For Catholics living in Western countries

[carefullytread]

I was recently talking to a friend of mine who is an evangelical minister. He mentioned how his entire life, he’s been in a culture that becomes more secular each year and feels that true Christians are now a definite minority. He mentioned how even other ministers he knows talk about how they can’t raise their children to have a Christian outlook on the world, that their own children are rather thoroughly secular in their outlook and this makes him sad.

But he also commented how Christianity is entering an exciting new phase where it ceases to be tied to Western culture - he predicts the West will become thoroughly post-Christian and more or less already is - and instead becomes a religion of the Southern Hemisphere.

He even mentioned that it would be really fabulous to live in an African nation that was undergoing conversion and be in a culture that sees an ascendent Christianity rather than one in decline. He thinks the Benedict option is the only choice for those who want to live Christian lives.

It was an interesting perspective and I wondering whether any Catholics here have similar ideas. So for Catholics in secular countries, do you ever consider this? Would you encourage people who wanted to live it out?

 

[StBenedictLabre]

I was recently talking to a friend of mine who is an evangelical minister. He mentioned how his entire life, he’s been in a culture that becomes more secular each year and feels that true Christians are now a definite minority. He mentioned how even other ministers he knows talk about how they can’t raise their children to have a Christian outlook on the world, that their own children are rather thoroughly secular in their outlook and this makes him sad.

But he also commented how Christianity is entering an exciting new phase where it ceases to be tied to Western culture - he predicts the West will become thoroughly post-Christian and more or less already is - and instead becomes a religion of the Southern Hemisphere.

He even mentioned that it would be really fabulous to live in an African nation that was undergoing conversion and be in a culture that sees an ascendent Christianity rather than one in decline. He thinks the Benedict option is the only choice for those who want to live Christian lives.

It was an interesting perspective and I wondering whether any Catholics here have similar ideas. So for Catholics in secular countries, do you ever consider this? Would you encourage people who wanted to live it out?

That sure is an interesting perspective. What part of the world if you don’t mind me asking does that evangelical minister live? We sure have a problem when minister’s can’t even firmly educate the faith in their children. One day, I think, please God not for a long time or better still not ever, the Southern Hemisphere too will have lost the faith massively and Christians there will live in the circumstances we live in, in Western countries today, which are not bad by any means when you think of Christians in the Middle East. I think things are yet to get worse here and I think they will, but that’s another day’s story. I think it would be joyous to live in a fervently Catholic or even a Christian society and of course that is what we all as Christians would desire. That would be good. However, I don’t think it’s the right option to support that guy’s view or idea.

Our job in the West and what I think God is calling us all to, regardless of how our society is comprised, whether it be secular or not is to live as witnesses to the faith. By this manner, many souls are drawn and are still being drawn to live good Christian lives in the West. We should never give up praying for the West or hoping that the West will change around again and I don’t think those in the West should leave and pack off to those fervently Christian societies, as we would lose that element of living where we are and bearing witness to the faith. We need, more then ever, to provide a Christian alternative in the West to the current system of governance, which people are already sick off. How many souls are searching for Christianity still? Our job is to draw them to it. Just because our religion isn’t a majority doesn’t mean we can’t live it effectively. We should not be too concerned in that sense with numbers and majority’s and so forth. So I would disagree strongly that living where your faith is the majority is the only option. I’m a Manchester City fan but just because my soccer team isn’t the most highly supported in my country doesn’t mean I can’t live there and support my team strongly. I sure don’t feel any need to pack off to Manchester now and I don’t feel I’ll ever need to…

 

[anon67074017]

I think that the West should remain Christian. Christianity has held Western civilization up since Roman times. It is great that these other regions are becoming Christian. They should have the West to support them.

 

[Xantippe]

I was recently talking to a friend of mine who is an evangelical minister. He mentioned how his entire life, he’s been in a culture that becomes more secular each year and feels that true Christians are now a definite minority. He mentioned how even other ministers he knows talk about how they can’t raise their children to have a Christian outlook on the world, that their own children are rather thoroughly secular in their outlook and this makes him sad.

But he also commented how Christianity is entering an exciting new phase where it ceases to be tied to Western culture - he predicts the West will become thoroughly post-Christian and more or less already is - and instead becomes a religion of the Southern Hemisphere.

He even mentioned that it would be really fabulous to live in an African nation that was undergoing conversion and be in a culture that sees an ascendent Christianity rather than one in decline. He thinks the Benedict option is the only choice for those who want to live Christian lives.

It was an interesting perspective and I wondering whether any Catholics here have similar ideas. So for Catholics in secular countries, do you ever consider this? Would you encourage people who wanted to live it out?

