Suscipe Domine Traditional Catholic Forum

First of all, I would like to emphasize that I am not writing this post to lecture anyone about what they must do in their lives or to accuse anyone - not only because I don't have any authority to do so, but also because I'm not sure what to think of the subject myself. I merely want to ask for your views in regard to several of my thoughts, some of which were inspired by following threads on this forum (but many of them were on my mind before):

Movie thread (discussion on pages 181-190) https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=85.2700
Patience and moderation thread https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=17786.0
Jerome's thread on movies https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=15694.0
Nudity in art thread http://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=3710.0

I think it is safe to say that there is a broad consensus here that the current moral standards among Traditional Catholics in areas of modesty, art and entertainment fall way short of the standards of the Early Church and the teachings of Saints such as St. John Vianney, St. Francis de Sales or St. Alphonsus Liguori. I think it is undeniable that the entertainment and culture which is consumed by Traditional Catholics today would have been condemned in strongest words by the Fathers and Saints and considered mortally sinful. That is not to say that in the Early Church there were no Christians who led sinful lifes - for example, in 1 Corinthians St. Paul condemns sinful lifestyle of Christians in Corinth. Nevertheless, moral standards were mostly clear, and today despite being Traditional Catholics we are far below these standards.

In the above-listed threads many excellent points were made by Pon de Replay, Matto, Maximilian and other users. However, what was missing (or at least not discussed extensively enough) were implications of the problem for our salvation. I think that the question which Traditional Catholics must answer is this: are the moral standards taught in the Early Church and by the Saints an objective standard which God requires from us? Many of you probably remember the user Jerome who started the thread about how movies which users of Suscipe Domine watch are full of mortal sin. He quoted extensively from Saints, Popes and Church Fathers, and he was mostly right. Granted, the way he conducted the discussion was not perfect, and he went too far in some of his criticisms (like his claim that to save your soul you must use internet with images blocked - this is unreasonable), but overall his arguments were sound and he backed up his position with solid evidence. On the other side, most of the users who responded to him did not even try to interact with the quotes he provided, he was mostly ridiculed and shouted down. So, if the teachings of Saints, Popes and Fathers on these issues are indeed right, where exactly does that leave us? If they were right and dancing, parties, sensuous music and worldly books was indeed objectively mortally sinful to watch/read//listen/attend in Antiquity and in the 19th century, how can we expect these activities to cease to be mortally sinful today? God does not change, nor does his standard. If something was mortally sinful then, it remains so now (of course, individual culpability is a different issue and that is not what I refer to).

To translate it into specific example - I would be willing to bet good money that if St. John Vianney was alive today and saw the movie thread on this forum, he would be absolutely horrified. He would have preached to us a fire-and-brimstone sermon and call Suscipe Domine users to immediate repentance. In fact, Bishop Sanborn recalled in one of his interviews that even in his youth going to a cinema for a movie which was disapproved by the Legion of Decency (or other Catholic reviews, I don't remember exactly) was considered a mortal sin (and the Legion of Decency would disapprove probably >90% of modern mainstream movies) - so it is not some sort of ancient standard which is dead since ages. This is not limited to movies. In nudity in art thread some users were actually defending Manet's Olympia and Bouguereau's female nudes as acceptable to look at for a Catholic. There is no question that these paintings are of high artistic quality, and Bouguereau's nudes are indeed stunning portrayals of female beauty. However, erotic nature of these works of art is undeniable. I don't think anybody here would argue that Cure of Ars would have approved his parishioners watching these paintings or that the Early Church Fathers would have anything positive to say about them.

I think there are only two intellectually honest answers to that problem:
1) To treat the moral standards of the Early Church and the Saints seriously, which in pratice means rejection of >90% of modern culture and entertainment, aviodance of most of public gatherings, swimming pools, not sending children to public schools etc. and transition into an Amish-like life, something like what Benedict Option advocates, or at least dramatic changes in daily life. Difficult? Certainly, for some Traditionalists perhaps even impossible due to financial and family considerations. But at least the objective necessity of such changes must be acknowledged if these standards are indeed to be treated seriously.
2) To conclude that the Early Church and the Saints were simply wrong, were too prudish and today we know better and can relax the moral discipline to enjoy some life (and that somehow we learned these new, correct ways simultaneously with almost universal apostasy and modernism in the Church). In the movie thread there was one user who did this, openly saying that the Early Church Fathers were wrong on dancing and other stuff and taught proto-Islamic ideas which need to be rejected. As Pon de Replay correctly pointed out, this introduces relativism, but at least is intellectually honest.

However, common response to the problem from Traditional Catholics is casuistry, accusations of ,,Jansenism", rationalizations and other mental gymnastics. I don't find these to be intelectually honest. In the thread started by Jerome it was painfully obvious that nobody who responded to him was able to refute his points on Catholic moral teaching. 

Mind you, I'm not saying this from some moral high horse. I also have attachments to modern culture, as many of us do. For example, I'm a great fan of opera, especially Italian bel canto, with Verdi, Donizetti and Puccini among my favorite composers. Opera has great artistic value, but the reality is that many operas include dancing/ballet scenes, and in most of modern productions, including the ones with traditional staging, there are costumes which fall short of Catholic standards of modesty (usually low-cut gowns showing cleavage). I can't argue in good faith that St. John Vianney would sit down with me in my living room and enjoy La Traviata (ballet scenes, extra-maritial relationship of Alfredo and Violetta - although nothing sexual implied, and in most of productions you will see Violetta, Flora and other ladies in low-cut gowns). And opera is still far more innocent than vast majority of modern mainstream entertainment. Yes, vast majority of Novus Ordo Catholics and priests (probably even many Traditional Catholics) would say I worry too much and we should not be prudish, but is that approach compatible with the teachings of Early Church Fathers and Saints? Is that compatible with Catholic morality? I'm not sure, and attempts to justify myself might could my judgment.

So, where am I going with this? Pon de Replay admitted (and I applaud his integrity to write this) that he tried to be strict like Jerome before, but he gave up. But that makes it sound like the moral standards of the Early Church and the Saints are optional - the problem is that this is not how the Early Fathers and Saints themselves saw it, they claimed it is an objective moral standard required by God and falling short of it was sinful. Sure, they were not infallible and could have been wrong on some points - but the difference between their teachings and modern lax practice is not just on some points, it is a dramatic difference. If someone claims we are right today with our relaxed approach, he must conclude that Saints and Fathers were wrong all along. Someone wrote in one of the threads I listed that people won't be damned for listening to certain music or stuff like that. Reading Church Fathers and Saints I'm not sure they would have agreed. I think all of us go to Traditional Latin Mass, receive the sacraments frequently and try to avoid mortal sins - so, we might think we are more or less on path to salvation. What if after our death we are for unpleasant surprise, learning before the judgment seat of God that our laxity and abandoning of moral standards taught by the Early Church and the Saints caused that we were never close to salvation to begin with, and our Trad-lite approach to modern culture was wrong? Maybe I exaggerate, but I think you get the point.   

Any thoughts?

Good post. These are some of the kinds of threads that interest me. It seems you are bordering on the side of being a "Jansenist rigorist" and perhaps you will draw fire from the "Jesuit laxists" on the forum. I am somewhat in the middle because while I generally disapprove of modern amusements, I do not know where exactly to draw the line (mainly because of the approval of nudity in Catholic Churches for hundreds of years, the most prominent example being the Sistine Chapel). I know when I first converted I was more strict than I am now. Though now I think I am still on the rigorist end of the spectrum, just not as far to the right as Jerome is. As an example I was recently watching a video of a traditional dance show by a group of Chinese dancers called Shen Yun and it was very beautiful but in the middle of the show some of the women were wearing clothes that were a little too sensual for me so I stopped watching (but I think some would condemn me for even trying to watch the dance in the first place). I do generally think Catholics should avoid most modern entertainment and I usually avoid watching modern TV shows or modern movies made in the last fifty years or so. I am sure many of the old movies condemned by the Legion of Decency would be considered tame today.

As far as music and plays go I have heard quotes from fathers and saints condemning them broadly and I believe at times the Church used to blanketly excommunicate theater actors in the days when the plays were probably not as corrupt as the movies and shows of today.

Quote from: Matto on January 01, 2018, 12:27:02 PM
Good post. These are some of the kinds of threads that interest me. It seems you are bordering on the side of being a "Jansenist rigorist" and perhaps you will draw fire from the "Jesuit laxists" on the forum.

I think that "Jansenist rigorists" have simply much stronger and more consistent arguments, usually drawing from historic Church teaching, Saints and Fathers. "Jesuit laxists" often use little more than rationalizations and sophistry (let's be honest - Jerome's arguments in the movie thread were not refuted at all), because there is not much in the Early Church and devotional writings to support their case. That does not mean that I am always consistent with "Jansenist rigorism" in my own life - as I said, I like opera very much (there are several other opera lovers in my SSPX chapel too), I also enjoy more melodic and lighter sub-genres of metal music (especially folk metal), although I am vetting the music in regard to the content of lyrics.

The main problem I have with the "rigorists-laxists spectrum" is the subjectivity of it and very unclear objective implications of it. Many posts on this forum seemed to imply that you can be a Catholic in good standing whether you are laxist or rigorist. What if being a "Jansenist-rigorist" is necessary for salvation and being a "Jesuit-laxist" means approval of mortal sin and is a path to damnation (I'm not claiming this, but it is not outside the realm of possibility)? There is not enough conversation on implications of these issues for our salvation. I know, with the Vatican in apostasy we are left on our own to interpret all of this, and the world we live in is a mess, but there is too much at stake to "agree to disagree" I think. This is why I undestand why Jerome chose such an approach on this forum (if he really believes that watching most of modern movies is mortally sinful he must have seen it as salvation issue), even though it did not work out.

Quote from: MattoI am somewhat in the middle because while I generally disapprove of modern amusements, I do not know where exactly to draw the line (mainly because of the approval of nudity in Catholic Churches for hundreds of years, the most prominent example being the Sistine Chapel).

