This is particularly striking, since Canada was once upon a time, despite being long problematic, a fertile area for the Roman Catholic Church.
In the East, for more than four centuries of French-speaking Catholic presence there were many great missionaries, including many Jesuits, many martyrs, there was active missionary activity and deep roots in the French-Canadian population.
In the western part of Anglophone Canada there is a strong presence of immigrants from Catholic countries with strong influences from the United States and Great Britain, both religious and typical characteristics as usually occurs through contact and dealing with Anglican and Protestant denominations.
Blooming Church under Pressure
Over the past 50 years, this structure was put under very severe stress, such as is well documented on the website www.dici.org.
In the French-speaking areas, a vast laicization of the population occurred. The 2nd Vatican Council and its local "implementation" ensured a huge disorientation among the local clergy and the absence of substance and liturgical debauchery brought great alienation underway of the original majority portion of the devout Catholic population of the Church.
Many churches, including cathedrals are closed, sold, profaned, often demolished. Nevertheless, the main activity of many now numerically very small dioceses (up to 8,000 believers) appears to be combating the Society of St. Pius X (as it is now in the diocese of Chicoutimi, where the bishop has never had a zeal for new evangelization.)
Since believers have thus organized a visit by a priest of the SSPX there in Saguenay, nerves are on edge. First, in the journey was the visitation of the aging Augustinian monastery where a 90 year old nun almost collapsed with joy, because for after over half a century, at last there was a Catholic priest in cassock at the door (so much for the ordinary pastoral care).
Second, Father has celebrated a Mass in the traditional rite on 15 February 2015, which caused a lot of interest among the people thirsting for religion, but in the diocese, it lead to the worst threats and has led to imprecations not to participate in this.
A very strange reaction, the secularization in the French-speaking Quebec once the most Catholic place in the world, with a 95% decline of practicing Catholics from 1965 to now. Many religious retreat, or merge with the Anglo-Canadian brothers and sisters. Consider as a particularly significant example since the once very great and proud Jesuit province of Quebec had its own seminary in the English Jesuit province of Canada.
Evaporation of the Catholic Order
The Canadian Conference of Religious numbers at the moment its number of communities / religious houses to 200, with approximately 16,000 members, of whom 94 percent were older than 60 years and not less than 50 percent were older than 80 years!
In Anglo Canada, however, the Roman Catholics are significantly closer to their faith and Catholic doctrine with her younger tradition of immigration (Irish, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Filipinos). The members are on average younger and there is also a higher percentage of young religious.
At the same time there, through, the neighborhood with the USA and by a common language, close contacts and similar conduct cause problems and threats. The clergy and the bishops especially, are usually very progressive and very interested in dialogue and understanding of the world. Also some orders with a focus in Canada are very modernist leaning: particularly known here are the "Basilian Fathers".
Secularization pressure by the State
For several years, an aggressive campaign for the right to abortion, gender, for early and rabid sex education in schools and the special feature of the man-woman-child family is now run by the secular state, very similar to the US and in France. In contrast, strong protest has developed, for example by the Campaign for Life Coalition, by PAFE (Parents as Educators First) by REAL Women of Canada. Legally, they fight their way through with the CCRL (Catholic Civil Rights League) against the paternalism of the state.
The bishops, however, has surrendered long ago. Cardinal Thomas Collins of the Archdiocese of Toronto, to dialogue with the world and avoid conflicts and understanding modernity, announced recently in the statement: "Schools have a responsibility to teach the curriculum set out by the Ministry of Education" (Schools have an obligation to inform the curriculum of the Ministry of Education). He thus revealed the identity of the free Catholic schools.
Surrender of the bishops, opposition of parents
The secular state justifies itself that the Institute of Catholic Education had (founded in 1986 by the Episcopal Conference) demanded this and (occupied by progressive loving people) a committee has given its consent by Cardinal Collins' feedback and advice. "
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of parents have signed a protest petition to the government and to the Canadian episcopate.
There are very detailed and engaged reports on the internet. The website www.LifeSiteNews.com has provided an extensive article and linked it with the statement of Cardinal Robert Sarah: "Detaching pastoral practice from catholic doctrine is a dangerous schizophrenic pathology." The statement comes from the book "Dieu ou Rien" (God or Nothing) by Cardinal Sarah, published in Paris by Fayard, from the strange to say disappearing of the previously mentioned foreword by Pope em. Benedict XVI. (see separate report ).
Feeble episcopate
The Synod of Bishops on the Family 2015 is awaited in Catholic Canada with the eyes of Argus.
Much attention was given an obscene insult upon Cardinal Raymond Burke on 7 February 2015, produced by Father Timothy Scott, the longtime spokesman for the Basilian Fathers . Only after massive protests was the tweet deleted on 22 February 2015. To date, it is unknown whether this priest continues as a spokesman for the Basilian Fathers. This order only offered a short "Sorry too".
The Canadian episcopate is silent (as the French episcopate is in the Manif pour Tous and the Veilleurs ). From the Vatican you can hear nothing.
