The Lost Generation of Catholics

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sir_galahad said:
There was a time when it wasn’t different… when Mass in the Spanish parish would have been virtually identical to Mass in the American parish. Again, the preoccupation with personal expression in the Mass. This is the mentality that has led to a lost generation of Catholics and, I think, a loss of identity amongst Catholics of the Roman rite.
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You may be onto something. I miss the Mass in Latin and I miss the fact that you could go anywhere in the world and hear the same Mass.
That’s what I mean by pluralistic, of course, now that you mention it, it’s probable that some folks on this site are so young that they can’t remember those days.
The epistle, Gospel and sermon were always in the tongue of the attendees.
However, we have to get used to it or leave.
 
OP et al, I am with ya. The more we actually study our faith by reading the Fathers (unabridged) and other magnificient Saints (St. Bernard of Clairvaux is my current fav) the more we find ourselves drawn to something greater than ourselves. I belong to a parish that is at war with itself. We have a new rector and a resident priest that are attempting to make it as orthodox as possible, but the “community” insists on maintaining its strangle hold.

Somedays I just want to scream out “Shut up I am trying to pray you insensitive jerks”, but I doubt that would be well received. Then there are days when a I lose a tear to the phenomenal love I feel with them.

Its tough, it hurts. When I don’t go up for communion, for reasons that are mine own, I get quizzed and scoffed at by parishoners. I have been snapped at by one priest for desiring to receive communion on the tongue. I cringe at the some of the Agnus Dei changes, whether allowed or not.

I guess I am just at a crossroads and I am none to happy about being here. If it was not for my being a sponsor, I would probably go ahead and transfer to a smaller more insular parish in midtown. I am supposed to join the RCIA team this next session, maybe I could do some good there, but I will have to battle the left-wing feminazi.

What happned to the days when Saints would stand up against sin, rail against it, point it out to everyone, and then show us why it is evil and disgusting, and then in the most sincere love and compassion help us to overcome it.
 
chotock said:
OP et al, I am with ya. The more we actually study our faith by reading the Fathers (unabridged) and other magnificient Saints (St. Bernard of Clairvaux is my current fav) the more we find ourselves drawn to something greater than ourselves. I belong to a parish that is at war with itself. We have a new rector and a resident priest that are attempting to make it as orthodox as possible, but the “community” insists on maintaining its strangle hold.

Somedays I just want to scream out “Shut up I am trying to pray you insensitive jerks”, but I doubt that would be well received. Then there are days when a I lose a tear to the phenomenal love I feel with them.

Its tough, it hurts. When I don’t go up for communion, for reasons that are mine own, I get quizzed and scoffed at by parishoners. I have been snapped at by one priest for desiring to receive communion on the tongue. I cringe at the some of the Agnus Dei changes, whether allowed or not.

I guess I am just at a crossroads and I am none to happy about being here. If it was not for my being a sponsor, I would probably go ahead and transfer to a smaller more insular parish in midtown. I am supposed to join the RCIA team this next session, maybe I could do some good there, but I will have to battle the left-wing feminazi.

What happned to the days when Saints would stand up against sin, rail against it, point it out to everyone, and then show us why it is evil and disgusting, and then in the most sincere love and compassion help us to overcome it.
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I would never question another Catholic as to why they didn’t receive communion. You have a right to be disturbed.

Feminazi is an uncharitable term created by Rush Limbaugh. I’m sure that you don’t mean to minimize the atrocities committed against Jewish people and others during the holocaust but that’s what you do when you use that term to describe other members of your church.
 
I apologize for the term then, I should have used militant feminist perhaps. I guess when one has been called names such as backward thinking misogynist one gets a bit defensive. Perhaps I should just let her have her way and I will move on to where men are priest and women are not, or where the CCC is taught and believed and not called just some old book some old men thought up in Rome. Again I apologize for my uncharitable reactions.
 
Karianne said:
Feminazi is an uncharitable term created by Rush Limbaugh. I’m sure that you don’t mean to minimize the atrocities committed against Jewish people and others during the holocaust but that’s what you do when you use that term to describe other members of your church.
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According to Wickipedia, it was not created by Rush Limbaugh. And it was created and applied to those feminists who are for unlimited abortion rights-our very own, on going holocaust.
The term was popularized by conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh, who credited his friend Tom Hazlett, a professor of law and economics at George Mason University, with coining the term. Limbaugh originally claimed that the word “feminazi” meant not just an extreme feminist but a woman whose goal was that there should be many abortions as possible, saying at one point that there were fewer than a dozen true feminiazis in the U.S. However, many, including Limbaugh himself, subsequently began to define the term more loosely. James Joyner noted upon Andrea Dworkin’s death that she seemed to typify what critics were calling a “feminazi.”
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Karianne said:
You may be onto something. I miss the Mass in Latin and I miss the fact that you could go anywhere in the world and hear the same Mass.
That’s what I mean by pluralistic, of course, now that you mention it, it’s probable that some folks on this site are so young that they can’t remember those days.
The epistle, Gospel and sermon were always in the tongue of the attendees.
However, we have to get used to it or leave.
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I concur. The mass is supposed to be the same wherever you go even if you don’t understand the language. That was part of the beauty of being catholic.
 
