The Sad State of the U.S. Catholic Church

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: About twenty years ago I was an Evangelical. I was part of a growing and vibrant movement. These communities couldn't expand their worship chapels fast enough. No sooner than they would grow out of a renovated store front, they would buy an abandon grocery store and convert it into a chapel, only to have to sell it a few years later and move into a renovated office building where they could build stadium seating. I now live in an area in Southwest Missouri where mega-churches the size of small college campuses dot the landscape. For all of their growth however, I knew something was missing.

A Modernist tsunami swept over all Western Christianity
in the  1960s - 1970s

Evangelicals are known to church hop. In fact they are notorious for it. They move around from congregation to congregation, 'wherever the Spirit is leading,' so they say. Rarely do they settle down on a permanent church home. So naturally these communities are highly competitive with each other for new members. 'Come to our church, we have a new children's ministry!' and 'No, come to our church, we have a new rocking worship band!' Another funny thing about the Evangelical churches of today is that they were the mainstream Protestant churches of yesteryear. This is another example of church hopping. Socially speaking, mainstream Protestantism never died. It just morphed. As liberal modernists began taking over the leadership positions of mainstream Protestant denominations during the 1960s through 1970s, their relatively conservative and traditional congregations just left. A mass exodus occurred over the course of three decades, as the old mainstream Protestants simply became the new Evangelicals! My own family of five, in which I was raised, is a perfect example of this. We started off as Lutherans in the 1970s. During the 1980s we transitioned to Baptists, and finally by the 1990s we were full-fledged nondenominational Evangelicals. My family has since remained in the Evangelical fold, while only I myself, along with my wife and children have gone back to the Catholic Church via the Canterbury Trail. This is because I came to understand an inherent weakness in the Protestant strategy of preservation through schism. You see, Protestants never confronted the tsunami of liberal Modernism that swept through Western society during the 1960s and 70s. Instead, they just ran away from it. When the liberal Modernists infected their churches, and took them over, they didn't fight to regain control. They just left and started their own new Evangelical churches. There are many problems with this, which I could spend a lot of time talking about here, but I won't. Instead I will just say this. Sooner or later, when you fail to face your problems, they eventually catch up with you. So it is with Evangelicalism. The Modernist tsunami is just now touching the doors of the Evangelical churches, and guess what! The water is getting inside. It's just a matter of time now. Soon they will be dealing with all the same problems as their traditional Protestant counterparts. Women will demand ordination (it's already happened in some of these churches) and homosexuals will demand to be recognised as 'normal.' Evangelicals will not have the tools to confront the flood once they are up to their knees in it. Their only choice will again be preservation through schism again, and this time, they really have nowhere else to go. The entire Evangelical Movement has done nothing but postpone the inevitable.

This Modernist tsunami affected every aspect of Western
society and religion itself was not immune.

As I said, my wife and I came into the Catholic Church via the Canterbury Trail. I won't go into the methodology that led to our decision to leave Evangelicalism for Anglicanism, but suffice it to say, rather than run away from the tsunami, we chose to dive right into it. There in The Episcopal Church U.S.A. we found ourselves confronted with literally everything our family had run away from -- liberal Modernism in religious robes. Thankfully, we had a relatively conservative priest, a leftover from a time long past, to help us overcome our fears of catholic ritual and tradition. What he could not help us overcome was the obvious flood of liberal Modernism that was all around us, something that he himself struggled with. My wife and I knew we could not support an institution that embraced this sort of thing, and we quickly discovered why our parents left the Lutheran church some twenty years prior. Nevertheless, our good Episcopal priest had showed us enough to overcome our fears, and so we jumped into the Tiber River and swam over to Rome.

The effect of Modernism on religion is always the same.
Only the Catholic Church has remained intact, though damaged,
after the Modernist tsunami swept through Western Christianity.

Once in the Roman Catholic Church we discovered the same liberal-Modernist tsunami had swept over there too, leaving a wake of destruction in its path. However, something was different in the Catholic fold. While many Catholics no longer practice, and those few who do oppose the Church in many areas, the doctrine of the Church remains intact. The pope remains in charge as its defender. For all the damage Modernism has wrought to Western Christianity, it is the Catholic Church alone that has neither succumbed to it, nor run away from it. Her doctrine remains intact, and the Gates of Hell have not prevailed. As the Voris video above accurately assesses the damage done to the Catholic Church by the Modernist tsunami, it does not point out what I have here. The Catholic Church took the tsunami head on, absorbing the full force of it, enduring an incredible amount of damage in the process. Many of our people were swept away by its sheer force. Yet in spite of that, the Catholic Church still stands. The Rock of Peter still reigns in Rome. All the forces of Hell could not wash it away. Now as the water recedes, and the damage is revealed, we are in awe of its devastation. The good news is it's nearly over. Rome has been tested, and Rome has survived. The mainstream Protestant denominations did not survive. They were changed, becoming part of the tsunami itself. As for the majority of mainstream Protestants, well, they just ran away, becoming Evangelicals, but they shall not escape. For some reason unknown to us, it would seem that God has ordained this tsunami to hit all of Western Christianity. Their time is coming. Indeed, that time has already come. Their church basements are already flooding. As for we Catholics, our flood is nearly over. Now comes the clean up work. As we clean up, some of our washed-away members will return to us, wandering back through the devastation, and when they find their way home, they will help us clean up. Don't be discouraged by this work. God has preserved a remnant for it. He always does.