Well, nude figures in Sistine Chapel were painted over with clothing about the time of the Council of Trent I think, and the clothing was removed only at the time of John Paul II, who is hardly a go-to moral authority on this issue (many times I have seen attempts to justify gross immodesty with his Theology of the Body - certainly often abusing the text, but there seems to be a problem with it). In fact, Council of Trent condemned immodesty in sacred art:

"Moreover, in the invocation of saints, the veneration of relics, and the sacred use of images, every superstition shall be removed, all filthy lucre be abolished; finally, all lasciviousness be avoided; in such wise that figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting to lust; nor the celebration of the saints, and the visitation of relics be by any perverted into revellings and drunkenness; as if festivals are celebrated to the honour of the saints by luxury and wantonness." (Council of Trent, XXV Session)

Granted, this is only about sacred art, not art in general, but somehow I can't imagine Tridentine Fathers (let alone Saints like Cure of Ars or St. Alphonsus Liguori) approving of Bouguereau's The Birth of Venus, regardless of great beauty and artistic quality of Bouguereau's art.

Quote from: MattoAs far as music and plays go I have heard quotes from fathers and saints condemning them broadly and I believe at times the Church used to blanketly excommunicate theater actors in the days when the plays were probably not as corrupt as the movies and shows of today.

I started a thread about Church's view of acting and theatre a while ago on Cathinfo, and there was a broad consensus that opening for theatre and acting (John Paul II in his 1999 Letter to Artists explicitly mentioned actors and called them to use their talent) was in fact another example of laxity taking over the Church. Consider Adrienne Lecouvreur, one of the most famous actresses of the 18th century (there is a great opera by Francesco Cilea about her by the way) - she was denied a Catholic burial due to her profession.

At the judgement seat of God things are going to be very strict.  Not just in regards to entertainment, but to how we spent our time, money, our thoughts, and words and so forth. 

Yes, the standards outlined by Fathers, Doctors and Saints are going to be the standards we are judged by in a fundamental way but not in a specific way.  For example, their where Saints at different times and different periods that taught different things on modesty.  One can only read about beards, or jewelry and makeup on women to find the differing points of view.  St. Augustine teases women who paint their faces, St. John Chrysostom (I believe) condemns it, but St. Albert the Great said it is permissible and not a sin. Which one will we be judged on, it really will depend on the intention of the women putting on makeup and her conscience informed by a life of grace. 

Dancing is another interesting topic because once again we find different authors saying different things.  For example St John Vianny condemns it wholesale while St. Francis de Sales in Introduction to the Devout Life while not condemning the practice points out that it is time lost that we could have been spending redeeming it. We also know from the life of St. Ignatius that he dances after his conversion, and St. Philip Neri used to dance as a gypsy in the streets. In fact we even know by reading the annals of various convents that Nuns would be allowed to perform little dances as well.  I think once again it is going to be in part determined by intention, conscience and grace.

There are many people, still young and fragile in the Faith, that are still working towards being prepared for the broadness of the law and the real demands of perfection it puts on us.  St. Paul says as much "I gave you milk to drink, not meat; for you were not able as yet. But neither indeed are you now able; for you are yet carnal." 1 Cor 3:2.

As to other debates such as nudity in art, whether drums lead to  passion, can womens pants ever be modest, I think people should make a good effort to form their conscience and admit in prayer constantly their own blindness and sinfulness and strive to cultivate a spirit of repentance and humility. 

Do you really want a church where no women wear makeup?  Does anyone really want to see that?

Quote from: Arvinger on January 01, 2018, 11:50:07 AM
However, common response to the problem from Traditional Catholics is casuistry, accusations of ,,Jansenism", rationalizations and other mental gymnastics. I don't find these to be intelectually honest. In the thread started by Jerome it was painfully obvious that nobody who responded to him was able to refute his points on Catholic moral teaching. 

This is similar to my assessment of those threads.

Quote from: Arvinger on January 01, 2018, 01:21:08 PMWhat if being a "Jansenist-rigorist" is necessary for salvation and being a "Jesuit-laxist" means approval of mortal sin and is a path to damnation (I'm not claiming this, but it is not outside the realm of possibility)?

I accept that this is a possibility and because of this I try to avoid impure entertainments. I remember when I was a new convert I would hardly even look at women at all, especially if they were wearing pants, but now I am not so strict because it was impossible to live in the modern world that way without being shut away in a monastery (I live in New York City and have to take the subway to get to Church on Sunday and on other days I have to go around town doing errands. The worst is on the day of the Puerto Rican parade or the Gay Pride parade, you can imagine the immodesty witnessed on the way to the Holy Sacrifice those days), though most people would consider me a prude today even in my laxity. I am not as vocal about it as Jerome or Jean-Baptiste. Before I converted I often committed sins of impurity but I do not struggle with those sins that often anymore. Maybe because I am getting older and my libido has lessened or maybe because I pray to be delivered from such sins. I have been drinking wine in celebration so my tongue is going on and on, but the main thing I wanted to say is that I fear Jerome is right and that all of us are guilty of sin but I hope he is wrong and people are only appreciating beauty without falling into lust. I believe there is a dangerous border between appreciating beauty and falling into lust where for some a woman will incite them to sin and for others it will inspire them to noble thoughts. Still, I do not like nude art myself, even by the great El Greco.

Quote from: JubilateDeo on January 01, 2018, 03:12:11 PM
Do you really want a church where no women wear makeup?  Does anyone really want to see that?

This says it all, really.  The Early Church Fathers must've been wrong about vanity because our modern sensibilities favor make-up.  There can be no going back from this.  I say this as a supporter of Jerome: but if Jerome is right, then the Church has defected.  Because institutionally, the Church has not taught the disciplines and austerity of the Early Church for quite a while.  The Jesuits won and the Jansenists lost.  That was the last time this battle was fought in any meaningful way, even if a few outliers on the traditional Catholic corners of the internet refuse to concede defeat.  Jerome, for all his righteousness, is unfortunately a lot like the Japanese holdouts after World War II: stalwart and principled, perhaps, but completely delusional.  The Christianity of the Early Church is a dead religion, like Manichaeism or the cult of Isis.  It's merely easier to recreate because the gospels and the writings of the Fathers have survived intact and in abundance down through history, whereas anyone who wants to take up Manichaeism or Isis-worship has to guess at a lot of things because the relevant texts are so scarce.

Just a random addendum, but I currently live in a rural area that's home to a Mennonite community.  One runs into them occasionally in the local stores.  The women do not wear make-up.  They wear bonnets and long dresses.  A modern sensibility would probably find this sort of thing to be "frumpy" or drab.  Admittedly it's not sexy or fetching, but it has a more transcendent kind of allure.  St. Paul asked women to "adorn themselves with modesty and sobriety" instead of gold and styled hair and fancy attire, and there does seem to be an elusive beauty in that sort of simplicity.  But to each their own.  The Mennonites will leave it to the Catholics, I suppose, to disregard St. Paul.  It's interesting, though, that the first generation of Protestants were fixated on doctrine, ecclesiology, and liturgy.  But by the second and third waves, sola scriptura had the unintended effect of recreating the Early Church disciplines in certain pockets like the Quakers and Anabaptists, where the Protestants reading the bible found many of the same things the Early Church Fathers had.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 01, 2018, 06:53:56 PM

Quote from: JubilateDeo on January 01, 2018, 03:12:11 PM
Do you really want a church where no women wear makeup?  Does anyone really want to see that?

This says it all, really.  The Early Church Fathers must've been wrong about vanity because our modern sensibilities favor make-up.  There can be no going back from this.  I say this as a supporter of Jerome: but if Jerome is right, then the Church has defected.  Because institutionally, the Church has not taught the disciplines and austerity of the Early Church for quite a while.  The Jesuits won and the Jansenists lost.  That was the last time this battle was fought in any meaningful way, even if a few outliers on the traditional Catholic corners of the internet refuse to concede defeat.  Jerome, for all his righteousness, is unfortunately a lot like the Japanese holdouts after World War II: stalwart and principled, perhaps, but completely delusional.  The Christianity of the Early Church is a dead religion, like Manichaeism or the cult of Isis.  It's merely easier to recreate because the gospels and the writings of the Fathers have survived intact and in abundance down through history, whereas anyone who wants to take up Manichaeism or Isis-worship has to guess at a lot of things because the relevant texts are so scarce.

Just a random addendum, but I currently live in a rural area that's home to a Mennonite community.  One runs into them occasionally in the local stores.  The women do not wear make-up.  They wear bonnets and long dresses.  A modern sensibility would probably find this sort of thing to be "frumpy" or drab.  Admittedly it's not sexy or fetching, but it has a more transcendent kind of allure.  St. Paul asked women to "adorn themselves with modesty and sobriety" instead of gold and styled hair and fancy attire, and there does seem to be an elusive beauty in that sort of simplicity.  But to each their own.  The Mennonites will leave it to the Catholics, I suppose, to disregard St. Paul.  It's interesting, though, that the first generation of Protestants were fixated on doctrine, ecclesiology, and liturgy.  But by the second and third waves, sola scriptura had the unintended effect of recreating the Early Church disciplines in certain pockets like the Quakers and Anabaptists, where the Protestants reading the bible found many of the same things the Early Church Fathers had.

Are you basing these conclusions off of your own examinations of patristic writings or off of various secondary sources?

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 01, 2018, 06:53:56 PM
Just a random addendum, but I currently live in a rural area that's home to a Mennonite community.  One runs into them occasionally in the local stores.  The women do not wear make-up.  They wear bonnets and long dresses.  A modern sensibility would probably find this sort of thing to be "frumpy" or drab.  Admittedly it's not sexy or fetching, but it has a more transcendent kind of allure.  St. Paul asked women to "adorn themselves with modesty and sobriety" instead of gold and styled hair and fancy attire, and there does seem to be an elusive beauty in that sort of simplicity.  But to each their own.  The Mennonites will leave it to the Catholics, I suppose, to disregard St. Paul.

