The death of the Church

[Saint_Michael]

I wouldn’t say in a century Christianity won’t exist, but at the current rate it will be dwarfed By Islam.

Your professor has a good point, most Christians today in the West have a couple kids, while Muslims have double or triple that. Mass attendance and Church attendance is down, while in Muslim countries it is essentially mandatory. Islam is growing rapidly while Christianity appears to be stalled or shrinking.

Secular humanism, atheism, and relativism will become the majority religion in the West in 100 years at this rate.

If the Church is true it will not die, if it dies then we’ve all been had.

 

[Caesar]

Secular humanism, atheism, and relativism will become the majority religion in the West in 100 years at this rate.

If the Church is true it will not die, if it dies then we’ve all been had.

Or secular society will collapse, and the Mohammedans will feast on it’s bloated corpse.

 

[ComradeAndrei]

Look at the world stats though. My teacher says that Islam almost doubles Catholicism and is almost more numerous than Christianity in general. She says that Islam is gaining ground in South America (I thought the fundies were replacing Catholicism there), Africa and Asia- and soon in Europe.

There are some 1.some billion Catholics worldwide, along with hundreds of millions of Orthodox and Protestant Christians. There are maybe a billion muslims of all types around the world.

That means that there aren’t even as many Muslims as there are Catholics, let alone all the Christians.

Don’t let growth rates fool you. If the Mormon Church would keep growing at the same rate that they claim they are growing (and they are not really, but that’s OT) the whole world would be Mormon within a 100 yrs or so. Growth rates don’t work like that.

With the Muslims, there are lots of them in Indonesia and the whole Middle East and parts of Africa. They have a “base” so to say of predominantly Muslim people-just like India has about a billion some Hinduists/Buddhists and China has about a billion offical “atheists”. Islam is the new “chic” religion of the intelligensia, just like Buddhism and Hinduism was (and still kinda is) in the West.

She also says that because of the Catholic sexual ethic (she thinks it is a “dont have sex at all” policy), Catholic countries have falling birthrates- although I always thought that it was the secularized countries with populations that are Catholic only word that have the falling birthrates, while actual Catholic countries in South America and Africa have high birthrates (in fact, I thought the stereotypical Catholic family was supposed to be very large).

I think your teacher is just full of it. She sounds like one of Lenin’s “useful idiots” that do all they can do to be good quislings to prepare the way for the “New Order” that is supposedly coming.

It used to be that people made fun of Catholics for having large families. Sex is fine for us within marriage, just not screwing around with everybody and anybody.

 

[Ianjo99]

To have christianity collapse in 100 years would require nothing less than a act of God. For one, over two billion people profess Christianity as their religion and, even though atheism and secularism are rapidly growing, Christianity continues to grow.

For the 100 year hypothesis, every child of the next generation would have to denounce Christianity. I.E. Not bloody likely.

 

[Saint_Michael]

To have christianity collapse in 100 years would require nothing less than a act of God. For one, over two billion people profess Christianity as their religion and, even though atheism and secularism are rapidly growing, Christianity continues to grow.

For the 100 year hypothesis, every child of the next generation would have to denounce Christianity. I.E. Not bloody likely.

Playing devils advocate here, but how many of your “2 billion Christians” number are actually also a HUGE part of the growing secularism and relativism movement?

There may be 1 billion Catholics, but how many of them are “Catholic in name only”? We can play the numbers game all we want. But if we take the percentages of Catholics that live their faith and practice it today, compared to 100 years ago, I would say the numbers are that Catholicism (probably Christianity in general) was decimated last century.

 

[Beebs]

To have christianity collapse in 100 years would require nothing less than a act of God. For one, over two billion people profess Christianity as their religion and, even though atheism and secularism are rapidly growing, Christianity continues to grow.

For the 100 year hypothesis, every child of the next generation would have to denounce Christianity. I.E. Not bloody likely.

