Scandals in the Church as generational corruption?

[Tom Acre]

... Research shows that the sex scandal goes back to at least the 60's and has included clergy from the silent generation, boomers and GenX...the USA Catholic Church in the 60's ..."you guys are getting lax in your selection of priests and there is going to be trouble"...

Most likely, as with so many things in America, the beginning of degradation goes back to 1964 +/- 2.

A very high percentage of the sexual abusers are same sex attraction (homosexual) and one wonders if they went into the priesthood as a way to hide ...

Quite likely

Major changes within the Church ... If you look at the 2000 year history, the early Church was a church of the laity, meeting mostly in private homes rather than church buildings with minimal numbers of clergy...

My other prediction is that it will more and more become a church of the laity, as was the early Church.

Many non-Catholics don't consider themselves "Protestants", rather simply Christians in the manner you imply, like the New Testament.

Now coming to the generational element: It's there OK, because different generations look at things differently which influences both spirituality and expression. I see this a lot because I run programmes helping adults of all ages to explore the basics of the Christian message. The different generations can react very strongly to "small differences in expression and/or spirituality". For instance people over 65 can be feel totally alienated by the the guitars, drums and clapping during the singing of an enthusiatic Youth Mass; alienated enough to stop going to church! But the major issues within the Church seem much bigger than generational influences.

Regards. Richard

Many manage these generational and other differences by traditional services in the morning followed by Bible study and praise and worship groups afterward that meet the needs of the specific group. Some even gather in the group leader's or a member's house depending on what's better for the group, and the Message is remarkably consistent though the form is markedly different.

[richard5za]

But hasn't the Youth Mass as you describe it been going on for something like 40 years? One should think people would have had time to get used to it by now. And aren't traditional masses also available, often at a different time on the same day?

Yes, you are correct. I simply used this as one of many possible examples to illustrate that the spirituality and expression of the different generations is quite different, and whilst individuals regard their own spirituality and expression as important, its not an important issue within the Church. It happens every generation!

The Latin Mass was dropped at parish level after Vatican II, in favour of the vernacular, so around the end of the 60's, but there are still priests who say the Latin Mass and you can still attend Latin Mass if you want to.

From the outside the Catholic Church may look like a monolith, but in fact there's an amazing breadth of expression and spirituality within.

[John]

Dear Richard,

> My own prediction is that the next Pope will be the last. After
> that there will be some sort of union of Catholic Churches, and
> the way will be open for a significant re-unification of
> Christianity. There is already a Catholic / Lutheran agreement,
> and an offer to Anglicans, and first steps will probably be to
> also include Greek and Russian Orthodox. In this sort of union,
> Methodists would be an easy fit, and over 30 to 50 years the
> Church could account for 80% of Christians.

I really don't think so, Richard.

** Pope Benedict XIV pledges to end rift with Orthodox Christians
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 29#e050529

John

[richard5za]

Dear John,

I really don't think so, Richard.

There's a strong Catholic committment to re-unification of Christianity.

The smaller churches need the size of Catholicism to flourish.

There is already a Catholic Lutheran accord of 2004

The Orthodox churches are just as Catholic as the Roman Catholics. There is a minor difference in the Creed, and they have some small differences in canon law none of which are 'deal breakers' The differences on unification are political i.e. appointments of bishops and ultimate authority

The Catholic negotiations with the Anglicans in the 90's broke down on appointment of bishops, not doctrinal issues.

The current generation of Catholics are not as obedient as they were in yesteryear. There are lots of pressures for reform and change. For instance, there are already more than 100 women Catholic priests in Europe and USA and growing rapidly. They claim to be fully Catholic and that the Church's attempts to excommunicate or invalidate them are nul and void. And they attract large congregations!

The Catholic Church is in crisis and pressures will mount. In the context of a growing union of Catholic type churches, (eg Lutherans plus Orthodox) it is easily possible that geographical autonomy of Catholism could develop to deal with regional issues, initally in full communion with Rome, but with autonomy growing over time. In this context the Pope as we currently know the Pope could be replaced by a committee from all the churches. Theologically speaking why does 'Peter's successor' have to be a single person? Why not a committee duly elected, as Peter's successor currently is?

The "future of the Church, and the church of the future" subject is complex.