I've seen the same Mennonite women, and what I see is a lot of UV damage and early signs of aging.  If you're going to do one thing for your appearance, wear sunscreen.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 01, 2018, 06:53:56 PM

Because institutionally, the Church has not taught the disciplines and austerity of the Early Church for quite a while.  The Jesuits won and the Jansenists lost.  That was the last time this battle was fought in any meaningful way, even if a few outliers on the traditional Catholic corners of the internet refuse to concede defeat.  Jerome, for all his righteousness, is unfortunately a lot like the Japanese holdouts after World War II: stalwart and principled, perhaps, but completely delusional.  The Christianity of the Early Church is a dead religion, like Manichaeism or the cult of Isis.

Yes, I was just thinking something very similar recently. The Jansenists said that we must truly love God, and the Jesuits said no, it's good enough to just follow the rules. The Vatican ruled in favor of the Jesuits, and that is the world we live in. It's a sad sort of post-diluvian existence.

"Après nous, le déluge," might as well have been spoken by the last of the Jansenists as they were hounded to their deaths by the new ultramontanist establishment, under which we still live.

My perspective is coloured by my near 40 years of experience of Tradom.

Jansenistic trads are not, usually, able to keep their children on the straight and narrow.  They might convince ~30% of their offspring to remain catholic in their Jansenistic bent, but I rarely see a wholly functional large Catholic family of Jansenists passing that down multigenerationally.  I have lived in Australia, UK, America and followed the path of Trads over a generation.

If I think back to the Jansenistic families of the 1980s and 1990s their children are, in the most part, disappeared.  And of those that remain, many are not Jansenistic.

I doubt many became modernists which means they mostly lapsed.  I am Kung Fu, so I go to every Latin Mass in a 50 mile radius.  If they went to Mass I would spot them eventually or hear about it through the Trad grapevine.  And yes, I do ask, because I am nosey.

The dancing, hard drinking, sinning Trads deliver the goods more often.

Results matter.

What the old grey haired priests at the SSPX should do is commission a census.  They should gather data on the major Trad families from 40 years ago and see what happened to them and how they turned out.  Did the frumpy, long skirt wearing mother of 8 who stopped them from attending Greg's 20th birthday bash, actually raise those children to practice?  Have they had 8 children themselves or has their upbringing left them so devoid of skills that they never got married or married late and only had 2 children and then separate beds?

Is the divorce and annulment rate higher in Jansenistic Trads or Lax-Trads ?  (Pro-rata, obviously because there are more lax-Trads).  I certainly know of some Jansenistic nutters who have appalling personal circumstances and have divorced their Catholic husbands and wives, often because they were so nutty nutbar that they drove them away..  Hutton Gibson is no exception by any means.

Our own experiences are subject to confirmation bias, but gather enough data and the truth will out.

The data would show which path, which compromise, produced the best fruit.  This argument is then resolved.  You should do whatever works.

oh boy oh boy more reasons why achieving salvation is impossible for 99.9999% of catholics

my wife is still nudging me about going to this wheelchair ballroom dancing class she "gave" me as a "gift" for our anniversary years ago but it never worked out.  perhaps i dodged a bullet there!   I do miss dancing with her though...perhaps it is a mortal sin just to desire such a thing.  all aboard the despair train!

one question i have for people who are anti dancing is...what do you do at weddings

Has anyone been to a traditional Catholic wedding that did not involve dancing of any sort?  when i imagine Our Lord at the wedding at Cana I always imagine that there was dancing of some sort there?  it wouldnt be the first time my imagination was wrong, but it does seem that there are some occasions that call for dancing--the liturgy not being one of them

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 01:12:40 AM
I doubt many became modernists which means they mostly lapsed.  I am Kung Fu, so I go to every Latin Mass in a 50 mile radius.  If they went to Mass I would spot them eventually or hear about it through the Trad grapevine.  And yes, I do ask, because I am nosey.

Is it wrong to choose in this thread to make a Dos Equis joke about Greg being the most interesting man in the Trad Community?

Anyways, my thoughts on this and similar matters is that judgement might be graded on a curve.  We already see a similar concept with whether or not an action is a mortal sin.  In real life we also punish bad actions on a curve - if you hire a homeless man to do a task for you and you find that he stole $50 while doing so, you will probably chalk it up to his situation and move on with life.  But if you hired your adult son to do the same task and he stole the money while doing it, the consequences will be severe.  I think this is similar to how a saint feels great pain from the tiniest of sins they take - perhaps because they have been given so much grace and have come to know God so well that any action against Him is more severe than the seemingly worse actions "everyday" sinners take.

Our modern society is drowning in vice.  I cannot walk out the door without seeing countless women dressed provocatively.  It cannot be escaped unless I abandon my family and move into a cave.  We are also a largely anti-Christian society, or a no-religion society.  I cannot help but imagine that judgement will take into account the circumstances of our lives.

If God is just creating an all-star team of saints where only 1 out of a million is saved, then what was Jesus' point, why establish the Church for the whole flock if nearly all will be lost?

I also agree with Greg that results must be considered.  If the parents and parish end up losing nearly the whole flock, then what in the world was the point?

As for the severity - I see Jesus as being accepting of laxity and severity.  He fasted for 40 days, but He also chose His first miracle to be do multiply wine.  He feasted, He was anointed in luxurious oils, and He showed great mercy towards sinners.  But He also told us to pluck out our eye if it causes us to sin.

As with everything in Catholicism, the answer is never simple.  God created many different personalities of man, and He desires to save us all, so salvation must have more than one specific route that everyone must rigidly conform to.  This is not to say that anything goes, but I do not currently understand it to be as rigid as this thread is suggesting it to be.  I am open to correction though, for I am just a novice.

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 01, 2018, 08:56:30 PMAre you basing these conclusions off of your own examinations of patristic writings or off of various secondary sources?

I can't claim to have read the entire library of the Early Church Fathers, but I have examined much of the relevant portions first-hand.  My two favorite saints are St. Clement of Alexandria and St. John Chrysostom, so I would say I'm at least well-acquainted with the thought of those two particular Fathers.  I will grant that they could be outliers, but many other Fathers are frequently quoted saying much the same things that they did.  And surely, if the consensus of the Fathers was fractured on matters of strictness, the laxists would be wasting no time copiously quoting all the lax Fathers left and right.  But that's not the case.  The laxists are forced to accept the Fathers and argue from there: "well, those were different times," "you have to look at that stuff in terms of nuance and context," "the Fathers were overzealous and proto-Islamic," or "the Church says we don't have to live like that anymore."  I will grant all of this, but it's relativism.

It's true, as you have indicated, that the Early Fathers were not unanimous on every last point of strict discipline.  It's not like sheet music, where if you were to follow what one Father said it would be exactly the same as some other Father.  But what it is like is variations on a theme.  And the theme is: "be not conformed to this world," erring on the side of caution.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 01:12:40 AMThe dancing, hard drinking, sinning Trads deliver the goods more often.

Results matter.

If "results matter," then traditional Catholicism itself is a failure, as it was taken down from within by modernist theologians, rainbow sash priests, and middle-aged nuns doing interpretive dance.  It has to answer for what Abp. Lefebvre called the "mass apostasy" of the hierarchy.  That's fairly small potatoes compared to "Jansenist" parents having a few kids lapse.  Parents are not said to be infallible.  Traditional Catholicism must have a fatal flaw, because it eventually lost out, too, just like so-called "Jansenism" did.  I mean, at this point, Francis is the pope.

I'm fine with the Catholic faith being little more than an intellectual assent to a creed (if that's indeed what it is), with some requisite stances on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality kept up, and from there you can dance, drink hard, and sin like a pagan.  That's fine, but that isn't what Early Christianity was.  The gospels say that a person's righteousness has to exceed that of the Scribes and the Pharisees—which is to say, that you have to do better than the people who justify their laxity with their parsing, exemptions, and legalisms.  Don't get me wrong, though, Early Christianity eventually lost in the "results matter" department itself.  That religion is dead, long having been overtaken by the spirit of the Pharisees.  The spirit of Early Christianity has only been revived in small pockets: in the Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Russian Old Believers, and certain substrata of traditional Catholicism.  You can tell them by their women in headgear, with signs of early aging and UV damage.

Quote from: Chestertonian on January 02, 2018, 06:14:29 AMHas anyone been to a traditional Catholic wedding that did not involve dancing of any sort?  when i imagine Our Lord at the wedding at Cana I always imagine that there was dancing of some sort there?

A lot of non-Christians have a difficult time with the Incarnation.  The Incarnation does make some sense, though, pertaining to mysticism, and the Early Church theologians saw it as a model for theosis ("God became man so that man might become like God").  It does run into some problems on the level of, say, imagining God as a babbling baby, as Christians do this time of year.  Some of the aesthetics surrounding that are enough to overcome the objection, however; if you gaze on an icon of the Virgin and Child it can compel your soul to a certain extent.  But to think of God dancing at Cana to whatever was the first-century equivalent of klezmer music is just too ridiculous to consider.  Thank goodness there is no tradition of icons or paintings of that travesty (if it happened, but I doubt it did).

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 07:42:16 AM

Quote from: Chestertonian on January 02, 2018, 06:14:29 AMHas anyone been to a traditional Catholic wedding that did not involve dancing of any sort?  when i imagine Our Lord at the wedding at Cana I always imagine that there was dancing of some sort there?

A lot of non-Christians have a difficult time with the Incarnation.  The Incarnation does make some sense, though, pertaining to mysticism, and the Early Church theologians saw it as a model for theosis ("God became man so that man might become like God").  It does run into some problems on the level of, say, imagining God as a babbling baby, as Christians do this time of year.  Some of the aesthetics surrounding that are enough to overcome the objection, however; if you gaze on an icon of the Virgin and Child it can compel your soul to a certain extent.  But to think of God dancing at Cana to whatever was the first-century equivalent of klezmer music is just too ridiculous to consider.  Thank goodness there is no tradition of icons or paintings of that travesty (if it happened, but I doubt it did).