1. If the Benedict Option means anything, it doesn’t mean running off to Africa. There could be excellent reasons to go to Africa, but leaving for there in the belief that real Christianity is only to be found there is odd and looks a lot like deserting.
2. Raising pastor’s children to be good Christians and dealing with the embarrassment when they’re not is a perennial Protestant problem.
3. I live in the South and we have a strongly Christian local culture. Is it perfect? No. But it is definitely Christian, and many people of good will are trying hard to build a functional Christian culture.
4. I dislike the “true Christian” language. That’s not a Catholic way of thinking. If you’re baptized, you’re Christian.
5. I agree that it is very interesting to see the growth of Christianity in non-European cultures–but I think your friend is forgetting East Asia. We have friends who are Korean Protestants, and it is very interesting to see that it is possible to have a non-European Christianity and to see how it does and does not resemble American Christianity. For instance, our friends don’t celebrate Halloween–but why should they?
6. African countries (even very Christian African countries) have problems of their own, just as we have our problems.
7. Decline, even if it is present, is a very slow process. Christianity has been in decline in the Middle East for 1.5 millennia.
8. It might be helpful to think of certain dominant ideas in the West as Christian heresies, rather than as being completely wrong. There is often a real truth that is being given a false overemphasis, rather than something totally untrue. G.K. Chesterton wrote about this.

 

[Xantippe]

I found a relevant quote from a Protestant blogger I enjoy. Here’s what she says about the Benedict Option:

"It is a catchy phrase popularized by Rod “Crunchy Con never took off, so I’m trying again” Dreher. He’s turning it into a book, but the short version is that Christians should aspire to live in intentional communities like the Benedictines started out as, but without the celibacy, holiness, infrastructure and properly ordered hierarchy of authority figures.

“This blog (which is also going to become several books, but not before Mr. Dreher’s one comes out, though) is at least partly meant to be about how Christians, conservatives and conservative Christians can do something like a “Benedict Option” in a serious way. What infrastructure is needed, what does the village need to look like, what institutions do we need to form or revive, and so on. Practical, real questions that as I work through the ideas in blog form to make my book outlines will come to have practical, real answers.”

thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/what-is-the-benedict-option/

 

[Anglewannabe]

Everyone has an opinion of what the world is coming to. And only God can predict the future.

He even mentioned that it would be really fabulous to live in an African nation that was undergoing conversion and be in a culture that sees an ascendent Christianity rather than one in decline. He thinks the Benedict option is the only choice for those who want to live Christian lives.

That quote really rubs me the wrong way. This person’s point of view is no better than the next. If he feels it is the choice for him, that is one thing, but to insist it is the only way to go is ridiculous. The most exciting thing is to do God’s will period. You don’t have to be where all the ‘cool kids’ are to do that

Angie

 

[sticknstring73]

While I appreciate Rod Dreher’s ideas I think that we are called to have courage in our faith and stand firm in the faith. Yes society is more secular but this isn’t Yemen yet and they aren’t coming for our heads.

The thing that gets me about the Evangelical ministers problem is that he wants his child to be Christian on his schedule not God’s schedule. The earthly power of this church seems to be coming from converts and people who come to love God later in life. It’s unfortunate for him that his children have drifted away from faith but there is nothing showing that they won’t return. I pray for Christians with children because their burden is heavy in many different ways (Luke 23:28-30).

Who are we to turn down God’s challenges, no matter how difficult?

 

[Augustine]

One day, I think, please God not for a long time or better still not ever, the Southern Hemisphere too will have lost the faith massively and Christians there will live in the circumstances we live in, in Western countries today…

Sorry to break this to you, but, as a Brazilian, I can tell you that the Faith is Latin America has been decimated about as badly as in the developed countries (to call these the West is a misnomer, since all of the Americas and Europe, including their underdeveloped countries, share the same Western culture).

Surveys point out that 1 in 3 or 4 Catholics have abandoned the Faith in the US. In the last generation, the Catholic population of Latin America dropped from over 90% to about 60%.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for the Americas.

 

[Augustine]

I think that the West should remain Christian. Christianity has held Western civilization up since Roman times.

The Western Civilization is no more. What we have has not been a Christian culture for over a generation now and it is not worth saving, but destroying, much like the Roman culture.

Pax Christi

 

[StBenedictLabre]

Sorry to break this to you, but, as a Brazilian, I can tell you that the Faith is Latin America has been decimated about as badly as in the developed countries (to call these the West is a misnomer, since all of the Americas and Europe, including their underdeveloped countries, share the same Western culture).

Surveys point out that 1 in 3 or 4 Catholics have abandoned the Faith in the US. In the last generation, the Catholic population of Latin America dropped from over 90% to about 60%.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for the Americas.

I knew that. How sad all the same. I didn’t differentiate in my post between Latin America and the African Southern Hemisphere, which I meant to do. Apologies for that.

