In short, except for a VERY small core of Catholics I know who are able to separate the men from the institution, none of them are at all willing to believe anymore that the Roman Catholic Church is in any way a special institution with a particular right to dictate morality.
.. I live now in a very Catholic area (Wisconsin) with Catholic family. And the abuse scandals simply undid their faith in the church as an authority.
.. That said, hardly any of people who send their kids to school at our parish go to mass regularly. I’m in my early 30s and so are the other parents in my kids’ classes. It is nothing like I remember being in Catholic school in the 90s, when you saw everybody at mass on Sunday. If anyone does go, it is the mothers and kids. Fathers rarely go to mass.
.. it’s because it is easier (and more entertaining) to avoid Church and a religious life. I love the Catholic mass. It is beautiful, and a representation of Heaven on Earth. But it is not entertaining. It is not ESPN on Sunday morning; it is not a fantasy football app. It is not even a Megachurch with Starbucks and bagels in the lobby. For the poorly formed Catholic, the Mass is boring and repetitive.
.. I am happy my kids’ school focuses on faith formation. There is a whole generation of people who were not properly formed as Catholics (1960s-1990s). They simply do not know about their faith and don’t care.
.. And unlike in Catholicism, those who actively and publicly disagree with LDS teachings often leave the Mormon faith.
Why? Because Mormonism is not a comfortable environment for those who publicly flout its teachings. The same can’t be said in most case for Catholicism.
.. I was communicating with a Catholic parochial school teacher, a theological conservative who is also a father of young children. He is extremely fed up with the indifference and even hostility of Catholic parents. But he is especially fed up with the bishops. He told me that his local bishop is a time-server and bench-warmer who is presiding over the decline of the diocese’s Catholic schools into mediocrity.
.. No, the thing is this: that I cannot bring myself to believe that as a general matter, the hierarchy can be trusted to do the right thing consistently.
.. For us non-monastics, this community increasingly violates old confessional boundaries, discarding barriers sustained by removed intellectual extrapolation in favor of the experiential knowledge born out of praxis.
.. The rise of the Internet, however, has posed serious problems for this model. Increasingly, the person in the pew is receiving their theological and biblical understanding independent of pastoral oversight and guidance, often through a sort of personal ‘research’ akin to that of the Googling anti-vaxxer.
.. Congregants are following people on Twitter and Facebook, reading various blogs, listening to podcasts, watching Christian videos on Youtube, participating in online forums and communities, reading a far wider range of books than they probably would have done in the past, watching Christian TV shows, listening to Christian radio stations, etc., etc.
.. The result has often been a situation—similar to that faced by vaccination programmes—in which pastors and church leaders urgently have to protect the spiritual health of their congregations against false teachings that untrained people have adopted through their independent ‘research’. In such a situation, few things are more important than a strong bond of trust between lay people and those in authority over them, who are responsible for their well-being.
.. Pastors, prominent Christian leaders, and teachers may commonly presume that authority is something that comes with the job position. However, this election is just going to provide further evidence of how profoundly mistaken this assumption actually is. Especially among the up-and-coming generations, the older generation of prominent evangelical leaders has less and less influence. Their widespread support of Trump will just be the final nail in the coffin of their credibility for a large number of younger people. ‘Authority’ counts for little where trust no longer exists. Not only will this mean that their future statements won’t carry weight: they will be actively distrusted. Once again, there is a dangerous situation of unattached trust, ripe for the establishment of counter-communities.
Many people now privilege online bloggers, speakers, and writers over the pastors that have been given particular responsibility for the well-being of their souls. The result is growing competition among Christian gatekeepers, which increasingly positions the individual Christian, less as one fed by particular appointed and spiritually mature local fathers and mothers in the faith, and more as an independent religious consumer, free to pick and choose the voices that they find most agreeable. Sheep with a multitude of competing shepherds aren’t much better off than sheep with no shepherds whatsoever.
