Traditional Catholics and secular culture

[tradne4163]

It's beneficial to my marriage to watch "The Crown" with my wife.  She enjoys it, I enjoy it.  It's one of a very few programs we like watching together.

How much pornography, sex scenes and nudity is acceptable for that benefit?

Figure it out for yourself. I'm in no mood to argue. Frankly I have better things to do. Good day.

[Greg]

Pon,

"Results matter" means this.

I am not going to take advice about fatherhood or leading a family from a single man or a bad father.  I will take it from a father who raised 12 children and made them socially well adjusted, happily married people who can pay a mortgage and balance a checkbook.

I am not going to encourage my daughter to marry a man and who cannot provide for her, especially since she is going to have to have a bunch of children.  I don't want her back here.  I don't care how holy he pretends to be.  I want to see a work ethic not some tweed wearing fantasist.  Because families cost money to raise and my daughter is going to be pregnant and dealing with their children for the next 20 years so he's going to be the only breadwinner competing economically against two income households.

A priest or Bishop can say what he likes, but talk is cheap.  Show me fuller churches, a more active parish life, a flourishing youth group, inspiring sermons.  Then I will open my wallet and throw in my support.  I am very reticent to support Father X just because he is Father X and makes the right sounds.

I don't take medical advice from people on the internet.  Give me a double blind clinical trial and a panel of experts telling me the pill works and I will take it.  I am not going to entertain fad diets or other alternative medicine quackery.  If there are statistically significant results then show those to me.

The Catholic Church is failing the world over.  The Muslim religion has delivered nothing for 1000 years.

Delivering positive results today are medicine, technology, sensible Trads who possess good judgement, Russians, Hungarians, Trump etc.

I couldn't give a rats what a bunch of anonymous people say on an Internet forum.  Some of you are massive tossers with screwed up past lives or still living in your mum's basement.  Why should I care what you think about how to live a good Catholic life?

Or Bishop Williamson who for all his tough talk, when the resistance actually broke away and needed him to lead and unite them, decided to retire to the Kentish seaside.

"Results matter" essentially means. Piss or get off the pot.

I have had a lifetime of Trads proffering advice and criticism, telling people how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but who are very poor at supporting practical events to improve the lot of fellow Trads.  The priests are usually weak men who latch onto the carnival barkers and self-promoters and fail the large families who are going to be providing the next generation of parishioners.  Mum and Dad can't spend hours with the priest discussing modesty of dress or the rubrics of 62, because they are raising 11 children.

When do the Jansenist types ever arrange for a really fun day out where young people can socialise in a way that competes with what the secular world can offer?  They never do, because that would expose them to risk and criticism.  They criticise, condemn and complain, but they never construct.

[Xavier]

The Catholic Church is failing the world over

Not the world over, only where the "free love" sexual revolution that began around the 60s in the west is unchallenged; it leads to fornication, contraception, divorce, adultery, single parenthood, abortion and a whole host of other evils in most cases; western civilization was great and glorious when it was Christian. Do you know the historian Corbett says that your own country, merry old England, in Christian ages was "the happiest country perhaps that the world had ever known". Here's stats on what things were even 100 years ago in the west, you know what they are today. "In Canada during 1900 there were eleven divorces; in 1901 nineteen. In England there were 284 in 1902, as compared with 177 in 1901. In Germany at the same time there were about 10,000 annually, and in France 21, 939 with a tendency towards a rapid increase." http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05064a.htm why don't "results matter" when traditional Christianity delivered them and modern heathenism has failed to?

Also, you may not know it, but in Asia, Africa and other places where secular culture has not accepted the sexual revolution wholesale, the Church is not only standing still, but even actually growing, that's right, I said growing "In 1900, the whole of Africa had just a couple of million Catholics, but that number grew to 130 million by the end of the century, and today it approaches 200 million. If current trends continue, as they show every sign of doing, then by the 2040s there will be some 460 million African Catholics." http://catholicherald.co.uk/issues/september-9th-2016/catholicisms-incredible-growth-story/ the same is true in some countries in Asia and there's no reason this growth cannot be replicated also in the west; but only if Christians stop living like worldlings do. We compromise far too much, our Christian ancestors lived happy, holy, healthy lives in the Christian way. There's no reason for us to do otherwise.

