Talk Elections

Here's (http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0412/survey-shows-disconnect-between-church-and-flock.html) a new poll on behalf of the Association of Catholic Priests.

Some findings -

87% of Irish Catholics believe priests should be allowed to marry.

77% support allowing female priests.

An impressive (;)) 75% of Irish Catholics believe that the Church's teachings on sexuality have no relevance to them or their families. As you might expect, there's a signifcant generational gap on this.

61% of Irish Catholics disagree with the Church's stance on homosexuality, with 46% disagreeing strongly compared to just 9% agreeing strongly. 21% don't know or care. Again, there's a predictably large generational gap on this, too.

87% of Irish Catholics believe that divorced and/or seperated people should be allowed to receive communion. 5% disagree.



Very interesting results, if not that surprising considering how a-la-carte the average Irish Catholic is. I do wish they'd polled attitudes on divorce, since it'd be interesting to see how far the country's come since 1995. The question regarding divorced people receiving communion suggests we'd see an overwhelming majority supporting legal divorce, though.

I wonder how similar the results of a poll of American Catholics would be.


Full results here (http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0412/catholic.pdf).

Opposition to divorce was really more about property than OMG TEH LAWS OF DE JEEBUS!!!1111. Now that everyone realizes that legalized divorce will not mean the end of the family farm, and indeed, there are less family farms to be potentially split up, a lot of the public concerns that originally existed about divorce has simply disappeared.

Unsurprising numbers, btw. Irish Catholics were always a la carte in many ways, but now they are being so in a different way.

It'd be quite different. The primary reason being in the US people who realize they don't have anything in common with the Catholic Church leave it and quite affiliating with it for inane reasons. These people in Ireland ought to do the same.

This is Europe. Such consumer approval tests don't apply to the churches here, really. There is still the mindset, at least towards census enumerators, of Cuius regio, eius religio. But that doesn't mean that lots haven't abandoned the church in practice. In some Dublin parishes attendances at mass, for example, are down to 2-3 percent and this is despite the large influx of Eastern European Catholics (who are likely to be much more demonstrative in their devotion) in the last decade or so.

Even many or most of the atheists in Ireland are Catholic, BRTD, and have every cultural and affective reason to be so.

Based on what though? Like most of the people I know raised Catholic who don't agree with the church and aren't involved in it in any way now don't claim to be Catholic.

Based in part, one assumes, on the fact of being Irish. It might seem vaguely phyletic but considering the history of Irish culture and the place of the Church within it it does have to be admitted of as entirely different from hipsters of your acquaintance making clean breaks.

You've said that you still have some instinctively Lutheran characteristics, right? It's like that, only stronger because of the nature of the country and its history.

BRTD this explains it as well as I can:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUVNZFylTdo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUVNZFylTdo)

But the difference is I actually like the ELCA. Now if I were from LCMS or WELS I doubt I'd feel that way. And really, the role of the Catholic church in Irish history is not something I'd be too proud about or want to affiliate with...(A 12th Century Pope being the whole reason the rather hated British even took it over in the first place just for starters...)

Heh, I actually referenced that clip a couple of months ago which led to a very negative reaction from BRTD. :P

Well yeah because it'd be utter nonsense if it was serious and not just some comedian.

Way to fail Medieval History and Politics 101, BRTD. The Norman invasion (not English and certainly not British) was given sanction by Pope Adrian IV (who could have easily been ignored if he hadn't), not caused by it.

As for the clip, yes it is by a comedian but I can't believe that even you can't recognize that he is referring to something real.

But I don't think giving sanction would be something one would be too proud of in history either. And that's really just the start of the whole thing...


But...it's not true to many as I've noted, to which taking it literally would actually be pretty offensive.

Like what he said about joining the Taliban. OK well that's a joke. But joining a hipster church or Nathan's which is quite known for sucking away ex-Catholics in the US and now you have something quite real, you see?

I'm sorry for being Irish, I don't know what you mean by a hipster church, really. At least I can imagine what that means and I doubt it to appeals to much Irish people; maybe a small subsection of Irish protestants (especially in the north...), maybe...