To add to Ianjo point, birth statistics show that the atheists and seculars are not keeping up the replacement rate. Just look at Secular Europe where the average birth rate is just a hair over 1 child.

 

[EsclavoDeCristo]

I can see I am being slightly pessimistic here, but how true is this? Is the Church dying? Will society die with it?

If we don’t do anything it will certainly deminish if not be forced underground but it will not die. We have Jesus’ assurance of that!

 

[Liberian]

Caesar,

I think your teacher is a little too Eurocentric. The Church is thriving in Africa and Asia. Who knows, it might revive in Europe and America as well.

It is possible that Western civilization will go the way of the Roman Empire and the Church will simply take root in the peoples that replace it. Alternatively, we may have a decisive moment such as happened at the Battle of Lepanto, when Christendom was also facing extinction at the hands of Islam. Many things are possible.

The Church may be dying, but that is no matter; her Lord knows the way out of the grave. (That’s a paraphrase from G.K. Chesterton, I think.)

• Liberian

 

[Caesar]

I think your teacher is a little too Eurocentric. The Church is thriving in Africa and Asia. Who knows, it might revive in Europe and America as well.

Most of Asia that isnt atheistic is under the thumb of Islam, which is also growing in Africa much faster than Catholicism.

In South and Central America, massive amounts of people are flocking to fundamentalism.

 

[Ignatius]

The words of my world issues teacher got me thinking today. She says that because of the rapid growth of Islam, combined with the general secularization of North American and European countries (the “Christian West”) signals the death of the Christian religion. Christianity is no longer growing, and certainly not the Catholic Church. The secularization and modernization of western society has created an extreme drop in birthrates in the last few decades and the abandonment of Christianity. Demographers now say that within a century Christianity will cease to exist.

As I was reflecting on this lesson I began to wonder if all that the Church is trying to do- bring back traditional morality; denouncing relativism, modernism; pushing for a rebirth of Christian thought- if all this is just an attempt to prolong the death of the Church; an effort to slow the inevitable downfall of Christianity . Does not the Church that we see in the west possess but a shell of her former glory? Is it not this liberal, relativistic society that we live in dying in its own decadence and corruption, starved of morality and deprived of God? Society has killed the Church and in doing so has ushered in its own death.

I can see I am being slightly pessimistic here, but how true is this? Is the Church dying? Will society die with it?

Jesus said of the Church which he founded, “gates of hell will not prevail against it” and “I will be with you all days, even unto the end of time.” When the Church dies, it will be he end of the world.

 

[StMarkEofE]

The Church is divine in origin and the Body of Christ himself. It will last until the end of time. We do not have the promise that it will be as large or as influential, but there will always be a pope, Magisterium, and a body of the faithful.

I believe that a restoration is coming that will once again boost our population and turn our society around. The attacks on 9-11 were the impetus for this, as such dire events often are. People don’t realize what they have until someone tries to steal it away from them. It’s God way of waking us up and getting us off our complacent behinds.

Why do I get the unsettling impression that there will be legions more in hell than those destined for heaven. For the path is wide but gets very narrow the closer we get to salvation.

If the church gets to a point where it is so small it is still the truth and the church regardless. Dont pay too much attention to the numbers game as the Muslims are fond of bragging about. If you have the truth it will set you free no matter if you are 1 billion or 1 hundred.

 

[Kevin56]

During the incipient stages of Christianity the Church would come together in a clandestine fashion in the home of an elder. The Church Jesus established on earth has no religious affiliation for criteria. The term church or ecclesia is specifically referencing ‘people’ who have faith in the risen messiah. This is a core tenant of my belief system but I am not a religious person. I am a part of the body of Christ by my faith in His finished work on the cross and His resurrection. Certainly the gates of hell will not prevail against this Church. You may ask how I know this to be true? Because Jesus is God and God said it is true. Peace

 

[bones_IV]

The Church Militant doesn’t belong to the world, it is IN the world. Big difference. The whole reason it’s called the “Church Militant” is that it’s fighting the struggle in the world, representing the City of God against the City of Man.