The trend is very clear, we see it also in the liberal Protestant denominations that bleed members - compromise more and more, and you will only fall faster and faster. And No, I'm not advocating any sort of Protestant or Jansenistic rigorism - Catholics have always been marked by a holy joy, as Belloc rightly said "wherever the Catholic sun doth shine; there's always laughter and good red wine". But modern pagan hedonistic culture has nothing to offer us Christians.

[Greg]

African Catholicism with all of its pluses and minuses is going to be a far cry from anything that represents the Tradition of the Roman Catholic Church.

African countries are some of the most corrupt on earth.

Africans are massive fornicators.  The priests there mostly have girlfriends.  And not one girlfriend per priest but several.  It's so endemic that they don't even try to stop it.

African men are very rarely faithful to their first wife.  Will take an enormous cultural change to stop that behavior as they have been like that for eons.

Africans have low-IQs and are increasingly owned by the Chinese.  They have no ability to develop their own economies and control their own governments because they are far too primitive.

If the great black hope of Africa is what catholicism needs to survive then I'm definitely going to be converting to Russian Orthodox.












If they have the numbers then they are calling the shots.  You can kiss goodbye to a nice quiet low mass or Mozart at Christmas.  Going to be bongo drums and big asses waving around for 1000 years.  Not my cup of tea I'm afraid.

And by the way the above examples were NOT handpicked by me.  I randomly chose three African masses that came up in the YouTube search as representative samples.

[Arvinger]

Here is the relevant section of the interview with Bishop Sanborn which I mentioned in OP:

S.H. Well, I was going to follow up with that, Your Excellency, about these norms. Why do you think families would fight you about the television? Why would they fight you about discipline when its advise coming from you or any priest?

B.S. [Bishop Sanborn] For a number of reasons. One is that many people perceive the problem to be one of merely liturgy. "We don't like the New Mass. We like the traditional Mass. We have found the Traditional Mass, and that's the end of the story". Yet there is a whole other world beyond the traditional Mass, one of sacred doctrine and there's a world of preserving all of the practices that are dictated by Catholicism and which were observed before the Council. Many people don't want any part of these.

S.H. Why?

B.S. Because I think they have this schizophrenic personality in the sense of wanting the traditional Mass but at the same time wanting their culture from the modern. They like the modern culture, but they don't like the New Mass.

S.H. Is there something to be said for reconciling change and permanence, reconciling modern culture with Catholic thought or trying to understand modern thought through a Catholic prism? Why do you think they are not bringing their Faith into observing the culture or changing the culture or adapting the culture?

B.S. They want to live, in my opinion, in two different worlds. There's the world of Sunday morning and then there's the world of the week. It is just too disturbing for them to observe certain rules of modesty, certain rules of entertainment, certain rules of discipline. It's too disturbing for their lives, makes them too different from their peers and their other family members who may not be as traditional. It causes a lot of problems to be sure, even picking a spouse, the person you bring home, and so forth. It's difficult. It makes you swim against the current and that's uncomfortable for a lot of people.

S.H. So you still—when you're speaking about this, Your Excellency, are you talking about the congregations that you and your priests work with? You still have some of these problems?

B.S. Sure. Very much.

S.H. And even though they've been properly catechized from the pulpit, they say, "Thank you, Father. Thank you for Mass" and then...

B.S. You know, you have a whole spectrum of people. Some people are very observant in all of those things and others would not be disrespectful to you, but they essentially decide that the priest is excessive or doesn't understand the situation, or give you some sort of brushing off.

S.H. So is that how it was before the Council?

B.S. Well, I lived before the council. I remember it distinctly. I think people observed the rules overall. We in Catholic school would get a list every week of what was playing in the movie theatres with the Legion of Decency rating next to it. We were told that as children we can only go to "A-1" movies, and if we went to anything that was marked 'B' it was a mortal sin. All of my friends observed that. We wouldn't think of going to a movie without looking at the Legion of Decency. We wouldn't think about it.

S.H. Well, maybe Bishop Sanborn only hung out with the goody-good kids then?

B.S. I don't know. I'm sure there were always some that were...

S.H. I mean what would be a 'B' movie?

B.S. That would be today...Gone with the Wind was 'B'.

S.H. Because he said "damn" in there?

B.S. That was one of the things, I am sure, but more importantly there was the theme of a loose-living woman. They were very conscious of themes. Where divorce was glorified or even socially accepted, the movie was given a B. It wasn't only the skin flick that they were looking for. It was moral and social themes that were very important...so some of them would be put in "A-3" which was for adults only, but some were given B.

