at the time, “yet to watch privately as a congregation in the Vatican refuses to even acknowledge their letters!...”

Many of these sexual-abuse cases have stalled in Rome, however. The canon-law system arguably disincentivizes quick or decisive action to discipline priests, in part because it can be difficult for Church officials to fully investigate claims that took place decades ago. Canon lawyers are keen to protect the rights of the accused, but that focus has also contributed to cultural problems in the Church. “In the terrible days before the Church came to face this crisis, the missing piece was that understanding of the damage that was done to victims,” O’Malley told me. “All of the attention was on the perpetrator—send them off to a psychiatric facility, and the psychiatrist would then say, ‘He’s cured, you can put him back in ministry.’” And cases are often processed slowly: Even some of the Boston cases are still pending, 17 years later. “It’s like a parallel universe of understanding or function or structure,” Thorp said. “We used to use the term glacial. Now we call it just ‘frozen....’”"
02-16-2019 10:31 AM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02...legations/

This came out today. McCarrick was prominently mentioned in the ATlantic article above.

"A powerful former US cardinal has been expelled from the Catholic Church for sex offences against minors and adults following a Vatican trial, becoming the highest ranking figure cast out from the priesthood in modern times.

The defrocking of Theodore McCarrick, who served as archbishop of Washington DC and mingled with presidents and popes but who asked young men to call him "Uncle Ted", was announced by the Holy See on Saturday...."
02-16-2019 02:04 PM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
Perhaps they should switch places - the priests should be going to confession and the parishioners can tell them what to do as penance.
02-18-2019 11:42 AM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
I fail to understand what their "problem" is. They should be treated like ANY other child molester would be.

If a priest is molesting children, they should be arrested, criminally charged, not to mention, defrocked.

Pretty simple.

It's when they attempt to deny and cover-up that the problems begin.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”
02-18-2019 12:18 PM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
The Catholic church is the largest single organization in the world.

There are over 1.2 million consecrated religious, 143,000 schools, 5,000 hospitals, and 9,000 orphanages. It has more employees than the US government and the Chinese government combined.

Any change is going to take forever to actually implement on all levels.
02-18-2019 02:00 PM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
(02-18-2019 12:18 PM)BadgerMJ Wrote:  I fail to understand what their "problem" is. They should be treated like ANY other child molester would be.

If a priest is molesting children, they should be arrested, criminally charged, not to mention, defrocked.

Pretty simple.

It's when they attempt to deny and cover-up that the problems begin.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”

I completely agree.

But that IS what happens now. The new revelations over the past year are almost exclusively from far in the past. In fact I haven't seen a single incident yet of a new allegation being discovered and NOT reported to police since the American church instituted reforms in 2006.

I'm frankly struggling to see what the actual current-day relevance is of the controversy. Could someone tell me what the current controversy is? I.e., what does the Church needs to do differently in 2020 from what it did in 2018?

The Catholic Church in the USA today has the most stringent child protection practices of any organization in the world. You can't even have an 11th grade basketball practice on Church property without 2 adults present.

This was a problem, and we fixed it. The fact that new people are coming forward with new allegations from 40 years ago doesn't change that fact.
02-18-2019 02:20 PM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
(02-18-2019 02:20 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(02-18-2019 12:18 PM)BadgerMJ Wrote:  I fail to understand what their "problem" is. They should be treated like ANY other child molester would be.

If a priest is molesting children, they should be arrested, criminally charged, not to mention, defrocked.

Pretty simple.

It's when they attempt to deny and cover-up that the problems begin.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”

I completely agree.

But that IS what happens now. The new revelations over the past year are almost exclusively from far in the past. In fact I haven't seen a single incident yet of a new allegation being discovered and NOT reported to police since the American church instituted reforms in 2006.

I'm frankly struggling to see what the actual current-day relevance is of the controversy. Could someone tell me what the current controversy is? I.e., what does the Church needs to do differently in 2020 from what it did in 2018?

The Catholic Church in the USA today has the most stringent child protection practices of any organization in the world. You can't even have an 11th grade basketball practice on Church property without 2 adults present.

This was a problem, and we fixed it. The fact that new people are coming forward with new allegations from 40 years ago doesn't change that fact.

