Over at the Commonweal blog, they are discussing the need to be more accommodating to couples who wish to receive the Sacrament of Marriage if the Church is going to continue to be a going concern, considering marriages authorized by the D. of Providence (RI) have plummeted 71% in a 40-year span whereas population increased about 5%. We are presently at a time and place where pastors are increasingly not surprised to have a true pagan seeking instruction on entering the Church. With the marriage rate in the Church where it is at, will the next generation of priests be surprised to find someone seeking instruction who isn’t a true pagan?
In contrast, the D. of Madison (WI) finds itself in the news. In this case, Bishop Morlino felt the need to exercise his authority and excise the demon of eulogies now. As is prone to happen in a Father Z combox, the usual insufferables are cheerleading the church getting smaller, because, as we all know by now, an empty church – due to people being pissed off with petty dictators – doing the red and saying the black is much more pleasing to God than a full church where a liturgical abuse has occurred. Of course what has already begun is that people are increasingly offering a polite “no” to the church funeral. I fully expect the church funeral to be a 50/50 proposition by the end of the decade.
A common thread to all of this is the difference between being the servant and being served. Ideally this is a reciprocal relationship, we serve and are served. A simple test to determine who is in what position is to ask whose interests are more served in the act? A time that is supposed to be a celebration of God’s Creation has become a penitential time for couples to atone for the sins other couples committed a generation ago. In the Commonweal combox, folks suggested a similar time around a child’s baptism to insure the parents have received their full penance. Of course these opportunities require more staff and more fees. For some inexplicable reason, the prohibition against simony isn’t one of those abuses people get excited about. The parish will subsidize private school tuition but will run its religious education program at net zero cost to the parish. In the face of this, we get the usual cultish response: the people just don’t love us God enough.
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