{"id":22024,"date":"2016-10-05T06:21:59","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T11:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/?p=22024"},"modified":"2016-10-05T06:21:59","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T11:21:59","slug":"pence-and-kaine-two-bad-catholics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2016\/10\/pence-and-kaine-two-bad-catholics.html","title":{"rendered":"Pence and Kaine: Two Bad Catholics?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color:#fff;display:inline-block;font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#a7a7a7;font-size:11px;width:100%;max-width:594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding:0;margin:0;text-align:left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/612693300\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow:hidden;position:relative;height:0;padding:67.340067% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/612693300?et=33qZUNaOQu9uVgHDe7z4Dg&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=eXtQyvIMOt5sdjc0BbCqVYelfK4PqgajXnjUQFaboVM=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin:0;\">\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Last night\u2019s VP debate was interesting from a religious point of view because it pitted a departed Catholic against a dissident Catholic.<\/p>\n<p>In doing some demographic studies of the church recently I came across the statistics I already knew\u2013that former Catholics are one of the largest religious groupings in the USA. We should be honest. We\u2019re losing members more than we\u2019re gaining them.<\/p>\n<p>Hispanics are easily drawn to the Protestant churches with their informal worship and easy membership message. Liberal Americans are tired of the church\u2019s stance on same sex marriage, women\u2019s ordination and other emotive issues. Lazy Catholics are drifting away to the allure of the American \u201cgood life\u201d of prosperity and pleasure.<\/p>\n<p>What interested me about Kaine and Pence, however was that they typified two types of Catholic of their generation. I have no idea why Pence left Catholicism except that he probably found Evangelicalism more accessible, relevant and that like many who go that path \u201cgot saved\u201d. In other words he had a personal encounter with Christ that he did not discover in Catholicism.<\/p>\n<p>For him I actually have a lot of time. I don\u2019t condone his leaving the Catholic Church, but I understand it. It is very possible that the Catholic Church he left was riddled with the double poison of liberal theology and what I call \u201cmechanical sacramentalism\u201d. In other words, the Catholic faith was reduced to a justice and peace ideology combined with a routine and empty\u00a0celebration of the sacraments. That kind of deadly Catholicism empties churches, and if it was combined (as it often is) with lazy, corrupt clergy who are sexually active (with one another and too often with young boys)\u2014well no wonder he left.<\/p>\n<p>If that is the case with Pence (and these are the complaints I hear from many who have left) then I sympathize. It is very possible that he left that kind of Catholicism and found in Evangelicalism a robust, supernatural, traditional and disciplined expression of the Christian faith.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot judge Kaine, but his particular brand of self righteous, self congratulatory \u201cCatholicism\u201d is, from all appearances, just the kind of Catholicism that probably drove Pence away. The\u00a0public church going of a man who supports abortion and same sex marriage\u2013while having support from his pastor and silence from his bishop\u2013is more destructive than the honest departure of someone like Pence.<\/p>\n<p>Are Kaine and Pence two bad Catholics?<\/p>\n<p>To stand things on their head, from what I can discern, Pence the non-Catholic is a better Catholic than Kaine the Catholic.<\/p>\n<p>He exhibits something I\u2019ve thought \u00a0for a long time: \u201cBetter a good Protestant than a bad Catholic.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images Last night\u2019s VP debate was interesting from a religious point of view because it pitted a departed Catholic against a dissident Catholic. In doing some demographic studies of the church recently I came across the statistics I already knew\u2013that former Catholics are one of the largest religious groupings in the USA. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pence and Kaine: Two Bad Catholics?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Embed from Getty Images Last night&#039;s VP debate was interesting from a religious point of view because it pitted a departed Catholic against a dissident\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2016\/10\/pence-and-kaine-two-bad-catholics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pence and Kaine: Two Bad Catholics?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Embed from Getty Images Last night&#039;s VP debate was interesting from a religious point of view because it pitted a departed Catholic against a dissident\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2016\/10\/pence-and-kaine-two-bad-catholics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fr. 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