Abuse scandal
A particularly explosive situation in Canada is related to some of the largest and most heinous mass abuse cases in the Church took place here. A native of West Flanders, Oblate missionary Eric Dejaegher was sentenced to a very long prison sentence just as the end of January 2015. Another hearing against him will take place in Edmonton Alberta. At the St. Joseph's College in Edmonton, incidentally, the aforementioned Father Timothy Scott was rector.
Many diocese have come to penury because of large payments of compensation for abuses by church representatives. In 2013 the closing reports of two churches in the Archdiocese of Antigonish were due to financial problems that involved giving compensation.
See the current picture
Highly sensitized and motivated militant believers; serious wrongdoing within the church; fundamental threat to the Church's teaching; Contempt and obscenity against brave reputable cardinals; feeble shepherds, articulated for the world spirit; serious financial problems and pastoral withdrawal across a broad front. In Canada, there seems to be no longer a local skirmish engagement before the main argument. Instead, here is already an enormous pitched battle in a minefield.
Text: Amand Timmermans
image: Wikicommons
image: Wikicommons
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG
The Church in Canada is a disaster particularly since the Winnipeg Statement. Mass attendance in once great Catholic Quebec is around 8% and in the Diocese of London it is about 12% and the east coast is about the same. Ontario - Toronto in particular has a burgeoning immigrant population as the article states keeping the Church afloat. Vocations are at disaster levels but there are sound and orthodox young men coming up, just not enough of them. The liturgy is a mess in the Ordinary Form everywhere and the traditional liturgy is held in disdain by most bishops and barely tolerated by nearly all the rest.
ReplyDeleteMost of those immigrant parishes have gotten extremely liberal over the years and the liturgies have turned into protestant claptrap. Not surprisingly the children of these immigrants are no longer going to Mass once they stop living with their parents.
DeleteCanada in general is ruled by money. "Catholics" and Muslims voted for Premier Wynne in droves because they care more about their bank accounts than their children being sexually assaulted with graphic sex-ed. And lets not even start with that communist sewer known as Quebec.
The only place of worship I can really trust are the SSPX chapels. Going to a Novus Ordo parish you've never been to is like walking into a mine field.
Canada's problems are all because no pope has yet consecrated Russia to the Sacred Heart of Mary. If only they would consecrate Russia to the Sacred Heart of the Blessed Ever-Virgin Theotokos Mother of God, our Lady of Fatima, then all of Canada's problems would disappear.
ReplyDelete"Sacred Heart of Mary"? What's that?
DeleteYou must be a troll. Maybe you should immigrate to Russia. You'll love it there! Nothing says morality like the highest abortion rates in the world, drugs everywhere, alcoholics sleeping on every street corner, some of the highest child pornography production in the world , prostitution everywhere, the sluttiest women outside of a German bordello, a Church which has been run by the KGB for the last 100 years and lets not forget that ever so Christian practice of divorce and remarriage. If having an affair with a gymnast half your age is good enough for St. Putin, then it's good enough for you! The RoC will even award you with a divorce! ... but you're only allowed to have three divorces, after three it's a sin :P
The only reason you like Russia is because they hate on sodomites, that's it. If you actually lived in the country you'd know that it's a morally bankrupt hell hole.
The USSR was infinitely more Christian than modern Russia. Homosexuality is still legal in modern Russia, in the Soviet Union it was illegal. Modern Russia has also legalized pornography.
lol Russia.
DeleteWithin a few years, Muslims will make up half the conscripts in the Russian army.
Alcoholism-plagued ethnic Russians are said to have European birth rates and African death rates, with the former just 1.4 per woman and the latter 60 years for men. In Moscow, ethnic Christian women have 1.1 child.
In contrast, Muslim women bear 2.3 children on average and have fewer abortions than their Russian counterparts. In Moscow, Tatar women have 6 children and Chechen and Ingush women have 10. In addition, some 3-4 million Muslims have moved to Russia from ex-republics of the U.S.S.R., mainly from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan; and some ethnic Russians are converting to Islam.
Christians declining in numbers by 0.6 percent a year and Muslims increasing by that same amount.
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DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Delete..obviously a very clever troll was at work.
DeleteThe Canadian Church can achieve its long desired Trudeaupian Aggiornamento by making the Mackenzie Brothers archbishops of Niagara Falls and Hespeler, Ontario.
ReplyDeleteThat's the second best laugh I've had tonight!
Deletehttps://catholicintelligenceblog.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/comparing-acboice-responses-to-sex-ed-in-2010-and-2015/
ReplyDeleteIf only the Canadians would adopt the NAB rather than the NRSV, that would solve all their problems. Err...wait...it might make them 10 times worse. Nevermind.
ReplyDeleteListen to what the auxiliary bishop said ("It could become something else. We are open to all sorts of possibilities"). In other words, the parish building could become ...a mosque or a condo. As for the causes of this decline, you will meet with only silence from the clergy. They are silent because they are compelled to protect their sacred cow which is Vatican II.
ReplyDelete