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

[MarysLurker]

The Facebook DCF group says that there is a technical problem that they are working on

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

I did hear that tidbit from a member I recruited for the board, years back. I was guessing another hostile attack.

It looks like DCF was running old software. That’s what happens when you don’t stay up to date. And if they can’t afford to modernize… well… sigh.

 

[MarysLurker]

Our parish is taking evangelization and discipleship very seriously, as is our entire Diocese. We are having Ananias Training here and across the Diocese.

Which diocese? Maybe we need to move!

 

[MarysLurker]

I was the other. But the regulars were registered and numerous.

So there you have it, another successful small Catholic forum. Since DCF is presumably coming back you could add it to my running list.

Working list of alternative Catholic forums and similar media Evangelization

I would like to begin keeping a list of alternative Catholic forums to replace this one due to the impending shutdown of CAF on December 31, 2020. There are no forums that are near substitutes for CAF in terms of the size or volume of posts. This is actually a good thing IMHO. Thus, what follows is a list of smaller forums for your consideration. Take some time to consider supporting one or more of them. Please ensure that additions to this list are in communion with the Holy See. There are m…

 

[GKMotley]

Small it was. Cozy, even.

I hope to see it again. After 18+ years, everyone knew my name/personality. But I seem to recall some sort of vague vibrations about its future, in recent years.

 

[MarysLurker]

“Forming Intentional Disciples” is a must read for parish workers. All of our priests have had education in this important work.

Summary of the book

https://www.drgareth.info/Summary1.pdf

We no longer have a church culture where the young lapse but come back for marriage or because they want children baptised. The main reason Catholics lapse from religious practice or join other churches is because they do not arrive at a lived experience of a relationship with God through their Catholic upbringing or RCIA experience. And only those who are already in relationship with God can communicate its importance to others!

Ok, how?

Threshold One: The Ability to Trust
The first step requires the person to establish a relationship of trust with Christ, the
Church, a Christian believer or something identifiably Christian. (p129)
Outreach programmes for lapsed Catholics have to work on re-establishing this trust.
Whoever the person meets – priest or laity – as the “face of the Church”, the person
needs to establish trust and ensure that they are trustworthy (e.g. not making promises
they can’t keep).

But…

Trust only exists when there are shared beliefs. Husbands and wives have to trust each other in order to lower their defenses and share everything in common. That isn’t possible when they don’t agree on what is right or wrong. They can’t give what they don’t have. So their kids have no basis on which to learn to trust their parents, and in turn, they are unable to trust anyone else.

Here is an explanation from Archbishop Chaput:

Even the best process depends on the character of the people who live it. The American project needs a virtuous people. A free market economy requires trust. The people who buy and sell must be trustworthy in order for the system to work. No organizational structure can make up for dishonest people. Regulatory agencies and courts mean very little in a morally crippled culture. American life worked so well because of the moral ideals that undergirded it and the behaviors it required. Those ideals and behaviors were rooted in faith.

Bottom line:
Once you lose the shared Judeo-Christian moral culture, you can no longer evangelize because there is no longer any basis for trust.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Threshold One: The Ability to Trust
The first step requires the person to establish a relationship of trust with Christ, the
Church, a Christian believer or something identifiably Christian. (p129)

This is basic Eric Erickson theory of development !

Love it

 

[TheLittleLady]

Once you lose the shared Judeo-Christian moral culture, you can no longer evangelize because there is no longer any basis for trust.

I’m thankful that many, many missionaries, many parishes, many priests, bishops and many of the laity are working day and night to accompany people to the trust threashold!

 

[MarysLurker]

Bottom line:
Once you lose the shared Judeo-Christian moral culture, you can no longer evangelize because there is no longer any basis for trust

Another explanation from Archbishop Chaput:

Once upon a time in America, a person could walk into a grocery store, take a bottle of aspirin off the shelf, twist open the cap, and shake out a tablet or two.
No plastic bands around the caps. No foil safety seals glued over the opening. It didn’t matter what company made the aspirin. It didn’t matter where the customer shopped. People with a headache might take a pill right in the store aisle. They’d throw the bottle into their cart and pay for it with the rest of their groceries. Then, in the fall of 1982, seven Chicago-area people died after swallowing Tylenol capsules that had been laced with potassium cyanide. Copycat crimes soon followed. Alert to lawsuits and a loss of consumer confidence, drug makers started adding tamper-proof seals to their bottles. The FDA approved regulations requiring companies to safeguard their products from being opened without the buyer’s knowing it. In the space of a few weeks, a nation of (then) 231 million people—people who had trusted one another to respect a person’s medical needs—became a country of people who wouldn’t buy a bottle with a tear on the edge of a safety seal. Today, no drug company would dare propose selling medicines without those seals. The public outcry wouldn’t allow it. Customers wouldn’t buy the unprotected product. The social trust that preceded the Tylenol affair is gone forever.

