A clarion call to restore our beautiful Catholicism

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I’ve been pretty fortunate. I was born in 1975 and a cradle Catholic. As far back as I can remember, we always had really good and holy Priest. Of course there was the big gap between the late 90s to probably 2011/12 when I very rarely attend Mass. So I could of missed a few.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Some people can’t handle the supernatural aspects of Catholicism.
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Sometimes I think about this teacher—she was truly a God fearing woman. And wonder if she still believes in the “Miracle of Sharing”
 
Wow, I heard of very liberal Priests and Nuns, but never any that layed down in front of the gates at an air show. Crazy and sad.
 
You likely missed the worst of it by being born a bit later.
The late 60s through the early 80s were pretty much prime time for modernism. It started to get better after Pope JPII got in and started emphasizing Marian devotion and anti-Communism again. Kinda got things back on track. He was not perfect, but he was a great saint and I sometimes wonder if he was the Pope who saved the Church between the two pillars like in Don Bosco’s vision.
 
Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI contributed. I was reading an account about Pope Benedict using older vestments. One well-known critic made the following remark: “The Pope wants to return the Church to the Middle Ages.”
 
JP2 is one of my heroes!! JP2, Regan, my Dad, Gene Simmons from KISS (for certain things only like his work ethic), Jaco Pastorius (for certain things), JFK and of course my biggest hero is Jesus. 😃

Yes I would’ve been to young to remember most things prior to the early 80s. I remember JP2 always being the Holy Father, until he passed away. So I suppose I missed out on a lot of the bad things when it came to that.

P.S., I also admire our founding fathers!
 
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Pope Benedict also made it possible to celebrate the Latin Mass again. So props to the Holy Father!
 
Really? My now 89 year old mother loved the Church and the sisters in her Catholic education in NYC. She isn’t so great for typing but she’ll send you a nice handwritten note if you like.
 
The good news is that Seminaries are not like McDonald’s Franchises. Each Seminary has different professors, each Diocese different formation processes.

I am sorry this priest had a bad Seminary experience, but, let’s not assume his experience is universal.
 
My mother who died at 89 in 2015 was pulled out of Catholic school by her very Catholic mother (big Irish Catholic family, the whole nine yards) in the 1930s and sent to the public school thereafter, because she was being emotionally abused by her teacher, a religious sister. My mother had a rather jaundiced view of religious sisters generally for the rest of her life, although there were one or two sisters she really liked (one was my fifth grade teacher) and became good friends with.

Mother Angelica also had some not-very-nice things to say about her time at Catholic school when she was young.

I am sure there were some sisters who were very kind and good teachers, and others who were not. I had the same kind of “mixed bag” experiences with them when I was young. There are some I remember very fondly and others not so much.
 
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It was both. Sadly, the prevailing culture formed the Church instead of vice versa. Sexual revolution? Oh yeah, but look at the bitter harvest which was reaped - outside and inside of the Church. The same with permissiveness, modernity (which was bemoaned in Chesteron’s time!), the licentious interpretation of virtually everything including “architecture” after Vatican II, you name it. I am blessed to attend an early 70s circular parish (oh, no!), but which has the tabernacle prominent directly behind the altar. 👍 They got one thing right.

But as to the rest, let it, like Soviet communism, be relegated to the ash heap of history.

Ecclesia semper reformanda - attributed to Saint Augustine.

Let the healing begin with us.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I am sure there were some sisters who were very kind and good teachers, and others who were not. I had the same kind of “mixed bag” experiences with them when I was young. There are some I remember very fondly and others not so much.
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And some of the hippie types were very kind and good, and others who were not. Mixed bags are common.
 
Some nice posts here. I will add to what others have said, that most of the young priests I’ve met are very orthodox, with a real call (or surely they wouldn’t have made it as far as they did) and so are a great blessing to us all. I just bumped into one young priest I used to know in lay life, helping at our Tridentine masses for Holy Week. It was very encouraging, really.The Church has some come a long way in the last two decades.
 
bassmansteiny said:
Was this more a product of the era or just certain seminaries?
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It was certainly a product of the times, but also some seminaries were better than others. Even decades later, my diocesan bishop would only send his seminarians to particular seminaries for formation.
 
This is likely true. I have a personal bias because with one exception, all of my positive experiences were with sisters between late middle age and very old, some of whom were even still wearing the complete old-school full habit.
 
JimG said:
It was certainly a product of the times, but also some seminaries were better than others. Even decades later, my diocesan bishop would only send his seminarians to particular seminaries for formation.
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Absolutely true.

I was in the seminary for a time in the 1980s. I can assure you that the Rosary was a regular feature of our spirituality. We had adoration and exposition frequently. I was part of a group that fasted on a regular basis. Our theology was solid and completely in line with Holy Mother Church (in fact, my spiritual director wrote one of the earliest defenses of Humane Vitae and another wrote a widely-acclaimed textbook on moral theology). My bishop was VERY particular about where he sent his seminarians.
 
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It’s good to hear this. I suspect some of the good priests I know who are around my age must have attended similar seminaries, as they would have been going then.

Unfortunately I also have heard from at least one guy who dropped out of a seminary in the 80s because according to him it was very similar to what is described in that Goodbye Good Men book. I believe he ended up falling away from the Church after that.
 
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Having read Rose’s book, I have serious concerns about where our seminaries are at… It’s the sort of reading that leaves one scarred.
 
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