The point is BRTD that to most people being Irish and Catholic are symnomous. People who stop being Catholic in any religious sense identify themselves as "Catholic" because they are Irish. That is what they are. It is an unthinking reflex.

And where was I saying that anyone was proud of the actions of Pope Adrian IV?

Religion smorgasbords that you can drift in and out of throughout your life are a culturally specific thing, BRTD. They don't generally have much meaning outside an American context.

I'll note as well that Irish protestant churches have not really covered themselves in glory over the past couple of years... or, like, forever.

Well trying to define a "hipster church" is like trying to define "emo", but essentially what we are talking about is churches that have a mostly young and non-"churchy" congregation (people like me) as opposed to the stereotypical church full of olds who dress up and actually play good music like what hipsters listen to instead of that traditional church music or that awful Christian contemporary crap. Like I've seen people from my church at shows like The Jealous Sound and Explosions in the Sky. And the whole point is to make Christianity more relevant and modern for the present day. And the services are closer to one of my music shows than a Catholic mass or traditional Protestant service including with that charismatic hand raising and jumping stuff. I doubt Paisley and co. are too big on it and I noted that I don't know if such churches even exist outside the US, Canada and Australia. This site (http://hipsterchristianity.com) kind of does a good job of tongue-in-cheek explaining it.

But anyway the point is these type of churches are often full of people raised Catholic and don't want anything to do with the church anymore, and since they actually have converted to something else it would strike me as kind of ridiculous to insist on them still being Catholic any more than it would be for someone raised Catholic who converted to Islam or Buddhism or whatever. I mean note this (http://www.urminneapolis.org/mediaVideo.php?year=2011) (not my church, but a similar one in Minneapolis), the video at the bottom "Krysta Baptism" where she talks about this, it's similar to all the testimonials I've heard where people talk about how the church of their birth turned them away and hurt them and then they realized that God never stopped loving them and how they can still have a relationship with Christ instead of following religion and all that, a very common theme.


OK, and I see that as really really silly. Now maybe this is a very American-centric view as Nathan noted, but it really just does not compute for me.


That's beside the point, my point is that I wouldn't be proud of the Catholic church's actions in Irish history and would see that as a reason to NOT affiliate it with it any way.

re: Ireland and hipster Christianity

Peter Rollins, associated with the Emergent Church movement (and thus one might say "hipster Christianity") started a community in Belfast called Ikon.

http://www.wittenburgdoor.com/peter-rollins-interview.html

admittedly, this is sounds a different in form than the American hipster practices BRTD is describing, but it can come out of some similar  concerns.  (Rollins has preached at Rob Bell's church for instance)

Only if one accepts that Laudabiliter actually existed in the first place; or that even if it did exist, that the Cambrensis version is a faithful representation of it.

Not a suprising poll at all (and probably a more progressive response from members than you would find in BRTD's Vineyard Movement ;) )

I think you will find that Belfast is not located in the country which we are refering to in this thread.

It isn't called The Great Falling Away for nothing.

True but still interesting of note since as I said I wasn't sure how widespread these type of churches were. Thanks shua.


Well considering the Vineyard Movement already has married pastors and female pastors that's clearly not the case for the first couple of those...And one of the pastors at my church who baptized me I learned does support gay marriage while talking to him before that, which isn't too surprising for a 20something guy who used to work at an organic food co-op, has played in several bands, and lives in a ~90% Obama neighborhood.

And while this is difficult to prove I'd be pretty confident that ex-Catholics who joined the Vineyard are more progressive on those issues than American Catholics, especially since they are likely to be people who were backslid for awhile and certainly holding progressive views as I noted with Nathan, it's easier to get someone who supports gay marriage to believe in charismatic theology stuff than to oppose gay marriage. memphis actually posted this very good article (http://www.npr.org/2012/03/26/149394987/when-god-talks-back-to-the-evangelical-community) elsewhere and the researcher in it noted she encountered a wide diversity of opinions despite your attempt to smear everyone involved in the Vineyard as nothing but completely made up of right wing fundies.