.. Everyone appears to be a peer online, which dulls our awareness of the fact that some people have authority over us and others have other forms of authority resulting from privileged knowledge, training, or experience. Everyone is expected to make up their own opinion in such a world, but very few people have the means to make up their minds well.
..
Trump’s argument against vaccines works because people no longer trust the authorities—the governments, the scientists, the medical professionals, etc.—who tell them that they are safe. The biased mainstream media, the liberal elite, lying politicians, activist judges, crony capitalists, politically correct academics, the conspiring government, scientists bought off by big business, hypocritical religious leaders: all are radically corrupt, motivated by self-interest, and radically untrustworthy. In such a situation, people’s realm of trust can become more tribal in character, focusing upon people of their own class, background, friendship groups, family, locality, ethnicity, nationality, religion, etc. and deeply suspicious of and antagonistic towards people who do not belong to those groups. This collapse of trust hasn’t occurred because the general public has suddenly become expert in the science behind vaccinations and discovered the authorities’ claims concerning vaccines to be scientifically inaccurate. The trust that has been lost was never directed primarily at such scientific claims. Rather, it was a trust in the persons and agencies that presented us with them.
.. We have entered a period of radical distrust, and if anybody tells you they know for sure where it’s going, don’t trust them.
The 24 excuses Team Trump has used to explain Donald Trump’s alleged sexual assaults
From airplane armrests to a Mexican billionaire.
Before Taking the White House, Trump Due in Court Over Fraud
Then there are the lawsuits that the ever-litigious Trump has either threatened or launched himself. The president-elect is still embroiled in two separate breach-of-contract lawsuitswith restaurateurs Geoffrey Zakarian and Jose Andres, who pulled out of deals with Trump in the wake of comments the then-presidential hopeful made about Mexican immigrants. Trump has also threatened to sue nearly a dozen women who have come forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault against the former reality-TV star over the past month—which could mushroom into multiple lawsuits as some of the women have threatened to countersue if Trump moves forward. He also warned that he intends to launch defamation and libel suits against a slew of media organizations for their coverage this election cycle, including The Washington Post and the New York Times.
What Trump’s chief of staff pick says about his presidency
Whether it’s Priebus or Bannon — or a dark-horse candidate — Trump will send a big message with his selection.
Priebus is a Wisconsin political operative who has long been a close ally of House Speaker Paul Ryan, a relationship that would be crucial to any of the legislative priorities Trump has outlined thus far — from amending or repealing Obamacare to passing a massive infrastructure package.
.. But picking Priebus could provoke a revolt among Trump’s fervent supporters on the right, who thought they were voting for a president who wanted to “drain the swamp” of Washington — not stack his administration with the very people he vowed to overthrow.
.. Under Bannon’s guidance, Breitbart became a ferocious critic of Ryan’s tenure, casting him as a “saboteur” in favor of amnesty for undocumented immigrants and describing him as “universally despised” by conservatives. One article published under Bannon’s co-byline, headlined “Paul Ryan Betrays America: $1.1 Trillion, 2,000-Plus Page Omnibus Bill Funds ‘Fundamental Transformation of America’,” portrays the speaker as a sellout secretly working to boost Obama’s policies — complete with a photograph of a bearded Ryan posing with a grinning president.
.. Bannon reportedly described the mild-mannered House speaker as “the enemy” on conference calls, and once swatted down Breitbart staffers seeking a more conciliatory approach: “Long game is him gone by spring,” he wrote in one leaked email.
.. Many in the GOP establishment view Breitbart with scorn — not only for its scorched-earth attacks on fellow Republicans, but also for promoting views well outside the conservative mainstream.
.. Bannon’s own copious writings and commentary would likely come under intense scrutiny should Trump select him for any White House job, let alone chief of staff. In July, for instance, he weighed in on the racially charged topic of police shootings by musing: “[H]ere’s a thought: What if the people getting shot by the cops did things to deserve it? There are, after all, in this world, some people who are naturally aggressive and violent.”
.. Former Breitbart staffers have savaged their ex-boss for allegedly “verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies,” though current employees