Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America

Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America
Author: David Carlin
Publisher: Sophia Institute Press
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2013-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1622821696

Behind the lurid headlines: why the Church in America declined. Forty years ago, three powerful forces capsized the Catholic Church in America. These pages detail those forces, and map the path that you and I - and our priests and bishops - must walk if we are to make the Church in America vigorous again.

The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book

The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book
Author: Scott Hahn
Publisher: Emmaus Road Publishing
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2021-05-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 164585101X

What is wrong with Scripture scholarship today? Why is it that the last place one should go to study the Bible is a biblical studies program at virtually any university? Why are so many faithful priests and pastors, and the people in their pews, unaware of the centuries-long effort to turn the sacred Word of God into just another secular text? In The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book, authors Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker trace the various malformations of Scripture scholarship that have led to a devastating loss of trust in the inspired Word of God. From the Reformation to the Enlightenment and beyond, Hahn and Wiker sketch the revolutions and radical figures that led to the emergence of the historical-critical method and the pervasive ill effects that are still being felt today.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church
Author: Malachi Martin
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2015-02-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781312889972

Fr. Martin's classic exposition of the Church's perennial temptation to become worldly, and the disasters that have arisen therefrom.

The Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders

The Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders
Author: Patricia Wittberg
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 446
Release: 1994-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780791422298

A sociological analysis of the periodically recurring cycles of Roman Catholic religious life, applying the theories and research on large-scale social movements and on the internal dynamics of other intentional communities to the data presented in historical works on specific periods. Following an introductory chapter (The Extent of the Problem),

Among the Ruins

Among the Ruins
Author: Paul L. Williams
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2017
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1633883035

This critical review of the Roman Catholic Church since the pivotal changes initiated in the 1960s by Vatican II paints a disturbing picture of decline and corruption. Dr. Paul L. Williams, a self-professed Tridentine or traditionalist Catholic, traces the various factors that have caused the Church to suffer cataclysmic losses in all aspects of its life and worship in recent decades. Williams illustrates the decline with telling statistics showing the stark difference between the robust number of clergy members, parishes, schools, and active church-going Catholics in 1965 versus the comparatively paltry number today. The author is highly critical of Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis for steering the church so far away from its traditional teachings and for a lack of oversight that allowed corruption to fester. Symptomatic of this failure of leadership are the recent pedophilia scandals, the ongoing financial corruption, a gay prostitution ring inside the Vatican, and criminal investigations of connections between the Holy See and organized crime. This unflinching critique from a devoted, lifelong Catholic is a wakeup call to all Catholics to restore their church to its former levels of moral leadership and influence.

A People Adrift

A People Adrift
Author: Peter Steinfels
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2004-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780743261449

In this national bestseller, the most influential layman in the United States reports that the Roman Catholic Church in America must either profoundly reform or lapse into permanent irrelevance.

American Church

American Church
Author: Russell B. Shaw
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1586177575

Has the Americanization of American Catholics--their cultural assimilation, that is--been a blessing or a curse for the Church in the United States? Or has it been a bit of both? In The Gibbons Legacy Russell Shaw takes a searching look at that question and reaches a disturbing conclusion. Cultural assimilation, which was ardently championed by churchmen like the great Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore around the turn of the last century, has undoubtedly conferred many benefits on Catholics. Their absorption into the secular culture of America, however, now threatens the Catholic identity of millions of faithful and of their institutions, such as schools, universities, and hospitals. Shaw does not offer this conclusion as an unsupported generalization. The Gibbons Legacy is a richly documented analysis of a process extending over two centuries. Colorful characters and dramatic incidents abound, including the nineteenth-century intellectual feud between Father Orestes Brownson and the Transcendentalist convert to Catholicism Isaac Hecker, Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of Americanism, the anti-Catholicism that greeted the presidential campaigns of Al Smith and John F. Kennedy, and the numerous intra-Church conflicts that have divided American Catholics since the Second Vatican Council. In concluding his study, Shaw offers a number of thoughtprovoking suggestions about what the Church in America needs to do now in the face of an ongoing decline that is sapping its strength and may threaten its very survival.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 8

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 8
Author: Edward Gibbon
Publisher: Palala Press
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2015-12-05
Genre:
ISBN: 9781347421888

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

American Catholic

American Catholic
Author: Charles Morris
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2011-08-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0307797910

"A cracking good story with a wonderful cast of rogues, ruffians and some remarkably holy and sensible people." --Los Angeles Times Book Review Before the potato famine ravaged Ireland in the 1840s, the Roman Catholic Church was barely a thread in the American cloth. Twenty years later, New York City was home to more Irish Catholics than Dublin. Today, the United States boasts some sixty million members of the Catholic Church, which has become one of this country's most influential cultural forces. In American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church, Charles R. Morris recounts the rich story of the rise of the Catholic Church in America, bringing to life the personalities that transformed an urban Irish subculture into a dominant presence nationwide. Here are the stories of rogues and ruffians, heroes and martyrs--from Dorothy Day, a convert from Greenwich Village Marxism who opened shelters for thousands, to Cardinal William O'Connell, who ran the Church in Boston from a Renaissance palazzo, complete with golf course. Morris also reveals the Church's continuing struggle to come to terms with secular, pluralist America and the theological, sexual, authority, and gender issues that keep tearing it apart. As comprehensive as it is provocative, American Catholic is a tour de force, a fascinating cultural history that will engage and inform both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. "The best one-volume history of the last hundred years of American Catholicism that it has ever been my pleasure to read. What's appealing in this remarkable book is its delicate sense of balance and its soundly grounded judgments." --Andrew Greeley

The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom

The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom
Author: Steven D. Smith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2014-02-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674730135

Familiar accounts of religious freedom in the United States often tell a story of visionary founders who broke from centuries-old patterns of Christendom to establish a political arrangement committed to secular and religiously neutral government. These novel commitments were supposedly embodied in the religion clauses of the First Amendment. But this story is largely a fairytale, Steven Smith says in this incisive examination of a much-mythologized subject. The American achievement was not a rejection of Christian commitments but a retrieval of classic Christian ideals of freedom of the church and of conscience. Smith maintains that the First Amendment was intended merely to preserve the political status quo in matters of religion. America's distinctive contribution was, rather, a commitment to open contestation between secularist and providentialist understandings of the nation which evolved over the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, far from vindicating constitutional principles, as conventional wisdom suggests, the Supreme Court imposed secular neutrality, which effectively repudiated this commitment to open contestation. Instead of upholding what was distinctively American and constitutional, these decisions subverted it. The negative consequences are visible today in the incoherence of religion clause jurisprudence and the intense culture wars in American politics.