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What sounds terrible? That new immigrants are making up the majority of congregations in many parts of Canada? Or that many parishes are simply dying out from lack of a congregation?
In Canada, it's really just Chrsitianity that is suffering - other religions are doing fine. And the reason Christian denominations are having such a hard time attracting worshippers is because most denominations have refused to modernize and allow their Church to grow and adapt to modern society. Basically, they have made themselves irrelevant.
As an example, I am a very spiritual person who was raised Catholic. But the way the Church protected child abusers and allowed them to perpetrate crimes over decades knowing full well that they were serial abusers, and never offering a sincere apology to the victims afterwards or doing anything to truly repent for this grave sin (and instead covering their flanks with lawyers and obfuscations at every turn) was one of the big reasons I turned my back on the Church. They also refuse to accept any kind of birth control as acceptable despite the rampant overpopulation problem this world is facing; they refuse to allow priests to marry despite the fact that the Vatican knows that more than 50% of priests are not fulfilling their vows of chastity at any given time; they won't allow women to be priests and insist that homosexuality is a grave sin. All of this, plus a nearly two thousand year record of brutality, prejudice, corruption, hypocrisy, avarice, and some of the worst crimes against humanity in Western history makes me think the Catholic Church (and many other denominations) are just reaping what they've sown. They are no longer about promoting Christ's teachings - they have created their own interpretation of what "true" Christianity is, and as someone who has studied early Christian writings (including all the Gospels, not just the canonical ones) I can tell you that most deonominations are so far from Jesus' original message, they may as well be another religion.
Even in Quebec, formerly one of the most Catholic places on the planet, churches are empty. And I hope they stay that way until the Church changes, remembers what it's true mission is, offers restitution to the victims of pedophile priests, residential schools, etc., ordains women, accepts gays into the fold, allows priests to marry, and goes back to Christ's teachings as the foundation of everything they do.
In the mean time, the churches should be happy to have anyone filling their pews here in Canada.
Christ's teachings is Not ordaining women pastors! neither accepts gays as pastors, God forbid!
But I agree totally that Pastors should be married (to one women) as the gospel goes.
That's free speech on my part according to the Bible, some may differ and that's fine with me.
God bless.
Hmmm. I think if you consider atheism to be a lack of belief in a god or gods, then everyone is most definitely born an atheist since newborn humans do not have any beliefs to speak of much less the concept of a god to believe in.
I suppose it depends how you define atheist. If an atheist is someone who does not believe in a deity, then all babies are born atheists. If an atheist is someone who asserts their disbelief in a deity, then no baby is born an atheist. In either case, no baby is born a Christian (or a member of any other religious group that is defined by what they believe.)
"The theory or belief that God does not exist. The word comes (in the late 16th century, via French) from Greek atheos, from a- ‘without’ + theos ‘god’.'
The important words in this definition are theory and belief. Babies have no theory of anything nor any beliefs. They are blank slates.
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