[John]

>> I really don't think so, Richard.

> There's a strong Catholic commitment to re-unification of
> Christianity.

> The smaller churches need the size of Catholicism to flourish.

> There is already a Catholic Lutheran accord of 2004

> The Orthodox churches are just as Catholic as the Roman
> Catholics. There is a minor difference in the Creed, and they have
> some small differences in canon law none of which are 'deal
> breakers' The differences on unification are political
> i.e. appointments of bishops and ultimate authority

> The Catholic negotiations with the Anglicans in the 90's broke
> down on appointment of bishops, not doctrinal issues.

> The current generation of Catholics are not as obedient as they
> were in yesteryear. There are lots of pressures for reform and
> change. For instance, there are already more than 100 women
> Catholic priests in Europe and USA and growing rapidly. They claim
> to be fully Catholic and that the Church's attempts to
> excommunicate or invalidate them are nul and void. And they
> attract large congregations!

> The Catholic Church is in crisis and pressures will mount. In the
> context of a growing union of Catholic type churches, (eg
> Lutherans plus Orthodox) it is easily possible that geographical
> autonomy of Catholism could develop to deal with regional issues,
> initially in full communion with Rome, but with autonomy growing
> over time. In this context the Pope as we currently know the Pope
> could be replaced by a committee from all the
> churches. Theologically speaking why does 'Peter's successor' have
> to be a single person? Why not a committee duly elected, as
> Peter's successor currently is?

> The "future of the Church, and the church of the future" subject
> is complex.

I guess I see your point, Richard, but I'm not sure what the point
would be. It's always possible to form another committee. We have
the mother of all committees, the United Nations, and we can argue how
much good it's done. The General Assembly seems pretty useless. The
Security Council sometimes gets things done, but that's because it's
not very democratic. So we might envision some new super-ecumenical
council, but the Orthodox patriarchs would never accept anything like
the Security Council that would put them into a position inferior to
the Pope.

I look at the situation a bit differently. It's true that Western and
Orthodox Christians are both Christian, but that's like saying that
they're both human. The doctrinal commonalities pale in significance
to the cultural differences. A Greek Orthodox can certainly never
become a Catholic, but just as important, he could never become a
Russian Orthodox either. A Catholic is a Catholic anywhere in the
world (in theory, anyway), but there's no such thing as a generic
"Orthodox." You have to be Orthodox PLUS something else.

I would suggest that the Pope would have better luck unifying with
another universal religion -- say, Buddhism or even Islam!

The other important point is that the generational trends that you
reference are artifacts of the Awakening eras, and are about to be
reversed. As the Crisis era progresses, those pressures for reform
will be subordinated to pleas for help to survive. After the war,
things will look very different for Catholics than they do today.

John

[richard5za]

Dear John,

The other important point is that the generational trends that you
reference are artifacts of the Awakening eras, and are about to be
reversed.

I'll do some research on the subject of generational influence upon the Christian church. I imagine I need to confine the exercise to the last 200 years when the modern world came into being. I can't promise anything very soon, but will get there.

Richard

[xakzen]

I'll do some research on the subject of generational influence upon the Christian church. I imagine I need to confine the exercise to the last 200 years when the modern world came into being. I can't promise anything very soon, but will get there.Richard

I did some historical research on Presbyterian churches here in America years ago before I even read Strauss & Howe and came up with the attached chart as the best representation of the organizational changes.

I've spend a little time trying to align the splits/reunions with the official S&H periods here: http://www.fourthturning.com/my_html/bo ... story.html

but I can seem to find a direct correlation. I think it's just the nature of the chart, but it's apparent that after multiple schisms are followed by reunions, but the dates do not consistently align with the turnings I would have expected, e.g. separations in unraveling periods & unifications during austerity/high period. A further complication is that with every re-unification there is almost always a small group that disagrees and splits. The thickness of the lines tries to represent this, but not to scale, i.e. the OPC/BPC/EPC branch represented only a few 10K people at best whereas the mainline PCUSA may have had 4 million or more at one time.

[John]

> I did some historical research on Presbyterian churches here in
> America years ago before I even read Strauss & Howe and came up
> with the attached chart as the best representation of the
> organizational changes.

