never been there

There is heavy proselytising when a Catholic marries a non-Catholic. Conversion is always the first best goal, and the RC partner is expected to pitch in.

My mum's second husband (yeah, irony of ironies) put the pitch to me because he'd been made to promise the priest that he would at least try to get me into the church. I was almost getting pissed at him (I was 15 at the time) until I detected the tongue-in-cheek approach: "Jimi and Janis will be there, and Keith Moon on drums, jamming for all eternity, and you'll be playing along with them..."

Jet Grind

The Roman Catholic Church by far has the largest following already, that may have something to do with it.

Note that I've never been to church in my life so my knowledge of this is severely limited.

Rational BAC

Interesting thread.

It is true that Catholics do not proseletise ---at least in the USA.

Exception is of course when a Protestant marries into a Catholic family-------then the pressure to convert the Protestant or at least to promise to raise the children as Catholic is enormous. It is amazing the pressure put on the Protestant by members of the Catholic side even by those who do not even go to Mass or have been to confession in 20 plus years. ----------something I guess about we against them and WE have to win.

It does seem like the Catholics believe that "get 'em young and you got 'em for a lifetime" works quite well from a practical standpoint. ------And they are probably right.

I was born of an Episcopalian, free thinking mother and a Catholic also free thinking father who was immediately excommunicated simply because the Church could not recognise a marriage where the children were not promised to be brought up Catholic.

"Foolishness" said my father. "Foolishness" said my mother. Their children were all brought up as very skeptical Episcopalians.

They made the right choice. I could never imagine constricting my mind so much to be Catholic. (And half my extended family is of course Catholic.)

Adrammalech

My thought is that the catholics are the physical manifestation of the Borg (go to a catholic mass, listen them recite the creed and you'll know) If you are an individual buzzing around their collective, they won't bother you because it would be a waste of energy to assimilate you. On the other hand, if you're an entirely new race of people then they send in their cross ships and you can hear over the loudspeakers "We are the Catholic church, you're biological and theological distinctiveness will be added to our own, resistence is futile"

Wayne P

Senor:

In the US the Catholic church considers only some parts of the country to be missionary areas, the southeast and the mid west. You'll notice that EWTN (Eternal Word Network) is based in the south, Alabama I believe.
Unofficially, I think, the church's attitude is that if an area has a large, not necessarily a majority, population of Catholics they are willing to let procreation create more Catholics and are pretty laid back on missionary work. But some parts of the country don't have the organizational setup, diocese and such, and NEED more outreach and missionary activity. These are areas that have or had a strongly protestant population.

Laci

Born and raised Catholic.
I'm thinking that Catholics don't feel they should try to sell their religion while mass is going on. Mass is a celebration of our God.
Going to countries where a "religion" would help people with none- is a totally different thing.
If you were of course serious about converting, which I know you're not. You'd make an appointment to see one of the priests at a nearby church. And go from there. You'd of course have to start out as we did and learn the Catechism. sp?
It's a nice quiet religion. I use to think it was boring. But I don't see it that way anymore.

ekalavyak

Simple reason why the catholics do not proselytize in the US:
1. It just costs too much to market Jesus and all his stories- 349,000US$ now and expected to rise to 650,000US$ by 2025 (http://www.gurumurthy.net/display.asp?id=143).

2. It is easier to harvest souls in the countries like India and the Papal energies are now totally concentrated on making that Italian born Sania Maino as the next PM of India mainly to hurry up their activities of converting Indians into their herd and then destroy the oldest civilization on earth as they did to the civilizations in Rome; Greece; Sun worshipping Incas (Ina Samskrit word for Sun); Mayas; Aztecs; Maoris; Aborginees (orginal Tamils from India); the rape of African continent etc. This way the big corporates in the conquered lands of the Americas can then market their produce having found their own markets are saturated.

3. Maybe they are too sick and tired of using their WMD's (Evangelists) for slaughter of humankind.

It is estimated that between the two evil proselytising monotheistic desert jealous Gods (Hiranyakasipu clones) and their self appointed messiahs the world lost over 150 million people in just 2000 years!

Opera Nut

I'm sorry, children, it's medical experiments for the lot of you!!!


......buuuuutt.....

EVERY SPERM IS SACRED

They're too busy telling people to crank out snot nosed brats they can't support...if you can't support them, you can always farm them out to a nunnery or two as novices.

They don't need to convert them if the churchgoing ones are reproducing furiously. However in the US nearly all Catholics ignore the prohibition on birth control and have one or two children.

sullster

Roland,
I used the past tense in order to support my point about the historical reasons for the current state of non-proselytization by the RC in the USA, yet I do agree that anti-catholicism is alive and well. It is just not overt any more.

I consider the fundies to be "the business end" of the protestant sects. Fundies will say that all Catholics are damned and their religion is heresy, if you ask pointedly. The rest of the Protestant sects agree but are far too proper to come out and say it.

Protestants still feel the USA is a protestant country.

Amos

Hello sullster. The difference here is truth and perversion. If you have truth on your side it is easy to sway the multitude but if you are a pervert you must single out individuals and do them one by each in any of the 20000 different ways.