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In some non-US news German Catholic has decided to vote against official Catholic doctrine, by supporting the blessing of same-gender relationships. Unlike ML
Kwho advocated a stricter reading of the Bible, present schismatics seem to argue in favour of a "livingconstitutionBible".If they hope to bring back believers by adopting left-alligned attitudes, they are probably mistaken. This is because if one looks towards the US, a country with sufficient religous pluralism to make comparisons between various sects of Christianity, one can observe that future only holds failure for such a plan.
More progressive Christian groups, apparently called "mainline" in American discourse, are declining significantly faster then conservative ("evangelical") ones.
I assume that such statistics are known to Catholic leadership, be it in Vatican or Bonn, so it stands to reason it probably isn't maximization of mass attendance that is the motivation. Sincere belief in correctness of their cause is.
If Vaticans persecution of rightist deviations, and German acceptance of leftist ones, hastens the decline of belief in G-d, it would be in-line the usual stance of the Church that Truth (as it interprets it: gay couples deserve to be blessed, bishops need permission to Mass in Latin) is important than popularity.
Better there be A Couple, but Committed, than Common, but Cafeteria.
As a catechumen, I’ve seen plenty of people talking about this in online Catholic spaces, but this has yet to come up in real life.
Maybe this is just the fervor of a convert speaking, but it seems to me we have a lot of work to do educating the laity (and apparently the German bishops) on doctrines of the faith. Last night YouTube recommended a video to me from Bishop Barron where he shared a poll that 70% of Catholics do not believe in the real presence of the Eucharist.
This is perhaps the greatest distinction between the Catholic Church and nearly all of Protestantism.
Is it? Theological ignorance is a massive problem in American Protestant churches as well - remember that Ligonier poll? That found 73% of evangelicals affirming the statement "Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God", which is as classically heretical as you can get. 43% of evangelicals affirmed "Jesus was a great teacher but he was not God". 57% of evangelicals agreed with "Everyone sins a little,, but most people are good by nature". 65% of evangelicals affirmed that "Everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God". These are all obvious heresies.
There are even some obvious contradictions: 97% agree that "There is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit", and then 60% agree that "The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being". Not only is that false, they just said that the Spirit is a person!
Likewise I am sure that a majority of Catholics deny the Real Presence, or think that the Immaculate Conception is about Jesus, or some other basic misunderstanding of doctrine.
Catechesis is a massive problem in Christian churches in the West right now.
On the Ligonier poll, it is striking that there is a very high degree of conformity on culture war issues (e.g. 92% agree that abortion is a sin), but extreme levels of confusing on even basic questions of doctrine. It suggests to me that churches have become very good at lining people up into political tribes, but are failing at their more basic, essential duty of teaching the gospel.
TBF, that's only if you think teaching the gospel is the point, rather than sorting people into culture war tribes.
Are you sure that partitioning people along culture war fault lines is the primary function of churches? The culture wars breaking out over religious lines is a pretty recent (~50 years) development.
I'm pretty sure religion is a more basic fault line for culture wars than race is, and going back further. It's not that religion produces culture war, just that it's a battlefield for it.
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