S.H. Some of the Hitchcock movies?

B.S. Some of the Hitchcock movies have themes which would not scandalize a prudent adult. Other some are very bad.

https://www.truerestoration.org/interview-with-bishop-donald-sanborn-on-cultural-issues-march-2009/

[Xavier]

Leave it to you, Greg, to miss the point almost completely. (1)what were divorce and fornication rates a century ago in England and Europe compared to what they are today? Are you a math and stats guy? Do the number crunching and figure out what caused the social breakdown. Run a regression analysis if you know to. It isn't hard to figure out. Immodesty and indecency in theatres and the cultural demise it engendered are very strongly correlated.

(2) beside your stereotyping of Africans which does not befit a universal Church (St. Augustine, a great Doctor, was African) you missed the point there as well; Church numbers grow when the Church counters the culture of the world and does not try pathetically to appease it or be absorbed by it. Explain why liberal Protestantism is dying in western Europe? Answer, because it compromises with the culture. Why would the world strive to be like the Church when a church is striving so hard to be like the world?

Read Bp. Sanborn's interview. Some movies are always bad for all and some are not fit for different people based on their state of life. Explicitly Christian movies are to be preferred. Those that show courtship or committed married love in a wholesome manner are ok; those that promote impurity or normalize immoral living like much of what comes out of liberal Hollywood these days should be rejected.

[Arvinger]

Leave it to you, Greg, to miss the point almost completely. (1)what were divorce and fornication rates a century ago in England and Europe compared to what they are today? Are you a math and stats guy? Do the number crunching and figure out what caused the social breakdown. Run a regression analysis if you know to. It isn't hard to figure out. Immodesty and indecency in theatres and the cultural demise it engendered are very strongly correlated.

In general I agree, although I think you conflate the cause and the symptom. Immodesty and indecency were merely a a symptom, not the root of the problem - the root was a large scale social engineering which went full steam ahead in the 1960s (although its origins are much older) which resulted in overthrow of patriarchy based on Judeo-Christian values, opening the door for feminism and progressivism (I recommed reading Peter Hitchens' book The Abolition of Britain, which documents abundantly how leftist progressives worked methodically and according to an organized plan to change the society the way they wanted - it was not an organic evolution). Trads in general are against feminism, but I don't think most understand how grave this problem is, and how deep it reaches - feminism not only attacked traditional gender roles and nuclear family, but also removed shackles which were rightly put upon male and (especially) female sexuality (removal of social stigma on divorcees, children outside of wedlock, pressure to marry young etc.). As a result concupiscence and sexual instincts damaged by Original Sin (which were supressed under Judeo-Christian patriarchy by Christian morality and social norms) reasserted themselves and were fully accepted by the society. Pushing women into employment and pursuing often worthless higher education caused delay of marriage into late 20s and early 30s, as a result damaging both men and women (waiting till late 20s for marriage creates a massive occasion of sin - in this sexualized culture, where sexual content is shoved down out throats it is very difficult for many people to stay chaste untill late 20s), and making many unable to form stable families - thus, divorce epidemy (which was also caused by change of understanding of marriage, promoting a model of hedonic marriage in which marriage is merely an extended LTR serving to provide pleasure to both parties, and when it ceases to deliver in this area it needs to be terminated). Add to this unfair divorce laws heavily favoring women and causing many children to be raised without a father and you have a recipe for societal disaster.

This is why crusade against immodesty, modern entertainment, etc. is merely trying to supress the symptoms, without addressing the root of the problem - radical change of the way the society functions by overthrowing patriarchy and destroying nuclear family. Untill this is addressed and the society is rolled back to the way it functioned in the early 20th century (which is - barring a miracle - pretty much impossible right now), we won't get out of this mess.

[Greg]

Children are very nice.

But I don't want them running the government.

Sub-Saharan Africans are low IQ and culturally primitive.  Just look at the mess that is Africa.  It's a basketcase.  The only time it functioned any better, in all of recorded history, was under the Colonial powers.  Africans can't even construct sewer and clean water systems or irrigate and grow food in a land with ample sunshine and rain.  They have no industry, no high-culture.  They can't even maintain the infrastructure that the white man left behind.

That's not going to change within the next 100 years because IQ is genetic.

