# De Conversion and Conversion a New Reformation



## dudley (May 25, 2012)

De Conversion and Conversion,is it possible there is a New Protestant Reformation on the verge of occuring? Many Historians claim that major realinging and thinking about religious beleifs have occured about every 500 years. It has been now 500 years since the Glorious Protestant Reformation.

There has been much talk about what outreach programs your church has used that were successful programs reaching out and evangelizing the Good News and spreading the True faith and the True Gospel of Jesus Christ. It has caused me to do some further thinking and research on the subject and I ask all here on the PB to please read what I have found.

The following article appeared in the magazine 'America" the national catholic weekly......there are some who continue to say American Roman Catholics even those that stay are becoming more like Protestants...many, 15 million like myself and others here on the Puritan Board are ex Roman catholic who are now Protestants. Faith in Flux says Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S. indicate that Roman Catholics who become Protestants are more serious about their faith and become serious practicing and rabid Protestants after they convert than when they were Roman Catholic. Some say the Roman catholic church is a dying institution....of course we all know that mainline Protestant churches are also loosing members at a great rate. Faith in Flux also notes that Protestantism was on the verge of becoming a minority faith in the United States until the large numbers of Roman Catholics recently began to become Protestants. However while Protestantism has lost significant numbers; it is the ex Roman Catholics who are now Protestants like me who have maintained Protestantism as a majority religion with a slight majority of 51% of the United States citizens being active and practicing Protestants in the US. 

I think it is possible that the Lord is guiding a new sort of Protestant Reformation , the realigning of many into the Protestant fold with old faithful Protestants could be the beginning of a major shift in religion in this country and the world as similar events are occurring in Western Europe and Latin America where at one time Roman Catholicism, was a majority religion, the shift is now for the majority in Western Europe, Latin America and the United States to be Protestants....I continue to urge others on the Puritan Board to recognize this and reach out to evangelize Roman Catholics and bring them into the Reformed Protestant faith. I think that is what the Lord is wanting us to do. We are in my estimation on the verge of a new and revitalized Protestant Reformation , if we truly believe as I do that it is the Reformed Protestant faith that is the true church Christ founded and it is the true Gospel; than Christ wants us by biblical command to spread the good news and be disciples like Paul and bring many to conversion and being born again in the Protestant fold of Christianity. I thought I would share this with you......I think all here on the PB would benefit to recognize this and begin to outreach to those ready for conversion who are in the United States Roman Catholics who are now doubting their faith. 

Is Roman Catholicism dying or loosing its majority status as a world religion? Well here are some facts that are for the U.S. only, however statistics are similar in Europe and Latin America:

1. In 1965 there were 58,632 Priests. 
Now, 41,212 (30% Decrease) 
Since most are 65 years or older, the % drop could reach 85% in 7 to 10 years leaving less than 12,000 priests. And most of these are in aging categories.

2. In 1965 there were 48,992 Seminarians.
Now, 4,719 (90% Decrease) 

9. In 1965 there were 65% of Catholics Attending Weekly Mass. Now, 25% (62% Decrease) 

Source: http://catholicmoraltruth.com/churchstat…


These are just a few of the statistical facts, here are more

3. In 1965 there were 12,271 Religious Brothers. 
Now, 5,505 (55% Decrease) 

4. In 1965 there were 179,954 Religious Sisters. 
Now, 71,468 (61% Decrease) 

5. In 1965 there were 1,566 Diocesan High Schools. 
Now, 786 (50% Decrease) 

6. In 1965 there were 10,503 Catholic Grade Schools. 
Now, 6,623 (37% Decrease) 

7. In 1965 there were 104,314 Teaching Sisters. 
Now, 8,233 (92% Decrease) 

8. In 1965 there were 12,346 Teaching Priests.
Now, 1,897 (85% Decrease) 


In addition the catholic college I went to 40 years ago is now no longer catholic, Marist College recently disassociated and disconnected themselves from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. They have openly said they are no longer a Catholic college. There are other catholic institutions undergoing the same process. The shifts are as great and greater than ever in American Catholicism and more so than the shifts in Protestantism.

Read the following article it is also Fact!

Sincerely,
Dudley

Freedom From Religion Foundation Ad: "Time to Consider Quitting the Catholic Church"
Posted at: Friday, March 09, 2012 11:27:57 PM
Author: Tom Beaudoin 

In January of 2011, on this blog, I posted an entry with the title "A New Post-Catholic State of Awareness: Has Public Discussion of Catholicism Reached a New Moment?" In that entry, I suggested that "a new courage for telling the truth about the range of affiliations in and out of Catholicism seems to have taken over in the last several years, and I wonder if 2010 was the year in which this dynamism reached a certain irreversibility." 

I thought about that irreversibility when, today, I opened the New York Times to page A13, and I saw a full-page ad by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, headlined "It's Time to Consider Quitting the Catholic Church." You can see the ad at the FFRF website here.