Things are a lot less dire for the Church today then they were in the year 100 A.D., a LOT less, and we made it through those times quite well.

The collapse of the Western world may indeed occur. Do you know how many times the Church has outlived the collapse of the Western world? First there was the fall of the Western Roman Empire, more disasterous than anything we’re facing today. The Church came out flying from that one. Then there was the collapse of the Frankish Empire, again the Church survived. I would argue that the last collapse occured with the Protestant Reformation, and we are now witnessing the collapse of the “Western world” that grew out of the ashes of that, namely the Enlightenment period.

If anything, I’d say history shows us that one thing in the West that IS likely to survive, and even thrive, is the Church. I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see the latest iteration of the “Western world” go; it’s worse than the Roman Empire in many ways, IMO.

Peace and God bless!

Just look at the attacks by by Attila the Hun, the Moslems, Napoleon, Communist invasions/expansions of the 20th century. We will always have enemies of the Church and we will always have anti-Christs masking themselves as coming from God. Check out this prophecy by St. Methodius:

“A day will come when the enemies of Christ will boast of having conquered the whole world. They will say: ‘Christians cannot escape now!’ **But a Great king will arise to fight the enemies of God. He will defeat them, and peace will be given to the world, and the Church will be freed from her anxieties.” **(The Revelations of St. Methodius.)

It is predicted that the Mohammedan empire will be defeated.

The Powerful Monarch, who will be sent by God, will uproot every Republic. He will submit everything to his authority, and he will show great zeal for the true Church of Christ. The empire of the Mohammedans will be broken up, and this Monarch will reign in the East as well as in the West. All nations will come to worship God in the true Catholic and Roman faith. There will many Saints and Doctors (of the Church) on earth. Peace will reign over the whole earth because God will bind Satan for a number of years until the the days of the Son of Perdition. No one will be able to pervert the word of God since, during the sixth period, there will be an ecumenical council which will be the greatest of all councils. By the grace of God, by the power of the Great Monarch, by the authority of the Holy Pontiff, and by the union of all the most devout princes, atheism and every heresy will be banished from the earth." (Apocalypsin, Bartholomew Holzhauser, 1850, p. 69).

Bishop Sheen talked about the resurgence of Islam in our day!

 

[Maranatha]

The expansion of Catholicism in the South

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR

When I give talks in Europe or North America, I usually get some version of the following question: “What are the church’s plans for dealing with the priest shortage, or the decline in vocations to the religious life, or dwindling Mass attendance rates, or the problem of transmitting the faith to the next generation?”

The premise is usually that the church is in a crisis, one serious enough to provoke a re-examination of current doctrines or disciplines.
While there’s perfectly legitimate debate to be had on each of these questions, the underlying assumption of decline reveals a particularly Western focus. The reality is that worldwide, these are boom times for Catholicism, not bust.

 

[Maranatha]

If the church gets to a point where it is so small it is still the truth and the church regardless. Dont pay too much attention to the numbers game as the Muslims are fond of bragging about. If you have the truth it will set you free no matter if you are 1 billion or 1 hundred.

I agree with the above quote completely. If Catholicism holds the fullness of truth, and I I believe it does, then we can be at peace and we don’t have to worry about the numbers game.

 

[wjp984]

well there is supposed to be a second coming of Jesus. So, that has to happen before the church ever dies.

 

[nby]

Why do I get the unsettling impression that there will be legions more in hell than those destined for heaven. For the path is wide but gets very narrow the closer we get to salvation.

If the church gets to a point where it is so small it is still the truth and the church regardless. Dont pay too much attention to the numbers game as the Muslims are fond of bragging about. If you have the truth it will set you free no matter if you are 1 billion or 1 hundred.