Notwithstanding the fact that no Catholic prophecy, whether public or private revelation, suggests that the new crucible of Catholic growth in the 21st Century is Africa.  So if it is going to be we can write off all prophecy as a meaningless waste of time.  Because that would be a sea-change worth mentioning.

If the Africans take over and dominate the global Church the only upside I can think of is that there will be less queer priests.  Liturgical dancing or bongo drums ain't much of a choice.  There might not be any downside compared to an Argentine apostate, I agree.  But that is hardly a reason to be cheerful.

- - -

Not sure I understand your point about divorce rates.  Plenty of people in the past simply abandoned their wife or had a mistress on the side.  Nothing like as many as today but it has always gone on.

[Greg]

Some movies are always bad for all and some are not fit for different people based on their state of life. Explicitly Christian movies are to be preferred. Those that show courtship or committed married love in a wholesome manner are ok.

There must be about 2 dozen movies to watch then that fit that criteria and are vaguely entertaining enough to be worth watching.

How do I fill 20 years of family movie nights once a week without watching the same movies over and over?

No Clint Eastwood films.
No Titanic
No Godfather
No Star Wars (since they have homosexual characters in the latest films) not to mention the immodestly dressed women.
No Terminator 1 or 2
No Jaws
No Jurassic Park
No Saving Private Ryan
Very few Mel Gibson films either
No Star Trek the Original Series, since in just about ever episode Kirk has a love affair with just about any piece of Carbon-based life he can find.

I watched It's a Wonderful Life with the children are Christmas but how many old wholesome movies are there like that that modern day children would want to watch?  Most are pretty dated.  The classics are the classics because they are not.  My kids aren't going to watch The Little Rascals of the Three Stooges.  I tried them with Laurel and Hardy but they aren't that keen.  I listen to Frank Sinatra songs, but I don't like most of the music or my father's or grandfather's era.  It sucks.

Why even pretend that film is viable?  Just ditch the screen and Internet altogether and go back to playing Victorian parlour games like "Beggar my Neighbour" and SNAP.

[Jayne]

Scipio was wrong because he carried it to absurd extremes, claiming that bikinis are modest.
It is not fallacious to say that cultural norms are a factor in determining what is modest.

Scipio took your position to its logical conclusion.  If wearing pearls was modest in Regency England, then wearing a bikini would be modest in a society that didn't consider bikinis immodest.  You seem to be saying that the world sets the standards; the Early Christians were saying that the worldly standards would never be their own.  There's a difference there.

No, Scipio did not take my position to a logical conclusion nor are you representing my position correctly.  I am saying that cultural norms are a factor not that they are the only things we consider.  One aspect of modesty is the wish not to draw attention to oneself.  Something dramatically different from what everyone else is wearing, drawing every eye to oneself, is not modest, not matter how much skin is covered.  This aspect of modesty requires consideration of the culture.  Other aspects of modesty, such as avoiding stimulating lust, are more independent of the culture. 

[Mono no aware]

Just curious PDR, why did you think it ridiculous that I make the demand of epistemological consistency from traditionalists yet here you are making the exact same demand yourself?  Or is this just in itself yet another example of inconsistency one has to learn to live with?

On the contrary, QMR, I don't think it's ridiculous that you demand epistemological consistency from traditionalists.  It's a fine challenge which you present.  But in the end, epistemological perfection cannot be the answer, because it all ends in accepting St. JP2 and Francis and the Novus Ordo (and that's what I find ridiculous).  If the truths of Catholicism are mutable and relative, then there is little point in remaining Catholic.  You have met your nemesis on this forum in bigbadtrad, who hacks unremittingly at your Achilles' heel:

But let's suppose you are correct, that everyone is wrong, Catholics and especially those self-contained/doomed to fail traditionalists, but you are the lighthouse in a stormy sea. As you stand atop the mountains of bodies you've laid to waste in your quest for truth where would one study to think like you, to worship like you, to come to the same conclusions you've reached?

What books would they read? What church should they attend? Where would they put their children to encounter such believers as QMR approved schools of finer learning?

Let's go further, if all of those people called the doctors on so many issues are wrong and you right then what's the point in believing anything they write or reading them? How would one grow in love in paternal piety for our forefathers if they were so commonly wrong? Intentionally or not you make a mockery for a Catholic to study the faith and instead cling to subjective arguments based on personal logic which can be right or wrong based on the premise, but finds no memory or piety for the past. This is presupposing you are correct 100% of the time, let alone you are wrong which would mean your attacks on the doctors on your reasoning would be scandalous to Catholics.

