Religion

[gehringer_2]

10 minutes ago, chasfh said:

It's not until you consider that many priests rue that they never got to minister during pre-Vatican II time of the all-powerful, well-heeled parish pastor, pampered and fawned over by his congregation, who could do anything he wanted to anyone in the parish he wanted, and was looked upon as sitting at the right hand of the right hand of the Father.

I feel so lucky to have grown up during the guitar Mass/hippie Jesus era of the Church. That might be why it took me as long as it did to finally fall away from it.

 

participation in arcane ritual also is an easy way to engender self-satisfaction in the parishioners. It feels like atonement, even though it's only empty gesture. The declension of religious hierarchies into hollow  formalisms is a timeless phenomenon - no different today than in 30 AD Judea.

[chasfh]

26 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

participation in arcane ritual also is an easy way to engender self-satisfaction in the parishioners. It feels like atonement, even though it's only empty gesture. The declension of religious hierarchies into hollow  formalisms is a timeless phenomenon - no different today than in 30 AD Judea.

One of the reasons I left religion was the rote, almost unthinking nature of it. It started to feel like nothing more than marking time and checking boxes. When I was a child it just seemed like it's what I had to do to get to heaven or something. But at least I liked the relatively loose nature of it, and I seem to remember my high school teachers at Bishop Foley were open to discussing issues more deeply and openly, as was the norm in the 70s. I sense they do less of that in schools today.

[lordstanley]

 

 

[lordstanley]

3 hours ago, chasfh said:

One of the reasons I left religion was the rote, almost unthinking nature of it. It started to feel like nothing more than marking time and checking boxes. When I was a child it just seemed like it's what I had to do to get to heaven or something. 

For sure. It's a problem that's not getting better. I drifted from the Church for a good 15 years because Mass wasn't doing anything for me (well that plus a family friend, a Vatican-based monsignor, was convicted of heinous child sex abuse). Of course I know the heart of the Catholic Mass is the Eucharist. But really, the only three things to look forward to when I was a kid and still as an adult were: a) music; b) homily; and c) food/social afterwards.  For the homily, many priests put a lot of time into every week but lack public speaking skills. Simple Toastmaster things like telling the congregation at the beginning the 4 points he's going to make and how long it's going to take, so we can pace ourselves, rather than have him just drone on and on. Maybe a bullet point outline could be put in the bulletin or up on the screens that are sometimes used now. This has become an even more pressing issue as accents of foreign priests may be hard to understand and they tend to have longer sermons. 7-10 minutes should be plenty. Foreign priests often were trained in regions where "clericalism" still is too strong and the priest calls the shots with little input from the people in the pews. I know many long-time Catholics who get more out of online podcasts by "popular" priests like Bishop Robert Barron or Father Mike Schmitz than they do from anything they've heard in their own church. Incidentally, I've been married to a non-religious wife for 33 years and I didn't come back to Catholicism until my father's funeral 12 years ago. It was the rituals that first drew me back - the faith would eventually follow and then later my interest in theology.

Edited 3 hours ago by lordstanley