|
Since I don't have internet access often, I will answer the bigger questions.
First I'm going to ask my question: for those that are Catholic, WHY are you Catholic is you don't follow Her teachings?
Being an orthodox Roman Catholic is to be a faithful Roman Catholic. Yes, there are some churches out there that claim Vatican II was not in occordence with the Church and broke themselves off. This is not orthodox Roman Catholicism. To be orthodox is to be faithful and true to all the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Statistics on the vocation 'crisis': no, I don't have numbers, but I do know (in talking to local priests, bishops, religious, etc) that we do not have a crisis. There is a possibility that years down the road there will be a shortage of priests, but when the dioceses are ordaining 8-20 men on average a year, that is not a shortage or even close to it. What is happening is that society is putting religious life as a last resort (if you can't get married, join the priesthood, etc.). Where you have active prayer life you have vocations to the priesthood and religious life. To those that feel the 'only solution' is married priests, how can someone give their whole self to the wife AND their whole self to the Church?
With regards to women having a say in the Church, we do - and always have had a say. We are teachers, mothers, etc. Who are the first to instill a prayer life and religious beliefs in a child, the parents. If that is not having a say in the future of the Church, I really don't know what is. Holy women have influenced the Roman Catholic Church for centuries - and did not have to be priests to do such. Women have been given the title of Doctors of the Church. Women will never be priests within the Roman Catholic Church - and any truly Catholic woman will agree with this. It is a gross misunderstanding of equality that puts people on the rampage. To be equal does not mean that we have to do the exact same job/have the exact same role. Equality is respect - and women have had respect and reverence within the Roman Catholic Church since the beginning!
Beryana
P.S. by the way, there is a difference between abstaining from meat and fasting. Fasting is limiting the amount of food eaten during the day (water only fasts, bread and water fasts, two small meals and one larger where the two small together cannot equal the larger, etc). Abstaining from meat is just that - not eating meat.
|