The new crew of Priests becoming ordained is saavy to the recent past scandals and abuses and they want zero part of it--they are on fire for reform in this aspect and getting back to the conservative values that many in the church left behind since the 60's in favor of liberalism. Similar to society, we are seeing that relativism in values does not work...it only provides an illusion. Getting back to rock-solid values is helping the new generation of both Priests and laypeople make a positive difference. In most cases, the old Priests and Bishops that were brought in during the "enlightened" late 60s, 70s and 80s are the big remaining problem. And not all of them...but in general that is where the lion's share of problems lie.
Disordered individuals are turning away from the Priesthood in favor of organizations like the Boy Scouts, non-denominational and some of the more liberal, less-organized Protestant churches where they can hide and act out their agendas with far less scrutiny and/or even acceptance and promotion.

A majority of Catholic lay-people are also hyper-aware of theses issues and are pushing for even more conservative values to return to their churches. In fact, the areas that are most conservative in the country seem to be growing in Catholic conversions/returns and the areas more liberal (Chicago, New York, Philly, San Fran, LA, etc...) are the ones that seem to be losing the faithful. It is the liberal do-whatever-you-want-and-it's-still-okay attitudes that cause most problems and create opportunities for disordered people to infiltrate and hurt/abuse vulnerable people in the first place.
02-19-2019 10:31 PM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
(02-18-2019 02:20 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(02-18-2019 12:18 PM)BadgerMJ Wrote:  I fail to understand what their "problem" is. They should be treated like ANY other child molester would be.

If a priest is molesting children, they should be arrested, criminally charged, not to mention, defrocked.

Pretty simple.

It's when they attempt to deny and cover-up that the problems begin.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”

I completely agree.

But that IS what happens now. The new revelations over the past year are almost exclusively from far in the past. In fact I haven't seen a single incident yet of a new allegation being discovered and NOT reported to police since the American church instituted reforms in 2006.

I'm frankly struggling to see what the actual current-day relevance is of the controversy. Could someone tell me what the current controversy is? I.e., what does the Church needs to do differently in 2020 from what it did in 2018?

The Catholic Church in the USA today has the most stringent child protection practices of any organization in the world. You can't even have an 11th grade basketball practice on Church property without 2 adults present.

This was a problem, and we fixed it. The fact that new people are coming forward with new allegations from 40 years ago doesn't change that fact.

That’s been in place everywhere for 20 years
02-20-2019 12:47 PM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
(02-19-2019 10:31 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  
(02-18-2019 02:20 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(02-18-2019 12:18 PM)BadgerMJ Wrote:  I fail to understand what their "problem" is. They should be treated like ANY other child molester would be.

If a priest is molesting children, they should be arrested, criminally charged, not to mention, defrocked.

Pretty simple.

It's when they attempt to deny and cover-up that the problems begin.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”

I completely agree.

But that IS what happens now. The new revelations over the past year are almost exclusively from far in the past. In fact I haven't seen a single incident yet of a new allegation being discovered and NOT reported to police since the American church instituted reforms in 2006.

I'm frankly struggling to see what the actual current-day relevance is of the controversy. Could someone tell me what the current controversy is? I.e., what does the Church needs to do differently in 2020 from what it did in 2018?

The Catholic Church in the USA today has the most stringent child protection practices of any organization in the world. You can't even have an 11th grade basketball practice on Church property without 2 adults present.

This was a problem, and we fixed it. The fact that new people are coming forward with new allegations from 40 years ago doesn't change that fact.

The new crew of Priests becoming ordained is saavy to the recent past scandals and abuses and they want zero part of it--they are on fire for reform in this aspect and getting back to the conservative values that many in the church left behind since the 60's in favor of liberalism. Similar to society, we are seeing that relativism in values does not work...it only provides an illusion. Getting back to rock-solid values is helping the new generation of both Priests and laypeople make a positive difference. In most cases, the old Priests and Bishops that were brought in during the "enlightened" late 60s, 70s and 80s are the big remaining problem. And not all of them...but in general that is where the lion's share of problems lie.
Disordered individuals are turning away from the Priesthood in favor of organizations like the Boy Scouts, non-denominational and some of the more liberal, less-organized Protestant churches where they can hide and act out their agendas with far less scrutiny and/or even acceptance and promotion.

A majority of Catholic lay-people are also hyper-aware of theses issues and are pushing for even more conservative values to return to their churches. In fact, the areas that are most conservative in the country seem to be growing in Catholic conversions/returns and the areas more liberal (Chicago, New York, Philly, San Fran, LA, etc...) are the ones that seem to be losing the faithful. It is the liberal do-whatever-you-want-and-it's-still-okay attitudes that cause most problems and create opportunities for disordered people to infiltrate and hurt/abuse vulnerable people in the first place.

