Chateau Lloyd

A friend of mine loaned me a cd of the Great Courses for my listening pleasure.  This was was about Catholicism in America, which he figured I would be interested in.  I was, but in practice I could not get through the entire lecture.

The reason?  It was totally out of date.  It was like reading campaign material from 2004.  Not long ago I pointed out the fact that the "peace movement" has completely disappeared, but back then, it was a force throughout international politics.

In the case of the lecture, it was prepared in an era where Church doctrine was increasingly being called into question and American Catholicism in particular was headed into something like Anglicanism.

And then everything changed.

Listening to the speaker tick off the collapse of vocations, the rise of "dissident Catholic" groups (which we now know are nothing more than astroturf organizations that pass money back and forth between each other) was simply boring.  I know how people used to think about the Church.

It is shocking how quickly these trends have reversed.  The vocations (especially among women) have seen a huge surge of interest.  The number of seminarians studying for the priesthood in mid-Michigan has tripled.

My formerly liberal college parish had record Mass attendance on Ash Wednesday this year, and 80 percent of parish schools have seen enrollment increases, some up as much as 20 percent year-on-year.

The push by Pope Francis to discourage the Latin Rite is evidence that the progressive movement within Catholicism is losing ground.  There is renewed interest in tradition, and a rejection of the false promises of modernity.

I can't blame the speaker for getting things so absolutely wrong, but I can blame him for falling into the same old trap of saying "if current trends continue" because throughout history they do until they don't.  Decline is often the spur for renewal.

Of course, that is the logical explanation.  In matters of faith, different rules apply.