" A Hard Look At Catholicism’s Crisis" -A very interesting article by Rod Dreher published a few hours ago

[IanM]

A Hard Look At Catholicism's Crisis - The American Conservative

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I’m happy to talk honestly about happening, which is that a bunch of scandal sheets run by angry white guys (and a handful of angry white women) have taken up regular Church-bashing and tabloid muckraking (did we really need to know about a priest with personal problems involving adults, that the Bishop may very well be trying to help?) and disguised it as “accountability”, and a lot of us are sick of it and sick of the Catholics who seem to revel in it, but we have to continue to try to get along with them because that’s what Jesus wants us to do.

 

[Limoncello4021]

One thing I’ve noticed about Dreher is that although he is proud to say he left the Catholic Church he obsessively returns to it in his columns and always wants to justify himself again and again. I stopped reading him for all this handwringing about his own evident guilt, or whatever it is. Nevertheless, I also refuse to read things like Church Militant, the Wanderer, the Remnant, etc anymore. I started out a couple years ago thinking some were moderately balanced, but they’ve really dug in deep with mud slinging, scandal, etc. especially about Pope Francis.

 

[ralfyman]

The brief reference to Kunstler is notable because it may partly explain what is happening not only to the Church but to others. You see, Kunstler’s “long emergency” refers to a long-term future where the world population faces a combination of a resource crunch, the effects of ecological damage and global warming, chronic economic crises due to rising debts, and offshoots of those three problems, such as increasing incidences of epidemics and pandemics, wars over oil, water, and various resources, and so on.

Many of these phenomena are currently taking place, but they are coupled with growing secularism worldwide, especially in countries that have arrived at late stages of capitalism and developing economies eager to achieve it: high levels of consumer spending, a proliferation of commercial mass entertainment, increasing levels of self-entitlement, narcissism, and materialism, and with that higher incidences of mental health issues, criminal behavior and vices, and so on. The crises leading to that “long emergency” will make matters worse.

 

[commenter]

One thing I’ve noticed about Dreher is that although he is proud to say he left the Catholic Church he obsessively returns to it in his columns and always wants to justify himself again and again.

Luther did that too. It’s part of the program.