OK, I can sort of understand the line of thought that Catholicism is so embedded into some cultures that people from those cultures can't see themselves as truly separating from it even if they lapse into non-practice or even don't believe in God and the whole thing.

What I don't like is how some try to extend this to ALL Catholics. In the Midwest there aren't very many people who are Catholic in that way, if you were raised Catholic and went to a public or secular private school than that's simply the church you happened to be raised in, as most people here are, it could've been Lutheran or even something else but it just so happened to be Catholic. So there's no real type of cultural connection in people who were raised Catholic from a "generic Midwestern" background, I should also point out that if your parents weren't especially devout they might've had you baptized but if you only went to church like maybe every two months and Easter and Christmas (or maybe just the last two), and you went to a public school, you're not going to feel much of a connection either. Since this is the case of most of the ex-Catholics I know it just strikes me as really odd to seriously insist on things like what that comedian was joking about. If someone doesn't want to be labeled Catholic, I don't see anything unreasonable about not doing so.

Maybe its just a regional thing, but in my experience almost everyone raised Catholic who doesn't line up well with the church's official teachings still claims to be Catholic, while Baptists and other right wing Christian groups are more likely to abandon their labels.

Also, a poll of American Catholics would likely to be similar to this one. Catholics tend to be more liberal than America at large on virtually every political issue, regardless of what the man in Rome says (and he himself isn't as conservative as he's sometimes portrayed)

The fact that you're considering all other Christians to be "Baptists and other right wing Christian groups" (well that and the fact that you are talking about all Baptists as right wing), shows this is a regional thing, perhaps caused by tribalism. And in fact actually kind of contrasts with my point about the Midwest well, since Catholics in the Midwest are not the predominant group resulting in the church being intertwined in the culture (like in Ireland) or so uncommon that they are a notably rare and separate group (as in the South), they are a fairly generic group in the Midwest.

I should also point out that mixed marriages here are extremely common, and if one of your parents and half your family wasn't Catholic, you won't feel a large connection to the church, even if you were confirmed in it.

BRTD, one thing you dont seem to acknowledge about the dreaded state of Catholics staying that way in NI is that the same thing conversely is correct for the Protestant community.  1640 is in the mind of many more than some doctrine.  Sectarianism has ruled the day for centuries.  Protestants and Catholics would be set in their ways of history, even if they dont believe any of it at all.

Well yeah, I think that's pretty silly too.

History is silly? Misguided, also. Over a million people sign up for the Ulster Solemn Covenant, probably not silly- Serious business. When Ian is bellowing out, Never!

The Shankill butchers were "Protestants" but I dont think they went to many revivals, do you?
Identifying with some vague community and not really adhering is not unique to the papist.

patrick, if you couldn't tell by what I was saying about Jews offended by conversion in the presidential forum that I'm not exactly a fan of "hereditary religion" at all. This no doubt has a lot to do by the fact that I'm in a sort of "tradition" that virtually no adult alive today was born into and is basically all converts (like what percentage of people at my church do you think was born into any type of neocharismatic church? I doubt it's even 20%.) My big issue is in the US it is virtually only Catholics that act this way, and like I stated before, it can actually be pretty offensive to some people.

I remember some article from some newsmagazine or whatever where the author was sort of jokingly going over how she's the only one from her generation of her family who still identifies as Catholic and she barely is, the rest of her siblings became Episcopalian, evangelical and agnostic. Now in a case like that I just think it's kind of a dick thing to basically tell the other siblings that they are Catholic no matter what they think or call themselves today.

For another example, imagine someone from a Northern Ireland Catholic family getting baptized again as an adult, like I was. Now it turns out that basically no one in my family was bothered by this, and at least two people expressed regret to me at not being able to come. I imagine that a family of Northern Ireland Catholics wouldn't be so supportive...but why is it any more "wrong" for an Irish Catholic to be rebaptized than it is for me? It's a silly double standard.

