Quote of the Day

I keep looking at the issues that are really causing angst within the Western Church and am struck with how many of them are the identical issues which cause angst in parents of teenage and younger adult children. Sex, relationships, money, transparency, and obedience. The trouble is a lot of Western Catholics have matured beyond young adulthood and yet the teaching authority of the Church is still attempting to use the same kinds of controlling techniques parents who haven't adjusted to the idea their children are growing up use to keep those children in line. Techniques which serve to underscore parental control and family hierarchy while freezing children in prepubescent obedience. Bishops are taking to denying the Eucharist the way some parents threaten keys to the car.

Benedict's New Evangelization will fail miserably if it starts from the premise that the loss of influence for the Church is a product of secularization. This is tantamount to a parent blaming peer pressure or high school culture for the fact their children are just growing up. There's no question some teenagers get lost in the process of maturing, but most teenagers don't get lost, and generally survive the process as better more mature thoughtful people. Good parents learn to accept and adjust to maturing children. They even learn to relish the challenges posed by those children because there is also much growth to be found for parents in this process. In fact one of the most important lessons parents can show adult children is that growth and maturation is a continual process. It never has to end. It's what keeps us young at heart.

Holy Mother Church is walking a path similar to the over controlling mother. In the end the only children left to see to her needs will be her dysfunctional immature bachelor sons and her carbon copy passive aggressive daughters.

- Colleen Kochivar-Baker
"Secularism Is Not the Problem. A Maturing Laity vs. a Controlling Hierarchy
is the Problem"
Enlightened Catholicism
June 30, 2010