Make no mistake, QMR, you are one of the best posters on the forum.  You articulate the Catch-22 better than anyone else, even if you don't see it as a Catch-22, since you see the answer in Francis and whoever his successors may be.  But bigbadtrad is right: once you become a spokesperson for the Novus Ordo, you're really only a spokesperson for yourself, because the Novus Ordo is so diverse as to be meaningless.  You become an amateur version of Scott Hahn or something, where the apologist cobbles together his own brand of modern Catholicism.  Maybe Scott Hahn's is a quasi-Protestant Steubenville flavor, and your "semi-trad" strain is a kind of "FSSP lite" (although extremely lite as of late, now that you're defending communion for remarrieds).  You get the idea, though.

There is a reason why perfect epistemological consistency cannot be the answer.  If you can call the epistemology of traditional Catholicism "Orthodox," then your epistemology could just as well be called "Marshall Applewhite."  Surveying the Early Church Fathers, all I can tell you is that the epistemology of the Church as it appears to have been founded was not set up to have one universal bishop who could redefine tradition into novelty.  I don't know what the answer is.  Epistemologically, it's a Catch-22.  All I can tell you is that the Orthodox do not look nearly as crazy as the Novus Ordo does.  There was a user on here recently who was a tentative revert to Catholicism and still discerning Christianity, and he listed for his religion something like "Sedevacantist Catholic / Russian Orthodox / Anabaptist—still deciding."  I can appreciate that kind of thing.  The only thing I'm arguing for on this thread is more or less an aesthetic appreciation for the disciplines of the Early Church.  It still crops up occasionally here and there, and it's always compelling when it does.  But it's a dead religion at this point.

[Jayne]

I find that is hard to believe that gods love and mercy are real if we are at the same time constantly on the edge of damnation because one mortal sin can send you to hell for all eternity plus the reality of the fewness of the saved.  It doesn't seem like a path to heaven more like a tightrope walk over a canyon with a river filled with pirhanas.

Even if you're not in mortal sin right now there's the worry that you will do something horrible and that moment of weakness will be the moment God chooses to end your life.  He could end it immediately after first communion at 7 years old, or right after a fruitful SSPX retreat but what if He allpws a moment of weakness shortly before death what if I am committing mortal sins and not even realizing it what if I do something horrible I had no idea I was capable of... I can't stop worrying about this stuff.  I don't know how people can go about their lives not on the edge of a panic attack because the threat ofhell  is ever looming over our heads.  It's Christmas but the worry about mortal sin and helland damnation never take a Christmas break.  the uncertainty of it all is killing me

The path to holiness,true holiness, is near impossible and we are called to be perfect, which is impossible given our fallen nature.

You are a very sick person and it affects your mind.  Either due to your illness itself or to your medications, you are not able to approach this the way that we ought to.

Presumption and despair are both sins. The virtue of hope lies in between them.  It is wrong to take salvation for granted and also wrong to think it is impossible.  You are probably not culpable for your wrong thoughts, but they are objectively wrong.  We are called to be perfect but our salvation does not depending on succeeding.  As St. Paul wrote (Eph 2:8-10):

[8] For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God; [9] Not of works, that no man may glory. [10] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them.

Salvation is a gift from God, not something we do or earn.  Our good works are a sign that faith is alive in us, so they are important, but they, in themselves, are not the path to salvation. We can live with the knowledge that we are one mortal sin away from damnation because we also know that God's love and mercy are infinite. You are free to leave God, but He will not abandon you. We do not have certainty of salvation but we have a sure hope of it. 

[Greg]

Here is the relevant section of the interview with Bishop Sanborn which I mentioned in OP:

S.H. Well, I was going to follow up with that, Your Excellency, about these norms. Why do you think families would fight you about the television? Why would they fight you about discipline when its advise coming from you or any priest?

B.S. [Bishop Sanborn] For a number of reasons. One is that many people perceive the problem to be one of merely liturgy. "We don't like the New Mass. We like the traditional Mass. We have found the Traditional Mass, and that's the end of the story". Yet there is a whole other world beyond the traditional Mass, one of sacred doctrine and there's a world of preserving all of the practices that are dictated by Catholicism and which were observed before the Council. Many people don't want any part of these.

