The only point of mentioning Pope Francis was to posit that even a dynamic, charismatic engagement with the world backed by all the resources of the Vatican has not yielded a new evangelization. Pope Francis certainly is not responsible for the 40-50 year trends that have been repeatedly cited above.
Speaking of Pope Francis, he made this very point right at the start of his papacy in Evangelium Gaudii.
Part of the Truth is
Dreher argues that prototypical Benedict Option communities should ideally be built around monasteries and convents. That is why it is called the Benedict option.
There aren’t any. That is the problem. Case in point: Catholic Answers was founded, primarily, to defend the Church from Protestant attack and to make converts out of them (and I am one of them.) This forum is supposed to do just that. Back in the day, it worked (and I am proof.) But it doesn’t work anymore.
Although to be fair, we also have to root out our own sins and vices.
Absolutely. We can’t give what we don’t have. And that is why we have to start with ourselves and move out from there. You are supposed to evangelize your family and parish first. Emphasizing that over the world is exactly what you are supposed to do regardless of what you call it.
Here’s where it starts to go sideways. If you have the energy and drive to move your family and shape your entire lives around a monastery, you certainly have the ability to stay in your boring old local Catholic Church, volunteer for 986588964477 things and invite the 4-5 families you approve of over for dinner and picnics all the time. More boring, but better.
Nobody said that a BO community MUST be founded around a remote faithful monastery. That is the prototype because that is how St. Benedict did it.
Exactly. You nailed it.
This is an interesting analogy, and I pretty much see your point.HomeschoolDad:
Let’s say you are a father of a large family, and you have been lucky enough to get a ticket for the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. The White Star Line (popular culture) has convinced almost everyone on board that the ship is unsinkable. You decide to go see the stars one night, and so you see the ship hit the iceberg.
You promptly run under deck and tell everyone you can find that the ship may sink and that it is time to get to the lifeboats (evangelization). No one believes you until the ship begins to wobble. Now you know that you’re right. At first a lot of people believe you and they start getting on the boats. But your evangelizing is subject to diminishing returns. Worse, you realize that there aren’t enough lifeboats (the Church is running out of resources.) Even worse, the White Star Line has been very effective in thwarting your efforts and they are working on putting you in the brig.
At this point, if it was just you –if you were a priest or consecrated religious or otherwise not responsible for a family–you could just stay where you are on the Titanic (the popular culture) and try to save a few more people. But because you have a family , you have to do what is best for them, and that is getting them onto a lifeboat.
It isn’t about victory or defeat. It is about fulfilling your duties to God in your state of life.
The end of CAF is evidence that a poorly managed forum with a relatively high overhead cost is going to become a business liability as it’s failing to yield benefit on a number of levels, and it’s not surprising when it gets cancelled by management.
I’m not seeing a shrinkage in people in the pews.
In all honestly, I find it very hard to believe there are only 70 users per day on CAF when I just counted roughly 35 users of this thread alone.