Correcting the Root Cause of the Freefall of Catholic Faith and Practice

Pennsylvania, USA – WEBWIRE – Friday, December 2, 2022

A Catholic seminarian who would soon be ordained was quoted on Twitter 1Peter5: “Honestly, not much of my faith has survived the seminary . . . The Church is crumbling into quicksand . . . We call good evil, and evil good . . . The Church is like a wet cardboard box, and the bottom is falling out . . . it’s unhealthy to talk about sin, and hell no longer exists.”

Extreme? Maybe. But a Catholic priest — a seminarian in the 1970s — a few years ago wrote: “Dear Jerome, I saw seminarians lose their faith in my class when exposed to the unbridled use of this [Markan Priority Two-Source] method. Many were converted by this method to heterodox teachings or beliefs. Others lost their faith and left the seminary. [It] calls into question . . . miracles of Christ and his physical death and resurrection.”

Before Vatican II, the Gospel was preached in all its fullness, including Hell’s fire and brimstone. Catholics went to Confession, filled churches on Sundays and holy days of obligation and, by the millions, took to heart the instruction of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen on his “Life is worth living” TV program (1952-1965).

But, in the 1970s, most of our seminaries jettisoned the four evangelists as inspired writers of the Gospels, instead promoting an ahistorical Markan Priority theory that all four were probably written anonymously a generation later. Ask any Catholic priest or bishop which Gospel was written first. Virtually all will answer not Matthew but Mark.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote this about this Markan Priority Two-Source instruction: “Intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air.” (Jesus of Nazareth, 2007, xii).

In the republished “The 7-Step Reason to be Catholic, 2nd Ed: Science, the Bible and History” points to Catholicism, with Addenda clearing the historical-critical fog, in particular in the Addenda, eminent scholars bring down this Markan Priority house of cards and restore Gospel authenticity.

The root cause of the freefall of Catholic faith and practice: Five decades of indefensible reduction of the Gospels to what amounts to hearsay in our seminaries and Catholic universities.

“Let us pray that our bishops and leaders of Catholic academia soon restore the Gospel Truth that brought the Church to its pre-Vatican II Golden Age.”