The Americanization of Roman Catholic Church

THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH According to The 2010 Annual Megacensus of Religion (1) there are 283,308, 000 Christians in Northern America of which 84,4000, 000 are Roman Catholics. It is safe to say that the vast majority of these Catholics are the descendents of European Catholics who emigrated to the United States and Canada in the past hundred years: From Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Lebanon, and parts of Asia and Africa. Presently they are the first generation of the sons and daughters of their fathers and mothers and now are partnered with the second and 1third generation with their sons and daughters. The children of these parents are the main stumbling block of the hopeful continuation of the present Roman Catholic population in Northern America. Their forefathers came from Cultures of Catholicism which made being a Roman Catholic a much easier and normal faith for a solemn religious life obligation and commitment. Presently Northern American culture cannot offer the same religious culture to those born into a Catholic family. At best American Culture today offers little means of living a true Catholic life and 1 Time Almanac 2011page 508 - 509 as such may be in all probability a major hindrance to the future growth of the Roman Catholic Faith in America. LIVING IN A ROMAN CATHOLIC CULTURE Sister Elizabeth Anne Seton While in Italy with her dying husband, Elizabeth witnessed Catholicity in action through family and friends. In Italy, Elizabeth captivated everyone by her own kindness, patience, good sense, wit and courtesy. During this time Elizabeth became interested in the Catholic Faith, and over a period of months, her Italian friends guided her in Catholic instructionsThree basic points led her to become a Catholic: belief in the Real Presence, devotion to the Blessed Mother and conviction that the Catholic Church led back to the apostles and to Christ. Many of her family and friends rejected her when she became a Catholic in March 1805. WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Enough has been said and printed about the subject of Weapons Of Mass Destruction in the past two years to last a lifetime. This four word phrase is now world famous and synonymous with the employment of nuclear and chemical instruments of warfare. The term itself has become a social and political weapon in and of its own self - a handy tool for speechwriters and press conferences. It is designed to intimidate and warn “rogue” nations of the world that are proving to be nations and regions of “concern” for the new International League of Power Nations formed after 1945. These weapons are now seen as the ultimate “Sword Of Damocles” in today’s political affairs of modern man. One slight “miscue” and the ultimate tragedy begins or ends as the case may be. It is now sixty years since the world has witnessed the first and the last military use of “nuclear” power against a nation’s citizens. None have been used since those historical three days in March in 1945 when the United States Military bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most recent American “shock and awe” fire bombing of Baghdad, Iraq on the evening of March 21, 2003 creating a massive fire storm of 1500 bombs and missiles came as close as the world has seen a repeat of the frightful use of scientific military weapons being used against innocent civilians since the1945 nuclear bombings of Japan. Important, non-explosive weapons of mass destruction, have now replaced the incomprehensible terrors of a military use of new “Hydrogen” bombs in any imaginable international conflict amongst the nations of the world. Meanwhile, while this heavy , highly dangerous present day “weapons of mass destruction” political opera plays itself out towards its dramatic ending, an entire unnoticed obscure world of other programs of weapons of mass destruction works its way into our own private lives and homes via the cable wire which now penetrates the walls of our only sanctuary and fortress against the lies and the fabrications of the false and disreputable world of modern day political policies. This is the new and highly contagious world of Mass Media and Mega Money - weapons of social destruction. Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian born, 1911-1980, “oracle” and communications “sage” saw the highly dangerous toxic and explosive effects of this volatile mixture of mass media and high octane fuel of money on modern man. Understanding Media :The Extensions of Man (1964) became McLuhan’s most widely read and influential book, explores the electronic age and its affect of both the individual and society in general. After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly we approach the final phase of the extensions of man - the technological simulation of consciousness. When the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media. Whether the extension of consciousness, so long sought by advertisers for specific products, will be“a good thing” is a question that admits of a wide solution. Western man acquired from the technology of literacy the power to act without reacting. The advantages of fragmenting himself in this way are seen in the case of the surgeon who would be quite helpless if he were to become humanly involved in his operation. We acquired the art of carrying