I remember in the summer of 1964, sitting on the back steps with my first boyfriend, discussing the theologies of Catholicism (me) and Lutheranism (him).
The identity of Catholicism was keen and real. Because the society was Protestant, to be a Catholic meant that mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, taught religion to the children in the home. Catholic identity was learned in the home, through the celebration in the home of name days, feast days, holy days of obligation.
Catholic families watched Bishop Sheen on television in the 50s and 60s. Catholic families socialized with Catholic families. See my post here.
To be a minority was a good thing for Catholics in the Midwest. To be a minority meant learning one's Faith on one's own, in one's home.
I am thinking that one reason God will allow persecution is to make us a minority again. To be a majority religion is a dangerous thing in a society where compromises then take place in order to stay the majority religion.
This is the problem in the States. Catholicism stopped being home-based and become diocesan-based. Parents gave up responsibility for teaching and for formation of character to the schools.
Religion stopped being practiced in this home.
A remnant Church must be a local church. A remnant Church must take care of religious needs privately and on a small scale. A minority Church must preserve and pass down Catholic identity for survival.
Home schooling families have done this in America for forty years. And, real Catholics are being marginalized daily. A remnant has to decide to be Catholic--choose Catholic identity and pass it on.
The Church will disappear in many, perhaps most, areas, as it did under persecution in Northern Africa.
Only those families and clans which have Catholic identity will endure.
It is not so bad being a minority.
Here are some pertinent links.
31 Oct 2014
Over two years ago, it came to me that in the future, the Church will resemble Northern Africa in the Fourth Century, when in Carthage and the immediate area around Carthage alone, there were seventeen bishops.
28 May 2012
To the person who objected to the reference to Northern Africa, that is a place, not a racial reference. There are many, many races in Northern Africa, Caucasian, Asian, Black, etc. And, the Arabs are not a race, but Caucasian ...
24 Sep 2014
The same is true with the churches in Northern Africa. I have written on this before today. This map shows us two things. One, this map shows us how fast the Faith spread and two, how fast it disappeared in later times in some ...
24 Sep 2014
It is in fact the case that not only the flourishing Church in Asia, which was once the vibrant heart of the Church, but also the Church in North Africa vanished entirely beneath the tempests of Islam. Of course, the force applied .
07 Dec 2012
The way so many negative things are happening, even *inside* the Church, I cannot fathom it will look anything but the way it does in northern Africa. True, it may take a while here to get to that point, but the thought alone is ...
17 Nov 2013
All those dioceses up and down the Levant in the early days of the Church are gone. All those great basilicas and cathedrals which served the huge Catholic communities in Northern Africa are long gone. Email ThisBlogThis!