Simply put, America can’t be the way it once was. As we’ll see throughout these pages, changes in the country’s sexual, religious, technological, demographic, and economic fabric make that impossible. And these upheavals have further reshaped our politics, education, and laws. Traditionally, nations depend on the continuity of generations to transmit memories and beliefs across time and thus sustain their identity. At least for the United States, that pattern is now smashed. Discontinuity, more and more, drives today’s American life.

The world hates the story Christians tell. It no longer believes in “sin.” It doesn’t understand the forgiveness of sinners. It finds the ideas of a personal God, immortality, grace, miracles, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the whole architecture of the sacraments and the “supernatural” more and more implausible. It sneers at the restraints the Gospel places on appetites and ego. And in place of the Christian narrative of history, it lowers the human horizon to a relentless now of distractions, desires, and suppressed questions about meaning.

In order to evangelize,

we need places and moments in our lives to help us achieve that renewal. Places do exist where the world’s influence is diminished, where we can rest before returning to the mission. Practically speaking, this means working to renew our parishes, schools, and the small communities of which we’re a part.

 

[MarysLurker]

@TheLittleLady, just a reminder about 2 unanswered questions

Which diocese? Maybe we need to move!

How is the retention of kids in your parish? If the numbers are good, we need very badly to learn from what you all are doing.

 

[sealabeag]

There it is.

 

[TheLittleLady]

I do not reveal my location on public forums.

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.

Rare people never question their faith, most young people do question. How those questions are responded to by family, how much the family has modeled discipleship to their kids, these have the most impact on the result during those big questioning periods.

Looking at our official statistics as of today, the largest demographic in our parish is ages 2 - 21 then the second largest group is ages 23 - 47.

 

[sealabeag]

I’m probably picking you up wrong here but are you saying evangelisation isn’t possible in a non Judeo-Christian culture?

 

[rfournier103]

The Church will only become as small as we allow her to be. We must evangelize; preach the Word, and preach the TRUTH.

A new Catholic forum: “The Republic”

Res Publica Christiana​

 

[MarysLurker]

I’m probably picking you up wrong here but are you saying evangelisation isn’t possible in a non Judeo-Christian culture?

Evangelization isn’t possible in a culture without trust. In the West the historic moral culture comes from Judaism and Christianity. Before that it came from paganism, which at least provided a moral framework that the Church could use as a starting point.

But consider something like the Soviet Union in contrast. There was a culture hostile to the Church that taught everyone that only the state was trustworthy and that religion was inherently untrustworthy. Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall was evangelization possible.

Today instead of communism we have secularism. But both are cultures without a concept of trust that are inherently hostile to the Church. You have to get rid of the hostile culture before you can evangelize.

I am out of energy, so I have said about all that I can for now.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Oh yeah?

Imma complain to your manager

And don’t call me Shirley

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

We are starting to have younger families move in, people of various ethnicities in a neighborhood that was once lily-white, and it is refreshing to see children playing, riding their bicycles, and the other day, the neighbor boy was even climbing a tree. As the elderly people are dying off (that may sound cruel but it’s the truth), it seems that families who want a safe, well-kept (fairly strict HOA), attractive, affordable neighborhood are discovering ours. It’s all good

Your neighborhood provides a good analogy for how the Church should develop. The neighborhood provided something different and needed than what the “world” had. Good disciples (the retirees), a safe environment, good governance (HOA/clergy), and diversity and welcome. But it only had those things because it was first a separate community in which the residents developed it into a place of welcome.

It is indeed a good neighborhood, and it is sad every time the paramedics drive onto our street, because far too often, it means that someone is leaving and not coming back. I could be wrong, but I get the impression that African-American real estate agents have “discovered” this neighborhood, and are steering decent, respectable AA clients here, to be able to live in a diverse, tolerant, peaceful, safe HOA where everybody gets along and helps each other. It’s a good place and it’s only getting better. It’s good to see children playing again.