out the most dangerous social operations with complete detachment. But our detachment was a posture of noninvolvement. In the electric age, when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of our every action. it is no longer possible to adopt the aloof and disassociated role of the literate Westerner. “ It is obviously true that most bomber pilots are no better and no worse than other men. The majority of them given a can of petrol and told to pour it over a child of three and ignite it, would probably disobey the order. Yet, put a decent man in an airplane a few hundred feet above a village and he will, without compunction, drop high explosives and napalm and inflict appalling pain and injury on men, women, and children. The distance between him and the people he is bombing makes them into an impersonal target, no longer human beings like himself with whom he can identify.” (Anthony Storr: Human Aggression, 1968) Clearly, after reading Marshall McLuhan’s erudite, prophetic, and very insightful investigations into the new “Environments” that we now live in and that shapes and controls the form of human associations and actions that now exist in the world, we should accept the notion and the idea that a new world of electronic information and images exists for our benefit and personal fulfillment. Most governments and major corporations understand and accepts these findings and conclusions and now see great advantages in their support and involvement in these new communication tools which allows them to “read” new insights into the minds and the nature of their customers and their citizens. INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL CHANGE All of the communications instruments that make up today’s “Information Age” have improved the general life-style of millions of people around the world, many in various stages and in various ways: information, travel, entertainment are a few. Each and every step and manifestation of these new technologies brings with them new and invigorating ideas and concepts of life for most of mankind. But there are those in governments and media-based corporations, and those with special goals and ambitions that have large pools of money at their disposal, and are assisted with a staff of social scientists that see in these McLuhan ideas, only new , better, and less costly ways of furthering their global goals and ambitions. They are in our midst spreading their centuries old propaganda of division and hate. Now they have newer and better communications devices to complete their devious programs. They are resource complete with both personnel and financial resources. You know them well - you see , read or hear their electric voices every hour of every day. They involve their organizations in the entire range of social communications, from general elections, to the production and promotion of print and film products and networks. Their money is ever at work. THE MEDIA AND THEIR MESSAGES The USA is the world’s foremost economic and military power. It also is now the world’s main source of new global electronic media technology, offering the world a new international network of powerful governmental and private media organizations with their programming of domestic and international programs of American culture, political, economic and social concepts and ideas - a major new export commodity. The average American spends approximately eight hours a day with print and electronic media - at home, at work, and while traveling in a car. This includes four hours of television, three hours with radio, and one-half hour each with a newspaper and recorded music. Surveys show that 98% of Americans have television sets, 82% of which watch “prime time” and cable programming, 84% listen to radio, and 80% read a daily newspaper. Nearly 50% of the population have access to computer Internet programming. Most of the nation’s primary sources of news and information are in the communications business to make money. Media and communications organizations have an annual income of 242 billion dollars - one of America’s largest business groups. Advertisers spend over 215 billion dollars annually to bring their products to the attention of the public. The various components of the media provides employment for hundreds of thousands of technicians, writers, artists, performers, and intellectuals that shape attitudes and beliefs by their media presence. The print and electronic media in the United States, offering a wide variety of entertainment and news options and opinions to the American public are a pervasive element in American society. The nation’s daily televised world of happy, youthful, attractive, smiling, active, prosperous people, who do not work, is a false, misleading, and illusionary picture of daily American life. This not what Americans experience in their own very real lives of labour, pain and tears which they see from their own private windows on the world around them. Only the five o’clock local television news programs is the real world of news of the murder and mayhem in the cities they live in. This half hour or so is filled to capacity with local stories of deaths, crimes, mixed with the political and economic news that pertain to their own state or city. Weather and sports are added as “lighter” news events to fill their local television agenda. In Memory Of Valentino And Angela (Nella) Daldin April 27, 2012