I'm not saying I can imagine him dancing along.  But he didn't chastise everyone with whips either.  I think if He had the mindset of the Baptists he would have said "the last thing these sinners need is more wine.  Wine just leads to dancing and merriment"

Quote from: Chestertonian on January 02, 2018, 06:14:29 AM
oh boy oh boy more reasons why achieving salvation is impossible for 99.9999% of catholics

my wife is still nudging me about going to this wheelchair ballroom dancing class she "gave" me as a "gift" for our anniversary years ago but it never worked out.  perhaps i dodged a bullet there!   I do miss dancing with her though...perhaps it is a mortal sin just to desire such a thing.  all aboard the despair train!

one question i have for people who are anti dancing is...what do you do at weddings

Has anyone been to a traditional Catholic wedding that did not involve dancing of any sort?  when i imagine Our Lord at the wedding at Cana I always imagine that there was dancing of some sort there?  it wouldnt be the first time my imagination was wrong, but it does seem that there are some occasions that call for dancing--the liturgy not being one of them

I hope that is not what you got from my response bringing up dancing.

I am one of those trads that did not have dancing at my wedding.  My wedding was a relatively simple affair.  Morning High Mass, followed by a reception at a the top floor of a sentimental restraunt that my family went to on special occasions.  I visited with guests, took pictures with people and ate with the Canons who came to my wedding.  It was over by about 1pm in the afternoon.

I don't want to get sidetracked on specifics to my greater point.  That yes we are going to be judged strictly, but fundamentally not specifically.

The Gospels say a lot of things.

The day I meet a Catholic rigourist who cut his hand off to stop himself masturbating or plucked his eyes out to avoid sinful lusts, will be the day I buy a croft in the Orkneys or Siberian forest.

I have never met such a person.

As someone who has virtually cut all contact with everyone from the outside world & is resigned to living the domestic life at home (only to get out of grocery shopping/medical appointments/errands) this thread got me pretty intrigued, given the fact that this modern day & age indeed bears so too vast a contrast to the Age of Saints. What I'm about to share are were in my own opinion should not be taken as the 1 opinion to crush all other opinions.

Thanks to the rise of technology in the turn of the 21st century, it's ridiculously hard for Catholics to not get exposed to worldly influence through movies, music, art, etc. - let alone isolate themselves from their phones & gadgets. We see them growing cold towards matters of the Faith, the Mass being turned into a scandalous mockery with ancient liturgies destroyed. No one cares about saving their souls anymore, & religion is treated as nothing more but an accessory to their lives, not something which dictates every aspect of their actions. Sure, quotes of the Saints may come up every now & then in their news feed on social media/in the spiritual/religious books they read/websites, but these quotes are treated as no more but one-off superficially "inspirational" quotes. Of course, no one is obliged to subscribe to their writings at paranoid levels, but their lives proved so much more as they all kept their eyes peeled upon Heaven as they prayed & persevered. They serve as illustrious role models to imitate, & while each of them differed in spirituality & in charism, all of them had all but one universal aim - i.e: to lead souls to a complete & total union with God. I cannot help but agree with Arvinger that if St. John Vianney (or any other Saint) were still alive at this very moment to take a merry-go-round tour of the secular world today,  they would be more than horrified ...

A good reason as to why moral rules get enforced is because they help us to avoid near occasions of sin  (as with the case of indecent movies), yet it is a tragedy ... a very great tragedy that the average Catholic would never wish to bother with rusty laws of generations past when they have to decide on what movie to watch. (& should I mention of how N.O parishes can still screen secular movies in an attempt to analyze for hidden "Christian" messages?!)

Regardless, when it comes to dealing with the standards of the Saints (which admittedly has multiple dimensions to tackle), I think we all have to ultimately remember our identity & purpose as Christian souls - to pick up our crosses & follow Christ each & every single day of our lives. Going one way, one direction to eternal glory.

Quote
2. Why did God make you?
God made me to know him, to love him and to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next. - The Penny Catechism

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 01:38:15 AM
What the old grey haired priests at the SSPX should do is commission a census.  They should gather data on the major Trad families from 40 years ago and see what happened to them and how they turned out.  Did the frumpy, long skirt wearing mother of 8 who stopped them from attending Greg's 20th birthday bash, actually raise those children to practice?  Have they had 8 children themselves or has their upbringing left them so devoid of skills that they never got married or married late and only had 2 children and then separate beds?

Is the divorce and annulment rate higher in Jansenistic Trads or Lax-Trads ?  (Pro-rata, obviously because there are more lax-Trads).  I certainly know of some Jansenistic nutters who have appalling personal circumstances and have divorced their Catholic husbands and wives, often because they were so nutty nutbar that they drove them away..  Hutton Gibson is no exception by any means.

Our own experiences are subject to confirmation bias, but gather enough data and the truth will out.

The data would show which path, which compromise, produced the best fruit.  This argument is then resolved.  You should do whatever works.

But we would be missing the most important piece of data - the eternal destinations of all these people.  Since we do not actually know who is in heaven, hell, or purgatory, we cannot determine who has the best result.

Also, there are many other factors in how people turn out other than the influence of parents.  Adam and Eve, who had no other parent than God, chose sin.  Are you going to claim that God was a nutty nutbar who drove them away?

This is far too complex an issue to determine an answer by reasoning it out for ourselves.  Fortunately we have revelation from God on how we should live.  That is a far better guide than an over-simplified, flawed human analysis.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 07:23:57 AM

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 01, 2018, 08:56:30 PMAre you basing these conclusions off of your own examinations of patristic writings or off of various secondary sources?

I can't claim to have read the entire library of the Early Church Fathers, but I have examined much of the relevant portions first-hand.  My two favorite saints are St. Clement of Alexandria and St. John Chrysostom, so I would say I'm at least well-acquainted with the thought of those two particular Fathers.  I will grant that they could be outliers, but many other Fathers are frequently quoted saying much the same things that they did.  And surely, if the consensus of the Fathers was fractured on matters of strictness, the laxists would be wasting no time copiously quoting all the lax Fathers left and right.  But that's not the case.  The laxists are forced to accept the Fathers and argue from there: "well, those were different times," "you have to look at that stuff in terms of nuance and context," "the Fathers were overzealous and proto-Islamic," or "the Church says we don't have to live like that anymore."  I will grant all of this, but it's relativism.

It's true, as you have indicated, that the Early Fathers were not unanimous on every last point of strict discipline.  It's not like sheet music, where if you were to follow what one Father said it would be exactly the same as some other Father.  But what it is like is variations on a theme.  And the theme is: "be not conformed to this world," erring on the side of caution.

I don't think they would like the descriptor erring on the side of caution, but rather preferring nothing to the Love of Jesus Christ.  There is a big difference though between St. Jerome mocking women who where makeup in a letter to a widow or a virgin and you drawing the conclusion that the Church must then have become Apostate because St. Albert examined the question in detail and concluded that women could wear makeup to please their husbands. 

Many secondary works quote mine the Saints, even later Saints or they take things out of the context which they were written. 

The principle which is universal is that vanity is bad, and we will be judged for our vanity.  Even those who abstain from wearing makeup and feel the need to preach it from the roof tops can turn a lack of wearing makeup into an excuse for spiritual vanity.  This hasn't been lost, it is the same way it has always been.  When we approach Christ the first thing He tells us to do to have eternal life is to keep the commandments. 

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 07:50:15 AM
The Gospels say a lot of things.

The day I meet a Catholic rigourist who cut his hand off to stop himself masturbating or plucked his eyes out to avoid sinful lusts, will be the day I buy a croft in the Orkneys or Siberian forest.

I have never met such a person.

Well, now we're talking.  The gospels do say a lot of things.  "Be not conformed to the world" is open to every interpretation a human could possibly think of.  The question at hand is how the gospels are supposed to be lived out.  Either the Early Church and the Fathers got it right, or they were just needlessly blowing proto-Islamic smoke and compelling three centuries worth of believers to live way more strictly than they actually had to.  (They did not, as we know, take the passages about cutting off one's own hand or plucking out one's eye literally.  They were serious about "be not conformed to this world," however).

So Early Christianity is one of two things: it is either a dead religion, like Manichaeism, and can be recreated by anyone who wants to take those writings and follow their spirit, or it is a primitive form of Christianity that was superseded by a laxer one in the same way ancient Judaism was supplanted by Christianity.  As soon as you accept the latter, then everything is relative, and there is no reason not to accept Vatican II as superseding traditional Catholicism—Gaudium et Spes is a "counter-Syllabus."  If "results matter," then traditional Catholicism should be growing by leaps and bounds, and peeling off adherents from the Novus Ordo like Justin Beiber selling records to preteen girls, but apparently it's a tougher sell than that because, human nature being what it is, people will always prefer the lax and easy.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 07:29:57 AM

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 01:12:40 AMThe dancing, hard drinking, sinning Trads deliver the goods more often.

Results matter.

If "results matter," then traditional Catholicism itself is a failure, as it was taken down from within by modernist theologians, rainbow sash priests, and middle-aged nuns doing interpretive dance.  It has to answer for what Abp. Lefebvre called the "mass apostasy" of the hierarchy.  That's fairly small potatoes compared to "Jansenist" parents having a few kids lapse.  Parents are not said to be infallible.  Traditional Catholicism must have a fatal flaw, because it eventually lost out, too, just like so-called "Jansenism" did.  I mean, at this point, Francis is the pope.

I'm fine with the Catholic faith being little more than an intellectual assent to a creed (if that's indeed what it is), with some requisite stances on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality kept up, and from there you can dance, drink hard, and sin like a pagan.  That's fine, but that isn't what Early Christianity was.  The gospels say that a person's righteousness has to exceed that of the Scribes and the Pharisees—which is to say, that you have to do better than the people who justify their laxity with their parsing, exemptions, and legalisms.  Don't get me wrong, though, Early Christianity eventually lost in the "results matter" department itself.  That religion is dead, long having been overtaken by the spirit of the Pharisees.  The spirit of Early Christianity has only been revived in small pockets: in the Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Russian Old Believers, and certain substrata of traditional Catholicism.  You can tell them by their women in headgear, with signs of early aging and UV damage.

