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Graceful_Lamb
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Mormons are not Christians.
As for the decline in protestant denominations, that would seem to be true. There does seem to be a rise of people going to the Catholic church.
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As for the decline in protestant denominations, that would seem to be true. There does seem to be a rise of people going to the Catholic church.
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ComplineSanFran
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Mormons define themselves as Christians. We have had many discussions on this forum about the LDS church and we always back and forth. About all that has been decided is that 1) Mormons can define themselves as they wish, and 2) other faith communities have a right to determine who they will accept or not accept.
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Belshazzar
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Padres1969
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Not according to polling. The numbers are holding steady or shrinking depending on who you ask (I’d point you to the data sheet above). Individual parishes may be seeing growth, but Catholicism is shrinking in the west too. As much as mainline Protestantism if you discount incoming Catholic immigrants.
Now some like to point at mainline Protestants and say it’s the “liberalization” of the denominations driving the loss of members. But that ignores that more conservative churches like the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod are also shrinking at a fair clip as well. The Orthodox church is shrinking. Even some churches in the Evangelical wing like the Southern Baptist Convention have started to see shrinkage. Yes some churches started shrinking earlier, but they were the canary in the mine, for most of Christianity in the west.
To answer the above opposite side of the coin question, the only churches not seeing much shrinkage or even growth in the west from what I’ve read, are the LDS (if you accept they’re Christian) who are holding more of less steady)), the JW (same caveat as the LDS), the Seventh Day Adventists, Non Denominational Churches, and the Pentecostals.
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commenter
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I encourage posters not to focus on numbers, on gains or losses in members. Christ never promised his faithful followers would be popular. A church that genuinely preaches the gospel and is consistent with Christian Tradition may happen to gain members in a certain context, or lose members in another context. Even Christ had some people who walked away due to His preaching Truth they did not want to hear. The Bible does not record Him chasing after them, saying “Hey, all doctrines are relative to your own faith experience, come back and join our ‘Big Tent’, the more diversity of expression, the better”.
Americans, Canadians, French, and everyone else who happens to be Catholic, Baptist, Muslim, etc are also heavily influenced by other factors in their time and place, besides their faith community. Whether the Episcopal Church is having a “meltdown” depends on whether the leaders are currently faithful to Scripture and Tradition, not on membership gains or losses. In any event, they deserve our prayers.
Americans, Canadians, French, and everyone else who happens to be Catholic, Baptist, Muslim, etc are also heavily influenced by other factors in their time and place, besides their faith community. Whether the Episcopal Church is having a “meltdown” depends on whether the leaders are currently faithful to Scripture and Tradition, not on membership gains or losses. In any event, they deserve our prayers.
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Sy_Noe
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Fair enough if you’re counting practicing Catholics on this thread only before Commenter joined you.All the posters on this thread have been non- Catholics so far.
'Cept me, of course.
But it just hasn’t been my experience overall. Here’s one with 3 of the first 4 replies being from Catholics. forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=998829
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Peter_J
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I know we, at times, give numbers that are inflated owing to an increase/decrease method, but I think we get a bad rap on that score.
For example, look at the second-to-last page of cnewa.org/source-images/Roberson-eastcath-statistics/eastcatholic-stat03.pdf. You’ll see that The Romanian Greek Catholic Church had total membership reported as 1,390,610 in the 2000 Pontifical Yearbook, and 781,704 in 2002.
Consider: Did the Vatican think that 45% of that Church died in a two year period? Or was this an attempt to fix (without an increase/decrease method, surely) a number that was badly reported?
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Peter_J
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Just speaking for myself, I would answer: you might find that you’re not following the bible all that well. (Just as you might say that Catholics, ACNA, LCMS … might find that *we’re *not following the bible all that well, if we re-examined ourselves.)
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Padres1969
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I suppose that’s a fair point. We all can do better to follow the bible regardless of denomination be it Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Continuing Anglican, etc…
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ComplineSanFran
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I prefer the tripod method of discernment myself. Scripture, reason and tradition. If I were to follow the Bible only, I would be in a sorry state. I’m not so keen on stoning people, keeping the dietary laws, forcing women to the silent section of the sanctuary, giving away everything I own, etc, etc.