I went to a nice Mass at St Pats Cathedral last week, and even though I do not care for the new translation to the missal, I was given a sense of peace and happiness.  Yet, Different denominations should always strive for truth and common ground. So Sectarianism of any kind has to stop.  The RCC does not care about popular opinion much so I dont think they will change how they count on your account.

Well if someone doesn't have membership in a parish I don't see how they could be counted, but that's not really the point. But anyway wouldn't ending sectarianism also mean respecting the opinions of people who no longer wished to be included in those sects?

Ending sectarianism would mean stopping discrimination, murder and violence. These are things that have been largely overcome in the last ten years, despite the Atlas' still dwelling.

It is policy to count everyone who has been baptised. It is a useless exercise to keep tabs on anyone's whereabouts.

Since when is this going on in the US?

As for Northern Ireland see my example a few posts back about someone from a Northern Ireland Catholic family being rebaptized as an adult. Do you believe that most families would be as non-caring to supportive of it as mine?


Well that's going to result in a lot of people being double counted (converts being counted by their new denomination as well), which is really bad from a statistical standpoint.

But if Wikipedia is getting its info accurately, then note this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Archdiocese_of_Saint_Paul_and_Minneapolis) for example. With such precise numbers, I don't see how they could be getting them from anything other than adding the membership of all parishes in the diocese, which means that they are excluding people who lack such a membership (and as you noted, they have no way of knowing how many non-members who were baptized in that diocese anyway).

But ignoring whatever the church does from a personal standpoint, would you argue to someone baptized Catholic who doesn't identify as such that they really are Catholic and you'll never consider them otherwise? Because I think most people would consider that pretty crass.


Marketers would disagree. Now mind you I don't disagree that it's pointless for a church to try to track the whereabouts of someone who isn't voluntarily giving them this info and doesn't want anything to do with the church, but without doing so you're not able to keep the type of draconian retention policy described above.

BTW this is also worthy of note:

()

I'd say this either disproves Harry or simply proves that what he's talking about is incredibly regional, since by that study 1 out of 3 of people in the US raised Catholic no longer identify as such, and they actually have the worst retention rate of any group besides "None".

First, nice graphs.

There has been sectarianism in most places, and notably against your brand of Christianity in England for several hundred years.  They fought and killed kings to preserve it.

I count among family Catholics, Jews, Atheist and Protestants. We've managed to get along and I wonder why you cant.

The record keeping is pretty irrelevant from a faith perspective.   Love God and his creation.

As someone who comes from a part of the world with the same social sectarianism as Northern Ireland (though thankfully not politically) I will comment on this. I was raised in one of the most Catholic towns in Scotland in a Catholic family. Every single one of my aunts married a Protestant in the 1970’s-1990’s, all Presbyterian with the exception of my dad who was raised Nonconfirmist Evangelical. This is quite a familiar pattern. I went to Catholic schools and while nearly all had a Catholic mother, half had a Protestant father of varying denominations. Why? The Catholic Church does not recognise (sacramentally) the wedding of Catholic who marries outside of the church. (One of the provisios for allowing Catholics to even marry non Catholics, which was never officially barred but not encouraged in Scotland until Vatican II) was to promise to raise any children as Catholics. This was of course duly done.

As a result of living where I live, my family, my schooling etc (and in part supporting Celtic FC) I am culturally Catholic. I’m an atheist of course, but culturally I am ‘catholic’ because Catholics in Scotland have always been progressive and liberal in comparison to the once Presbyterian majority. In Social Attitudes Survey’s here, Catholics are the most liberal religious grouping (excepting those who say they have ‘no religion’) when it comes to divorce, gay rights, equal rights and race relations. I am part of the ‘Roman Catholic community’

My dad for the record holds no belief and hasn’t since he was 15. Only my mum attends mass and none of her four children do. Me and my sister identify as atheist/agnostic. Out of 7 cousins on the Catholic side of my family, as far as I know only 2 attend mass one because he is only 8. This has never caused any problem in the family

