Yet she has written that,
Elements of New Age sensibility seem to have entered American Catholicism, which in the 1950s was already moving away from its déclassé ethnic roots and Protestantizing itself through a startling drabness of church architecture and décor. The folk songs, Protestant hymns, affable sermons, and literal hand-holding in today's suburban Catholic churches illustrate mellow New Age principles of inclusion and harmony and reinforce the casualness of the vernacular Mass and the slackness of unpoetic contemporary translations of Scripture. Priests, meanwhile, are now being trained to be social workers; theology and learning per se are no longer as heavily emphasized.That sounds like a different kind of refugee.
“Priests, meanwhile, are now being trained to be social workers…”
ReplyDeleteShe has a point. In recent decades I have noted a shift in seminary emphasis – especially here in the US. More time has been devoted to ‘social issues’ (think: Peace and Justice…) rather than religious ones (think: Sacraments and Holiness…).
One has seen an increase in sacerdotal seeking of secular degrees, such that the ‘well-informed’ priest must have a plethora of letters after his name. For ‘credibility’ - one assumes. It used to suffice to have ‘PP’, ‘CC’, ‘SJ’, ‘OP’, ‘OFM’ etc. after one’s name to indicate that one was a ‘man of God’ charged with leading others to Heaven and God.
I suspect a St. John Vianney might view this askance. But what did he know? He didn’t have any letters after his name.