.........an honest look at the current data on the performance of the economy and an honest look at the core values of our Christian faith. Looking first at the economy -- how would you rate its performance in regard to the average American? Good? So-so? Poor? How do you assess the evidence of the steady growth of the loss of decent well-paying jobs across the nation? The growing job insecurity among all levels of business? The massive unemployment among our young people, so vulnerable to escape into drugs and alcohol? The soaring costs of health care? The lack of affordable housing? One could go on and on. I presume your answer will be, “terrible.” Now we look at the values of the message of Christ. His special attention to the poor and ordinary, the attention to those without shelter or clothing. The need to be a participating member of the community and a sense of belonging, etc. The ultimate sacredness of each and every individual person. The question rings loud and clear. How can we as a Judeo-Christian country focus almost exclusively on the profits of Wall Street; the multi-billion dollar salaries of so many people (while their colleagues are raising families while earning $10, $12 or $14 dollars an hour, often required to work at least two jobs); the massive profits of our military/industrial complex, the construction of huge, expensive high rise condominiums in our central cities?
Here is an article by Kevin and Marilyn Ryan
..........One Sunday morning this fast-fading summer, we went to Mass in a nearby vacation state. The church, one of the newer types, modeled on the theatre-in-the-round, was packed with families decked out in shorts and sandals. What was most striking about the liturgy, however, was that, with the exception of the celebrant, the event was dominated by women and girls. The reader was a young woman. There were two altar girls. All five eucharistic ministers were women. The happy-clappy, Barry Manilow music, played on one of those plinky-plink portable pianos, was led by a woman with back-up of five teen-age girls. Even that last bastion of non-clerical male prerogative, the corps assigned to pass the collection basket, was composed mainly of the fairer sex. If anyone needed an existence proof of the feminization of the Catholic Church, it was on display that Sunday.In the years following WWII, Catholics were led by a legion of strong and often rigid priests. Authoritarian pastors ruled their parishes, throwing out a crumb of responsibility here to the parochial school’s nuns and a crumb there to the Ladies Altar and Rosary Society. At the same time, the Church loudly proclaimed the importance of the family and the centrality of the man as the head of the family. Words were backed up by real outreach to men, an outreach not lost on their sons. Strong men served proudly in the Knights of Columbus, and promised themselves to serve and support any widows of Knights who had died. Then there were monthly men’s club meetings, a staple of parish life. So, too, was the Communion Breakfast where after Sunday Mass, fathers and their sons feasted on pancakes and sausages and were enthralled by talks from the winning coach of the area’s winning football team or an inspiring address by a former Navy chaplain who in WWII had won the Silver Star. Two events during the 1960s diminished both the role of men in our Church and the Church’s impact on them. First, Vatican II seemed to soften the Church’s clear position on many things and to focus more on process and issues such as liturgy and women in the Church. While these issues are important, they don’t have the capacity to hold the male attention like a tight, fourth-quarter, game-winning spiral pass in the end zone, or a moving tale of battle, sacrifice and saving souls on a sinking air craft carrier.The other event was the sexual revolution. In a brief few years, the young Catholic male’s primary question, “Actually, how far can you go?” was replaced by “Be real with me Tiffany. Are you, like, ya know, protected?” Catholic fathers, too, were swept up in the new erotica. Defying Woody Allen’s recommendations that people should marry for life--like pigeons and Catholics, we began divorcing and leaving our children to the care of their mothers in the same high numbers as the rest of our countrymen. The American Church lost sight of its men, leaving Catholic young men with one of two options: 1) to take seriously their increasingly feminized Church with its “gender sensitive language” and vague, smarmy ecumenicalism or 2) kick back, join the guys, chug a few brews and spend their weekends channel surfing for sports and hunting for compliant Tiffanies and Jasmines.
These two articles in the same Catholic paper, in the same edition, show the gulf between the priesthood and the laity on where the direction of the Church should be headed.
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