With regards to the type of church that BRTD goes to, in Northern Ireland and Scotland such churches have came out of the Presbyterian or Non-Conformist tradition in Northern Ireland which is closely affiliated with Ian Paisley and in a nutshell are theologically close to the views that JCL espouses. They are therefore both the most socially conservative churches in Northern Ireland and also the least favourable to Catholicism and by extension power-sharing (more so than High Presbyterian or Episcopalians). So a Catholic joining such a church probably would have a hard time because it wouldn’t be so much about abandoning his faith, but rather opposing the cultural tradition of their community and joining a church that in many instances are instinctively anti-Catholic and anti-community

Well I can. Like I said, I just think the issue is that if someone doesn't want to be labeled Catholic, then you shouldn't be a jerk and insist they are. It seems this would fall into getting along.


That's pretty weird that people in Scotland would care about that, since most people here don't. Like I said elsewhere, supposedly my mom had relatives disapproving of her being married in a Protestant church, but they're also all dead and I can't remember any of them, showing how old they were. I can't see anyone currently alive in my family caring in the slightest about someone not marrying a Catholic church or not pledging to raise their kids Catholic, though I can think of only two grandkids from that side of the family that are being raised Catholic, and they are quite young. But it's not just us, I'd be surprised to meet someone whose family would actually care about this in a mixed marriage here.


Actually shua posted another example earlier, so that's not always the case anymore. I doubt someone who has preached at Rob Bell's church is going to be too close to Ian Paisley.

And isn't Paisley a teetoaler and anti-alcohol? Because for most people at my church...well let's just say that is not the case at the risk of making quite the understatement. :)

But even though this wouldn't involve being baptized again, let's imagine that it's someone who converts to Anglicanism instead. Or even just marries an Anglican in an Anglican church and raises their kids that way. As Nathan can attest, ex-Catholics in the US are quite big in Episcopalianism, so this wouldn't be unusual at all, and you can't say they'd be joining some reactionary right wing church. Especially if they said the reason for that was that they wouldn't want to raise their kids in a church that promoted such reactionary positions on gay rights and divorce, considering what you said above about Catholics supporting such a thing.

The possibility exists that Minnesota may not be the absolutely typical standard against which all other socities must be measured.

Well yeah but Scotland is quite a bit more secular.

afleitch, I appreciate the post. Ive spent some time in your nice corner of the world to know about sectarianism. It is rotten yet identity can be excellent. Ive sung Depeche Mode songs to Celtic more than any Church song.  

BRTD, dont get caught up in labels.

Who accuses non Catholics of being Catholic? I've never heard of that...

Quite so.

Well ex-Catholics, who would be current non-Catholics of course. Not many people would really insist on it, but see what patrick was saying above that the church is going to consider anyone baptized to always be Catholic. As I noted they probably aren't including these people in the diocese membership numbers (not that they could), but I can see cases of friction such as in families insisting on Catholic weddings in what afleitch was talking about (and like I said that I find quite odd, I find it amazing a significant people in Scotland would care about what any church teaches at all.)

And like I said, note the graph above. It's pretty clear that not every person raised Catholic continues to identify as such and the retention rate is actually worse than both evangelicals and mainline Protestants. (In all fairness though the pure retention rate isn't significantly worse, the real cause of the decline is that unlike the Protestant groups they aren't picking up many converts in replacement.)


You got to realize, this is kind of a Berzerk Button issue for me. It's a lot like the Mormon posthumous "baptism" practice, even though I don't have a problem with that. But a lot of people who are offended by it say that it's basically very disrespectful for the Mormons to basically count these people as Mormons if they wanted nothing to do with the church in life (and they don't really do that, but you know the point.) Well in this case it's similar, except you're talking about people who are still alive and had as much say in their baptisms as the people "baptized" posthumously by the Mormons.

When I compared that practice to infant baptism, one defense as to why it was different was that someone baptized as a baby when they grow up can still renounce that if they don't agree with it while someone dead can't speak out. Well if someone baptized Catholic does do that and then someone wants to insist "Oh but you're still Catholic anyway"...well yeah you can see why I see that as being a jerk.

I am shocked. Shocked.