mnowlin1 said:
I concur. The mass is supposed to be the same wherever you go even if you don’t understand the language. That was part of the beauty of being catholic.
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This was great when we all knew some Latin. I learned it in grade school, and my grandparents spoke Italian/English (randomly alternating words of each) so it was pretty easy to pick up. Even the public schools taught it in those days. We should still be teaching our kids Latin, just as a part of regular everyday education. It does wonders for the vocabulary.

It was good when I went to Mass with my aunt and uncle, that it was the same at St. Wenceslaus as it was at Holy Family. Yes, that did make us one with each other, and set us apart from other Christians. You go to various Protestant services, and they may be pleasant and uplifting in various ways, but they’re all different. One of the most comforting things for me about Catholicism is that we have an authority to help us keep on the right track. Got a question? The Vatican has an answer. It may not be the answer you wanted, but there it is.

I guess a lot of the problems we have with the church come down to obedience. If there are things we don’t like but the Church allows them, we have to just (oh, please pardon this vulgar expression) suck it up. We all have things we struggle with daily…well, I do…but we pray, and we think and we study…and we open our hearts and minds to hear what God is telling us. Finally we accept.
 
It both saddens and encourages me to hear other people’s experiences with what I heard Fr. George Rutler once call “ecclesiastical Chernobyls”. I couldn’t have said it any better.

I am sadden in that this scourge of modernist architecture appears to have spread so far and wide but encouraged that so many people see it for what it really is, an attack on our faith.

Some have mentioned the cathedral in Milwaukee which I have read about. I learned that the former bishop there, Weakland I believe is his name, stuck a plaque on the wall of the church congratulating himself on the “renovations”. That to me just about says it all.

I have also seen pics of the new cathedral in Los Angeles. What a travesty. To think that the Catholic people of L.A. donated their hard earned money to build that monstrosity makes my stomach go quesy.
 
For those curious about the Milwaukee Cathedral, St. John the Evangelist:

This site has a B&W “before” picture

seattlecatholic.com/article_20010727_Weaklands_Cathedral_Renovations.html

This site has two “after” pictures

conradschmitt.com/CaseStudies/StJohnsMKE.asp

This site has some blurry pictures of more of the renovations if you scroll down:

community-2.webtv.net/mfb2/DORnewsviews/page3.html

The Cathedral still looks “nice,” but in my opinion it still looks good because of what survived - the fancy columns, stained glass, cieling, and the building’s vertical proportions. The altar looks barren without any kind of real canopy or anything to draw attention to it. Very blah, and the crucifix looks so very very 70’s.

And here’s a good renovation, to be fair:

thebasilica.org/photogallery/PhotoGallery.asp?imgGroup=Interior&imgNumber=1
 
Right now, I think that it is almost impossible to change the innovations in the individual modern parishes. Most are run by the 60’s generation, whether they be DREs, music ministers, etc. I agree with the OP. I am in the generation of not just lost but ignored catholics. (I’m 30 something). We are in a time of our lives where we are raising young children, and I would say that most of us are having more than our mothers did. I do what I can now, but look out, when my children get older, we will be a force to be reconed with.

I said this on another post on another thread, but I’m going to repeat it. I often think about the song by Bob Dylan, The Times they are a Changin’ when he sings the line "your old road is rapidly agin’, get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand, cuz the times they are a changin’ "

He was talking about the generation before the sixties, the parents of the hippies.

As a daughter of parents of the hippy generation that song to me means that now your generation is aging.

How ironic that the generation that rebelled against the traditions of their parents are now having children and grandchildren who have rebelled against the rebellion. 😃
 
marci said:
How ironic that the generation that rebelled against the traditions of their parents are now having children and grandchildren who have rebelled against the rebellion. 😃
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Oh and Thank the Good Lord for that!
 
Some have mentioned the cathedral in Milwaukee which I have read about. I learned that the former bishop there, Weakland I believe is his name, stuck a plaque on the wall of the church congratulating himself on the “renovations”. That to me just about says it all.
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I have also seen pics of the new cathedral in Los Angeles. What a travesty. To think that the Catholic people of L.A. donated their hard earned money to build that monstrosity makes my stomach go quesy.
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It is not suprising when you have Archbishop Rembert Weakland and Roger Cardinal Mahoney at the helm. I’m just suprised Archbishop Weakland didn’t just tear St. John’s down and build some mothership looking monstrosity it it’s place.

