Fishwrap: Approve of “gay” sex or risk a shrinking, irrelevant Church.

I think we are going to see the National Schismatic Reporter (aka Fishwrap) lurch even farther to the left, even deeper into angry dissent now that they have to cope with and distinguish themselves with Crux.

I suspect Crux will wind up doing a better job of what Fishwrap has been doing.

Here is an example of angry edginess from Fishwrap.  This ought bring in those readers!

Brian Cahill has a peevish piece in which he makes the claim that …

The Catholic church is on track to become a shrinking cult

Oh no!  What will save us from this dire fate?  Fishwap has an answer!

Let’s have a look.

Taking a break from his crusade against civil gay marriage, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is establishing an Oratory of St. Philip Neri at Star of the Sea Parish in the city.  [So, the theme has been introduced.]

[…]

But the Holy Spirit works in all sorts of strange and wonderful ways, and any effort to attract young adults — to keep them from leaving the church, should be praised, especially given the wholesale exodus of young Catholics over recent years. The Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project reports that four out of five Catholics who have left the church and haven’t joined another church did so before the age of 24.

One can point to an increasingly secular, materialistic culture as a factor in this exodus. But a closer look suggests that young Catholics are increasingly turned off by the attitudes and actions of some American bishops — the failure to address the child abuse scandal, the harsh opposition to civil gay marriage, the cluelessness of church teaching on contraception, and the refusal to consider women priests.

More recently, Catholic high school students, who can spot dishonesty and hypocrisy a mile away, are reacting with disillusion and disgust at how the church is treating some teachers in Catholic schools.

Bishop Michael Barber of Oakland, Calif., is attempting to coerce Catholic identity with a mandated morality pledge.

[…]

Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr upheld the firing of an assistant principal who expressed support for civil gay marriage on his blog.

[…]

Cleveland Bishop Richard Lennon fired a teacher at a Catholic high school from her job when the diocese read the obituary of her mother’s death and discovered the teacher was a lesbian. How many thoughtful Catholic high school students will stick around in a church that is capable of that kind of behavior?

St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt sent one of his priests to speak at a mandatory high school assembly just before Minnesota was to vote on an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment.

[…]

If our church is left in the hands of these bishops, [Those mean dumb meanies!] we are on track to become a shrinking, increasingly irrelevant cult [Fishwrap’s future] — not a source of appeal for thoughtful Catholic high school students.

Yep.  That’s a great idea!  Let’s adjust the Church’s Magisterium to the view of high school students!  We need a Magisterium of Sophomores!

Bottom line: The Pope should declare that every gender-distinction in the Bible and the Magisterium has been wrong all along and Bishops should stop teaching about sexual morality.  We really must start saying that sticking what you have into any place you want is fine, especially when it comes to same-sex sex.   Hey!  Even better…. why not just approve it!  That would make us even more relevant, and hip, right?  I can see the beginning of the Dogmatic Constitution from Vatican III: Quae olim dedecora esse dixit Ecclesia, nunc …. 

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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33 Comments

  1. John Grammaticus says:

    The thing which REALLLY gets my goat when it comes to the Fishwrap, the tablet et al is that around the world our brothers and sisters are being exterminated for their fidelitly unto death of the pure and unadulturated Catholic Faith and then this lot have the gumption to pass water over said faith. grrrrrrrrr…………..

    oh and for the ‘relavence’ thing, take a look at where the Faith is being preached without any modernist garbage attached, ohhhh converts and vocations by the bucketload………… I rest my case

  2. Andrew says:

    Quae olim dedecora esse dixit ecclesia, nunc, applaudente populo, omni aestimatione digna reputantur.

  3. RichR says:

    The Roman Catholic Church will survive to see the ruins of the United States of America.

  4. “Taking a break from his crusade against civil gay marriage, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is establishing an Oratory of St. Philip Neri at Star of the Sea Parish in the city.”

    It’s not clear what inference Mr. Cahill intends here. Is it that Ab.Cordileone should spend more time establishing oratories and TLM parishes? I suspect not, since he further says of the Oratory that

    “There will be Sunday and daily Mass in Latin, although it’s not clear how in 2014 Mass in a language no one understands will attract young adults.”

    Evidently, someone among his more informed colleagues at the NCR should inform him that most of the energy and dynamism in the TLM movement today comes precisely from those young adults whom he doesn’t think are attracted by it.

  5. Charles E Flynn says:

    Does anyone else think that all sorts of dubious things are sometimes attributed to the Holy Spirit by those on the left because the Holy Spirit does not have any speaking lines in scripture?