The Russian Old Believers won't let a non Russian Old Believer in their house during times of the year, and you always have to eat on separate plates than what the rest of the Family uses.  You cannot even own a belt in the Amish community. Rumspringa is in no way a Christian idea let alone an early christian one. Amish and Mennoties do not believe in having consecrated Churchs, nor do they practice infant baptism.


I feel like you are relying on most peoples ignorance of these things to make a point that is not true. 

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 08:11:48 AM

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 07:50:15 AM
The Gospels say a lot of things.

The day I meet a Catholic rigourist who cut his hand off to stop himself masturbating or plucked his eyes out to avoid sinful lusts, will be the day I buy a croft in the Orkneys or Siberian forest.

I have never met such a person.

Well, now we're talking.  The gospels do say a lot of things.  "Be not conformed to the world" is open to every interpretation a human could possibly think of.  The question at hand is how the gospels are supposed to be lived out.  Either the Early Church and the Fathers got it right, or they were just needlessly blowing proto-Islamic smoke and compelling three centuries worth of believers to live way more strictly than they actually had to.  (They did not, as we know, take the passages about cutting off one's own hand or plucking out one's eye literally.  They were serious about "be not conformed to this world," however).

So Early Christianity is one of two things: it is either a dead religion, like Manichaeism, and can be recreated by anyone who wants to take those writings and follow their spirit, or it is a primitive form of Christianity that was superseded by a laxer one in the same way ancient Judaism was supplanted by Christianity.  As soon as you accept the latter, then everything is relative, and there is no reason not to accept Vatican II as superseding traditional Catholicism—Gaudium et Spes is a "counter-Syllabus."  If "results matter," then traditional Catholicism should be growing by leaps and bounds, and peeling off adherents from the Novus Ordo like Justin Beiber selling records to preteen girls, but apparently it's a tougher sell than that because, human nature being what it is, people will always prefer the lax and easy.

The religion is not dead, it is the same in fact as what the early Fathers believed.  What detail is it that is a stumbling block?    Do you think St. Paul had to tell Christians not to go to orgies because they were all living like Hermits?  Do you think that he had to instruct them to shun people because they were wearing jewelry? (the time he did dealt with a case of open incest) Do you think their where controversies because Christians weren't committing all manner of sins? 

It's better that we don't mention my wedding reception.  Suffice it to say, that my mother in law got pretty drunk and she never drinks otherwise.  I didn't invite my family, as I don't think they would have coped with the riotous revelry and 24 separate Vodka toasts.  And getting a Russian visa was a big hassle back then too.  It was videoed too; if you want proof.

Even now, when we have parties, most of my family members can't cope with the Russian level of partying in the house.  At my wife's last birthday party, we almost managed to kill a Pakistani dentist by serving Barcadi 151 shots. The guests are nearly all Eastern European or working class local friends or the very posh upper class lady who runs the Latin Mass society.  They make my 20th Birthday party look like a square dance.

Anglos typically have BORING weddings. Like watching paint dry.  Best weddings I have been too are in Colombia, Russia, Georgia and Southern Italy.  Iranian weddings are fab as well so I hear.

If the drunk uncle doesn't sing Tom Jones with the fat lady and there's not some broken chairs at the end then frankly who is ever going to remember it?

If the sterile way Anglo saxons do weddings it the ideal way according to God then the Catholics of most nations are all damned.  Try finding a Catholic wedding in Sicily or The Philippines or Africa where they don't dance and drink like fish.

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 08:05:18 AM
But we would be missing the most important piece of data - the eternal destinations of all these people.  Since we do not actually know who is in heaven, hell, or purgatory, we cannot determine who has the best result.

Of course we can.  Those who are still attending the sacraments 30 years later.

Being a lax practicing Catholic is far more likely to get you to Heaven than being a lapsed Catholic.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 08:27:16 AM

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 08:05:18 AM
But we would be missing the most important piece of data - the eternal destinations of all these people.  Since we do not actually know who is in heaven, hell, or purgatory, we cannot determine who has the best result.

Of course we can.  Those who are still attending the sacraments 30 years later.

Being a lax practicing Catholic is far more likely to get you to Heaven than being a lapsed Catholic.

We do not know that for a fact.  It is quite possible that practicing Catholics are judged more strictly because we should know better or because we are being hypocrites. Perhaps a lax practicing Catholic is guilty of the sin of presumption, thinking "I can get away with my sins because I go to Mass."  Being a practicing Catholic is no guarantee of Heaven.  Meanwhile, a lapsed Catholic who repents on his deathbed might go to Heaven.  We just don't know.

God judges the heart, something that we cannot know.  In effect, you are proposing that we answer a question based on information we do not actually have.

Then what is the point of practicing?  Just lapse and leave it to God's judgement.

Practicing Catholics must on aggregate have a significantly higher chance of saving their souls than non-practicing ones or the sacraments, and the grace they impart, would be false and empty.

Logic and reason tells us this for a FACT.

It's no guarantee of Heaven, nothing is, but it is a SIGNIFICANTLY higher chance.  Otherwise we are all wasting our time dragging ourselves to mass.

The same God who tells us to "judge a tree by its fruits" and gives The Commandments to men cannot then turn around and become some wishy-washy liberal, with a mushy mind like you, who judges everyone on some secret "female intuition" basis as though the commandments and fruits no longer matter.

The faith is divinely complex.  That might be why the Church, at least so far as I know (but then again, I am a nobody), has not come out with a "How to" guide on how to be saved.

Heresies have, though.  Sola fide, just put your faith in Jesus once and you are good to go.  Calvinism, you were saved or damned from creation, so just do whatever, cause you can't change a thing.

I do not expect that there will ever be a dogma that one must do as the early Christians did nor believe everything a Church Father pontificated upon.  The faith is not that simple, which is why after 2,000 years Catholics are still puzzling over how to be saved.  Meanwhile the believers in heresy are quite happy with their simplicity - no idea how it turns out for them, just as I have no idea how things are turning out for all us Catholics.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 09:10:45 AM
Then what is the point of practicing?  Just lapse and leave it to God's judgement.

The point of practicing Catholicism is to obey what God has commanded.  We do it because we love God and we have a duty to obey Him.  It is not because we foresee an advantage to ourselves.  We are not looking for the minimum of obedience that we can get away with and still get to heaven.  We want to give God everything we possibly can because we know that is what He deserves from us.

St. Thomas taught to break from the ancients is to break the unity of the faith.

This is both a refreshing and disturbing question which interests me greatly and I wanted to respond fully and candidly. It challenges one's character and ultimately what you've become and the person you should be. Thank you for posting this. I'll address the theory then living it. Let me start with a story given Fr. Garrigou Lagrange in the Purification of the Soul in the Three Ages of The Interior Life:

"St. Jerome relates in a letter to Eustochium how, at the time when he was beginning to lead the monastic life near Antioch, he was led by a very great grace to the assiduous reading of the Scriptures. The elegance of profane writers still pleased him greatly; by preference he read the works of Cicero, Virgil, and Plautus. Then he received the following grace: during sleep he beheld himself, as it were, transported before the tribunal of God, who asked him severely who he was. "I am a Christian," Jerome replied. "You lie," said the sovereign Judge. "You are a Ciceronian; for where your treasure is, there is your heart also." And the order was given to scourge him. "Upon awakening," writes St. Jerome, "I felt, indeed, that this had been more than a dream, that it was a reality, since I bore on my shoulders the marks of the stripes I had received. Since that time I have read the Sacred Scriptures with greater ardor than I formerly read profane books." This experience explains St. Jerome's statement to Eustochium in another letter: "Let sleep surprise you only reading; fall asleep only on Sacred Scripture."
http://www.christianperfection.info/tta28.php

Let me start by saying he was called Reginald the Rigorist by his contemporaries so nothing new under the sun.


THE THEORY
I'd like to say that most of what I've learned and studied over the years seems foreign to me over time. The content is still there (although decaying through memory lapses) but its more distant.

It is very hard to review things that make you feel like a stranger in a strange land. In one of your threads I was reading PDR's posts (always engaging to peruse) and I see in his thoughts many of my own.

I'm going to use nudity as an example, but any other example could be used that plagues the modern world. This is not a crusade against nudity solely, but to use it more as a concrete example.

Take nudity in art. The early Church went from town to town and destroyed it. They didn't see exceptions in the quality of the art, just the loss of souls. Can a person pose naked and if so was God wrong to make clothes for Adam who was much closer to purity? What exceptions did the early Church fathers give for modesty? None and the concept of art with nudity is foreign to the East entirely and the West almost entirely (with a few regional exceptions) until the 14th century and crescendoing in the 15th which I believe is one of the reasons from Protestantism and the weakness in the clergy to overcome the spiritual battles before their eyes (namely, excusing evil in the name of culture).

If nudity and posing for nudity is fine would you nominate your sister, mother, and by extension Our Heavenly Mother and tell her it's just for the intention of the beauty of art? If one should think of Our Lady with the utmost purity what makes the stranger so much different if they are our sisters in Christ?

Do I honestly believe anyone who would stand before the Mother Of God could even walk her to a museum with quality nudes or would the facade of sophistry peel back the evil act it truly is when confronted with such purity? How would St. John Vianney view such a museum? Before anyone attacks my position, which they are free to, I demand they answer this questions for intellectual honesty's sake.

Let's also use St. Alphonsus in regards to opera. He loved the opera and as an attorney used to attend it frequently. As a priest he went but took off his glasses so as not to see anything and sat afar from the performance and later on stopped going entirely. He understood the act had consequences and acted on them accordingly.

