The church will become small ...She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built [like CAF]

[MarysLurker]

Wait, you couldn’t possibly understand just because you lived it

I lived the “bubble option” in a small Pentecostal Protestant grade school until second grade, whereupon I was severely verbally abused by the staff. So I happen to know the difference between a bubble and the Benedict Option. The differences have been thoroughly explained above.

A bubble environment of total separation from the world does not work. We all know that. No one is advocating that. So all of you can please stop bringing it up now.

 

[RobertAdams]

Sorry to hear about your experiences that must have been tough

 

[MarysLurker]

Sorry to hear about your experiences that must have been tough

Thanks. It is tough to think about even today.

 

[JMMJ]

But if children are formed in a Catholic environment from cradle to college, and equipped with apologetics and vocational formation, they will be ready to deal with the “real world” because they will know how to answer its lies and kick peer pressure to the curb. Most importantly, they will be given an optimal opportunity to discern and enter their vocation (e.g. marriage) before the world can destroy it

Interesting theory, but not true from what I have observed over the years. Would love some unbiased statistics for this claim.

 

[JMMJ]

A bubble environment of total separation from the world does not work. We all know that. No one is advocating that. So all of you can please stop bringing it up now.

Your post enumerating the steps to take are about as close to a bubble as one can get.

 

[MarysLurker]

Your post enumerating the steps to take are about as close to a bubble as one can get.

All Catholics were raised this way before the 1960s. Nobody called it a bubble.

Interesting theory, but not true from what I have observed over the years. Would love some unbiased statistics for this claim.

Just look at the Church in America before the 1960s. We recognized that we were different. So we had Catholic schools and Catholic colleges that actually prioritized their identity as such.

Nobody struggled with finding someone to marry because Catholics married each other. There were tons of vocations, too. Everyone was normal. The laypeople got normal jobs and lived normal lives in the world while keeping a healthy distance from its ways.

Of course the world treated us with suspicion and contempt because we were different. We have to learn to embrace that again because doing so is accepting reality.L

 

[GKMotley]

And…the DCF forum is back.

It was a technical thingy.

 

[Margaret_Ann]

That’s why I never became a Patron. I was suspended once or twice and have had my posts flagged without any reason given as to why they were flagged. And there’s a VERY limited window of time in which to appeal to the mods (which from what I’ve seen are gone now).

I’ve always appreciated your posts even though I occasionally disagreed with you. And that’s the way it should be imo.

 

[ralfyman]

I’m referring to this point: “This is why you see high inflation or even hyperinflation in many of the countries you think of as ‘poor.’ And many of these countries host secular socialist governments.”

The Philippines does not have high inflation, hyperinflation, or even a “secular socialist” government but a U.S.-style republic. Nigeria has high inflation but not hyperinflation or even a socialist government but a federal republic.

Also, for countries like the Philippines, even if you were to double min. wage, it will only take up 25 pct of profits (not revenues) of businesses with 15 or more employees. That means prices don’t even have to go up (which should be the case because the Philippines has some of the highest rates for fuel, electricity, medicine, and other needs in the region) but sales will. So what’s stopping the government from increasing wages? The Philippine government is not socialist but U.S.-style neoliberalist, which means it favors the rich. That’s why an estimated 74 pct of national economic growth in the Philippines goes to only the hundred richest families in the country. It’s similar in the U.S., where something like 10 pct of the population control much of the economy.

That means the cause of lack of consumption isn’t high prices but low wages. You ignored that and then moved on to talking about industrialized countries in 1950, and even that point is questionable.

Finally, about your new point (real wages), I think the reason why secularism boomed even with real wages barely going up is the amount in wages still far exceeds the cost of living. That is, given the same lifestyle and work, the cost of living in the U.S. would be twice that of the Philippines but the ave. wage ten times higher. Meanwhile, the cost of living in the Philippines would be around 25 pct higher than in Nigeria but the ave. wage twice as high.

 

[MarysLurker]

The Philippines does not have high inflation, hyperinflation, or even a “secular socialist” government but a U.S.-style republic.

The Philippine government is not socialist but U.S.-style neoliberalist, which means it favors the rich.

Duterte is a neoliberal? Sorry. He and his party are democratic socialists. Remember what I said about

Rather, the decline in religiosity has been correlated with a rise in socialism and especially the Sexual Revolution.