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commenter
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The TEC gave up the real tripod. Reason is crucial, like love, but is not just one leg of the tripod but like love something we need throughout. The tripod is Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium, all of which demand the use of reason.
The AC, then the TEC claimed to no longer need the Magisterium. But they, for a long time, relied on the Magisterium’s canon of Scripture; on the Magisterium’s “canon” of Tradition, in other words, they trusted the credibility of the 1% of traditions that the Magisterium defined as Sacred Tradition; they trusted the Magisterium’s list of who is an Early Church Father, and the Magisterium’s other list of who is a heretic. They rejected the same potential scriptures rejected by the Magisterium, and the same 99% of Christian traditions rejected by the Magisterium.
For a few centuries, they were implicitly following the Magisterium past, and sometimes Magisterium present, on most things, by momentum. This did not mean the TEC did not use “reason”, of course they did. In recent decades the leadership of the TEC is in effect
rejecting the Magisterium guidance, which had indirectly guided them most of the time since they began. Whether that is good or bad, or a meltdown, is debatable. But there is no more tripod for them.
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Peter_J
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Before the conversation progresses further, I think I should point out the word Magisterium is pretty much only used by Catholics.
Oh, I’ve tried to find an Orthodox equivalent (never mind an Anglican one) mind you. I ultimately had to conclude that they would just use a phrase like “the teaching authority of the Church”.
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ComplineSanFran
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I agree, Peter. If you used the word ‘magisterium’ outside the RCC, you’d get blank stares from most people. Now ‘the teaching authority of the church’ is quite understandable, and it would be applied to each branch of the church.
For the Episcopal Church, the teaching authority is quite in place. And they have made decisions per that authority.
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Little_Sheep
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Indeed.
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Peter_J
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Yep – or, in some cases, some Orthodox (usually the more prolific ones) *would *use the term “magisterium”, but it would be implied that they meant the Catholic magisterium. (And I’m not entirely sure they understood what we meant by that.) You’d likely get jumped if you told them they have a “magisterium”.
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commenter
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Yes, they have their own teaching authority. In effect, every Anglican and Protestant communion has one. So does ACNA, for instance.
No, they don’t have, never claimed to have, their own Magisterium. Nor does ACNA.
The TEC has been influenced by the RCC Magisterium’s decisions of the ancient past (like definition of the NT canon, and Sacred Tradition) and somewhat influenced by the RCC since the TEC was formed, but influenced a lot less lately. For instance, the RCC Magisterium is still following the Natural Law, which the TEC is moving away from now.
ACNA, like LCMS, has its own teaching authority, but that authority is still much influenced by the RCC Magisterium, past and present, in how they interpret Scripture and Tradition, using Reason.
The RCC Magisterium is like a lighthouse. Every boat has captains that don’t necessarily want to go to exactly where the lighthouse is, but still check the lighthouse regularly. You judge where you are, in relationship to where it is. That is true of ACNA, and the Continuum, for instance, but now less and less true of TEC.
Other boat captains always denounced the lighthouse as treacherous, and hardly check it at all. That would be the Mormons, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance. In other words there’s no limit to where they might go.
Other boat captains used to be influenced indirectly by the lighthouse, but have mostly rejected it; like the United Church of Christ. The recent president of the UCC has urged new Scriptures be added to the NT. In other words, Christians today should not be limited to the Magisterium’s ancient choices of gospels. In effect, the argument of their teaching authority is that, just as we are not bound to the “infallibility” of Benedict or Francis - so also, we now can be free from the decisions of ancient popes and bishops, too. The TEC has not rejected the decisions of ancient authorities on the NT canon, and I hope they never do (or the UCC either).
None of this post proves the RCC Magisterium is good or bad. But I think most Protestant and Anglican clergy are aware of it as something evil or credible, but in any event, different.
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