Brian Holdsworth: How Not to Renew the Church

Another excellent video presentation from Brian. Here he addresses the most frustrating and universal issue in the Catholic Church - and probably Christianity today. Everywhere I look, I see a truth reflected in existential reality: the progressive agenda has failed. Despite this undeniable truth, it seems the purveyors of progressive ideology see only one reason for this: we are not progressive enough! They reach this conclusion despite the clear evidence that the only growth is in places where we hold fast to the truth and the Traditions of our faith.

Brian starts this video by stating a self-evident truth: one thing we should be able to easily recognize is that something needs to change in the Church – and fast. Every survey out there reminds us that there is a crisis of faith as numbers are dramatically declining, successive generations are walking away, vocations are plummeting, and scandals seem to preoccupy all our attention.

He goes on to give evidence that the only exceptions — surprise, surprise — are places where we can see faithfulness to the Gospel and Catholic Tradition (as in, Scripture, Tradition & the Magisterium, the three pillars of Revelation) being lived out. This is also my experience and the experience of just about everyone I know. I don’t know a single “progressive” parish that is growing. Faithful Catholics are depressed, exhausted and undermined by the Church hierarchy at every turn. There is a constant low-level rumble of “bad shepherds”. There is a lack of leadership which is blindingly obvious.

Error abounds. The people involved on a strategic level are ignorant, incompetent or agenda riven. You find the same people involved in almost every project on a diocesan level. By any measure, they fail at every project, desperately justifying failure by press-ganging to raise numbers; any authentic measure is avoided like the plague. This sounds atrocious it’s because it is, and what is worse is the apathy it is treated with.