to think that the Catholic Church is deliberately taking the piss with this questionnaire?

[Slatecross]

Accessible to your average left footer?

Why should only highly educated Catholics have a right to make feedback?
Coz a lot of people are going to struggle to interpret that. Only those with the strongest theological views, patience, time will get thru it.
Written for clergy for sure.

Racist?

Has anyone postd this link already? Not meant for laity, News reports were false, etc.

Where are the racist remarks?

I am a practising catholic ( I practice I am not perfect) and the church administration has been found to have been rottten to the core in the last couple of years, with scandals of sex, money etc,
I don't support the administration I support the inherent message of do good and be good. I think that Jesus message is basically hippyish green agenda who tried to bring in the outcast into the church. I think the administration is chock full of pharisee's the odd good person shines through but unfortunately there aren't that many. There is a lot of hypocrisy within the priesthood
I know we are not supposed to cast the first stone but really the scandals in recent years have been truely shocking to me. What dismayed me was the management of those scandals.

I think the way the survey has been worded a structured basically sums up what the administrators think of the congregation and how the church has been over complicated and managed to serve its administrators rather than its congregation.
It's shows to me that they don't follow the teachings of the church but are self serving and would do anything to protects their position.
It has also lost a perfect opportunity to preach to non Catholics and show how good the Catholic Church could be.

I am a bog standard Catholic ie. brought up in the faith, attended catholic schools, married in the church, children have done the usual sacraments etc so was quite excited when I heard about this questionnaire in the news. I logged on only to be totally disillusioned after reading the first question! This is a survey that is really not going to be answered by the average catholic, though after reading lljkk's link perhaps it is not meant to be, but seems to be doing a pretty good job at putting them off answering.

At the risk of outing myself, my parish was, and still is,badly effected by the pedophile scandals, think several monks accused and found guilty while one is still on the run and holed up somewhere in Italy. Did the abbot condemn the behaviour of these men..... not in any of the sermons I listened to. It was at this point I absented myself from this hideously self serving and out of touch institution. It makes me sad to see this survey which only reinforces my view of the church.

What is an irregular marriage????

How bizarre and backyard.

Awful awful awful.

Aha. Having been very cross at the beginning, if that's not parishioner's questionnaire, but for priests and lay clergy, its ok. Not great but ok.

If the parishioners one isn't crystal clear and accessible I will be really disillusioned.

One of the questions is " how can an increase in births be promoted?"

Outrageous.

It is not outrageous at all. It is necessary since birth rates are declining in many countries below relacement level. China yesterdy announced that it will end its rigid one child policy.

This is what the Catholic Church is up against from the elite's green Malthusian movements

"One of the British government’s foremost advisors on environmental policies will tell a conference this week that to make Britain "sustainable," its 60 million-plus population must be reduced by half

Jonathon Porritt told the London Times this week that he will tell the annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), to be held at the Royal Statistical Society, that in order to reduce "pressure" on the world’s ecosystems, Britain must halve its population to 30 million inhabitants.

"Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact."

As a longstanding member of the Green party, and a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, Porritt has become one of the most public faces in the radical environmentalist movement. The son of Lord Porritt, he is one of Britain’s leading advisors to Parliament as well as an advisor to the Prince of Wales."

www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2009/mar/09032505

But yesterday China scrapped its rigid one child policy because its population is ageing and they need more young people for growth and prosperity. The fightback against the elite's population policies has begun. The Church is with humanity.

"China’s parents have begun to rebel

Brendan O’Neill says that the state’s cruel and antiquated one-child policy is being propped up by British environmentalists with an agenda — but the Chinese are striking back"

www.spectator.co.uk/features/6012603/chinas-parents-have-begun-to-rebel/

This is the reality that the media will not discuss, but the tide is turning. Let a light shine on what they are up to. Let the Catholic Church speak up and reveal the truth.

"The truth is that China’s one-child policy has long been supported and assisted by Western officials and campaigners. The United Nations Population Fund part-funded the one-child policy for years, and according to the 2005 book Governing China’s Population by Susan Greenhalgh, numerous population-reduction and family-planning outfits in the West provided China with the material and moral resources it needed to keep the policy chugging along. ‘Foreign non-governmental organisations and private foundations… were crucial sources for ideas and arguments, technical resources and political support,’ argues Greenhalgh.

