Why Catholics Have Failed Our Culture: The Bottom Line (By Deal W. Hudson)

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I agree with everything he said and I wish people would stop comparing going to Mass with going to an evangelical church. They are night and day different. Going to Mass is like going to work. It’s something you do because it’s beneficial for you and it’s your obligation to go.

Going to an evangelical church is by choice. It’s like going to a party. If someone you know has a habit of throwing boring parties, you wouldn’t go, would you? Of course not. You’re going to go to the good, fun parties. Evangelical churches compete with each other for parishioners. They have to be fun, engaging and social in order to get people to go. Naturally, they are going to draw people that are looking for that kind of experience, people who are looking for a social outlet in a Christian setting. They are going to be more engaged with each other, because that is the whole point of going to that church.

Catholics go to Mass to be engaged with Jesus, not with each other. It’s not a social club and throughout it’s 2000 year history, it’s never had to be a social club for it’s parishioners. They had family and neighbors for that. Nowadays, people are looking for surrogate family and they are attempting to find it in evangelical churches.

I wish the Catholic Church could be more social, but it wasn’t meant to be. It didn’t evolve that way. Evangelical churches are very social because that’s all they have, that is the attraction of them and that’s how they evolved. People are lonely and are looking for friendship in churches. I don’t know what the answer is. Going to Mass is like eating broccoli, and it’s always going to be broccoli. It’s never going to be cake and cookies. But I like broccoli and I’m going to keep eating it.😄
 
But at least The Church has given us a great cheese sauce to go with that broccoli.
 
Any Ph.D. in any field should be embarrassed to write such a short statement. Here, evangelizing others is portrayed as a negative, as well as street preaching. God encourages both but a poisonous atmosphere has been slowly created over the last several decades. I watched how it poisoned people and will continue to poison people.
 
BoomerangToo said:
Catholics go to Mass to be engaged with Jesus, not with each other. It’s not a social club and throughout it’s 2000 year history, it’s never had to be a social club for it’s parishioners. They had family and neighbors for that. Nowadays, people are looking for surrogate family and they are attempting to find it in evangelical churches.
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Right. We are going to Mass to ritually worship Jesus. It is the post-Resurrection equivalent to when the Jewish people used to go to the Temple to sacrifice an animal to God. Any social time took place back at your house or inn or whatever AFTER you left the Temple.
 
Exactly. The problem for modern day Christians, though, is the epidemic of loneliness and alienation that is permeating nearly everyone’s lives nowadays. I can truly understand the desire to form intimate connections with other people. Non-denominational churches are pretty good at this, and this is what attracts folks. People need to get it into their heads that the Catholic Church is just not built that way.

Behind every one of these “Catholics aren’t friendly” threads is the unspoken thought, “I am lonely. What can I do about it?” There are no easy answers. There was a thread a while back about older people who are leaving the CC because they don’t get any social benefits from the Church and are thinking about going to an evangelical church for the social atmosphere. It’s a real problem and I wish them well.
 
I just want to thank Deal Hudson for Crisis magazine. It is one of my favorite so many good articles.

It is this kind of evangelizing that will bring people to the faith and make community stronger.
 
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