Certainly, it is difficult to make the demands of the Gospel understandable to secularized people. But this pastoral difficulty must not lead to compromises with the truth.
For many people today, practical atheism is the normal rule of life...If this attitude becomes a general existential position, then freedom no longer has any standards, then everyting is possible and permissible.
In the name of tolerance, tolerance is being abolished; this is a real threat we face.
It is sad that there are what you might call professional Catholics who make a living on their Catholicism, but in whom the spring of faith flows only faintly, in a few scattered drops. We must really make an effort to change this.
Celibacy is always, shall we say, an affront to what man normally thinks. It is something that can be done, and is only credible, if there is a God and if celibacy is my doorway into the kingdom of God.
So DeusExMachina thinks that the firing of some scandalous bloggers has more to do with the realisation by the National Catholic Register that earning a living from a dying gang - what he calls "ZombieChurch" - is a bad business modell.
I have run into a rather decent blog recently. Here is what he has to say about Pope Francis' clearly modernist stance on the Church:
Distinctions Matter
Distinctions Matter Forward
Missale Romanum
Pre-1951 Calendar