We don't recommend "Catholicism" as a faith formation series. It is certainly educational, and the visual insights into what the Catholic faith has inspired over the centuries are, indeed, stunning. But the series isn't evangelization in any meaningful sense. Unbelievers may come away more enlightened and more informed, believers may come away confirmed in their belief, but no one is likely to be moved to conversion, as the message that conversion to the Catholic faith is necessary for salvation is nowhere present in the series. The Catholic faith did, obviously, inspire magnificent art, architecture, literature and music. Jesus was of course a great teacher with moral insights that are universally applicable. It just isn't obvious, in Fr. Barron's approach, that Jesus was necessarily God who established One True Church on earth. There isn't much here to explain why people would be willing to suffer martyrdom for the Faith.Barron's much-criticized public view that "there is a realistic hope that Hell is empty" can certainly be seen as misleading and even dangerous to souls. Unfortunately, the "Church of Nice" is well represented in diocesan RCIA programs -- the RCIA class my wife and I took at our former declining parish had many sessions that just played videos from Barron's "Catholicism" series.
It brushed over confession very lightly, and I got the coordinator angry with me when I kept asking exactly what we were supposed to do when we went to confession (i.e, "Bless me, Father. . ."). The expectation appears to have been that there was no need to explain it, since nobody was going to take it seriously. Pretty pictures of cathedrals were enough. (The pastor actually wound up excusing me from attending further RCIA sessions!)
Ever since I began to take the idea of becoming Catholic seriously, I thought there was no sense in going to all the trouble of becoming Catholic if I didn't mean to avail myself of all the sacraments for which I was eligible. The more I look at this, confession is central to being Catholic -- the Protestant view is that the Sermon on the Mount imposes an impossible standard; mortals can never fully measure up, so in effect, there's no sense trying very hard.
The Catholic position is that the Church does not make impossible demands. The Sermon on the Mount is one common standard Catholics use for examination of conscience. If Catholic voices don't stress confession and conscience, they're Protestantizing Catholicism. This is part of Voris's objection to the Church of Nice.
I've got to wonder how much the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus has become another part of the Church of Nice. I've already expressed my reservations that OCSP priests are not equipped via Catholic training in dogmatic and moral theology to hear confessions. Naturally, a Catholic in danger of death can go to confession with an OCSP priest, but the testimony of one Episcopal seminary graduate that I've published here is that his own seminary training said almost nothing about confession.
My regular correspondent has this take on the Church of Nice, Anglican division:
The implication of AC is that there is or was a significant number of Anglicans who ignored the call of their conscience regarding the claims of the Church because the liturgy was sloppy and the music third rate. "Now that everything is just like dear old St Swithun's we can make our submission." No wonder lifetime Catholics and those who converted long ago find the project offensive.Speaking of Michael Voris, I found this soon after I posted this entry. He has a few remarks on Thomas Cranmer. Er, he's right.The only good news is that apparently there were not as many hypocritical liturgy snobs sitting in the pews as was rumoured. The idea that it is a template for the mass reception of those from other, non-liturgical denominations I find risible for several reasons, not the least of which is that so many supposedly Anglican things being brought into the Church are just Catholic artifacts of yesteryear---nothing specifically Anglican about them at all.
I have heard the "recovery of lost treasures" used as another justification of AC, but the addition of these further goals, while they may distract us from the fact that the actual uptake of AC has been negligible, actually weaken the case, IMHO.
