What is wrong with the west?

[MonteRCMS]

Of course not. Because it is just codswallop.

Amazing how little curiosity I am witnessing … devoted to name calling.

 

[AlNg]

Amazing how little curiosity I am witnessing … devoted to name calling.

It is your quote. Back up your quote and give us the names of the communist bishops and priests in the Catholic Church.

 

[feed_me]

Here is my thought on it, the west is like those mentally disturbed ex girlfriends. “she craaazzy”.
“That woman got problems”.

 

[mytruepower2]

The Eastern Orthodox Church has maintained the fasting rules during Lent and its Liturgy is still quite beautiful.

Yes. It certainly is. I appreciate their commitment.

However, my concern is not so much with the beauty of the Catholic liturgy, as with the message that a human-centered liturgy sends to Catholics who are still not entirely formed in their faith. Many Catholics (at least where I live,) have learned to see the faith as a democracy, and I believe that this misconception comes about because they have been strongly involved in the mass, but without clarification of what their role actually is. The laity need instruction in the difference between their role and the ministry of a priest, but even more, they need to be educated in the difference between the changeable “rules” of a human institution, and divinely-instituted laws.

In making worship human-centric, these distinctions have become confused in the mind of the average lay-person. In refusing to preach about the afterlife, the focus is taken off of the essential importance of our standing in the eyes of God. In relaxing Church discipline, that lack of focus is permitted to perpetuate itself, not merely in spite of the Church’s human element, but through it.

Yes, the Church’s teachings are still correct, if you should happen to know where to look for them, but on the ground, where people mostly get their understanding of the faith from what they hear in church, it’s not helping nearly as much as it once did.

 

[Seeksadvice]

The belief that we have to fix everything in the entire universe.

 

[JimG]

So who are these Communist leaders in the Catholic Church?

If they were priests in the 1930’s they would be in their 90’s by now. I do recall a significant movemenof Marxist theology under the term liberation theology in the southern hemisphere.

During the 1940’s and beyond the communists were quite successful not only in spying within the U.S. But in placing their agents in government jobs.

 

[MonteRCMS]

Take a look at the on-going priest scandals … and their bishops.

 

[Jump4Joy]

Why is it when a woman mentions her difficulties some people feel the need negate her claims or argue that discrimination or suffering is equal?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think a major reason is that the World Wars unleashed inhumanity in a way and to a degree and on a global scale that directly undermined the foundations of both faith and family. Technological advances that came after did not help.

You will think I’m insane for saying the following.

I do think the world wars had a profound effect on western thought, especially the first one. I think the west’s central problem is that it has “buried its ghosts”, and it began with the first world war. The second one is a follow-on to the first. The horror of industrialized warfare among huge and well-organized states was so bad that people began cutting themselves off from their own antecedents as a form of self-loathing. They condemned the ghosts from their own past and thereby cut themselves off from the Communion of Saints.

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

I wasn’t around, but the “good old days” sound like the society crushing the individual into a narrow selection of acceptable behaviors.

 

[thephilosopher6]

Should of had multiple choice.

 

[EricF]

Selfishness and greed should have been an option.

 

[PetraG]

You will think I’m insane for saying the following.

I do think the world wars had a profound effect on western thought, especially the first one. I think the west’s central problem is that it has “buried its ghosts”, and it began with the first world war. The second one is a follow-on to the first. The horror of industrialized warfare among huge and well-organized states was so bad that people began cutting themselves off from their own antecedents as a form of self-loathing. They condemned the ghosts from their own past and thereby cut themselves off from the Communion of Saints.

I don’t know why it happened, but I do think people cut themselves off in reaction to that war. Partly, to be fair, so much that was the physical underpinning of traditions was destroyed–everything from old churches to neighborhoods and towns to young men in their prime–that it would have been hard to know how to go forward. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

And no, I don’t think you’re insane. I think the psychic repercussions of those wars has been grossly underappreciated and under-mourned. Just what happened during WWI would have been enough to mourn over for several generations.