The ad, an "open letter to 'liberal' and 'nominal' Catholics," asks Catholics to consider leaving Catholicism because of a range of public harms that it lists as being propagated by the Catholic Church, focusing most of all on the recent debate over contraception. It concludes by pleading, in a pun that would otherwise be playful were it not so striking in its content, "Please, Exit En Mass." 

A short blog post is not adequate space to think thoroughly enough about this ad, but I want to offer a few reflections and see what comments folks might have about it. 

Whatever one thinks of this ad, it seems to mark a particular moment in the unfolding history of the Catholic Church in the United States. That a full-page ad in one of the most influential newspapers in the country would ask members of a major religious group to walk away from that group is an extraordinary occurrence.

I hope that before people take sides pro or con on the ad, before the tendency to separate into "evil vs. good" or "good vs. evil" here, we might be able to take this opportunity for some serious thinking, and ask: What is happening with religion in general and Catholicism in particular today that would make such a moment possible? 

The ad trades on the newly widespread awareness that Catholicism is shedding adherents: that most Catholics live on the "lower" end between moderate and marginal affiliation, instead of high affiliation, and that a great many are actively disaffiliating. It trades on the widely understood distance between most Catholics' beliefs and practices and official teaching on certain matters. Most important, as far as I can tell, is its remarkably confident appeal to a kind of personal agency that would make Catholics, who so often see religion as something akin to an ethnicity, walk away from it. The example the ad gives is that of an abusive marriage, and the FFRF is trying to help Catholics who are the victims-survivors of being married to Catholicism cry "Enough!" That such an exit is up for public consideration is one of the most telling points here regarding what is happening with religion in general and Catholicism in particular. 

A Fordham colleague, Prof. Patrick Hornbeck, and I are presently working under a grant from the Louisville Institute on a study of "deconversion" in Roman Catholicism. Deconversion, in the theological and religious studies literature, is the process by which people step away from what they formerly held in religious belief and practice. It is a deep change of mind and heart about one's faith, away from where one had been formerly situated. This ad speaks to the cultural legitimacy that deconversion has achieved (although of course that term is not used), particularly in regard to Catholicism.

But some of the deconversion literature would suggest that when people do walk away from their faith/religion/religious community, they don't only want "freedom from religion." Some switch to another religious denomination or even another religion, some hang loose and nurture a religious/spiritual life apart from active affiliations with recognized religious communities, some let go of faith/religion/spirituality altogether, and some hang on within their religious community and struggle more or less openly with it. (These "trajectories" are the findings of Heinz Streib, et al, in the important research study titled _Deconversion_ (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2009).) 

One challenge is that scholars don't have a strong and complex enough sense about Catholic deconversions. There are very few in-depth deconversion studies with Catholic (or formerly Catholic) participants. A lot of the research is with evangelicals and mainline Protestants, and with new religious movements of various stripes. 

I know there will be those who want to vilify this ad, but I think a more productive and theologically searching route is to see it as a conversation starter, for the reasons I suggest above. It is an occasion to think about where Catholicism stands in our culture, and to ask where things go from here, and why.

Tom Beaudoin


----------



## Pilgrim Standard (May 25, 2012)

dudley said:


> I think it is possible that the Lord is guiding a new sort of Protestant Reformation ,


Well... I certainly see a slow growth trickling in to Reformed Denominations in my area today. A larger growth in children born to believers in those Churches is occurring.
I am also seeing more and more bible believing Christians having greater numbers of children, as well as opting to Homeschool their children.
I am witnessing a greater reception of the doctrines of grace, and an increase in curiosity in Covenant Theology.

Sermonaudio.com and the Likes on the internet are gaining large increases in downloads. Internet sites and forums such as the Puritanboard.com are spreading knowledge, fellowship, encouragement, biblical reformed resources the likes of which I can not identify historically since the Gutenberg press.

Publishers, such as Naphtali Press, Heritage Reformation Books and Banner of Truth, and The Puritan Shop are republishing valuable writings from Fantastic Protestant men of old, to a new generation. 

I have not heard of a decrease in Reformed Missions anywhere, on the contrary there seems to be a renewed interest in missions today.

Dispensational theology seems to be falling apart, now grasping at straws such as “Progressive Dispensationalism,” and many Christians I speak to today have either not heard of Dallas Theological Seminary, or they do not hold it in the same regard as generations past. It seems that the Eschatological scheme and modifications of it are the only glue left of the Dispensationalists. The heart has been cut out.

Something is going on.


----------



## Galatians220 (May 25, 2012)

Dudley, would you agree that most lay Roman Catholics with whom you're still in contact don't know what it is to be Catholic anymore? Even the ones who used to know? Many Catholics who consider themselves still "in the communion" are becoming functional Unitarians, I think. Absolutism is gone. In other words, they're probably not ripe for evangelical picking. Benedict XVI himself is busy these days, picking and choosing from what's virtually a Marxist cafeteria of ideology that he intends to install in the church's hard drive, probably by means of an encyclical, before he signs off. As though that would meet with much resistance from either the clergy or the laity.

There, but for the _matchless_ grace of God...


----------

