Decline of Church

[Rosebud77]

of course depends too whether you see the faith and the church as the same thing…

 

[CuriousMike]

Faith in what though? And eg the Poles have their own mass, their own community. They tend not to mix. The priesthood is all but finished here, and they do not have the humility to bring in eg asian priests Also sadly Ireland is deeply racist.

What has happened, at least from my limited view of it here in Australia, is the few Seminarians left over have a stronger form of traditionalism “in their blood” so to speak.

With such low numbers, the Church cannot go and spit them out, because they know there is a crisis in Ireland at the moment, given how everything turned out. And I’m sure they know if they started booting the few Seminarians they have out, it would cause all sorts of trouble for the Church.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel that if there are more Priests with this stronger respect for Tradition, and also for God, perhaps… Perhaps, something good shall come of it!

I can understand your view on the Polish. At least in this corner of Australia, the Salvatorian order do have a reasonable presence right across my state. In the 1980s, the Polish arm of the order took control of ‘their’ Parishes, according to the needs of the Diocese.
A lot of people, at least in my Parish, share the view that they place themselves “above” the people. A sort of “I’ll be over there if you need me. You must come and get me,” attitude, rather than the missionary attitude of secretly digging underneath then “popping up” right amongst the people.

Thankfully, our current Parish Priest holds this latter attitude, and has a better understanding on Australian people than most.

Unfortunately, I do see your point with regular Polish people too, but really, any people that speak another language, or have a radically different culture (or both), will be “outsiders” and tend to cling together. I think that is just human nature. Although, it can be annoying if you are trying to mingle, but folks from other countries/regions don’t make an effort to speak any English.

 

[40Days]

Many Moslem countries have much higher rates:
Afghanistan 5.3
Burkina Faso 5.9
Iraq 4.12

Forgot a few…

Bosnia. 1.23
Iran 1.62
United Arab Emirates 1.73
Albania 1.78
Brunei 1.82

…tragically, Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rates in the world…the other two, Iraq and Burkina Faso, are also very high