Well, there you go.

This discussion about economics and secularism is interesting but we are now far away from the original topic, which is whether the closure of CAF (not economic consumption or whatnot) foretells of institutional consolidation for the Church in the real world. If you want to continue this discussion please start a new topic referencing @MarysLurker (and make it quick because I will probably be gone in a week or so, and the whole forum will be gone in three.)

 

[puer.dei]

the mods (which from what I’ve seen are gone now).

No, they’re here.

 

[MarysLurker]

While I am not quite sure what you mean by “retention”, I answered about our parishioners in post #160. We do not implant tracking chips when a baby is baptised Some parishioners have kids who grow up and stay in the area, some have kids who move away.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to neglect your last reply.

Your local church sounds like it is quite healthy. Not to be nosy, but I can deduce it is in one of two possible places, and in both of those, the Church is competing against a dominant hostile Protestant culture that is holding its ground. That gives your parish an advantage because the terrain is not thoroughly secular. But the engagement of the families is the key to success and since you have that going, the only challenge is to keep it going as secularism replaces Protestantism. Once that happens your parish will likely naturally become a strong Catholic enclave.

Well done! And may God bless your efforts.

 

[MarysLurker]

Margaret_Ann:

the mods (which from what I’ve seen are gone now).

No, they’re here.

Yes, the Mods are still here. But a lot of the good people are leaving and are being replaced by a lot of last minute former lurkers (good people) and trolls (not so good.)

 

[EssentialBeing]

The problem is not us. It is the world.

Yes I can understand how you feel & agree to some extent that community starts with family. However it seems like a withdrawal on our part as we leave many innocent Catholics behind. It is not as simple to just simply retreat back into our own tribes, as the church has always taught to stand in the face of adversity & spread the word of our lord to whoever will listen. And yes maybe those fringe Catholics don’t want to listen but that is not the point.

Our faults don’t excuse the faults of the world, but still…

That is right & to add to that, with great respect to my fellow Catholics, the fact that our congregations are getting smaller may very well be our own doing, at the very least we must consider our own shortcomings as well.

 

[ralfyman]

It’s just a label. The PDP-Laban is actually a liberal democratic party that’s been promoting pro-U.S. liberal democracy since 1986. It’s the same for the Liberal Party, which actually promotes partial protectionism and tried to form alliances with leftist groups.

As this article reveals, political parties in the country are nothing more than platforms for winning in elections.

How Duterte's political style is hurting PDP-Laban in 2019

It is also symptomatic of the weak political party system in the Philippines, he added.

“It is actually more consistent with how Philippine politics is actually conducted. Political parties are little more than platforms for political coalitions for elections. That parties closely identified with President Duterte are presenting contending slates reflects how local political norms and structures in the Philippines, which are fundamentally personalistic in nature, have been superimposed on a feeble political party system which are also largely, if not wholly, driven by personalities at the national level,” Kraft said.

If you look at the slates, you will see that many politicians are showbiz and sports entertainers, relatives of the same, relatives of famous but departed personalities (which means they win thanks to necro-politics), members of political dynasties (making up something like 70 pct of the Lower House), and part of various alliances not based on ideology (political or even economic). Selection of officials is not based on ideology but on cults of personality, if not regional preferences.

Also, you’re probably not aware of this, but Duterte joined the party as a matter of convenience. So did most of the Liberal Party.

Given that and my previous points, we can conclude that the rise of secularism has less to do with the rise of socialism than with the growth of neoliberalism, i.e., industrialization leading to globalization. This especially applies to countries which are considered the next hope of the Catholic Church.

With that, we should expect that Church to become bigger as more people from Africa, Asia, and Latin America join it, and then become smaller for the same reasons as those in North America and Europe.

 

[MarysLurker]

Yes I can understand how you feel & agree to some extent that community starts with family. However it seems like a withdrawal on our part as we leave many innocent Catholics behind. It is not as simple to just simply retreat back into our own tribes, as the church has always taught to stand in the face of adversity & spread the word

I’ve posted CA’s model for evangelization before. And it does indeed start with our own tribes. Doing do does not constitute or imply a retreat from anything. It is simply the correct way to evangelize and the one proven most effective. I’ll quote from it at length.