Do you have any evidence of them moving or is that wishful thinking? Boy Scouts and other denominations have had these protections for decades. There are required courses before you can work with children. If this stuff hasn’t been in place with the Catholics for decades also, they are behind the curve
02-20-2019 12:53 PM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/a...posed.html

Review on a new book about this issue:

"I spent much of this week reading and trying to absorb the new and devastating book by one Frédéric Martel on the gayness of the hierarchy at the top of the Catholic Church, In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy. It’s a bewildering and vast piece of reporting — Martel interviewed no fewer than “41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignori, 45 apostolic nuncios, secretaries of nunciatures or foreign ambassadors, 11 Swiss Guards and over 200 Catholic priests and seminarians.” He conducted more than 1,500 interviews over four years, is quite clear about his sources, and helps the reader weigh their credibility. He keeps the identity of many of the most egregiously hypocritical cardinals confidential, but is unsparing about the dead.

The picture Martel draws is jaw-dropping. Many of the Vatican gays — especially the most homophobic — treat their vows of celibacy with an insouciant contempt. Martel argues that many of these cardinals and officials have lively sex lives, operate within a “don’t ask, don’t tell” culture, constantly hit on young men, hire prostitutes, throw chem-sex parties, and even pay for sex with church money. How do we know this? Because, astonishingly, they tell us....


I’m no naïf when it comes to the gayness of the church. I’ve lived in it as a gay man for all my adult life, and my eyes are open. And so the book did not surprise me, as such, but it still stunned, shocked, and disgusted me. You simply cannot unread it, or banish what is quite obviously true from your mind. It helps explain more deeply the rants of Pope Francis about so many of his cardinals, especially his denunciations of “Pharisees” and “hypocrites,” with their sexual amorality and their vast wealth and power. “Behind rigidity something always lies hidden; in many cases, a double life,” he has said....


Yes, there are times when Martel overdoes it a bit. But it’s completely understandable. As a secular gay journalist, not hostile to the church, he walked into the Vatican and was simply staggered by its obvious gayness. No gay neighborhood has existed like this in the West since the 1980s. (Lepore hazards a guess that 80 percent of the Vatican’s population is gay.) And as Martel probes deeper and deeper, one theme emerges very powerfully: “Homosexuality spreads the closer one gets to the holy of holies; there are more and more homosexuals as one rises through the Catholic hierarchy. The more vehemently opposed a cleric is to gays, the stronger his homophobic obsession, the more likely it is that he is insincere, and that his vehemence conceals something.” It’s a lesson I learned reporting my own recent essay on gay priests....


I went to Mass last Sunday to pray about this. My parish church has long been the Cathedral of Saint Matthew, where the child molester Cardinal McCarrick presided for many years, and who was succeeded by the proven dissembler Cardinal Wuerl. One is defrocked; the other has resigned in disgrace. Since the McCarrick defrocking was the lead story in last Sunday’s print edition of the New York Times, I naïvely thought someone in authority in the Cathedral — say, the rector who gave the homily — might finally acknowledge and address the intense betrayal and pain everyone in that parish was feeling. Instead, the homily was a pitch — I kid you not — for the cardinal’s appeal. Which cardinal? The rapist or the liar?

This may seem like hyperbole, but in my view, the last drops of moral authority the Vatican might hope to have evaporate with this book. It is difficult to express the heartbroken rage so many of us in the pews now feel."
02-24-2019 09:55 AM
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ericsrevenge76 Away
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
The best thing all Catholics can do is open their Bible and start reading it in a serious manner. Granted that may cause some to leave Catholicism, but whats important here is individual salvation and the Word of God, not a man made world wide institution.
02-25-2019 10:57 PM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
All institutions of any size develop an inertia of protecting the members of the group even when the members act in ways contrary to the core beliefs.

Liberty embracing Hugh Freeze. How quickly the Republicans in the Arkansas legislature circled the wagons around a member who "re-homed" a troubled girl he had taken in who disrupted his home by giving her to a known pedophile, trying to stymie investigations into pay for play legislative work, the local ad agency that bullied females complaining about being sexually harassed by a high level manager. The Southern Baptist scandal. My local police department a few years ago ended up paying out six figure settlements left and right for the abusive treatment of black, Hispanic, and female officers (in some cases hitting both categories) and the sole white male officer willing to stand up for them got paid too because of disciplinary actions taken against him, sealed with an officer being recorded telling him exactly how the deputy chief intended to frame him to discredit him and producing the recording when the deputy chief tried to investigate him on those charges.

