Why do Mass attendance and new vocations continue to collapse?

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ChurchSoldier

3h

We need leaders who train leaders. The only reason a parish with several hundred or thousand families is not producing vocations is because the Priests aren’t living a life that is seen as worth emulating…

This is the plain unvarnished truth!
 
ChurchSoldier said:
We need leaders who train leaders. The only reason a parish with several hundred or thousand families is not producing vocations is because the Priests aren’t living a life that is seen as worth emulating…
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Some of the Leadership have involved in shameful actions along with never Teaching the Good News.
Some of the Abuses began IN Seminaries and Novitiates
Who would want to become a priest or involve in an organization with many unresolved concerns?
As long as some leaders with influence remained entrenched - how can problems disappear?
 
You are correct oh, there are some very bad things happening. You can only affect your own Parish. The reason we call priests father is because of parish is like a big spiritual family and the priest is the father. If the father is doing something that is harming the family, then it is up to the family members to stop the harm. Always be respectful, but gather a group who are unsatisfied with the way things are and go to the priest. If you can’t get satisfaction go to the bishop. If you can’t get satisfaction with the Bishop then in a very firm but nonviolent way take things into your own hands.

Catholics need to learn two things. First is lay people have an amazing amount of power which they don’t use. Secondly is that the Catholic church is like any other major corporation. The regional office (in the church this is the diocese) wants smooth sailing and therefore the priest wants things to go well and not to cause waves for the regional office. If his leadership is causing the parish to cause waves he will be removed.
 
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ChurchSoldier said:
You are correct oh, there are some very bad things happening. You can only affect your own Parish. The reason we call priests father is because of parishes like a big spiritual family and the priest is the father. If the father is doing something that is harming the family then it is up to the family to stop him. Always be respectful gatherer group who are unsatisfied and go to the priest. You can’t get satisfaction go to the bishop. If you can’t get satisfaction then in a very firm but nonviolent way take things into your own hands.
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What you describe has been ongoing in not just a few Dioceses for many moons.

Trouble is - Today - there’s some discord which exists even amongst Cardinals and Bishops and Impacts right into the Vatican…

Non-Violence is always the way … as is Prudence…
 
We are at a point today where the church appears to be just as corrupt as it was prior to the Reformation. The difference is we shouldn’t be splitting or leaving the church we should be causing change within the church. As you state too many of the Bishops are too involved in the corruption to call it out so the change is going to have to come from the laity
 
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Mass attendance statistics from 3 - 5 years ago are going to reflect the saturation media coverage of the media’s own anti-religious fixation on events which happened 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.

satan strikes the shepherd to scatter the flock. And we’ve seen the type of folks who have abandoned the Church. Ashamed, embarrassed. By what? Decades old hearsay? Uncorroborated accusations? Closet pedophiles and atheists masquerading as clergy? These aren’t true priests. We don’t owe secular (atheist) society an apology for child abuse, perpetrated by ungodly people, anymore than we owe it an apology for the scourge of child abuse known as abortion.

Apologetics used to mean defending Christianity. These days, it seems to mean wanting to apologise for being a Christian. This is wrong.

I believe new vocations will start to grow again the more vocal we are in our public love and support for our Suffering Servant priests. They have been slandered and made the scapegoats.

They too are victims.
 
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I’d like to thank whoever flagged my post saying we should support good Priests particularly those working for (difficult) bishops.

So, to reiterate my initial thoughts on why Mass attendance is low, is we have people who won’t call bad leaders, bad leaders. This prevents a number of good men from going into the priesthood which has a cascading effect.
 
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ChurchSoldier said:
We are at a point today where the church appears to be just as corrupt as it was prior to the Reformation. The difference is we shouldn’t be splitting or leaving the church we should be causing change within the church. As you state too many of the Bishops are too involved in the corruption to call it out so the change is going to have to come from the laity
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Perhaps heading to the time of Jesus when the Leadership was 180 to God.
 
I don’t think I’ve seen the root cause addressed: do people care about eternity and where they will spend it? Before people start accusing me of condemning people to hell (like one rude little priest did when he cut me off when I tried to bring this up at a talk), the positive side is eternity in Heaven. Remember what St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians about how if there is no resurrection, then our belief is in vain. The resurrection is what sets us apart from other religions (such as Buddhism) and atheism.
 
If they adamantly refuse to Enter into God’s Kingdom -
they shall wind up outside it.
 
From my own personal experience I have noticed many changes since my childhood. I’m now a married young adult. I’ve noticed that there has been a diminishing sense of family time. This corresponding with a society in which there are so many activities that are pulling us in so many directions. For example: Sports and other extra curricular activities are being scheduled on Sunday’s and other holy days of obligation. Families are choosing sports and these other activities over going to Mass; people disagree with one doctrine or teaching or another and for that reason they just stop going to Mass altogether.

As far as vocations are concerned it all starts with the family unit. The well known notion to why vocations are diminishing is because of family size. There aren’t many large families anymore. There are many children born into “broken” families. Children being raised by their grandparents or other relatives. So many children are not receiving formation in their faith because (1) parents lack the knowledge and faith themselves, (2) parents aren’t instilling the importance of the faith into their offspring, (3) the c/Church isn’t helping families learn their faith. (As a former Director of Religious Education, I’ve seen first hand parents dumping their children off for catechism, but they don’t go to Mass. I’ve witnessed second graders preparing for the Sacrament of Reconciliation and their First Eucharist and their parents know little to nothing about the Sacraments). If we don’t instill faith into our children young and continue to develop them throughout their lives how do we expect them to seek out a vocation?

On a side note: My husband and I just experienced no preparation from our local Church, and only a one day “class” called pre-cana put on by our diocese as we prepared for our wedding. We are both Catholic, go to Mass fairly regularly, but should that matter? We are still beside our selves that the Church did not have a formal program for us to help us prepare for a SACRAMENT that we were going to receive.
 
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The main reason is that there are not enough priests overall. I believe that there may be over 3000 Catholic churches in the US ,that don’t even have a priest. I don’t know what the current numbers are, but for 35 years since 1980 , the quantity of priests in the US has been on a steady decline.
What needs to be done is that we need to increase the number of priests asap.
Unfortunately, this is not an easy task and may take some time. I don’t know of any other way.
 
Will someone please confirm that this post is visible ?
I havent seen any responses for a couple days.
 
Thank you for the reply.
It fascinates me that this is not an important topic.
 
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