Moral Decline

[LoveMorrissey]

First of all my sincere apologies if I have posted in the wrong thread - I’m new here

I would love to know what people think of the “moral decline” of Western society? I live in the UK where Church numbers are dwindling and I fear that materialism and drug addiction will takeover.

How do we win these people back to God? And how do we once again live a Christian life?

Andrew

 

[captainmike]

there’s nothing wrong with the West that a depression or world war wouldn’t solve. Either of those would get us on our knees.

 

[Hobbes42]

The West is it were, has been in steady decline ever since the Enlightenment.

Thanks to Bacon, science has become cloven from faith. Thanks to Nietzsche, objectivism has become the norm. Thanks to Descarte, solipsism has become the norm.

Thanks to the Enlightenment, we have the steady corruption in European culture (A better way of putting it, the West is only west if you’re looking at it from Asia)

 

[John_Martin]

“Western Society” is not the Kingdom of God, the Catholic Church, and it never was this. Western society is a conglomeration of kingdoms of this world that are making, and always have made, their cultures based on human appetites.

The remarkable fact is that there are citizens of the Kingdom of God living in all these kingdoms of this world. And you, in RCIA, are actively going to be one of these citizens of the Kingdom of God living in the midst of a kingdom of this world. You will be salt and light in the darkness of western society.

 

[JackVk]

“Western Society” is not the Kingdom of God, the Catholic Church, and it never was this. Western society is a conglomeration of kingdoms of this world that are making, and always have made, their cultures based on human appetites.

The remarkable fact is that there are citizens of the Kingdom of God living in all these kingdoms of this world. And you, in RCIA, are actively going to be one of these citizens of the Kingdom of God living in the midst of a kingdom of this world. You will be salt and light in the darkness of western society.

Whenever I see Hillaire Belloc’s quote, “Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe”, I want to scream. That statement can’t be more wrong. People were no less sinful 50, 500, or 5000 years ago than they are today.

I think many Catholics these days, overcompensating against Progressivism, have gone to the opposite extreme of imagining the past as a moral golden age. As all Thomists know ( which means it’s pretty much a secret), you can’t take the polar opposite of a vice and tag it as a virtue. The supposed golden ages were just as full of hedonism and corruption. I would say it was even worse then than it is today, since popes and bishops and priests were unapologetic lechers and thieves back in Medieval times.

 

[PietroPaolo]

First of all my sincere apologies if I have posted in the wrong thread - I’m new here

I would love to know what people think of the “moral decline” of Western society? I live in the UK where Church numbers are dwindling and I fear that materialism and drug addiction will takeover.

How do we win these people back to God? And how do we once again live a Christian life?

Andrew

The decline of “western society” is the result of the Protestant Reformation which shattered Christendom. The inability of Europe to solve the Protestant crisis lead directly to the rise of Reason (now seen in opposition to Faith, which no one could agree on anymore) during the Enlightenment and, later, of atheism, which leads to hedonism (“moral decline”). How do we turn the tide? One soul at a time. There is no other way.

 

[JackVk]

The decline of “western society” is the result of the Protestant Reformation which shattered Christendom. The inability of Europe to solve the Protestant crisis lead directly to the rise of Reason (now seen in opposition to Faith, which no one could agree on anymore) during the Enlightenment and, later, of atheism, which leads to hedonism (“moral decline”). How do we turn the tide? One soul at a time. There is no other way.

I don’t mean to be a religious masochist, but I think the Catholic Church was partly responsible for the Reformation. Luther, Calvin, and company were disillusioned by the hierarchy’s worldliness. Had they been leading holy lives, I think the Reformation could have been resolved.

 

[Hobbes42]

Whenever I see Hillaire Belloc’s quote, “Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe”, I want to scream. That statement can’t be more wrong. People were no less sinful 50, 500, or 5000 years ago than they are today.

I think many Catholics these days, overcompensating against Progressivism, have gone to the opposite extreme of imagining the past as a moral golden age. As all Thomists know ( which means it’s pretty much a secret), you can’t take the polar opposite of a vice and tag it as a virtue. The supposed golden ages were just as full of hedonism and corruption. I would say it was even worse then than it is today, since popes and bishops and priests were unapologetic lechers and thieves back in Medieval times.

I don’t think a lot of people realize this when the speak so fondly of the ‘old days’. It’s in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun”.

The old times were just as evil, corrupt, and hedonistic as our current age is. Why otherwise would God have needed the Prophets?

They weren’t there to advise agricultural irrigation policy, let me tell you…

 

[LoveMorrissey]

Some really persuasive and interesting answers everyone thank you.