The Catholic Church is a collection of humans and human nature is to support your tribe no matter how decayed with evil it has become. Protecting the tribe member over the purposes of the organization becomes paramount.
02-26-2019 10:09 AM
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ericsrevenge76 Away
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
The head of the RCC is the Vatican which is actually a state and government recognized by the United Nations. So their situation is rather unique in that respect. Plus the 1700+ year history and the Holy Roman Empire which ruled over much of the civilized world in a horrifyingly bloody manner for 1260 years in the dark ages.

I personally love individual Catholics, can't stand the RCC for all sorts of reasons, mostly their history and their opposition to Biblical Christianity.
02-26-2019 10:31 AM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
(02-26-2019 10:31 AM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  The head of the RCC is the Vatican which is actually a state and government recognized by the United Nations. So their situation is rather unique in that respect. Plus the 1700+ year history and the Holy Roman Empire which ruled over much of the civilized world in a horrifyingly bloody manner for 1260 years in the dark ages.

I personally love individual Catholics, can't stand the RCC for all sorts of reasons, mostly their history and their opposition to Biblical Christianity.

I agree that any bureaucracy is slow. The larger it is, the slower it works. And the Catholic church is the largest and most complicated bureaucracy on the planet.

Since this is the No-Spin room, we can agree to disagree on the bolded part 04-cheers All I'll say is that most criticism (not all, but most) from other Christians about Catholic practices/beliefs are about fictional practices/beliefs (i.e., that's not what Catholics actually do/believe). Sort of like how some ancient Romans disliked us because they thought we practiced cannibalism.
02-26-2019 06:23 PM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
(02-26-2019 10:09 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  All institutions of any size develop an inertia of protecting the members of the group even when the members act in ways contrary to the core beliefs.

Liberty embracing Hugh Freeze. How quickly the Republicans in the Arkansas legislature circled the wagons around a member who "re-homed" a troubled girl he had taken in who disrupted his home by giving her to a known pedophile, trying to stymie investigations into pay for play legislative work, the local ad agency that bullied females complaining about being sexually harassed by a high level manager. The Southern Baptist scandal. My local police department a few years ago ended up paying out six figure settlements left and right for the abusive treatment of black, Hispanic, and female officers (in some cases hitting both categories) and the sole white male officer willing to stand up for them got paid too because of disciplinary actions taken against him, sealed with an officer being recorded telling him exactly how the deputy chief intended to frame him to discredit him and producing the recording when the deputy chief tried to investigate him on those charges.

The Catholic Church is a collection of humans and human nature is to support your tribe no matter how decayed with evil it has become. Protecting the tribe member over the purposes of the organization becomes paramount.

I disagree that is what's going on today. The loudest voices against the sexual abuse scandal are from within the Church.

The Pope himself has spoken out about it repeatedly and vocally. Bishops, priests, Catholic media, they're all united in wanting these people removed.
02-26-2019 06:25 PM
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RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
(02-20-2019 12:53 PM)bullet Wrote:  
(02-19-2019 10:31 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  
(02-18-2019 02:20 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(02-18-2019 12:18 PM)BadgerMJ Wrote:  I fail to understand what their "problem" is. They should be treated like ANY other child molester would be.

If a priest is molesting children, they should be arrested, criminally charged, not to mention, defrocked.

Pretty simple.

It's when they attempt to deny and cover-up that the problems begin.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”

I completely agree.

But that IS what happens now. The new revelations over the past year are almost exclusively from far in the past. In fact I haven't seen a single incident yet of a new allegation being discovered and NOT reported to police since the American church instituted reforms in 2006.

I'm frankly struggling to see what the actual current-day relevance is of the controversy. Could someone tell me what the current controversy is? I.e., what does the Church needs to do differently in 2020 from what it did in 2018?

The Catholic Church in the USA today has the most stringent child protection practices of any organization in the world. You can't even have an 11th grade basketball practice on Church property without 2 adults present.

This was a problem, and we fixed it. The fact that new people are coming forward with new allegations from 40 years ago doesn't change that fact.

The new crew of Priests becoming ordained is saavy to the recent past scandals and abuses and they want zero part of it--they are on fire for reform in this aspect and getting back to the conservative values that many in the church left behind since the 60's in favor of liberalism. Similar to society, we are seeing that relativism in values does not work...it only provides an illusion. Getting back to rock-solid values is helping the new generation of both Priests and laypeople make a positive difference. In most cases, the old Priests and Bishops that were brought in during the "enlightened" late 60s, 70s and 80s are the big remaining problem. And not all of them...but in general that is where the lion's share of problems lie.
Disordered individuals are turning away from the Priesthood in favor of organizations like the Boy Scouts, non-denominational and some of the more liberal, less-organized Protestant churches where they can hide and act out their agendas with far less scrutiny and/or even acceptance and promotion.