I was baptised Catholic and I am on the Catholic parish baptismal register and that doesn’t really bother me because it’s not a government or state document.  No where am I ‘officially’ Catholic. On the only formal record I make to the state (the Census) I ticked ‘No Religion.’ No some people will tick a religion, because the wording of the census question leads many to answer what religion they are in a family/cultural context. The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey suggests that 50% of the population hold ‘No Religion’ varying across ages with 64% of 18-24 year olds holding no religion. No Religion is up from 40% to 50% since 2000. So we are broadly secular.

When I was talking about weddings you should remember that I was talking about my parents generation, most of whom married in the 1970’s and attitudes have changed. My brother, a non practicing Catholic married his atheist wife in a Humanist ceremony which is technically not recognised by the Church, but that doesn’t concern him. My sister (married in a Catholic ceremony but divorced) cannot re-marry in the Church and is leaning towards having a Humanist wedding too. For the record, Humanist weddings in Scotland were only introduced in 2005 and are now the third most popular ceremony after a Civil Ceremony and Church of Scotland.

I think you're making mountains out of molehills, BRTD. I have never, ever heard of anyone trying to count someone as Catholic against their will. While I don't deny that someone has probably done it before, it is nowhere near a mainstream thing.

In fact, it reminds me of what I've heard Baptists claim, that once you're saved, you're saved forever, regardless of what you do. I'm not sure if that's official Baptist doctrine or not, but what you're saying sounds (to me) much more like conservative evangelical protestantism than Catholicism.

Well yeah you're on a baptismal register, but that would also apply to many people baptized in Protestant churches who aren't a member anymore. Obviously we don't have any state or government registrations of religion, but as I noted earlier dioceses do have membership numbers, and I don't see how they could possibly calculate that any other way than parish membership since there's no way they could track down people baptized who don't register with a parish. So like I noted, this really makes the situation no different than a Protestant church. So I fail to see how one could argue that one is unleavable and not the other.


Ah true, but it also seemed few cared in my parents' time either other than a few olds.


It might not be, but watch that clip of the comedian above. He seems to be saying that's possible. Now yeah, he's a comedian. But Gully and oakvale seem to not exactly disagree with what he's saying seriously. And what patrick is saying implies that doesn't exactly contradict church doctrine. One case I remember hearing about though somewhat jokingly was one of the pastors at my church in her sermon mentioning how her grandmother had a difficult time understanding how she could be a pastor since she was both a woman and married and her grandmother couldn't seem to wrap her mind around that she wasn't Catholic anymore and then made a joke about how she had no clue how her grandmother would react if she told her she was baptized again, though that was more of an example about how people can get stuck in their ways and refuse to accept change, the point of the sermon.

Like I said, I just find this whole mindset very odd because it really doesn't exist here. I have never met anyone who claims to be an atheist Catholic, or anyone who would insist on still being Catholic despite never going to church. Now yeah cultural factors could have an effect on why this would be more likely to be the case in the Midwest. But if you also note that graph above, it's clear that it's not just isolated to here as well.

Let's compare this with a new poll from Austria:

"Do you favor or oppose abolishing the Celibate ?"

82% Yes
11% No

Interestingly, Salzburg & Upper Austria are the states most in favor of abolishing it.

86-5   Salzburg/Upper Austria
85-10 Burgenland/Lower Austria
82-11 Vienna
79-15 Styria/Carinthia
73-15 Tyrol/Vorarlberg

http://www.live-pr.com/priester-sollen-heiraten-d-252-rfen-r1049456501.htm

...

There has been another poll which showed a similar percentage of Austrians who favor women as priests in the Catholic Church.

You know if there are any "hipster" churches in Austria, they probably have less than 1% the number of adherents than the Catholic Church but still a far easier time recruiting clergy.

I mean for comparison in the US the estimates of the number of people involved in Vineyard churches is around 300k-500k, there are over 68 million Catholics. Guess which one has a much easier time recruiting pastors and planting new churches? But when you not only have the celibacy requirement but also prohibit a majority of your membership from the position...