Sorry, but this is UTTER HORSESHIT from the bishop.  He must live in a parallel universe to me.

No Traditionalist I have ever met perceives the problem to be "merely that of liturgy".   Every Traditionalist I have met in the last 40 years has cared far more about the wishy washy nature of modern Catholicism and how no teaching is clear, no discipline enforced, no apostates excommunicated and every Catholic can support Abortionist politicians or be contracepted to the eyeballs and still a "Catholic in good standing".  The Mass is seen by most Traditionalists as a banner of orthodoxy.  To prefer the banal new mass to the old rite is a sign that you are either ignorant, uncaring or malicious since the new mass is rarely conducted with reverence and even when it is, it lacks dignity.

I once went to a Methodist baptism and sat in their church because it was raining and the Church service they had there was just like the new mass.

Nobody in my family has broadcast TV.  They all ditched their cable or antenna decades ago.  I don't think I even know any Traditionalists who have a TV connected to a cable provider or watch broadcast TV.

The question then becomes, do I have a screen in the house at all for family entertainment?  If so what do I watch with the children.  They are socialising (and going to be learning and working) with peer groups who consume hours and hours of video.  Turning your kids into luddites ain't going to help them land a job in the modern economy which revolves around data and data services.  Robots are going to be involved in more and more of the jobs in the future, so your kids today need to learn the skills to work alongside intelligent machines or they will be welfare slaves on the government teat for their adult lives.

Want your welfare check?  Sorry, maximum of 1 child to save the planet.  A 2nd child will cost you 30% of your Amazon Digital Coins.  Click here for your nearest Planned Parenthood Clinic and get a free Amazon gift card if you book today.

Meanwhile, Bishop Sanborn starts and ends his monthly newsletters (which you need to pay $75 per year to get) with a request for donations.

Good luck developing a bunch of cultural outcasts who can hold down a job for 40 years in the modern economic system and fund Sanborn's seminary, all while living in a home culture 100 years separated from their peers at work.   Missing cultural cues, not able to understand jokes.

Consider that modern millennials are going to be running this world in 20 years time?  (I will be 70 but certainly envying the dead by then).  A complete collapse will probably by preferable.

Why do you think I run my own business?  Because I can leech off the beast without being employed by the beast.  As an external contractor I never have to do a job interview and convince anyone I am a "good cultural fit" or go on diversity training.  But it is VERY hard to engineer yourself into a position that I am in where they need me more than I need any of them.

Sanborn lives off donations.  You and your children have to actually earn money to operate and feed yourself in the modern world.

And, by the way, firms are now beginning to use AI technology to read your on-line behaviors and profile you.  If you have no online behaviors (or very weird outlying ones) you won't get a job interview because you will be an unknown quantity.  Just like you didn't used to get a loan without a credit history and you cannot get an office job today without being familiar with MS Office and other tools.

[Mono no aware]

Pon de Replay points to an abandonment of Catholic morals in the Church, even before Vatican II. His assertion that Early Christianity is dead and not alive in the Catholic Church because of moral laxity is due to gross exaggeration. First of all, decadence in the Church does not imply that the Church has apostatised. There were men of a similar spirit to Pon de Replay's in the Middle Ages who left the Church because they were scandalised by the decadent lives of many of her prelates at the time. St. Paul talks about degenerate behaviour for example in the Church of Corinth; while Pon de Replay extolls the moral rigour of the Church Fathers, he neglects to mention (from what I've read) that the same Church Fathers were decrying the widespread moral laxity among the Christians of their times, i.e. these Fathers were extraordinary examples of Christian virtue in their times, so one can hardly take their preaching as evidence that the Church was unequivocally more clean morally in their times than the Church has been in modern times. I'm not an historian of any sort but what I've heard doesn't seem to imply that the Church Fathers presided over a pristine Church; and for that matter, the apostles themselves in the New Testament complain of the errors and deviations in the Church already present. Now, one can undoubtedly say that there has been a collapse of Catholic morals in modern times, and especially after the modernisation project of Vatican II: but what could one expect when the Church has been so viciously persecuted, openly and surreptitiously, high and low, from within and from without, in modern times? We are talking about a persecution that has not been matched since the days of the pagan Roman emperors. And yet, despite all that, we still have our St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Maximilien Kolbe, and St. Padre Pio. So for Pon de Replay to imply that the Church has apostatised and Christianity no longer exists is frankly insulting. The Church still teaches Catholic morals and we still have saints practicing them. That we have so many traitors in the hierarchy and such a confused and fractured laity as a result has not prevented this, as the Church has the protection of the Holy Spirit. I had an interesting conversation with Pon de Replay a while back on this forum, where he talked about his loss of faith. He admitted early in this thread that he had tried to practice it rigorously but then gave up. I don't know the man and I can only speculate (and I hope not unjustly), but perhaps his trying to practice the faith in an over-rigorous fashion is what lead to his loss of faith. Whether he was holding himself or others to too a high a standard and ending up despairing as a result - I don't know. But the dangers of a too strict moral rigourism must be very strongly warned against, as with moral laxism.

