Catholic Civil War Brewing?

and then there's this. The first cardinal ever convicted by the Vatican court is facing prison.

Vatican’s ‘trial of the century’ sees cardinal given five-and-a-half-year jail sentence | CNN

 

Pope approves blessings for same-sex couples if the rituals don't resemble marriage

 

And, meanwhile ....

NYT:

With a Deadline Looming, the United Methodist Church Breaks Up

AP:

One fourth of United Methodist churches in US have left in schism over LGBTQ ban. What happens now?

 

There are pockets where individual churches are growing but attendance and belief are on a long term decline. Let’s hope the faithful don’t drag the country into the sewer on their way out.

 

Big in the so called Civil War. Much buzz in my world.

 

Hungrier, more homelessness, for starters.

As a nondenominational Christian i struggle with organized denominations myself, but the organized local church body is an absolute necessity in almost every community, as are most of your larger charities that also happen to be Christian in their core.

No one else is doing what they do.

 

I wish the two largest America churches, I.e., the Democrat and Republican parties, would crack down on its criminals like this.

 

Good.

 

You always say this and I always shoot you down. Musst I do it again?

You wishing it does not make it so.

You are mistaking a slowing in growth based on population growth with shrinking. Totally different things.

Christian population growth - Wikipedia.

 

The same people who regularly lambaste the churches would be outraged if the churches stopped doing the good that they do.

 

we shall see.

 

Goalpost moved.
8 made no prediction of "seeing" the fiture, but currently the Christian church is not shrinking. Denominations are as more and more Christians move to the biblical form of nondenominational community.

 

So fewer people are attending church post Covid. Churches are being closed and sold all over. (I realize this is anecdotal) People are answering poll questions that they still are Christian. I would have to do a deep dive on the questions asked to see if this is just people answering questions the way they are expected too and I really don’t care enough to do this.

 

Lots of people claim to be spiritual but not religious I have a hard time getting an answer as to what that means.

 

I mean Dan, you are just making stuff up.

 

I think the Moms for Liberty scandal is pretty illustrative. There are lots of people that call themselves Christian as a matter of identity and a recipe for social control when it comes to what other people should be doing, but are secular hedonists in practice. I think there are also a lot of right-wing types who find Christianity suspect, because it isnt based enough to be compatible with their revanchist fantasies and bloodlust. I dont think there is any doubt that America is increasingly secular, I would not be surprised if Church attendance is down while people calling themselves Christian has increased. Lots of people dont want to be bothered with the structure of religion, and just make up their own version of Christianity which usually means just doing whatever they want, like having bisexual threesomes. The best of both worlds, you can boss other people around but you get to do whatever, its the American way.

 

I take it as people who believe in or at least are very interested in the possible existence of a higher power, the concept of a "soul," the afterlife, karma, etc., without embracing particular religious scripture or dogma.

 

The percentage of Americans who identify as Christians has trended down, but that doesn't address the numbers globally. I've read that there is significant growth expected in Africa, for example.

 

This is as good of a definition as I have seen. Basically I think it means believing in woo without defining woo. lol