That's a pretty amazing chart.

I don't know if this will help or not, but my theory about new
religious movements is that they get launched during Awakening eras,
and become either established or extinguished during Crisis eras.
Perhaps looking at it that way may help.

John

[xakzen]

That's a pretty amazing chart.

I don't know if this will help or not, but my theory about new
religious movements is that they get launched during Awakening eras,
and become either established or extinguished during Crisis eras.
Perhaps looking at it that way may help.

John

I'd agree with that as far as totally new religious thinking, but in the case of the Presbyterian churches in America have mostly been about minor differences causing schism. The mainline church has repeatedly experienced the gradual liberalization of Reformational Theology (Calvinism) and the organization invariable blinks by refusing to impose discipline on the minority resulting in another minority that is angry that discipline has not been enforced forming a splinter group. This type of splintering I would expect to be more characteristic of an unraveling.

The groups on the bottom (Associate & Reformed) churches were founded by the descendants of the Scottish Covenanters that twice lost their wars with the English in the 17th & 16th centuries which does support your theory that wars cause religion.

[dearprudence66]

1. I'm amused how gen x could molest anything but a raggedy doll considering most weren't of sexual maturity.

2. The original post demonstrates for me how far looney tunes right (particularly male) will go to pains to lie, deny & deflect accountability from themselves, even if they must throw their children under a bus to accomplish their mission. They have no clue what their true allegiance is to anymore. Every word of accusation coming from the mouths of the right/ TP is actually a confession of their own guilt and they're too oblivious to themselves to realize it. I have far too much respect for the noble shoes of conservatives to allow these charlatans to call themselves conservative. Retire the jersey or leave.

3. Ayn Rand was the Trojan horse of the conservative mind corrupting their (genuinely good) principles, but they've made a lifelong career blaming the liberals for what their own hands created. It took on some momentum in the 50's and became justified abandonment of ethics in leadership in the 60's, which in turn justified boomer backlash over the sheer volume of hypocrisy. It's rendered them vacillating wildly from covert aggression to overt aggression and can't understand why everyone calls them haters.

4. Authoritarian personalities cannot handle freedom and prefer gated communities, however, cannot satisfy themselves with boundaries as Amish did by declaring war on free society claiming themselves 'freedom fighters'. Yes, they do fight against freedom, as did puritans. As did every power grabbing weasel threatening the founding of our nation. As did every white supremacist since this nation began. As do Zionist sects convinced of chosen child status. Selective attention conveniently ignores this nation consciously left behind the baggage of Europe for a reason.

5. Ayn Rand paradigm elites exploit authoritarians masterfully to subvert justice and enable theft using them as mules. These elites are not beholden to America or her best interests. America itself is reduced to a gigantic cats paw servicing malevolence.

6. It breaks my heart as Catholic to say this but... The schism will not be mended because Christianity is plagued with too many prejudices & too many who expect group think to carry their religion for them. They're divorced from personal accountability, which was a strength of Christendom, now horribly weakened by a flock worshiping the beams in their own eyes. This is why the emergent Church came to be.

7. The Church is not immune from the trend of being divorced from personal accountability. They've enabled the philosophy to thrive. The declaration of a war on moral relativity became all the justification the least of my brothers needed to step up the assault on free society with more Machiavellian worship.

8. The Church, particularly Catholic, is deeply troubled because they've conditioned far too much blind obedience.

9. Very little of Vatican 2 was a mandate. It was but an increase in options for local parishes burdened with too much mother may I from the Vatican. The latin mass was near abandoned wholesale by populist sentiment of clergy feeling obliged to compete with secular populism, not necessarily of parishioners. Truth is truth- no competition was necessary, but a doubling up of effort to teach absolutely was. Had they any faith in Christian women, they might have been able to rise to the occasion in a sound unified mission statement. The Church really blew it in the 60's-70's. "Competing" with disease is very similar to another issue. If men calling themselves Christian prefer the contrived beauty of transvestites over the real mccoy womanhood, that's the dent in their own head. The secret sauce of silent generation- you are what you've habitually valued throughout your lives.

10. Wars do not create religion, however, wars do encourage religious attendance from those looking to harvest a posse pandering to the male ego. They aren't religious at all but ape the part. It's called networking.