Yes I agree too, they are excellent points but may I also add that even death (0 followers) is not the end; Jesus died but he was raised up on the third day. And yes our Catholic Church is the truth and the truth will never be destroyed.

 

[Melanie01]

Rubbish, the gates of Hell will never prevail…against the Church as established on Earth by Jesus Christ.

The Church may suffer certainly and God may be wrathful in His discipline but being overcome…NO

 

[BJRumph]

As I was reflecting on this lesson I began to wonder if all that the Church is trying to do- bring back traditional morality; denouncing relativism, modernism; pushing for a rebirth of Christian thought- if all this is just an attempt to prolong the death of the Church; an effort to slow the inevitable downfall of Christianity . Does not the Church that we see in the west possess but a shell of her former glory? Is it not this liberal, relativistic society that we live in dying in its own decadence and corruption, starved of morality and deprived of God? Society has killed the Church and in doing so has ushered in its own death.

Actually, as the church has rejected the very things you acknowledge as being the principles killing society, the Church is going to outlast the dying societies surrounding it, not vice-versa. Naturally, until the world abandons its current poisons, it is going to declair the Church to be dead an irrelevant to it. Yes, conversions are going to show a declining trend. However, once these societies die, the Church will remain as the only healthy society left. Smaller that it was, certainly; but still alive.

The only way it will die, is if it gives in to the principles poisoning society.

As a side point, ask your teacher for the sources of those statstics, and find the breakdown between denominations. It is not really beneficial to lump all denomiations into a sinlge mass, as though they are all representative of the same teaching. It may be beneficial in your analysis and response to her assertions to see which religions are growing and which are shrinking, as many of the protestant denominations ultimately embrace, in a practical manner, the very poisons you speak of.

 

[ChristIsTheWay]

The words of my world issues teacher got me thinking today. She says that because of the rapid growth of Islam, combined with the general secularization of North American and European countries (the “Christian West”) signals the death of the Christian religion. Christianity is no longer growing, and certainly not the Catholic Church. The secularization and modernization of western society has created an extreme drop in birthrates in the last few decades and the abandonment of Christianity. Demographers now say that within a century Christianity will cease to exist.

As I was reflecting on this lesson I began to wonder if all that the Church is trying to do- bring back traditional morality; denouncing relativism, modernism; pushing for a rebirth of Christian thought- if all this is just an attempt to prolong the death of the Church; an effort to slow the inevitable downfall of Christianity . Does not the Church that we see in the west possess but a shell of her former glory? Is it not this liberal, relativistic society that we live in dying in its own decadence and corruption, starved of morality and deprived of God? Society has killed the Church and in doing so has ushered in its own death.

I can see I am being slightly pessimistic here, but how true is this? Is the Church dying? Will society die with it?

Why the lack of faith? Christ told us that the Church will not perish, the the gates of Hell will not prevail. Is that not enough? Consider 2 Thessalonians 2:3 - “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;” Have you not consider that the current events may have been predicted by this? A falling away (decline in Church membership, vocations) will occur when a man of sin, the son of perdition, is revealed. Could that be Islam, atheism, secularism? That all may be a stretch in the end, however, do not fool yourself into thinking that the Church is dead. The Second Coming may be at hand, however, we should be glad if that is the case.

Also, remember that in the 19th century people made similar claims that the ancient Church of Rome would soon be dead. Look how wrong they were.

Now, do I believe that this is the end? No, not really. Periods of secularism are not uncommon. Please refer to the following Wikipedia articles on the Great Awakenings: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening These have been somewhat confined to America, however, it is possible and even likely that a Western Great Awakening, a Western Revival, will occur in response to the rise of secularism and Islam. Even if not, a new “western” civilization will rise from the ashes of this one and it will be led by the Church because nothing else has proven its ability to survive successive collapses of civilizations and then serve as a beacon of hope and reconstruction that the Church has. Fear not, brother; trust in God, Who will prevail over all else.