Luckily, some day, Milwaukee will have an orthodox Archbishop who will say, “Sorry for my predecessor’s wasteful use of your money. The scrap metal will be taken down from the roof and the cathedral will be restored in a Catholic manner…”

St. Josaphat looks as glorious as a cathedral should look. That is what Catholic architecture looks like. This selfish self-aggrandizing humanistic modernist architecture from the likes of Fr. Vasko is heresy in stone.
 
Count me in with the old ways of the church. I’m a 20 year old converting from protastantism at the moment.
One of the things that turned me into looking into the church was the tradition. In this case it was the more visible: architecture, sacred music, and an older style of mass. Thankfully I learned about the truth of the one church before I found out about this trend of mordernization and will stay in the church without doubt, otherwise I would fear for the worst in myself, for I’m not into evangelical/fundamentalist style of worship of having stuff crammed down my throat in a most corny way (which I honestly find to be irreverent). Anyhow, when I become a neophyte I will start working to bring more tradtition into my parish.
 
mnowlin1 said:
I concur. The mass is supposed to be the same wherever you go even if you don’t understand the language. That was part of the beauty of being catholic.
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I always had a missal that had an English translation to the left and since I attended Catholic school we were coached by our priests as to pronounciation, so eventually, we were pretty adept at Latin.
 
Dranu said:
Count me in with the old ways of the church. I’m a 20 year old converting from protastantism at the moment.
One of the things that turned me into looking into the church was the tradition. In this case it was the more visible: architecture, sacred music, and an older style of mass. Thankfully I learned about the truth of the one church before I found out about this trend of mordernization and will stay in the church without doubt, otherwise I would fear for the worst in myself, for I’m not into evangelical/fundamentalist style of worship of having stuff crammed down my throat in a most corny way (which I honestly find to be irreverent). Anyhow, when I become a neophyte I will start working to bring more tradtition into my parish.
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It’s so wonderful to have a twenty year old who is so interested in her faith!
One of the things I always liked about our Church in the fifties was the fact that any time of day or night you could drop in and pay a visit, this was Washington DC in the fifties (God was still fixing you). Now it’s very hard to find any Church that you just enter to say a quick rosary or to make the stations of the Cross during the middle of the weekday.

Also, when there was something that you wanted to pray for we had candles you could light, generally the offering was ten cents. We don’t have that anymore either.

BTW, this also was the time when the Church would aggressively campaign for the 20 to 30 year old folks with dances, requests for volunteers at the various charities (soup kitchens, St Ann’s orphanage…). They were a desirable group to get to know. If I remember correctly we could even hold wedding and baby showers in some of the rooms of the school and church. That made the Church relevant in a “family” type sense to their lives.
Then, when they would marry, they would bring their kids to Church and so it would go…
 
SnorterLuster said:
According to Wickipedia, it was not created by Rush Limbaugh. And it was created and applied to those feminists who are for unlimited abortion rights-our very own, on going holocaust.
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Feminazi is an uncharitable term, popularized by Rush Limbaugh, I am sure that you do not trivialize the terrible actions of the Nazis toward Jewish people and others that they hated, but that is exactly what you are doing.
 
Karianne said:
Feminazi is an uncharitable term, popularized by Rush Limbaugh, I am sure that you do not trivialize the terrible actions of the Nazis toward Jewish people and others that they hated, but that is exactly what you are doing.
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The life of one Pre-born child has no less worth than anyone outside the womb. There is just as much of a Holocaust against them.

I have Jewish friends who actually are not offended by the term (and use it themselves) in the sense of defining Feminists who promote the murder of the pre-born in their last few months in their mother’s wombs. My Jewish friends are also Pro-Life and are tremendously offended by the entire militant movement and liken it to the extermination by the Nazis as well.

And understanding how many Catholics were killed in the Nazi death camps, we have a right to claim the holocaust as well.

Personally, knowing the term is offending someone on the board and also that it is against forum rules to use that term, I would not. But understanding that the poster who used it tried to edit (too late) and apologized for it, should be enough.
 
Karin said:
YUP…abortion is the “new” Holocaust…more unborn children have been killed by abortion than jews by Hitler and his Nazi gang!
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And pitifully, as my adopted sister of African/American roots says, “It’s a genocide against the African/American community supported by the Democratic Party who are supported by the African/American Community. Go figure.”

Anyone supporting a woman’s “choice” past the point of keeping her legs shut or putting her baby up for adoption, deserves any title that fits.
 
netmil(name removed by moderator) said:
And pitifully, as my adopted sister of African/American roots says, “It’s a genocide against the African/American community supported by the Democratic Party who are supported by the African/American Community. Go figure.”

Anyone supporting a woman’s “choice” past the point of keeping her legs shut or putting her baby up for adoption, deserves any title that fits.
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TOTALLY AGREE!!!
 
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