(To be clear, I am not black. Yes, my avatar is presently Samuel L Jackson, but I am choosing shaven-headed avatars on my various platforms, regardless of color, because we baldies must stick together. Only the little people have hair! )

 

[ralfyman]

But they want higher income which leads to more consumption and industrialization:

The rise of the global middle class - BBC News

which is part of increased secularization:

Modernization - Secularization, Rationalization | Britannica

 

[MarysLurker]

But they want higher income which leads to more consumption and industrialization

I don’t think that industrialization goes hand in hand with secularism. It depends on how the means of production are distributed.

The Distributist

 

[Rozellelily]

I think a lot of Western people look at non-white, non-western people through a romantic lens, and this is what is attracting them to these Muslim sites.

Romance and excitement?
Perhaps this sounds controversial, and I am not questioning anyone’ sincerity in religious beliefs, but I think when people convert to Islam it can become like a “whole new identity” and something different. Ie; you can live out your everyday life as “a Muslim woman”, and your whole life, world view, and everyday focus can be framed around whether you receive (perceived) discrimination, how people think of you and react to you, how people respond to your “visual” modesty, whether you were victimised (regardless of whether truly or from misperception), etc.
It can become like an identity. Whereas, if you are Catholic, public life goes on “relatively as normal”, so to speak…perhaps even perceived as a bit boring?

Every convert is different, and I don’t want to stereotype any, I hesitate to say this but perhaps there is even an element of a level of narcissism sometimes here?

I have noticed, that Black people and foreigners are given a lot more leeway in the public square when they teach morality than White people.

Is US identity politics partly the issue?
Muslims are often brave about their religion- partly from within themselves but perhaps also partly because the “social narrative” in western worlds today is supportive of them being?

Generally I have noticed a lot of US people losing the ability to tell nuances and instead making some false “black vs white” narrative where that’s all they can see
(in reality lot of foreigners are actually white, but not all are Ango-Saxons. I am white slavic and a foreigner).

So I don’t think that people can dismiss that there can be race factors involved to public receptivity of moral and practical teachings. It is that pedulum/balance thing in society again.

 

[Rozellelily]

But consider something like the Soviet Union in contrast. There was a culture hostile to the Church that taught everyone that only the state was trustworthy and that religion was inherently untrustworthy. Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall was evangelization possible.

I am from ex - Yugoslavia and there there was a similar situation with communism vs religion. I think it should be understood though that the situation is not so “cut and dry”, at least not for the Balkans region. It is easy to see it as Communism just being intolerant and hostile to religion, but it needs to be remembered that at least in ex- Yugoslavia, religion and national identity are extremely tied in together. So while we hear of the bad aspects of communism (and there were plenty bad aspects), we rarely hear of the good aspects. I.e., communist party was attempting to create a unified Yugoslavia where Croatians, Bosnians, Serbs etc…and iow, Orthodox, Muslims, and Catholics populations could live side by side proud as one nation in relative harmony. No small feat for anyone. So while communism may have been against religion, it was also opposing negative excesses of religion. I.e, the things that make people fight with one another.

In these countries there is (perhaps lesser now) huge involvement with religion and governments. We may view that as a good thing because in western countries its the complete opposite and we see the negatives (such as politicians mass support of abortion), but this over-involvment of religion can also be very negative. Especially when religious figures forget the Great Commandment and instead become ultranationalistic and civil wars happen.

People in ex-Yugoslavia, and in the Soviet Union were always free to worship in private. It was only public displays of religion that were prohibited. Majority people in the Russian Empire were Orthodox and this did not change under the Soviet Union (regardless of strong Government attempts against religion).

In ex-Yugoslavia specifically, to get around the “no public display rules”, Catholic Churches would sometimes have their processions go along the Church roof (as still private property). Very innovative, I think!

Communism is often painted as a evil that hated and oppressed religion and loved atheism.
But I don’t think communism hated God/Jesus and his commandments as much as what they rather hated was what they perceived as religions control over man.

I guess they perceived religion as a power, political competitor in some ways.

Religion was a threat to totalitarian regime.
But at the same time religion was not just Church, it was a power.

Today instead of communism we have secularism

It’s funny, because with secularism today, in some forms it has almost become like an unofficial religion in some ways, imo. For example: cancel culture where people try to “cancel” the career and influence of anyone that doesn’t agree with their pc narrative (e.g., J.K Rowling). Isn’t this like a religion in some ways?