My estrangement comes from history and principle. How can both the principle and history of something be so easy to see but denied by not only the laity but the hierarchy? Probabilism was meant as a means to find a few theologians on a topic that agreed and proceed from there. But what happens when it's clear they are just making up their own theology estranged from from the Fathers and Doctors and eventually become the soup de jour?

It appears the recipe is time + reason = whatever you want eventually

How can you can be fully Christian to reject nudity entirely for the 1st millennia then an uneducated bore with no aesthetic sense in the 2nd going into the 3rd? What about Padre Pio about television?

Another example in one of those threads you posted is a priest's response to nudity and it seemed as if he was a professor because he alludes to teaching or instructing other priests. He said, correctly but incompletely, that an object is known by it's intention thereby excusing nudity in art. That's incorrect.

The first thing that must be noted is the object itself and if it is good, not the intention alone. Intention must be guided by the act's moral uprightness in itself. St. Thomas uses the example of hunting a deer and killing a man. The intention was not murder and therefore it's not murder so he's right on that point. But before we discuss intention we have to discuss the act itself. If the act of nudity or modern entertainment can be good where would you find that in the ancients, how would a St. Theresa of Avila view this, or would St. Jerome watch movies recommended by most with me?

Nudity can be by extension applied to movies, shows, blasphemy, indecency in language. A woman in a bikini using blasphemy is obviously worse than the a museum. The horror of blasphemy is worse than murder and yet who feels it's sting?

Nuance and complexity arguments to me are simply relativistic and morally improbable. If nuance and complexity arguments had any merit they would have history on their side with examples, but they don't. If both doctrine and history are against you then all you have is reason which is hard to ever see how both the ancients and moderns can be reconciled. Scorn and mockery aren't arguments.

THE PRACTICE
Ok so let's be honest with ourselves. Which priest would you speak to today who would agree with you? Which one of your kids will find such a priest? If saints were scorned in their day by their priests and leadership where would you find one today? They are incredibly hard to find and even harder to openly say what they feel for fears of repercussions.

Lest we forget priests scorned the idea of St. John Vianney giving advice to so many because of his lack of nuance and training. In his holy simplicity he saw evil more clearly hence he cried constantly when hearing sin.

Seminaries are not like jobs. You may be fully qualified and work hard, but if they don't like you for any reason you're gone. It's one of the most subjective vocations one can enter into that is highly demanding.

I once asked why priests watched movies at one trad community and my potential superior said to me, "You know I've had this conversation with other seminarians and they're not here anymore" with a grinch-like devilish smile. Sadly, I could give stories like this over and over again but it's not fair to the readers so I won't go further.

When I called one older, elderly priest/professor who clearly believed in the ancients I asked him point blank how anyone can be a priest today. His response was illuminating when he said, "You have to join a monastery". He saw the utter corruption and obviously at his age his powers were diminished but I know for a fact he did much good to the seminarians. In his raw honesty I saw laid bare what I confusedly understood made indelibly clear. Is this realistic for most? Obviously it's not as both the civil laws and ability to make an income are highly impaired and at the end of the day you have to eat or provide or society disappears.

As a father of children I wrestle with this question: if I teach my kids the faith of St. Alphonsus, Peter Damien, Chrysostum, Vianney, what do I give them except frustration, but I believe over a decade of being a father I have found the answer by traveling and seeing so many different scenarios that I delve into last.

Things have eroded so quickly I highly doubt St. Alphonsus without his titles would ever be accepted almost anywhere today to teach moral theology except in a few monasteries. We live in the sound-byte LOL culture where most won't read this either as it's too much work.

I don't care how the poster Jerome sounded to others in other threads, St. John Vianney was hated by his flock and eventually won them over with hard work, penance and prayer. He was initially hated by many. This is the path of the truth teller even amongst supposed people of like mind like St. John of the Cross who was imprisoned by his own.

Sadly, there are no answers from a linear understanding of application. You want one but one doesn't exist unless you were to live near penitential monasteries. The day is gone when sound doctrine is easily accepted, when we are forced to practically ignore our priests and bishops to try to keep our souls or sanity, and when good priests are punished for teaching the truth.

The only answer is our own souls and spiritual life, to muster the courage and conviction to be the best man you can be today; to realize time is short and our souls will be called sooner than we think.

In conclusion I had this same conversation with my wife but in a different way. She asked how we make our kids into saints if things are so corrupt and the lives of the fathers seem so abstract. I mentioned the analogy of Bishop Sheen's "modern hairshirts" where he showed in times past we imposed penances on ourselves in a Catholic ethos to help conform to God's law against internal dangers. In today's time our neighbor is our hairshirt as it's an attack from without that constantly bombards us with attacks stronger than impurity but against our faith.

That maybe our way back to the ancients is not in linear form, but in the spirit of joy, happiness, spending more time as a family, playing games that are wholesome, restore chaperones over dating, and to make life the most fun it can be so they see the love of God through the family. Maybe the discipline imposed on us is to be as joyful as we can in a fallen world and not to let melancholy and despair take over us.

I've seen Catholicism practiced in 12 countries from Eastern, Novus Ordo, and Traditional perspectives. The only thing I've seen as a thread that binds them when I see the children prospering and growing in the faith is love, patience, compassion, modesty, family activities (which I can't stress enough) sobriety, and vigilance against the world into their homes. Maybe it will be through our joy and by extension the analogy of the compassion and mercy of God that gives them the will to fight in a decimated world and to conclude in the words of St. Paul our salvation is founded upon hope. May we be that for others and that might be the greatest interior mortification which exceeds all other penances.

QuoteThe point of practicing Catholicism is to obey what God has commanded

In that case I don't see how a lapsed Catholic can, on aggregate, beat a practicing Catholic to Heaven.  However lax the practicing Catholic is, he is still "obeying what God has commanded" more than the lapsed Catholic simply by practicing his faith.

So assuming the data demonstrates that rigorists lose more of their children than typical lax-Trads then being a lax-Trad is superior to being a rigorist.

The kind of wackadoodle Jayne logic, (nothing more than purely contrarianism), that would suggest a lapsed Catholic with a deathbed conversion was no worse off than a weak but practicing Catholic is the same sort of moronic liberal stupidity that gives us the canonised saints of John Paul II and Paul VI.

Yes, hypothetically, JP2 could have confessed his many sins and heresies and scandals at the last nano-second.  But there's absolutely no evidence to suggest he did.

If salvation is that random, that much of a lottery why bother?

Quote from: bigbadtrad on January 02, 2018, 09:24:34 AM
St. Thomas taught to break from the ancients is to break the unity of the faith.

This is both a refreshing and disturbing question which interests me greatly and I wanted to respond fully and candidly. It challenges one?s character and ultimately what you?ve become and the person you should be. Thank you for posting this. I?ll address the theory then living it. Let me start with a story given Fr. Garrigou Lagrange in the Purification of the Soul in the Three Ages of The Interior Life:

?St. Jerome relates in a letter to Eustochium how, at the time when he was beginning to lead the monastic life near Antioch, he was led by a very great grace to the assiduous reading of the Scriptures. The elegance of profane writers still pleased him greatly; by preference he read the works of Cicero, Virgil, and Plautus. Then he received the following grace: during sleep he beheld himself, as it were, transported before the tribunal of God, who asked him severely who he was. "I am a Christian," Jerome replied. "You lie," said the sovereign Judge. "You are a Ciceronian; for where your treasure is, there is your heart also." And the order was given to scourge him. "Upon awakening," writes St. Jerome, "I felt, indeed, that this had been more than a dream, that it was a reality, since I bore on my shoulders the marks of the stripes I had received. Since that time I have read the Sacred Scriptures with greater ardor than I formerly read profane books." This experience explains St. Jerome's statement to Eustochium in another letter: "Let sleep surprise you only reading; fall asleep only on Sacred Scripture."
http://www.christianperfection.info/tta28.php

Let me start by saying he was called Reginald the Rigorist by his contemporaries so nothing new under the sun.


THE THEORY
I?d like to say that most of what I?ve learned and studied over the years seems foreign to me over time. The content is still there (although decaying through memory lapses) but its more distant.

It is very hard to review things that make you feel like a stranger in a strange land. In one of your threads I was reading PDR?s posts (always engaging to peruse) and I see in his thoughts many of my own.

I'm going to use nudity as an example, but any other example could be used that plagues the modern world. This is not a crusade against nudity solely, but to use it more as a concrete example.

Take nudity in art. The early Church went from town to town and destroyed it. They didn?t see exceptions in the quality of the art, just the loss of souls. Can a person pose naked and if so was God wrong to make clothes for Adam who was much closer to purity? What exceptions did the early Church fathers give for modesty? None and the concept of art with nudity is foreign to the East entirely and the West almost entirely (with a few regional exceptions) until the 14th century and crescendoing in the 15th which I believe is one of the reasons from Protestantism and the weakness in the clergy to overcome the spiritual battles before their eyes (namely, excusing evil in the name of culture).

If nudity and posing for nudity is fine would you nominate your sister, mother, and by extension Our Heavenly Mother and tell her it?s just for the intention of the beauty of art? If one should think of Our Lady with the utmost purity what makes the stranger so much different if they are our sisters in Christ?

Do I honestly believe anyone who would stand before the Mother Of God could even walk her to a museum with quality nudes or would the facade of sophistry peel back the evil act it truly is when confronted with such purity? How would St. John Vianney view such a museum? Before anyone attacks my position, which they are free to, I demand they answer this questions for intellectual honesty?s sake.

Let?s also use St. Alphonsus in regards to opera. He loved the opera and as an attorney used to attend it frequently. As a priest he went but took off his glasses so as not to see anything and sat afar from the performance and later on stopped going entirely. He understood the act had consequences and acted on them accordingly.

My estrangement comes from history and principle. How can both the principle and history of something be so easy to see but denied by not only the laity but the hierarchy? Probabilism was meant as a means to find a few theologians on a topic that agreed and proceed from there. But what happens when it?s clear they are just making up their own theology estranged from from the Fathers and Doctors and eventually become the soup de jour?

