Does Anyone Else Find This Amazing?

[Ed Normile]

I am amazed, or maybe shocked and probably even saddened that the Bishops of the U.S.C.C.B. are forming a pastoral letter to encourage catholics to go to confession in the upcoming lenten season. Isn't this basic knowledge among all catholics, even the twice a year catholics should know this or has American catholicism waned to this level of ignorance and indfifference ?

On a side note the Papal Nuncio in a speech said ...

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has told the University of Notre Dame that [b]there is a concrete “menace” to religious liberty in the U.S. that is advancing in part because some influential Catholic public figures and university professors are allied with those opposed to Church teaching.[/b]

[b]He cited Catholics’ duties to be disciples of Christ, not elements of a political or secular ideology.[/b] [b]He lamented the fact that many Catholics are publicly supporting “a major political party” that has “intrinsic evils among its basic principles.”[/b]

The nuncio said it is “essential” to pray for a just resolution to religious freedom controversies, including the controversy over the new federal mandate requiring many Catholic employers to provide morally objectionable insurance coverage for sterilization and contraception, including some abortion-causing drugs. [b]The issues that the Catholic bishops have identified in this [HHS] mandate are “very real” and “pose grave threats to the vitality of Catholicism in the United States,” Archbishop Vigano said.[/b]


[b]Religious liberty is a human, civil and natural right that is not conferred by the state, he said, adding “religious freedom is the exercise of fidelity to God and his Holy Church without compromise.” “What God has given, the servant state does not have the competence to remove,” Archbishop Vigano affirmed.[/b]

http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/US.php?id=6530#ixzz2CKnqINhk[/url]

This speech was before the election by the way, seemed to fall on deaf ears I guess he shook the dust off his sandals as he left...

ed

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='Ed Normile' timestamp='1353266853' post='2512401']
I am amazed, or maybe shocked and probably even saddened that the Bishops of the U.S.C.C.B. are forming a pastoral letter to encourage catholics to go to confession in the upcoming lenten season. Isn't this basic knowledge among all catholics, even the twice a year catholics should know this or has American catholicism waned to this level of ignorance and indfifference ?
[/quote]
If we weren't intended to be reminded of things like this, Jesus wouldn't have left us shepherds.

[Apotheoun]

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò speech can be read at the link below:

[url="http://icl.nd.edu/assets/84679/religious_freedom_persecution_martyrdom_nd_vigano.pdf"]RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH, AND MARTYRDOM[/url]

[Gabriela]

I don't find it amazing. I've met lots of Catholics who didn't know you're supposed to go to confession regularly. In fact, some of them are now nuns. (That is, nuns who now go to confession regularly, but in spite of growing up in Catholic families and going to Catholic schools K-12, they didn't know they needed to go to confession until they had a real conversion experience and sought the info out.)

[Nihil Obstat]

Better to admit that we have a very serious problem and try to address it, than stick our heads in the sand and hope it will work out eventually.
The head in the sand thing has been tried for the last fifty years. It did not work. Time for a new tack.