 

[Augustine]

But he also commented how Christianity is entering an exciting new phase where it ceases to be tied to Western culture - he predicts the West will become thoroughly post-Christian and more or less already is - and instead becomes a religion of the Southern Hemisphere.

Christianity has been in the Southern hemisphere for about five centuries. The culture in Latin America is still largely Christian, much more than in the pagan North America, if he can at least acknowledge that a Catholic culture is as Christian as it gets.

He even mentioned that it would be really fabulous to live in an African nation that was undergoing conversion and be in a culture that sees an ascendent Christianity rather than one in decline.

If anything, the history of the Christianity has been one of ebbs and flows, if only he acknowledges that the 2000 year old Catholic Church is as Christian as it gets.

He thinks the Benedict option is the only choice for those who want to live Christian lives.

I tend to agree, but the Benedictine movement cannot possibly be repeated 15 centuries later without adaptations. For one, in a society that is not reproducing itself, families, not individuals, will have to form nucleus of the Christian Faith. On another point, it’s virtually impossible to be isolated geographically from the society at large, be it because of telecommunications or because of fast means of transportation. I have not seen a viable, contemporary Benedict Option being proposed that hasn’t fallen in the traps of repeating previous movements that fit very well their times and scales, but that do address the difficulties or the scale of our times.

So for Catholics in secular countries, do you ever consider this? Would you encourage people who wanted to live it out?

Yes, to both questions, especially because I haven’t seen a proposal that would actually work in our times, so we need all the creativity that we can muster.

For the time being, to be a faithful Catholic - not yet another Evangelical Protestant - in a strong parish community is as counter cultural as we can be.

Pax Christi

 

[carefullytread]

Yes, to both questions, especially because I haven’t seen a proposal that would actually work in our times, so we need all the creativity that we can muster.

For the time being, to be a faithful Catholic - not yet another Evangelical Protestant - in a strong parish community is as counter cultural as we can be.

Pax Christi

What do you mean by proposal that will work?

I think what my friend means (though I’m guessing here) is that he personally yearns to be in a community in which Christianity is ascendant meaning it is actively shaping the culture and looks like the way of the future.

In his opinion, secularism has already won in the West and we’re just in a period where the cultural inertia means that you get things like modern Sweden, where 65% of people are officially in the Church of Sweden, but only 17% believe in God, 10% say religion is important, and 2% are regular church goers.

It’s quite like that in the United States. In fact, he thinks the growth of Evangelicals in the United States is a great sign. But for him, the realignment of Christianity from being a big tent religion to a smaller, more devout core of Evangelicals is still a situation in which Christians are minority who persist despite their culture rather than shape where the culture goes. So, yes, being a devout Catholic is pretty counter-cultural in Texas, but I think my friend would say being a devout evangelical is counter cultural with the West more generally, even if in parts of the South it is ‘the culture’.

Speaking of the future of Christianity in United States, this article reminds me of the sombre state of Catholicism here.

For him, the Benedict option is the only chose to avoid that culture if you stay here, but he says that has, in a sense, a pessimistic view. And you don’t have to pessimist about the future of Christianity; you can be an optimist, but the optimism is in Africa (and China?), not in the West.

I don’t know what I think about all that, but I was curious what people here might be thinking.

 

[Augustine]

I think what my friend means (though I’m guessing here) is that he personally yearns to be in a community in which Christianity is ascendant meaning it is actively shaping the culture and looks like the way of the future.

That’s his first idealization. The Benedictines didn’t get to see the fruit of their labors for about 4 centuries. Such false expectations inevitably lead to disillusionment and cannot possibly work, especially if the results, the reshaping of a culture, will take generations to make an impact.

For him, the Benedict option is the only chose to avoid that culture if you stay here, but he says that has, in a sense, a pessimistic view. And you don’t have to pessimist about the future of Christianity; you can be an optimist, but the optimism is in Africa (and China?), not in the West.

Both the pessimism and the optimism are in you, not in a geographical area. This illusion that over there, wherever there is, is better than here reeks of the illusion of the greener grass on the other side of the fence.

Of course, being an Evangelical, he perhaps despairs, if only a little, because he has no concept of martyrdom, the greatest witness of all. In this sense, the West is a good place to be a Christian, if only the Lord deems us worthy of such a grace: to become the seed of Christians.

Pax Christi

 

[Xantippe]

What do you mean by proposal that will work?

I think what my friend means (though I’m guessing here) is that he personally yearns to be in a community in which Christianity is ascendant meaning it is actively shaping the culture and looks like the way of the future.

In his opinion, secularism has already won in the West and we’re just in a period where the cultural inertia means that you get things like modern Sweden, where 65% of people are officially in the Church of Sweden, but only 17% believe in God, 10% say religion is important, and 2% are regular church goers.