  6. Suburbanbanshee says:

    I think it’s more likely to be connected with bitterness over:

    – being forced to earn Confirmation through forced labor
    – family conflict and the desire to get back at parents
    – bad Catholics who are presented to kids as perfect Catholic exemplars and saints
    – lack of meaningful instruction and activities for junior high and high school kids to do after being forced to buy into the Church through forced labor
    – and being sent away unarmed and untrained to places full of aggressive atheism, aggressive Protestant evangelism, temptations to various idiocies and sins, etc.

  7. rcg says:

    I hope homosexuals remain in the Church and seek the Truth with help from the Holy Spirit and from their fellow Catholics. But what are the numbers? If less than half the Catholics attend Mass are they saying half of all Catholics are gay??? And is it the half that stay away, or the half that are still here? This sort of threat is silly.

  8. MWindsor says:

    Yeah, such approval worked out well for the Anglican’s, didn’t it.

  9. Patrick-K says:

    First time I have seen “Crux.” Seems to be tastefully designed, left-of-center-but-not-crazy, and where John L. Allen, Jr. landed after his departure from NCR. I see it is “A Boston Globe Media website.” Allen appears to be second in command, with Teresa M. Hanafin as general editor. Hanafin apparently has nearly 30 years experience as a journalist, so this is likely a personal project rather than something designed to catapult her into the limelight. I’m not entirely sure we need yet another US Catholic news agency, and America and Commonweal seem to have the left-of-center-but-not-crazy angle covered pretty well. But, hey, if it’ll draw a few readers away from the left-of-center-and-indeed-crazy NCR, I won’t complain.

  10. Dennis Martin says:

    Did you perhaps mean a Magisterium of Sopophorics, a Sopophoric Magisterium? Figuring out the difference between that and Magisterium of Sophomores or Sophisters could keep the Fishwrap’s intrepid journalists busy, perhaps out of mischief, for a while. I wonder how long it might take to discover that they need Liddell and Scott instead of Lewis and Short??

  11. Kerry says:

    Why is the Fishwrap warning the Church about these consequences? Isn’t a shrinking, irrelevant Church what they campaign for?

  12. Bosco says:

    Ironically, and inevitably, approval of the abomination of gay sex virtually will assure a shrinking church and thereafter, of necessity, a church utterly irrelevant.

    Reminds me of Three Dog Night’s 1968 “One (is the Loneliest Number)”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5ab8BOu4LE

  13. Cafea Fruor says:

    Shrinking Church or the wrath of the Father.

    Gee, I can’t really decide which risk is greater…

  14. Juergensen says:

    Shrinking and irrelevant to this world? I’ll take it!

  15. Ben Kenobi says:

    Apparently the fishwrap believes that membership is more important than integrity.

  16. pannw says:

    I think those people are some of the ones St. Paul was talking about when he said, “For this cause, God delivered them up to shameful affections…” I wonder if they have read the last line in his letter to the Romans 1. They really should.

  17. majuscule says:

    Henry Edwards said:
    It’s not clear what inference Mr. Cahill intends here. Is it that Ab.Cordileone should spend more time establishing oratories and TLM parishes? I suspect not, since he further says of the Oratory that
    “There will be Sunday and daily Mass in Latin, although it’s not clear how in 2014 Mass in a language no one understands will attract young adults.”

    Evidently, someone among his more informed colleagues at the NCR should inform him that most of the energy and dynamism in the TLM movement today comes precisely from those young adults whom he doesn’t think are attracted by it.

    The church where the Oratory is located (Star of the Sea) has already been offering daily and Sunday EF Masses for several years (encouraged by the same Abp. Cordileone). The Oratory has now been established there and will continue (and promote) the TLM.

    A few months ago I was speaking to a young man who has been serving Mass there . He affirmed that the EF Mass is extremely popular with young people. I think I just saw picture among those of local seminarians.

  18. majuscule says:

    …er, his picture…

  19. They’re using the same tactics the democrats use, and successfully use, on Republicans: approve of gay marriage, . . . or amnesty, or risk being a shrinking, irrelevant Party.

  20. JonPatrick says:

    “There will be Sunday and daily Mass in Latin, although it’s not clear how in 2014 Mass in a language no one understands will attract young adults.”

    A Mass that illiterate 12th Century peasants had no problem with, but here in the 21st Century we can’t deal with Mass in Latin and have to have it dumbed down for us.

    At my local EF Mass, young couples and their many children outnumber the old folks, the opposite of what I see at the OF Mass.

  21. Mike says:

    Twice in the article we encounter the phrase “thoughtful Catholic high school students.” Nowhere in the article — or at least in the excerpt — do we encounter the word prayerful, which leads one to wonder where the thoughts are supposed to come from. (Evidently the vaunted “thoughtfulness” is not inclusive of the truths of the Faith which the Bishop of Oakland insists that teachers in his diocese convey fully and accurately.)