The Five Circles of Evangelization | Catholic Answers Magazine

The Circles of Evangelization include five concentric circles, ranging from the most important to the least important. Each circle builds upon the next, so you can’t skip one of the first circles to reach a later circle.

Circle 1: Yourself​

… We must first evangelize ourselves. This doesn’t mean that all we need to do is live our faith and people will magically convert. Evangelization has to include sharing our faith. But if we don’t convert ourselves each day to Christ, we won’t be an effective evangelizer. Moreover, if we are truly and radically living our faith, we won’t need to find people to evangelize; they will come to us asking why we live the way we do.

Circle 2: Family​

Families are the school of holiness. It’s in families that vocations are born and saints made. In our efforts to evangelize, charity really does begin at home. If you are a parent, the bulk of your evangelization work must be directed at your children, starting at their births and not ending until death. Even if you are not a parent, you still can work at family evangelization. These are the people you are stuck with for life, for better or worse. Likewise, these are the primary people God put in your life to influence for him.

Circle 3: Parish​

The next circle might appear counterintuitive at first; after all, don’t you attend your parish to grow in your own faith? That’s true, but the reality is that many at your parish are in desperate need of evangelization. They are also, in a way, “low-hanging fruit” of evangelization, for they already have an attachment to Catholicism—at least enough of an attachment to attend a parish.

One of the largest “religious” groups in America is former Catholics. At some point in their lives they were members of a parish, but, for one reason or another, they fell away from the practice of the Faith. How many would have stayed if a fellow parishioner had evangelized them? Many who still identify as Catholic receive the sacraments only irregularly. By emphasizing the importance of the sacraments to others in our parishes—particularly, by talking about how much they impact us —we can evangelize these somewhat-practicing Catholics.
(Next)

 

[MarysLurker]

(Previous)

Circle 4: Community​

Many people, particularly introverts, may feel like they don’t have a very large sphere of influence. But unless you’ve been living as a hermit for the past thirty years, it’s unlikely that’s true. Consider your past week: how many people did you encounter? You interacted with multiple people at work; you briefly talked to the young lady at the grocery checkout; you laughed with other parents at your son’s Little League game; and you said hello to your neighbor when you were pulling out of the driveway. In everyday life, we meet and interact with dozens of people each week.

So, how do we evangelize them? Consider Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. She was coming to the well to draw water, and Christ used that simple activity as a springboard to talking about eternal truths. “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10).

We too can use everyday activities to talk about spiritual realities. We don’t have to be preachy about it; in fact, talking about our faith should be as ordinary as talking about our favorite hobby or sports team. These everyday encounters can be the foundation of an effective evangelization apostolate.

Circle 5: The World​

… this is the final Circle of Evangelization because it is the least important for the individual Catholic. You likely won’t convert thousands, and probably aren’t called to do so, but you can help with the conversion of those around you.

Most people who are enthusiastic for evangelization want to jump into this fifth circle immediately. But without the foundation of the first four circles, work done in this circle will be for naught. I’m friends with a well-known Catholic evangelist whose work has impacted tens of thousands of people. But what I’m most impressed with about him is that all of his children have embraced the Catholic faith in their adult lives. This evangelist understood that if he ignored the work of the second circle, his work in this fifth would be meaningless. So before you want to jump on social media to defend the Church, be sure to keep your own house in order by evangelizing in the first four circles.

You can tell that, for the most part, the Church is doing things completely backwards and the statistics from Pew and CARA represent that. We need to go back to square one and evangelize ourselves, our families and our parishes. Like CA says, even without deliberately going into the community or world, they will see us and how we genuinely live the Faith and come to us.

 

[Fets]

As you mentioned the Benedict Option, I would suggest to join the Benedict Option Discussion Group on Facebook. I think the name is now Live Not By Lies Discussion Group, Rod Dreher’s most recent book.

Here’s a link here:

Log into Facebook

 

[MarysLurker]

I don’t use Facebook, but glad there is a group discussing these things. If only there were more people who were aware of how bad things are getting. I suppose that unless you have young children, it is harder to notice how inhospitable the culture has become to them.

 

[JimG]

I’m afraid that for quite awhile now we have been like the frog in the pan being brought slowly to a boil. When the culture gets so depraved, we hardly notice each new thing.