It appears the recipe is time + reason = whatever you want eventually

How can you can be fully Christian to reject nudity entirely for the 1st millennia then an uneducated bore with no aesthetic sense in the 2nd going into the 3rd? What about Padre Pio about television?

Another example in one of those threads you posted is a priest?s response to nudity and it seemed as if he was a professor because he alludes to teaching or instructing other priests. He said, correctly but incompletely, that an object is known by it?s intention thereby excusing nudity in art. That?s incorrect.

The first thing that must be noted is the object itself and if it is good, not the intention alone. Intention must be guided by the act?s moral uprightness in itself. St. Thomas uses the example of hunting a deer and killing a man. The intention was not murder and therefore it?s not murder so he?s right on that point. But before we discuss intention we have to discuss the act itself. If the act of nudity or modern entertainment can be good where would you find that in the ancients, how would a St. Theresa of Avila view this, or would St. Jerome watch movies recommended by most with me?

Nudity can be by extension applied to movies, shows, blasphemy, indecency in language. A woman in a bikini using blasphemy is obviously worse than the a museum. The horror of blasphemy is worse than murder and yet who feels it?s sting?

Nuance and complexity arguments to me are simply relativistic and morally improbable. If nuance and complexity arguments had any merit they would have history on their side with examples, but they don?t. If both doctrine and history are against you then all you have is reason which is hard to ever see how both the ancients and moderns can be reconciled. Scorn and mockery aren?t arguments.

THE PRACTICE
Ok so let?s be honest with ourselves. Which priest would you speak to today who would agree with you? Which one of your kids will find such a priest? If saints were scorned in their day by their priests and leadership where would you find one today? They are incredibly hard to find and even harder to openly say what they feel for fears of repercussions.

Lest we forget priests scorned the idea of St. John Vianney giving advice to so many because of his lack of nuance and training. In his holy simplicity he saw evil more clearly hence he cried constantly when hearing sin.

Seminaries are not like jobs. You may be fully qualified and work hard, but if they don?t like you for any reason you?re gone. It?s one of the most subjective vocations one can enter into that is highly demanding.

I once asked why priests watched movies at one trad community and my potential superior said to me, ?You know I?ve had this conversation with other seminarians and they?re not here anymore? with a grinch-like devilish smile. Sadly, I could give stories like this over and over again but it?s not fair to the readers so I won?t go further.

When I called one older, elderly priest/professor who clearly believed in the ancients I asked him point blank how anyone can be a priest today. His response was illuminating when he said, ?You have to join a monastery?. He saw the utter corruption and obviously at his age his powers were diminished but I know for a fact he did much good to the seminarians. In his raw honesty I saw laid bare what I confusedly understood made indelibly clear. Is this realistic for most? Obviously it?s not as both the civil laws and ability to make an income are highly impaired and at the end of the day you have to eat or provide or society disappears.

As a father of children I wrestle with this question: if I teach my kids the faith of St. Alphonsus, Peter Damien, Chrysostum, Vianney, what do I give them except frustration, but I believe over a decade of being a father I have found the answer by traveling and seeing so many different scenarios that I delve into last.

Things have eroded so quickly I highly doubt St. Alphonsus without his titles would ever be accepted almost anywhere today to teach moral theology except in a few monasteries. We live in the sound-byte LOL culture where most won?t read this either as it?s too much work.

I don?t care how the poster Jerome sounded to others in other threads, St. John Vianney was hated by his flock and eventually won them over with hard work, penance and prayer. He was initially hated by many. This is the path of the truth teller even amongst supposed people of like mind like St. John of the Cross who was imprisoned by his own.

Sadly, there are no answers from a linear understanding of application. You want one but one doesn?t exist unless you were to live near penitential monasteries. The day is gone when sound doctrine is easily accepted, when we are forced to practically ignore our priests and bishops to try to keep our souls or sanity, and when good priests are punished for teaching the truth.

The only answer is our own souls and spiritual life, to muster the courage and conviction to be the best man you can be today; to realize time is short and our souls will be called sooner than we think.

In conclusion I had this same conversation with my wife but in a different way. She asked how we make our kids into saints if things are so corrupt and the lives of the fathers seem so abstract. I mentioned the analogy of Bishop Sheen?s ?modern hairshirts? where he showed in times past we imposed penances on ourselves in a Catholic ethos to help conform to God?s law against internal dangers. In today?s time our neighbor is our hairshirt as it?s an attack from without that constantly bombards us with attacks stronger than impurity but against our faith.

That maybe our way back to the ancients is not in linear form, but in the spirit of joy, happiness, spending more time as a family, playing games that are wholesome, restore chaperones over dating, and to make life the most fun it can be so they see the love of God through the family. Maybe the discipline imposed on us is to be as joyful as we can in a fallen world and not to let melancholy and despair take over us.

I?ve seen Catholicism practiced in 12 countries from Eastern, Novus Ordo, and Traditional perspectives. The only thing I?ve seen as a thread that binds them when I see the children prospering and growing in the faith is love, patience, compassion, modesty, family activities (which I can't stress enough) sobriety, and vigilance against the world into their homes. Maybe it will be through our joy and by extension the analogy of the compassion and mercy of God that gives them the will to fight in a decimated world and to conclude in the words of St. Paul our salvation is founded upon hope. May we be that for others and that might be the greatest interior mortification which exceeds all other penances.

I agree with most of what is written hear.  However, to discard historical context, complexity, nuance, and such like is wrong.  If it is not wrong then how could St. Thomas disagree with St. Augustine on certain points. Or to have disagreements on matters of faith like what Choir of Angels does St. Gabriel belong to (I have been reading a commentary on scripture recently and was shocked at the level of disagreement on that)  If we discard them wholesale then how do we explain the development of sacramental confession from a a very rare event with long canonical penances, to an event now which can even be done daily.  What happens when the Saints are in conflict, like St. Bernard's sharp criticisms of Cluny?

It is easy to be frustrated on a topic like nudity in art, and conclude that we are just wrong and the ancients are right.  However, when we see that there was  Nudity in art going back to the 3rd century in the Catacombs of Rome we know that it is not historically true that all Christians everywhere destroyed nude art when they saw it. The painter Rubens also was a very devout Catholic and he did paint nudes.  I don't really see a need to take a side in the issue.  I forgot what Father it was but one Father said young monks where forbidden from reading certain sections of Scripture due to the concern that it could inflame their passions.  I am not saying that is wrong, I just don't think that you and I need to figure out who is right. 

The ancients also had in some regions prohibitions on not wanting mensutrating women to go to Church a practice that was widespread, and even maintained a certain dominance in many regions for a long time. 

I am not trying to make the point of those who are inclined to follow pleasure at the expense of the Gospel by pointing out these things, but if one looks at pentientals written on the question of whether it is a sin to play chess from the Medieval period reveals that we do need to understand why different authors said different things at different times.  At one time chess was condemned as sinful because of the violent quarrels, drunkeness and gambling involved in it, later it became viewed as even a good virtuous thing to do.   This is why it is important to consider that those Saints (one of which when he found out one of his penitents had a chess board he forced him to burn it and drink water with its ashes in it) in another place you have St. Ganadio (I hope I spelled that right) recommended the practice in monasteries as an aid to prayer and concentration.

I don't see a solution other than acknowledging our blindness, humbling ourselves and constant repentance.  Nudity in art is not necessary for salvation but I am not prepared to say that others have forfeited it because they painted it.  And we have to have an explanation of why we have such tensions to those outside our faith or those who are struggling with it.  I don't want to see people conclude that our Church is apostate and has been so for a long time because we allow women to wear make up, or that some of our Churchs have nudes in them.

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 08:14:07 AM

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 07:29:57 AM

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 01:12:40 AMThe dancing, hard drinking, sinning Trads deliver the goods more often.

Results matter.

If "results matter," then traditional Catholicism itself is a failure, as it was taken down from within by modernist theologians, rainbow sash priests, and middle-aged nuns doing interpretive dance.  It has to answer for what Abp. Lefebvre called the "mass apostasy" of the hierarchy.  That's fairly small potatoes compared to "Jansenist" parents having a few kids lapse.  Parents are not said to be infallible.  Traditional Catholicism must have a fatal flaw, because it eventually lost out, too, just like so-called "Jansenism" did.  I mean, at this point, Francis is the pope.

I'm fine with the Catholic faith being little more than an intellectual assent to a creed (if that's indeed what it is), with some requisite stances on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality kept up, and from there you can dance, drink hard, and sin like a pagan.  That's fine, but that isn't what Early Christianity was.  The gospels say that a person's righteousness has to exceed that of the Scribes and the Pharisees—which is to say, that you have to do better than the people who justify their laxity with their parsing, exemptions, and legalisms.  Don't get me wrong, though, Early Christianity eventually lost in the "results matter" department itself.  That religion is dead, long having been overtaken by the spirit of the Pharisees.  The spirit of Early Christianity has only been revived in small pockets: in the Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Russian Old Believers, and certain substrata of traditional Catholicism.  You can tell them by their women in headgear, with signs of early aging and UV damage.

The Russian Old Believers won't let a non Russian Old Believer in their house during times of the year, and you always have to eat on separate plates than what the rest of the Family uses.  You cannot even own a belt in the Amish community. Rumspringa is in no way a Christian idea let alone an early christian one. Amish and Mennoties do not believe in having consecrated Churchs, nor do they practice infant baptism.


I feel like you are relying on most peoples ignorance of these things to make a point that is not true.

Nmoerbeek, I think you missed Pon de Replay's point here. I don't think he was saying that Amish, Mennonites, etc. are somehow an accurate representation of what the Early Church was like - sure, they differ with orthodox Catholicism on many points of doctrine and practice. What Pon de Replay was saying, I think, is that these communities preserve a spirit of genuine separation from the world and rejection of all worldliness, something which was characteristic for the Early Church, and which is almost completely lost in the Catholic Church today, even among most of Traditionalists (it is sufficient to look at threads which I linked to in my OP to find abundant evidence for that).

