Does this happen every generation? Or is something actually different?

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MNathaniel

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I guess I’m asking for the older generations here, who have the experience of having lived across more time than I have.

I am 30 years old. And it feels like the world is, well… getting real. Like, everything is a madhouse. Every little thing seems to have obvious (and dramatic) spiritual impact. It feels like the demonic is practically visible. (For example, mass gender confusion, mass child sacrifice (abortion), mass hysteria and anger between peoples, and even within many families.)

I say this without expectation (because Jesus himself told us that even he doesn’t know the exact date of the end of the world, and for all practical purposes we should just live as if it’s the end of the world anyway, because for each individual it always is (because of the death of each individual, which always comes within several decades, no matter what)) – but honestly, and I mean this soberly, not hysterically… in many ways it seems like the world is ending. And we do know that it’s not unrealistic to imagine that the tools of its destruction are already potentialities in the world (e.g. nuclear arsenals; astronomical phenomena with destructive impacts, etc. Maybe even something to do with climate change (though personally I think humans are adaptive and that would be only one small ingredient in whatever happens).)

So I guess I’m wondering…

Does it always feel like this? In every generation? As people come of age as adults, is there always ‘something’ going on in the world, that seems like the plausible end times? Or for those who have lived through many years already, is something happening that is actually new?

PS I’m not actually bothered by the prospect; I find the stark battle lines kind of clarifying, to be honest. I mean, it’s much harder to be misled about abortion when they’re talking about still killing the kids after they’re born, than I imagine it may have been back when they talked about ‘clumps of cells’ and euphemized the whole thing. And the chaos and extremity of the anger out there sort of accelerates the realization of its wrongness, for me (and I hope for others). So if this is the end times, I don’t mind (although I still pray it isn’t, just so more humans can be born and ultimately populate heaven and live forever in union with God). Just, curious for the thoughts of our older brothers and sisters: is this sense of drama just an illusion, and we all feel this way as we meet the world as it is (however it is at the time)? E.g. I imagine during WWI or WWII people might have felt similarly. Or do you think young people today are having a different experience – like, not just different in the sense that every generation is subtly different, but that something different is actually going on, ‘out there’, spiritually…?
 
MNathaniel said:
Does it always feel like this? In every generation? As people come of age as adults, is there always ‘something’ going on in the world, that seems like the plausible end times? Or for those who have lived through many years already, is something happening that is actually new?
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Yes, it always feels like that in every generation. There is always something going on. There may be new things going on, but then they become old and something new happens, and life goes on.
 
I believe every generation has its challenges. By the time my dad was 24, he had survived the Great Depression and World War II. Just remember that God gives us the graces we need regardless of what the world throws at us.
 
MNathaniel said:
Does it always feel like this? In every generation?
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No, and no.

It is an objective fact that evil is increasing rapidly, and holiness is decreasing rapidly. I emphasize “rapidly” because there were always both good and bad things cyclicly trending up and down. But when e.g. California (where I currently live) comes up with a radically new evil idea, it spreads in no time all over the earth (thank you Internet).

Darkness has come over the media (news, Hollywood), academia (from K through PhD), and even the church. These are the major drivers for morality in this world.

The 3rd secret of Fatima (and elsewhere) said that in the last days that the big battles would be over sexuality and family. And oh how far we’ve gone downhill. I keep thinking that we’ve hit bottom, but something new keeps coming along and shows us a new bottom. How disappointed God must be in the children he loves so much.

Is this the end times? If it is, then we certainly deserve it.

Oh, by the way, have a nice day !! :cry:
 
When I feel depressed about the state of the world, I read history.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another!
 
World War II and Nazism and the Holocaust were less evil than what we’re seeing today? There is definitely great evil today…: but there’s always been great evil.
 
It happens every generation. And compared to what was going on with some of the other past generations, yours has it easy. There’s not a World War going on. There’s not even a Cold War going on.

The only thing happening here is you’re turning 30. That tends to be a time when people get acutely aware of a lot of stuff and often make a directional change in their lives.
 