    One hopes that, somewhere along the line, the children being patronized by the article’s rubbish are invited to consider how Rousseau’s Hell-begotten concept of the general will — implicitly (at least) embraced by the relativists of NcR, RNS, Crux, et al. — spawns the shards of hateful groupthink that have ever sought to cleave the Body of Christ from Him Who died to redeem His Church and Her members from bile such as that masked by the brittle smiles of the practitioners of the “Spirit of Vatican II.”

  22. benedetta says:

    Sounds like some people put a lot of stock into orchestrated bullying and threats, in order to get their way. Does this at all relate to the gay lobby that Pope Francis has spoken about with concern? I believe that the Church is a here comes everybody kind of a place. Everyone is welcome. Still in these times faketivism through harsh and even criminal machinations are not a worthy or Christian solution towards uniting all of us sinners within Holy Mother Church.

  23. benedetta says:

    As to these high school youth: studies show that they have bucked their boomer forebears who want the Church to ok even more abortion, for no apparent reason, just because, you know, libertinism is on principle the priority. Not the compassion, NB.

  24. Joe in Canada says:

    I presume Mr Cahill noticed all these young people flooding into the mainstream Protestant churches and is wondering how to stop their growth.
    I also presume that the NCR will get shriller, as a policy, faced with the competition of a similar newspaper unencumbered by the word “Catholic” .

  25. Sonshine135 says:

    I suppose that Fishwrap doesn’t realize that outside of Latino families, the fastest and youngest families in the church are those attending the EF.

    Thanks for the quality entertainment this morning Fr. Z. I like to laugh when the left gets into spittle-flecked nutty mode.

  26. AngelGuarded says:

    Hahahaha! A good laugh! What made me spit out my coffee was the implication that high school students know best. “…Catholic high school students, who can spot dishonesty and hypocrisy a mile away, are reacting with disillusion and disgust…” Back in the 1900’s when I was a high school student, we KNEW everything and reacted with disillusion and disgust to many things too. Fortunately, some of us grew up. Hahahahaha! A knee slapper, Father Z. Thanks.

  27. AvantiBev says:

    The bishops and priests cannot “STOP” teaching sexual morality because for many of them, they never STARTED teaching it. Boy, I wish you could all be flies on the wall here at this law office and see the Catholics and other Christians who troop through our doors. I see precious little evidence that anyone has been taught marriage is a covenant let alone a sacrament. Chastity, celibacy, PUHLEEZ! What are you some sort of medieval theologian???

    “Hey, how come the judgment for dissolution of marriage says I can’t have my snuggle buddy overnight when the kids are here?”

    The other day I overheard 2 members of this law office discussing their grown children and one lady was delighted that though her son is currently shacked up, he wasn’t even going to consider marriage to anyone until he had X amount of dollars and had bought his first house. 8 years of Catholic school in her background.

    No matter whom you vote into this office or that, no matter what referendums you champion, the rot in this nation is in our foundation — our families. But hey, the main thing is that the brides of America say “yes” to the right dress, no?

  28. Supertradmum says:

    Some young people under 40 have a new phrase for boring, out-dated subjects. What they say about articles and other things which are now considered boring, is “Oh, that is so gay!”

    Who are fishwrap journalists writing for, btw…?

  29. KateD says:

    I like Pope Benedict’s vision of a smaller more faithful church, personally. This last weekend we had our walk for life. Due to circumstances, I would say 95-99% of the participants were Catholic. The number of people marching were fewer than in previous more ecumenical years, but the walk felt so much more powerful. Everyone noted it. So, even if the church did become smaller (which I disagree would be the result of remaining faithful to God’s will), it would certainly become stronger, more solid. It would be come a more stable foundation, as Christ said, built upon stone, rather than ever shifting sand.

  30. JesusFreak84 says:

    So who wants to ask the fishwrap how well that’s worked out for the Episcopalians and other far-left Anglicans?

  31. Nicholas says:

    KateD,

    Benedict’s argument for why we would have a smaller Church is that those who do not strongly believe. I would agree with you in that a faithful Church would bring in converts, but the number of unfaithful leaving would be more than the number of new faithful Catholics being brought into the Church.

  32. Marissa says:

    As to these high school youth: studies show that they have bucked their boomer forebears who want the Church to ok even more abortion

    I’m 27 (of the Millenial generation, I believe). A third of my generation was never born, according to some abortion statistics. Those are brothers, sisters, friends, acquaintances, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, priests, nuns, monks, doctors, nurses, social club attendees, volunteers, etc. We know something is missing from our lives that ought to have been there.

  33. frjim4321 says:

    Factual Error.

    It was not CLEVELAND, it was COLUMBUS.

    (Gay teacher fired because her partner was listed in her mother’s obituary.)

    A tragic, foolish mistake . . . but it was not in the North Coast City.

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