I apologize, John Lamb, for insulting the faith.  That was not my intention.  Just to clarify on two points: first, it is not my contention that Christianity no longer exists.  Clearly it does.  At this point, however, I am simply in no position to say in which denomination it wholly subsists.  Taking the Early Church, I would say that the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have more or less its doctrine, and that the Russian Old Believers and Mennonites have more or less its practice.  (I am stressing the "more or less" with italics because I have been misconstrued here as implying that the Old Believers are the true Christians.  That is not my claim.  I am only speaking generally).  In terms of the Church apostatizing, all I am saying is that if maintaining those early disciplines was necessary for the Church not to defect, then my conclusion would be that the Church has defected.  Obviously, traditional Catholics do not believe that those practices were necessary for the faith to continue or for the Church to be indefectable.  (As Greg points out, though, "indefectable" can be conveniently redefined at every failure).

Secondly, I would only want to repeat what I've said elsewhere on certain threads: I did not lapse from my so-called "Jansenist rigorist" practices because I found them too difficult or got burnt out on them.  Almost the opposite, in fact: I think I actually had a greater mental clarity and focus during those days.  I almost wish I could get that back.  Sometimes when I listen to the kinds of music I was permitting myself back then (like Bach's cello suites or John Dowland's Lachrimae), I get somewhat nostalgic for it (and by "it," I can only suggest something along the lines of "contemplation").  I can still listen to the music, of course, but I can't recover the benefits that came from the disciplines.  What eventually drove me out of it, though, was the cognitive dissonance that came from the nagging suspicion that I was creating my own personal religion.  I didn't have the confidence in myself to believe that I was on the right track and that the majority of traditional Catholics were on the wrong one (presumably leading to a ... "fiery end").  And this goes back to the problem of epistemology: I was on a sola scriptura path of sorts, where my scriptura consisted mostly of the Early Church Fathers and Meister Eckhart and Thomas à Kempis, spiced with some Stoics and Neoplatonists.  I was ignoring the fact that the Catholic Church no longer demanded the rigors of the Early Church.  Eventually I came to realize that I had become my own pope in my own little spiritual cocoon, and that's not the Catholic Church, which is a community of believers.

So for me, the problem with "Jansenism" (or whatever anyone wants to call it) isn't that it's difficult.  It is difficult, of course, but once you clear the highest hurdles it has a beneficial and calming effect.  The only thing that perturbs the calm is if you have an intellectual tendency to consider whether you really belong to a living religion or whether you've recreated one out of the past.  That's why I've said: the Jesuits won and the Jansenists lost.  That battle is over and the Jeromes are the Japanese holdouts.  Look, if the Catholic religion was the religion of a former user on this forum named AustrianOrthodoxCatholic, I would be a Catholic.  The sad truth, however, is that that person was simply an unparalleled genius in creating the best possible Christian patchwork from the best variety of sources from the past.  It's like reanimating a corpse.  Even if it's beautiful, it's still the undead; it's still a zombie.  I'm just trying to face the facts here.  Last week I discovered a millennial band called The Blue Angel Lounge that sounds better the higher you turn the volume, which I never would have discovered if I was still a so-called "Jansenist."  Meanwhile Greg is waiting on an apocalyptic phantasmagoria of fireballs raining down from the sky on Catholic bishops and homosexuals (or maybe that's a redundancy).  Someone else is probably waiting for Pope Francis to grant Adriana Lima an annulment.  I don't know.  It's all pretty wild.  To each their own.

[Greg]

A man needs his hobbies Pon.

If God fireballs those clerical nonces for me, I will be content just watching re-runs of that and Trump's election night until the day I die.