Decline of religion, Catholicism in the Philippines
A WATERSHED has occurred in my generation: religion is now on a steep decline, especially Catholicism whose culture and worldview have dominated this country since the Spanish conquistadores subjugated this archipelago nearly 500 years ago.
And it is during what we call the Holy Week that it becomes obvious that Catholicism is on the way to extinction as a system of beliefs, although many will still cling to its cultural aspects, as there are yet no replacements — weddings, baptism, and even house or office blessings. It is also during Holy Week that one feels religion as still fighting for dear life, as in several newspapers' closure from today till Sunday.
Opinion poll surveys, most of which report about 50 percent of Filipinos as religious, grossly underestimate the decline of Catholicism here, of course as most are still reluctant to report that they aren't really practicing Catholics any more.
Just go to any Church on Sundays, and they are becoming only half-full at most. If surveys show Filipinos are still practicing Catholics, it is because most of them are poor and desperate to get a boon from a Deity that they think can give them what they want — a job abroad, a winning lotto ticket, remission from cancer.
It was the Church hierarchy itself which debauched Catholicism, when it indulged in politics, its leaders, especially Jaime Cardinal Sin, getting drunk over the huge role they played in toppling Marcos, and then, Estrada.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo broke that streak, when she angrily told Cory Aquino, who claimed that Cardinal Sin wanted her to step down in that tumultuous "Hyatt 10" year of 2005: "Even if the pope asks me stop down, I won't: my responsibility is to this country." Many Filipinos had been turned off when activists, even leftist priests turned their pulpit into political soapboxes, and there have been many reports of church-goers leaving the church when such priests did so.
I suspect Covid-19 awakened Filipinos: even after at least a year of missing Sunday Mass because of the lockdowns, they discovered they still lived normal lives, and many felt they could go without the transportation expense and hassle of going to church. Covid-19's impact on the decline of Catholicism has been underestimated: priests proved to be totally useless in the fight against that contagion of nearly biblical proportions. Saint and sinners, the virus didn't differentiate. So what's the use of religion?
One of former president Rodrigo Duterte's most important legacies is his demystification of the Catholic Church. He is the first Philippine president ever and political leader of note, to take on the Church, and to show his disdain for it. He minced no words in a speech in January 2017: "You are in palaces while your faithful are in squatter areas and then you talk about sanctity? What is your moral ascendancy in the Philippines?" Religion? What is the meaning of it?"
"I challenge the Catholic Church. You are full of shit. You all smell bad, corruption and all," the then president said. Nobody but only the kind of person Duterte is could have spewed such vitriol on the Church.
Duterte certainly trod on very dangerous ground in challenging, even insulting the Catholic Church, yet going by his 88 percent popularity ratings during his entire term, and even after it, Filipinos didn't at all take it against him, and maybe even believed him. Not a few were even delighted at Duterte's tirades against the Church.
https://www.manilatimes.net/2023/04/07/o...es/1886029
How some South Dakota churches are adapting to attendance declines
Falling attendance and membership at many South Dakota churches has prompted pastors, leaders and elders to look for creative ways to keep people engaged and pursuing a larger purpose.
Constanze Hagmaier, bishop of the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said that includes using technology to allow for remote attendance and encouraging lay church members to take a more active role in spreading the gospel outside the walls of the church.
For example, Hagmaier said, trying to use traditional methods to collect offerings at church may not work for children or young adults.
“If all I do is pass a basket … I’m not sure my kids would make an offering,” said Hagmaier, who has three children. “My kids, they never owned a checkbook and I don’t know that they even carry cash.”
Churches need to adapt and react to changing trends in church attendance very soon due to a breakdown in generational church attendance that could have grave long-term consequences for organized religion, Hagmaier said.
“We’re coming now to a generation where the parents never went to church,” she said. “Right now, 7-year-old children are like, ‘Church, what is that?’”
Some religions, the Catholic and Lutheran churches among them, are also seeing a decline in the number of new priests and pastors who can run churches. The shortage is more acute in rural areas but is not a major factor in South Dakota declines, church leaders said.