A majority of Catholic lay-people are also hyper-aware of theses issues and are pushing for even more conservative values to return to their churches. In fact, the areas that are most conservative in the country seem to be growing in Catholic conversions/returns and the areas more liberal (Chicago, New York, Philly, San Fran, LA, etc...) are the ones that seem to be losing the faithful. It is the liberal do-whatever-you-want-and-it's-still-okay attitudes that cause most problems and create opportunities for disordered people to infiltrate and hurt/abuse vulnerable people in the first place.

Do you have any evidence of them moving or is that wishful thinking? Boy Scouts and other denominations have had these protections for decades. There are required courses before you can work with children. If this stuff hasn’t been in place with the Catholics for decades also, they are behind the curve

Chicago's Catholic Church in transition: What parishioners are saying

Here's at least one more recent article from one of the areas I suggested.
One might argue they are just mimicking the general trend of people fleeing these states for the Sun Belt and West and younger populations there declining.

I will say that in my travels in recent years, most churches in the Sun Belt and West seem to be full up during Mass, at least when I have gone when visiting other cities. That is anecdotal, of course.

Here's a bit more info on the subject:
Catholic Parishes of the 21st Century

Quote:The book’s chapter on changing clergy demographics notes that while about 500 new priests are being ordained in the United States each year and this country has a more favorable ratio of clergy to priests than many other parts of the world, that does not replace the number of priests who die or who are inactive due to illness or retirement.

Now the Catholic Church in the United States has about 16,500 active diocesan priests, and the average age of U.S. priests is in the mid-60s. In 2014, the U.S. had 26,000 priests, including retired clergy, compared to 34,000 in 1990. About one-fourth of U.S. diocesan priests come from foreign countries.

There are an estimated 40,000 lay ecclesial ministers on parish ministry staffs, and the United States has about 18,000 permanent deacons serving in a variety of roles. The book highlights the need for adequate training for lay parish workers and volunteers, especially in financial and operational matters, to assist the declining number of priests.

Another dramatic development in the U.S. Catholic Church in recent decades has been the shift in Catholic population and how Catholics are now distributed across the country.

While the earlier Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life done in the 1980s found that almost two-thirds of the nation’s Catholics lived in the Northeast or Midwest, now Catholics are almost evenly distributed across the four major regions of the country, with 28 percent in the Northeast, 23 percent in the Midwest, 25 percent in the West and 24 percent in the South.

The book notes how significant numbers of Catholics have moved from cities and farms to suburban areas and to parts of the country where there are more jobs. Some dioceses in the Northeast and Rust Belt have lost tens of thousands of Catholics in recent decades and had to close or merge parishes, while dioceses in the Sun Belt are rapidly growing and have to build expansive churches.

“People move, infrastructure doesn’t,” said Gaunt, noting the change is also fueled by the mobility of younger generations and the nation’s growing immigrant population. An added challenge is maintaining older churches that are expensive to maintain and have small numbers of parishioners.

The declining number of priests and the shifting Catholic population has also led to new models of parish leadership, the book notes, pointing out how some priests now lead more than one parish, or clusters of parishes are led by a team of priests, and some parishes are now administered by permanent deacons, women religious or lay people who serve as parish life coordinators.

The book characterizes the contrast between parts of the country where the Catholic population is declining and churches are closing, to other regions where there’s rapid growth, as a “tale of two Churches,” and notes how the neighborhood parishes of the past are being transformed into larger regional communities, with churches that now seat more than 1,000 parishioners.
02-27-2019 12:42 AM
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Captain Bearcat Offline
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Post: #17
RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
White flight meant a lot of Catholics fleeing the inner city and being replaced by African-Americans. Only 5% of African Americans are Catholic, and the neighborhoods usually are losing population overall.

A classic example is Cincinnati's urban basin, which is the Central Business District and 4 surrounding neighborhoods (Over the Rhine, West End, Queensgate, Pendleton - some people also include Lower Price Hill when talking about the Basin). In 1900, Over-the-Rhine had 45,000 residents and was 75% German. By 2000, it had 7,300 residents and was over 80% African American.

The other neighborhoods around OTR were decimated by the highways. The state tore down 15,000 homes and 500 businesses to build I-75 and I-71 through the urban core.

