Sectarianism vs. Evangelism

[Bubba_Switzler]

I was thinking through the implications of the “death of marriage” in another thread by the name and described my temptation toward sectarianism.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=611109

And now I’m curious about the the choice itself:

For purposes of discussion I’ll pose the alternatives as sectarianism vs. evangelism. (And by posing it this way I don’t mean to imply that it’s all of one or the other.)

Marriage is dying. How ought one to respond?

One approach, which I will call evangelism, would be to go out and try to convince others of the value of marriage and try to turn things around in the general population.

The other approach, which I will call sectarianism, is to huddle together with those who still value marriage, insure that one’s children get married, and generally insulate oneself from the negative impact of the death of marriage in the general society.

Now, again, one can mix the two strategies. But even so if you go the sectarian route you will make very different decisions than if you try to evangelize marriage.

And it occurs to me that this is a more common phenomenon. There are many behaviors, crime genially, that we simply seek to protect ourselves either because there is no realistic prospect of changing minds or because minds change slowly in comparison to the harm that bad choices cause.

Now we come to the question of charity. How much of our charity should be directed toward helping people who are making bad or harmful choices? Should we help poor Catholic families send their kids to Catholic school or help the children of broken marriages?

Many such questions arise from the competing strategies of sectarianism and evangelism. Perhaps the simplest way to put it is at what point do you give up on a segment of society that is perpetuating bad choices?

 

[Semper_Zelare]

EXCELLENT post. I say that, because I was reflecting on this very issue and wanted to post on it. But, I didn’t really have the words to convey this kind of situation.

Earlier tonight at our RCIA meeting, the nun who was teaching the class mentioned briefly that John XXIII was the Pope who did away with this “fortress mentality” in the Church. And really opened up a spirit of ecumenism through Vatican II.

So… in our RCIA the terms were “fortress mentality” vs. “ecumenism”

I myself would have to lean on the fortress mentality side. Or the sectarian side. Now… another term that gets thrown around Catholic publications, and on the web refers to a problem with this approach called the “Catholic ghetto”.

I look forward to the posts on this thread, it should be an interesting discussion.

Putting my feelings in a nutshell, my :twocents: would be that Catholics need to reject the world by forming strong communities. We need to reject individualism and once again rely on strength of numbers for our faith. In an individualistic society, it seems poorly catechized Catholics are quickly becoming lapsed Catholics. So, in marriage we would focus on our own. In terms of evangelism, I think if we just catechize all the Catholics who can’t defend their faith… eventually that will translate into evangelism of non Catholics.

If that wasn’t much of a nutshell, here goes: the problems the Church faces are internal. We need to first get non-practicing Catholics to practice. We need to first get Catholics who disagree with Church teachings to understand the beauty and truth in the orthodox teachings of the Church. Then, we go out and evangelize.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

Earlier tonight at our RCIA meeting, the nun who was teaching the class mentioned briefly that John XXIII was the Pope who did away with this “fortress mentality” in the Church. And really opened up a spirit of ecumenism through Vatican II. So… in our RCIA the terms were “fortress mentality” vs. “ecumenism”

Yes, I recall those terms now and it’s not exactly the same as what I was thinking but petty close.

I think “fortress mentality” was much more of a defensive posture and attitude. And ecumenism is much more about softening orthodox theology, or at least the presentation of theology, in order to find commonality with non-Catholics, e.g. Protestants and Jews.

But my thoughts are much more on the practical side of things. If, for example, marriage is in trouble as an institution and if marriage proves to be a dividing line between more and less successful segments of the population (i.e. children of married families tend to be more successful financially, staying out of jail, etc.) then to what extent ought Catholics let those rejecting marriage suffer their fate and just look to maintaining the practice of life-long marriage among Catholics. (The obvious problem with that is that the children of those rejecting marriage are suffering for the choice of their parents and it seems rather cold-hearted to abandon them.)