“If your rural area is emptying out, with just a few people there, it’s hard to support a pastor’s salary, and if there’s nothing left for ministry, that’s a concern,” Hagmaier said.
https://www.sdnewswatch.org/stories/sout...e-decline/
A WATERSHED has occurred in my generation: religion is now on a steep decline, especially Catholicism whose culture and worldview have dominated this country since the Spanish conquistadores subjugated this archipelago nearly 500 years ago.
And it is during what we call the Holy Week that it becomes obvious that Catholicism is on the way to extinction as a system of beliefs, although many will still cling to its cultural aspects, as there are yet no replacements — weddings, baptism, and even house or office blessings. It is also during Holy Week that one feels religion as still fighting for dear life, as in several newspapers' closure from today till Sunday.
Opinion poll surveys, most of which report about 50 percent of Filipinos as religious, grossly underestimate the decline of Catholicism here, of course as most are still reluctant to report that they aren't really practicing Catholics any more.
Just go to any Church on Sundays, and they are becoming only half-full at most. If surveys show Filipinos are still practicing Catholics, it is because most of them are poor and desperate to get a boon from a Deity that they think can give them what they want — a job abroad, a winning lotto ticket, remission from cancer.
It was the Church hierarchy itself which debauched Catholicism, when it indulged in politics, its leaders, especially Jaime Cardinal Sin, getting drunk over the huge role they played in toppling Marcos, and then, Estrada.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo broke that streak, when she angrily told Cory Aquino, who claimed that Cardinal Sin wanted her to step down in that tumultuous "Hyatt 10" year of 2005: "Even if the pope asks me stop down, I won't: my responsibility is to this country." Many Filipinos had been turned off when activists, even leftist priests turned their pulpit into political soapboxes, and there have been many reports of church-goers leaving the church when such priests did so.
I suspect Covid-19 awakened Filipinos: even after at least a year of missing Sunday Mass because of the lockdowns, they discovered they still lived normal lives, and many felt they could go without the transportation expense and hassle of going to church. Covid-19's impact on the decline of Catholicism has been underestimated: priests proved to be totally useless in the fight against that contagion of nearly biblical proportions. Saint and sinners, the virus didn't differentiate. So what's the use of religion?
One of former president Rodrigo Duterte's most important legacies is his demystification of the Catholic Church. He is the first Philippine president ever and political leader of note, to take on the Church, and to show his disdain for it. He minced no words in a speech in January 2017: "You are in palaces while your faithful are in squatter areas and then you talk about sanctity? What is your moral ascendancy in the Philippines?" Religion? What is the meaning of it?"
"I challenge the Catholic Church. You are full of shit. You all smell bad, corruption and all," the then president said. Nobody but only the kind of person Duterte is could have spewed such vitriol on the Church.
Duterte certainly trod on very dangerous ground in challenging, even insulting the Catholic Church, yet going by his 88 percent popularity ratings during his entire term, and even after it, Filipinos didn't at all take it against him, and maybe even believed him. Not a few were even delighted at Duterte's tirades against the Church.
https://www.manilatimes.net/2023/04/07/o...es/1886029
How some South Dakota churches are adapting to attendance declines
Falling attendance and membership at many South Dakota churches has prompted pastors, leaders and elders to look for creative ways to keep people engaged and pursuing a larger purpose.
Constanze Hagmaier, bishop of the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said that includes using technology to allow for remote attendance and encouraging lay church members to take a more active role in spreading the gospel outside the walls of the church.
For example, Hagmaier said, trying to use traditional methods to collect offerings at church may not work for children or young adults.
“If all I do is pass a basket … I’m not sure my kids would make an offering,” said Hagmaier, who has three children. “My kids, they never owned a checkbook and I don’t know that they even carry cash.”
Churches need to adapt and react to changing trends in church attendance very soon due to a breakdown in generational church attendance that could have grave long-term consequences for organized religion, Hagmaier said.
“We’re coming now to a generation where the parents never went to church,” she said. “Right now, 7-year-old children are like, ‘Church, what is that?’”
Some religions, the Catholic and Lutheran churches among them, are also seeing a decline in the number of new priests and pastors who can run churches. The shortage is more acute in rural areas but is not a major factor in South Dakota declines, church leaders said.
“If your rural area is emptying out, with just a few people there, it’s hard to support a pastor’s salary, and if there’s nothing left for ministry, that’s a concern,” Hagmaier said.
https://www.sdnewswatch.org/stories/sout...e-decline/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