Of course, they tried to avoid big and sensitive buildings like churches when building the highways. But who was going to attend those churches when all the houses were demolished?

The Cincinnati Archdiocese has torn down 15 churches in the basin, although the last one torn down was in the 1970s. Amazingly, there's still 6 Catholic churches left for about 20,000 residents.

Picture of Cincinnati's Queensgate in 1958 and 2010. Today, Queensgate has less than 150 residents:
[Image: 90p2ut5wmzpx.jpg?width=640&amp;crop=...3991e0401a]
(This post was last modified: 02-28-2019 09:53 PM by Captain Bearcat.)
02-28-2019 09:49 PM
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ericsrevenge76 Away
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Post: #18
RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
(02-26-2019 06:23 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(02-26-2019 10:31 AM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  The head of the RCC is the Vatican which is actually a state and government recognized by the United Nations. So their situation is rather unique in that respect. Plus the 1700+ year history and the Holy Roman Empire which ruled over much of the civilized world in a horrifyingly bloody manner for 1260 years in the dark ages.

I personally love individual Catholics, can't stand the RCC for all sorts of reasons, mostly their history and their opposition to Biblical Christianity.

I agree that any bureaucracy is slow. The larger it is, the slower it works. And the Catholic church is the largest and most complicated bureaucracy on the planet.

Since this is the No-Spin room, we can agree to disagree on the bolded part 04-cheers All I'll say is that most criticism (not all, but most) from other Christians about Catholic practices/beliefs are about fictional practices/beliefs (i.e., that's not what Catholics actually do/believe). Sort of like how some ancient Romans disliked us because they thought we practiced cannibalism.



Most Catholics have never really read most of the NT, so its impossible for them to know if their traditions and beliefs are biblical or not.

Its amazing how blinded people are by denominationalism, both catholic and protestant. They literally have an impenetrable wall and can't hear or see anything beyond that barrier. Not in the Bible or form other people. Its illogical and emotionally driven, and totally irrational, but its incredibly commonplace.

Those who have broken out of those denominational chains know what I'm talking about. Its so powerful and overwhelming, and people are totally blind to it when they are trapped in it. I once was as well.
(This post was last modified: 03-03-2019 10:21 AM by ericsrevenge76.)
03-01-2019 07:53 AM
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TigerBlue4Ever Offline
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Post: #19
RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
(02-25-2019 10:57 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  The best thing all Catholics can do is open their Bible and start reading it in a serious manner. Granted that may cause some to leave Catholicism, but whats important here is individual salvation and the Word of God, not a man made world wide institution.

The same can be said of any denomination...
04-10-2019 07:09 AM
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TigerBlue4Ever Offline
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Post: #20
RE: Catholic bishop struggles to reform church on sexual abuse
(03-01-2019 07:53 AM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  
(02-26-2019 06:23 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(02-26-2019 10:31 AM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  The head of the RCC is the Vatican which is actually a state and government recognized by the United Nations. So their situation is rather unique in that respect. Plus the 1700+ year history and the Holy Roman Empire which ruled over much of the civilized world in a horrifyingly bloody manner for 1260 years in the dark ages.

I personally love individual Catholics, can't stand the RCC for all sorts of reasons, mostly their history and their opposition to Biblical Christianity.

I agree that any bureaucracy is slow. The larger it is, the slower it works. And the Catholic church is the largest and most complicated bureaucracy on the planet.

Since this is the No-Spin room, we can agree to disagree on the bolded part 04-cheers All I'll say is that most criticism (not all, but most) from other Christians about Catholic practices/beliefs are about fictional practices/beliefs (i.e., that's not what Catholics actually do/believe). Sort of like how some ancient Romans disliked us because they thought we practiced cannibalism.



Most Catholics have never really read most of the NT, so its impossible for them to know if their traditions and beliefs are biblical or not.

Its amazing how blinded people are by denominationalism, both catholic and protestant. They literally have an impenetrable wall and can't hear or see anything beyond that barrier. Not in the Bible or form other people. Its illogical and emotionally driven, and totally irrational, but its incredibly commonplace.

Those who have broken out of those denominational chains know what I'm talking about. Its so powerful and overwhelming, and people are totally blind to it when they are trapped in it. I once was as well.

That's a broad brush there isn't it? I attended Catholic schools and we read, dissected and re-read the NT all before the 8th grade. There was infinitely more focus on the NT than the OT.
04-10-2019 07:13 AM
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