The Catholic church is on track to become a shrinking cult | National Catholic Reporter

The Catholic church is on track to become a shrinking cult | National Catholic Reporter

This article came to me through my online subscription to NCR.  I read it and thought - Wow!  I thought this because only last week I got an email from a good friend, a priest in Rome.  He was reflecting on the Church in Europe, saying:

"We see the problems of our religious congregations and of the Church.  In fact, it is much deeper and is a profound moral morass and if they're not careful they'll be overtaken by more powerful and focused groups.  It might be a caliphate.  It might be China.  But unless they wake up, they'll sink."

I thought my friend a bit dramatic but then his thoughts are reflected in some way by this article which independently came my way at the same time.  This is no coincidence.

The Church is losing its way.  In the west, I would name it as the Church has lost touch with its own grassroots.  Where I live now, the Church has its issues but they appear to be different from ours back home. 

I named my growing up in Church as like belonging to a ghetto.  Everyone and everything I knew - family, friends, school, the scouts, sporting groups - all were Catholic or else they did not own up to being anything else.  The Church was just there, a part of my life as a boy and a teenager.  The first time I ever confronted non-Catholics was when I went to work after finishing school and ones there were making fun of me being Catholic.  The Church provided me a family and a school, a place to belong and grow.  Such a Church no longer exists.  You can no longer belong to a ghetto.  That is a good thing but for this argument that is by the way, as is the fact that the Church today also has many strengths.      

What worries me the most is that the Church of a Cardinal Pell blames us, blames our society and world for what has happened.  I would turn it around and ask where has the Church lost the plot and missed opportunities?   Where the Church finds herself today has a lot to do with her decisions and actions, or lack of them, and how she presents herself. 

Then along comes good Pope Francis and he is calling us to be a Church of the poor, a Church of the people and telling us to get our priorities right, not always just focusing on people's sexual dilemmas or personal proclivities.  Pope Francis is calling us to be Church in a fresh and renewed way.  A Church caught up in its own life and focusing on select issues; a Church that is hypocritical and unfeeling in the midst of scandal is running the risk of becoming a cult and being overtaken.  Francis challenges us to be out there amidst the action and not hide in some cave where we would just become a forgotten or strange cult.  He can see this and name it for us. 

Good Pope Francis!