Fisheaters shutting down?

[Tis_Bearself]

Americans from USA like to join movements and be part of labeled groups. It’s cultural and has been satirized in literature.
I’ve always found it a bit of a drag being labeled and put in a box, so other than the Catholic Church, Jesus/ Mary, and the United States itself, and maybe my home state and home cities, I don’t tend to pledge allegiance to groups.
Any group I am in, I will end up disagreeing with something or making some power-that-be get annoyed if I hang around long enough. It’s my nature.

 

[adgloriam]

Ohh @Tis_Bearself please allow me to clarify, the negative effects of “group sectarianism mentality” are found everywhere: e.g. communist parties in the EU historically lived of it (militants join a group unconditionally and start uncritically reproducing the groups bias) - historically anti-catholic deleterious secularism derived its cultural force from the numerical influence of such groups.

The “trad” issue is perhaps the ONLY label currently existing in the catholic church that allows for such institutional sectarianism from within the church. (So, many of those endowed with a preexisting tendency for sectarianism will have a strong tendency to label themselves as “trad” at the outset.)

I don’t tend to pledge allegiance to groups.
Any group I am in, I will end up disagreeing with something or making some power-that-be get annoyed if I hang around long enough. It’s my nature.

This is very noteworthy @Tis_Bearself and it would prompt an entire thread of its own, you’ll see most Catholics would like to join catholic laity movements but there’s a shortage of meaningful groups to join.

In western society the bodily works of mercy have largely been taken over by the Social Services, there used to be catholic laity groups (like “Catholic Action”) that functioned much like a “workers union” - most of that has largely been dismantled, for the same reasons “unions” lost their relevance during the latter 20th century.

And what are we left with?

Well, this is hard to circumscribe, but the fact is “modern western society” has fallen into a sort of generalized individualism. And that reflects on the church. Such analyses is so broad it’s mostly beyond my abilities (I find the small town parish groups unwelcoming if you’re not born and raised in that small town), suffices to say that forming any group, being a member or a leader, is a hard organizational challenge - but here, we should have to contrast the ease and vitality of communities that form and sustain groups (and perhaps the evangelical communities are somewhat iconic at that.)

 

[mathematoons]

I hope Fish Eaters shuts down. It taught me all kinds of errors—mainly, that of private judgment against the Church, the same as all Protestants. For years, because of that site (even before I saw the forums!), I was heavily influenced by the errors of traditionalism, until God gave me the grace to understand that it’s another kind of Protestantism, one made palatable to Catholics.

This error taught me nothing but discontent for what is, contrary to Scripture (e.g. Philippians 4:11-12, Hebrews 13:5). I wasted a lot of time on account of this discontent. I hope it doesn’t stick around to corrupt any more sincere Catholics.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

When I was a kid, there were still a few Catholic Laity movements that focused on prayer, fellowship, and doing some useful task like washing altar linen or volunteering for a charity every couple weeks. You also weren’t expected to go into the worst part of the city to volunteer. You could help the blind or shut-ins right in your own neighborhood.

A lot of those groups died out and the ones that remained tended to be either really politicized activist groups, charismatic groups, or the kind of prayer group where people are supposed to do a lot of personal “sharing” and be accountable in some way to the group over spiritual matters. About the only group I see going strong that doesn’t fit in these categories is Lifeteen, which obviously doesn’t work for older people.

The closest I can come to a group around here is going to Flame of Love events and similar Marian prayer groups. I’ll do a Right to Life event sometimes, but a lot of those people are very focused on that one issue and while I am pro-life I want to be doing things that are broader in scope than a Pro-Life March every month.