It’s quite like that in the United States. In fact, he thinks the growth of Evangelicals in the United States is a great sign. But for him, the realignment of Christianity from being a big tent religion to a smaller, more devout core of Evangelicals is still a situation in which Christians are minority who persist despite their culture rather than shape where the culture goes. So, yes, being a devout Catholic is pretty counter-cultural in Texas, but I think my friend would say being a devout evangelical is counter cultural with the West more generally, even if in parts of the South it is ‘the culture’.

Speaking of the future of Christianity in United States, this article reminds me of the sombre state of Catholicism here.

For him, the Benedict option is the only chose to avoid that culture if you stay here, but he says that has, in a sense, a pessimistic view. And you don’t have to pessimist about the future of Christianity; you can be an optimist, but the optimism is in Africa (and China?), not in the West.

I don’t know what I think about all that, but I was curious what people here might be thinking.

I think your friend wants to be on the winning team, like those people that buy a t-shirt of whatever country won the World Cup.

That’s human, but not very edifying.

 

[Yeoman]

I was recently talking to a friend of mine who is an evangelical minister. He mentioned how his entire life, he’s been in a culture that becomes more secular each year and feels that true Christians are now a definite minority. He mentioned how even other ministers he knows talk about how they can’t raise their children to have a Christian outlook on the world, that their own children are rather thoroughly secular in their outlook and this makes him sad.

But he also commented how Christianity is entering an exciting new phase where it ceases to be tied to Western culture - he predicts the West will become thoroughly post-Christian and more or less already is - and instead becomes a religion of the Southern Hemisphere.

He even mentioned that it would be really fabulous to live in an African nation that was undergoing conversion and be in a culture that sees an ascendent Christianity rather than one in decline. He thinks the Benedict option is the only choice for those who want to live Christian lives.

It was an interesting perspective and I wondering whether any Catholics here have similar ideas. So for Catholics in secular countries, do you ever consider this? Would you encourage people who wanted to live it out?

I was wondering if we had a Benedict Option thread somewhere here on the forum. Maybe this is a good place to start one, if there isn’t.

Anyhow, so I don’t engage in thread hijacking, a couple of things.

For one thing, I think that while we clearly live in a time in which the Church’s influence has waned and seems to be waning, and in which there’s a full scale assault going on from the entertainment media and popular culture on Christian values, it’s easy to become overcome by the immediate and fail to take a more realistic long view. If we did that, I think we’d find:

1. Things aren’t as bad as they seem. In spite of everything, the basic Christian world view actually is the view that dominates the West.
2. History takes a long time to cycle anything. Something is going on in the culture and its not exactly clear what, but I suspect its a delayed impact of the horror and killing of World War Two combined with the vast increase of wealth in the Western World post 1950. When we look at history, real developments often take a century or more. Indeed, Vatican II was called in part because there was a concern over what WWII would mean to faith. We don’t really know how this all plays out, but what we do know is;
3. Real radical social views are vested in the Baby Boomer demographic. Everywhere, including in the pews, the younger generations, including the Millennials, are conservative if informed. Talk to young people in your parish and you’ll find that they are the ones who bristle at the guitar Mass, want a more traditional service, etc. My point is, while things are bad right now, it might just be the bulge in the snake. This doesn’t apply to all young people; but;

1. A lot of them are casualties of the revolutions of their Boomer parents. They’re not rebels, they’re lost, and;
2. Things have been bad before. If you read t he lives of the saints you’ll find all sorts of accounts of Priests who went into unobservant towns in an unobservant region and turned things around. God will do that for us.

Finally, I’d note, there’s a certain irony here in that Rod Dreher, who wrote the Benedict Option, isn’t a Catholic (he once was). He speaks like a Catholic, but he’s Orthodox as he lost his Catholic faith as a reporter during the priest abuse scandals. I note that, as he’s sort of retreated towards the separate and more traditional. I’m not trying to critique Dreher here, but I think it’s ironic that his book (which I haven’t read) includes traditional Protestantism in his “option”. I note that, as in some ways if you really want to know how we got to where we are now, with all this “choice” and “lifestyle” stuff, you can lay it right at the feet of John Calvin. Calvin went where even Luther wouldn’t with deciding that anybody can decide what things mean and you don’t need to take it from higher authority. No doubt, he didn’t see it that way, but once he determined he didn’t need a Magisterium, well it’s a short 500 year trip to churches whose basic view is that Christianity just means its nice to be nice to the nice. . . and we’re all very nice.

I note that as, while I know I’m taking a hard line on it (I’m for the Nicholas Option, or maybe the Constantine Option) I think that protestants concerned over these issues need to renounce the Protestant Rebellion and come home, and Catholic clerics who are liberal need to get with the program and get orthodox, and that Catholics in general need to start taking a leadership and direct role publicly.

In other words, if you sit next to Justice Kennedy at Mass go ahead and say it; “Anthony, you’re a disgrace and better get things straightened out personally and professionally”.