Sorry, Goya, I had to shorten your post a little to fit in my comments.
=Goya;12879680
IMO, Protestantism will never end, because it is profitable to individual pastors.
A few individual Protestant pastors make a lot of money, but oh my, they work very hard for it. It’s not an easy way to become rich. Constant travel, or constant on-air appearances, writing books, lots and lots of public speaking, and of course, having your life on view for all to see and judge. There is a sad history of many of these pastors losing their wives and families (children especially suffer under this kind of childrearing), and also losing their health through various addictions, and/or losing their reputation when they fall into sin, often a sexual sin.
If I wanted to make Big Bucks, I would find another way.
But most Protestant pastors struggle financially. Many live on the ragged edge of poverty, and many have wives who go to work outside the home so that they can make ends meet. This is especially true in the non-denominational churches which don’t have a denominational headquarters to help them out when finances get tight.
Add to this how many families are do deeply entrenched generationally, that to reject the faith of your families, is to admit that your grand parents and great grandparents…were dead wrong…that’s just not realistic. E.g.–we still have Judaism; and Judaism still has us.
When I was growing up in the Conference Baptist church, there were a lot of multi-generation families in our church. This is especially true in churches that identify with a certain nationality; the Conference Baptists were formerly Swedish Baptists, and the majority of families in our church were of Swedish heritage, including many with grandparents who actually were born and raised in Sweden. When I was a child, the church still offered worship services in Swedish, and often, we heard Swedish hymns.
But as people in the U.S. are becoming less enamored with their nationality, this is changing in Protestant churches, at least the Evangelical Protestant churches. The only churches that I know of in our city that have strong nationality loyalty are the various African-American churches, but even this is changing as more and more black people marry white people, and as more and more neighborhoods become totally integrated.
IMHO, there is a place for Protestantism in the Church, though I have a heck of a time figuring out what it is.
A while back, I realized that many of the ex-Catholics who attend Protestant churches were abused by priests, or were related to someone who was abused by priests. It occurred to me that one reason why God allows Protestantism to continue is because it provides a refuge for those who have been sinned against by the priests of Holy Mother Church. In other words, it is a punishment (and a severe one!) for Catholicism. In the Old Testament, God showed little or no mercy to priests who sinned.
And there are also many ex-Catholics in Protestant churches who were hurt by the Catholic Church’s stance on divorce and re-marriage. I certainly agree that divorce is of the devil, and a destroyer of marriages and of CHILDREN (children are profoundly damaged when their parents divorce). But many times in a divorce, one of the spouses is totally blameless; perhaps the other spouse commits adultery, or is an abuser, or is addicted, and the whole spouse has no choice but to leave for the sake of his/her safety and health, and/or for the sake of the children’s safety and health.
Many people are confused by the Church’s teaching about divorce and receiving Holy Communion; those questions comes up all the time here on CAF. So a lot of Catholics who have an incorrect understanding of this get angry over the lack of compassion of Catholic parishes, and they head for a Protestant church where they are welcomed and loved (often in a practical way with gifts of food, handyman help, and lots of listening and sharing of tears).
Finally, I think that Protestantism is a refuge for musicians who crave more variety. I know that sounds really self-centered and trivial in the grand scheme of things, but we are kidding ourselves if we don’t pay attention to “music” as a reason for leaving churches. MANY MANY Protestants will admit that they left their former church (Catholic or Protestant) because of the bad music. In the U.S., music isn’t just an interest, it is part of who people are and where they come from–it’s part of our culture, and I personally think that it will and SHOULD become a much bigger issue in the Catholic Church. I think that the Vatican is making a bad mistake to ignore Mass music as an issue. It’s very important to many Americans.
What I foresee ultimately, is not an annihilation or extermination of Protestantism, but a reconciliation of a significant number of protestant churches, with the Catholic Church. Something that would entail private profitability to the protestant clergy, the Sacraments, and a clear delineation of the Pope’s authority over the merged Protestant churches. But that’s clearly pure conjecture, and optimistic at that (I have a weak spot for our separated brethren, particularly being married to one, whose family has several pastors).
Yes, I agree, but I think this will come about in answer to Jesus’ Prayer for unity in John 17. It’s already happening–the group Evangelicals and Catholics Together continues to work for unity, even though its two founders (Chuck Colson and Father Neuhaus) are dead (R.I.P.).
I’m still contemplating the many applications and objections to these ideas and arguments, so I’ll probably write more later. You might want to think about how the “picking and choosing arbitrarily” mentality applies to today’s relativism.