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It is true that each generation has had something terrible to worry about: the WWII generation lived not only in the face of war but the Great Depression, and, in Europe, the Holocaust, and shortly thereafter the Communist purge of McCarthyism. While the 1950’s was relatively tranquil, we did have the Korean War as well as the Cold War with Russia and the continuous threat of nuclear annihilation. The 1960’s was a turbulent era, including three major assassinations: JFK, MLK, and Robert Kennedy, as well as Vietnam, the civil rights battle, and, in short order, women’s liberation and gay liberation. Today we have the constant threat of terrorism, government polarization to a remarkable degree accompanied by the spawning of extreme ideologies of the Far Left and the Far Right, and several other urgent domestic and global concerns including healthcare, superbugs, and the threat of Iran and North Korea. So I suppose each generation has had its share of major problems.
 
meltzerboy2 said:
Today we have the constant threat of terrorism
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Not really. Certainly no more so than when I was a child and the Weathermen were dropping bombs, planes getting hijacked, Ashby Leach taking over the Terminal Tower, riots breaking out on a semi-regular basis etc
governmental polarization
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Small potatoes. The only time this even affects my life is when I read a news forum. It is also likely to ease up when The Donald leaves office in either 1 or 5 years.
 
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I don’t recall a steady succession of terrorist attacks in a variety of venues including schools, colleges, shopping malls, nightclubs, and so on, by both domestic and foreign terrorists. Also, in the new form of terrorism, at least with regard to Muslim extremism, the terrorists are willing and eager to sacrifice themselves for their cause.
 
Apparently we have different memories. Or maybe it’s just that seeing my neighbor rushing out of our suburban backyard in his National Guard riot gear with a gun and seeing mayhem either in Nam or in the streets of my city on the TV every night when I was 4, 5 and 6 years old has made me jaded.
 
twf said:
World War II and Nazism and the Holocaust were less evil than what we’re seeing today? There is definitely great evil today…: but there’s always been great evil.
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WW2 had a lot of deaths involved, but the mortal sins involved were primarily to the few leaders of certain countries.

In the modern world, just in the US we’ve had 60 million innocent children killed by their own mothers through abortion since 1973.

We are currently experiencing an evil fad where children are being indoctrinated so as to question their own sex, and demand (with government support) that they have their sexes changed without parents permission.

We have drag queens giving reading lessons in public libraries with (apparently) lots of community and parent support.

Sodomy and fornication have been legitimized, pedastery and bestiality are being discussed in state legislatures.

Compared with 50 years ago, divorces are way up, single parent homes are way up, sex outside of marriage and children born out of wedlock are way up.

Men and women are being indoctrinated to hate each other, to mistrust each other, to not depend on each other, to be totally independent of each other.

The number of people who believe in God, and the number of Catholics, and the number of people who subscribe to any religion is way down.

Prayers are not allowed in schools, at football games, etc.

Catholics are being persecuted worldwide, and it’s getting worse.

The church is in the midst of crises - financial, attendance, sex abuse, theology. Cardinals and bishops are on side A and Cardinals and bishops are on side B (where A and B are opposites). Confusing statements are made in the Vatican and seem to never be clarified.

We worhip God’s created earth, and ignore the Creator.

World wars, and cold wars did not affect as many people as the sexual revolution and all it contains.

We mock God by doing everything we can NOT to “go forth and multiply” (contraception, abortion, sterilization).

We attempt to make man and woman’s “image and likeness of God” into our own image of woman and man.

And it all is becoming “normal”.

I’m not sure how it could be any worse. But I’m sure it will be after I read the newsfeeds tommorow morning.
 
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meltzerboy2 said:
I don’t recall a steady succession of terrorist attacks in a variety of venues including schools, colleges, shopping malls, nightclubs, and so on, by both domestic and foreign terrorists. Also, in the new form of terrorism, at least with regard to Muslim extremism, the terrorists are willing and eager to sacrifice themselves for their cause.
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I recall as a child of the 70s things like the Black September siege at the Munich Olympics, tcountless terrorist hijackings of airplanes, Bloody Sunday and strings of terrorist acts in the UK and Ireland … certainly felt significant and varied enough.
 
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I agree too much media, I’ve always said stuff like this has always happened. It is just more wide spread in this day and age thanks to the media and internet.
 
Many of the items people listed in above posts were things that affected people’s earthly situation in a negative sense. For example, the great depression. But those kinds of things are often opportunities to show great love in the face of adversity. They are actually good for our souls.

But our souls are much more important than things of the earth. The things I listed in the long post above lead to or contain actual mortal sins which affect whether or not we go to Heaven. And they affect people worldwide.

There are a lot of “I’m OK, you’re OK, everything is fine, nothing to see here, move along move along” sort of posts. Well, good luck with that.
 
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