It is gobsmackingly inhumane that Mr Porritt and others can only see China’s one-child policy in terms of how much CO2 it has allegedly saved. Behind the jumped-up stats purportedly demonstrating that China is a good green nation for controlling population growth, there lurks immeasurable suffering, where people have been severely punished for wanting to do that most basic of things: start a family."

www.spectator.co.uk/features/6012603/chinas-parents-have-begun-to-rebel/

I filled it in but boy was it hard work, I tried to give really simple and honest answers. I don't understand how they can say it isn't for laity when the first question asks what position you are completing from and I ticked laity and parent.

I am not sure how some of my answers will be received and I am slightly worried that Ive dropped my parish in it by honestly stating that there are lots of people in the parish living in a range of circumstances which church hierarchy might consider 'irregular' but nobody interrogates them before communion,it is left to them and their own conscience.

I have completed it honestly as best I can because I think the views of ordinary Catholics need to be heard and an open debate had.

My final answer was that there needs to be a simpler version of this to foster open debate.

The Catholic church is keen to increase birth rates for theological reasons not political ones.

If the Church prioritised what they do best (campaigning for social justice), they'd notice that high birth rates are in conflict with rising living standards. But they're bound by theology about populating the earth.

Religions are just weird.

'The Catholic church is keen to increase birth rates for theological reasons not political ones.'

Yes, because they believe that life is a blessing granted by God, and they do not approve of mankind wanting to reduce any population "by half" or of enforced one-child socialist policies.

Birth and life are more important than living standards and living standards rise with a growing young population anyway, since there is increased economic activity and increasing human ingenuity to solve problems and invent new solutions.

Religions are not weird, they stand for life against the elite's Malthusian scaremongers who are anti-human and anti-life with their lie that every human's "carbon footprint" is harming the planet.

I saw a documentary recently on the effects of the one child policy in China. I think it said there is now 1 woman for every 10 men. 90% of men will never have partner or children or grandchildren. :(

There is certainly racism in 'Left Footer', the old English slur against Irish catholics;

www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1121,00.html

Good to see the 'last acceptable prejudice' in action!

The guardian is wrong. Catholics genuflect with their left foot forward.

Sorry Craig but the catholic approach to women is shocking - women having baby after baby sanctioned by the Catholic Church and I speak from someone whose mother and grandmother were catholic.

It is not in the interests of women to have 9 or 10 or 14 babies despite what the church says.

Anyway anyone want to give me am explanation as to what an irregular marriage is?????

Is an irregular marriage is one where one is Catholic and one isn't?

I wouldn't be able to answer a lot of those questions.

Wow so is an irregular marriage not deemed as good as a regular marriage?

How odd that such language is used in 2013?????

Promoting births is apparently a good thing. Who cares if they are only born to starve. It's numbers that count.

So strange isn't and why the Catholic Church is so oppressive to women is just really awful and so so damaging. Those laundries I mean how the fuck was that allowed ... Oh the dominance of the Catholic Church!!!

Some really foul racist remarks against Catholics and the Church

Look up the word racist. Despite what you may have been told it doesn't mean "disagreeing with MY church"

I doubt you'd all say it if it were any other religion

I would and do all the time. As an atheist I see no fundamental difference between Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Moonie, etc. Those distinctions only matter to believers.

I'm really sad about this. I'm not Catholic but attend a Catholic Church as the nearest one if my denomination is 300km away. DH is Catholic.

I don't for a second think the questionnaire will be any more accessible in the local language. I do suspect that the people who respond will be the very traditional 'hard core' 6+ children crowd and it won't reflect anyone else's view. For that reason DH and I will be ploughing through it, as part of the spiritual life of our probably irregular marriage, even though as a reasonably educated couple I suspect we'll spend more time researching the question than actually thinking about the answer.

Well I come from one of many countries where the church had its utopian dream of almost entire control over a country's practice in family planning, divorce, legality of homosexual practice etc. In fact when people were unable to look after the many children they had for a variety of reasons the church had the opportunity to step in and take a direct role in children's upbringing. It was not a success at all as we are all aware and you might think from that they might start to see the flaws in their hard line on values and the issues with unaffordably large families. I find it hard these days to see much credibly in the hierarchy of the church, they had their opportunities to do right and actually chose not to so why not look to their flock with a little bit of understanding.