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 09:40:41 AM
If salvation is that random, that much of a lottery why bother?

You are starting with the wrong assumptions. You write as if the only reason to be Catholic were for obtaining the reward of Heaven.  You ask "why bother?" and "what's the point?" if you cannot see an advantage to yourself to being Catholic. 

It is not about seeking a reward, it is about pleasing God.  The question to ask is not "what is the minimum necessary for salvation?" but "what will please the One who created, redeemed and sanctifies me?"  Why bother trying to please Him?  Because that is what is due to Him by His nature.

Quote from: Davis Blank - EG on January 02, 2018, 06:54:23 AM
Is it wrong to choose in this thread to make a Dos Equis joke about Greg being the most interesting man in the Trad Community?

(https://i.imgflip.com/220nmp.jpg)

I'm going to keep this real simple in order to avoid putting my foot directly in my mouth. Germs can be dangerous, but many have such an aversion to them that they fail to allow their immune systems to work. If you go out of your way to avoid all contact with immodesty you also tend to fall into the trap of conceding a certain power to lord over you.

That's all. You are all intelligent people and can surely fill in the rest. But one last thing, even immodest movies tend to have some kind of moral lesson attached to them. They didn't call that very immodest movie Fatal Attraction for nothing. Look at horror movies of the late '70s and early '80s. Those who engaged in the forbidden fruit of premarital sex also always get slaughtered with an axe or knife immediately following the act.

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 10:33:57 AM
I agree with most of what is written hear.  However, to discard historical context, complexity, nuance, and such like is wrong.  If it is not wrong then how could St. Thomas disagree with St. Augustine on certain points. Or to have disagreements on matters of faith..."

Yes, faith, not morals in which we are all in agreement that was universally taught and lived correct?

Questions of faith can be easily developed through the kernel of praxis, and other saints who have more of a developed sense of the divine. I'm not advocating apokostatasis because enough Fathers taught it so. Theology can be quite nuanced as to particulars which can mean a great deal and do not violate the laws of nature. But this is a distraction from the argument which is a pretext for your next argument which was woven a bit disingenuously to be upfront with you as you conflated several topics to make a pretext for the next.

In regards to morals you have clear text and practice. Unless man has changed the moral law cannot change. We aren't discussing finer soteriological points but aspects of lust, avarice, etc..

Again, not to beat the path of nudity, you have to point to particular individuals, but not the culture because both culture and history are against you. This is the antithesis of common sense in these debates which I find to be unfair. Sure one could point to a guy committing adultery too who was pious and maybe Amoris Laetitia could be the end result where God wills the adultery 1700 years later. Like I said moral theology has become time + reason = anything

Particulars don't make general laws or culture, that's faulty logic. 1 woman who is a saint committed accidental suicide to avoid being raped, certainly I'm not advocating suicide either are you? That's why I only want to discuss the general praxis, not particulars which is usually 1 "gotcha" moment after another.

Also, you did the "all" trick which is also a bit unfair as well. Certainly I would exclude 90 yr old women. I never said all Christians ripped down nudes, but many men did and many did not survive antiquity and to avoid the clear case of this happening throughout the Roman empire is to avoid history.

I think in order not to have this to go from menstruating women (which had nothing to do with the moral law, but temple purity) the same standard should be set:

-Would you recommend Our Lady to be used as an example and ask her to be a model for the artist in a nude? If not her how about your mother?  Would you show your friends afterwards?
-Would you take Our Lady to see such art?
-What would the saints we revere think of it? Can you think of any father or doctor of the Church in particular? 

The rest of it is merely a distraction of particulars I wish to stray from because it's sleight of hand distractions.

Quote from: Arvinger on January 02, 2018, 10:53:30 AM

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 08:14:07 AM

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 07:29:57 AM

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 01:12:40 AMThe dancing, hard drinking, sinning Trads deliver the goods more often.

Results matter.

If "results matter," then traditional Catholicism itself is a failure, as it was taken down from within by modernist theologians, rainbow sash priests, and middle-aged nuns doing interpretive dance.  It has to answer for what Abp. Lefebvre called the "mass apostasy" of the hierarchy.  That's fairly small potatoes compared to "Jansenist" parents having a few kids lapse.  Parents are not said to be infallible.  Traditional Catholicism must have a fatal flaw, because it eventually lost out, too, just like so-called "Jansenism" did.  I mean, at this point, Francis is the pope.

I'm fine with the Catholic faith being little more than an intellectual assent to a creed (if that's indeed what it is), with some requisite stances on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality kept up, and from there you can dance, drink hard, and sin like a pagan.  That's fine, but that isn't what Early Christianity was.  The gospels say that a person's righteousness has to exceed that of the Scribes and the Pharisees—which is to say, that you have to do better than the people who justify their laxity with their parsing, exemptions, and legalisms.  Don't get me wrong, though, Early Christianity eventually lost in the "results matter" department itself.  That religion is dead, long having been overtaken by the spirit of the Pharisees.  The spirit of Early Christianity has only been revived in small pockets: in the Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Russian Old Believers, and certain substrata of traditional Catholicism.  You can tell them by their women in headgear, with signs of early aging and UV damage.

The Russian Old Believers won't let a non Russian Old Believer in their house during times of the year, and you always have to eat on separate plates than what the rest of the Family uses.  You cannot even own a belt in the Amish community. Rumspringa is in no way a Christian idea let alone an early christian one. Amish and Mennoties do not believe in having consecrated Churchs, nor do they practice infant baptism.


I feel like you are relying on most peoples ignorance of these things to make a point that is not true.

Nmoerbeek, I think you missed Pon de Replay's point here. I don't think he was saying that Amish, Mennonites, etc. are somehow an accurate representation of what the Early Church was like - sure, they differ with orthodox Catholicism on many points of doctrine and practice. What Pon de Replay was saying, I think, is that these communities preserve a spirit of genuine separation from the world and rejection of all worldliness, something which was characteristic for the Early Church, and which is almost completely lost in the Catholic Church today, even among most of Traditionalists (it is sufficient to look at threads which I linked to in my OP to find abundant evidence for that).

Please then do explain  in the Apostolic Age or in the Early Church how these communities specifically mirror the rejection of worldliness of  those early Christians?  I am somewhat familiar with the the writings and history of that Age and don't see it myself.   

Jayne,

It is in a human's nature to be self-interested.

I'm honest enough to admit that I have/adopt/accept moral values for my own benefit and the benefit of the society around me which in turn benefits me.  If God is not there to benefit me, then I have no motivation to love God.  It's a two way street.

That's why I wouldn't become a Muslim.  Because their society is phucked up.  Far more than ours.

Any god who does not allow drinking and bacon is an idiot.  I'd never love such a god because bacon is tasty and boozing is nice.

Greg

QuoteAs a father of children I wrestle with this question: if I teach my kids the faith of St. Alphonsus, Peter Damien, Chrysostum, Vianney, what do I give them except frustration, but I believe over a decade of being a father I have found the answer by traveling and seeing so many different scenarios that I delve into last.

That's why I look at results.  What works, on average, and what does not work.  If the rigorists who tell their children they are only one mortal sin away from Hell are producing solid, mentally stable offspring 30-40 years later then imitate that.  If they are producing sons who cannot hold down a job and daughters so dour and dull that no Catholic man wants to marry them, or marries them because he is like them, but cannot afford a large Catholic family because he cannot operate in the real world, then what is the point?

If you don't foresee sustainable growth in a business you don't start it.

QuoteThings have eroded so quickly I highly doubt St. Alphonsus without his titles would ever be accepted almost anywhere today to teach moral theology except in a few monasteries. We live in the sound-byte LOL culture where most won't read this either as it's too much work.

I question the stories about the lives of these saints myself.  History is written by the winners and humans are storytellers and myth-makers and have been since the dawn of time.  We live in a era of fake news now and we know that every camp of Tradom spins the truth to support their view of the world.  Father Pfeiffer is "a brave and bold Holy man" if you like him and a disobedient, proud loony with some very dodgy friends like Pablo, if you don't.

Same for Bishop Williamson.  A great orator, but highly flawed in other ways.  You can easily imagine the details of his life being selectively edited to make him into a right-wing saint if the cultural wind blows in that direction.  Protecting known pedophile priests (twice) gets buried.

"The Nine" were once traitors and outcasts from the SSPX.  40 years on their position is more accepted though they have achieved very little other than basic survival.

Even Pope Michael isn't the complete laughing stock he used to be in light of Pope Francis.

My opinion is that these saints lives stories are embellished by the writers of them and those who approve publish and promote their writings at the time.  Since we cannot trust the canonization process itself, then who is to say that every utterance was even made, let alone in the correct context.  Just as the SSPX and the Resistance both claim that "Marcel Lefebvre would side with them today" were he alive.  They cannot both be right.

Once you accept that the main ship has sunk and you are in the lifeboat boat rowing your own family towards the horizon then the best thing to do is ignore everyone else's mindless ramblings and row the way you want to row at the speed you want to row.  Ignore the priests and pundits and Cassandras.  They haven't got a phucking clue.  Behind closed doors their lives are probably more phucked up than yours.

So just keep rowing, be friendly to the people and priests calmly rowing in your direction and keep your chin up.  Best case you make it to safety.  Financially support the handful of priests you see eye to eye with.  My goal is simply to help my children make good marriage choices and then let them row in whatever direction their see fit.

The thing that will MOST influence your children and their moral choices is whether they like you.  My Dad has the advantage that I actually like and admire him.  So 90% of what he does I copy.  If I thought my Father was a miserable Jansenistic tosser, with no sense of humor or fun, I'd just ignore the old fart.

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 08:20:08 AMThe religion is not dead, it is the same in fact as what the early Fathers believed.  What detail is it that is a stumbling block?    Do you think St. Paul had to tell Christians not to go to orgies because they were all living like Hermits?  Do you think that he had to instruct them to shun people because they were wearing jewelry? (the time he did dealt with a case of open incest) Do you think their where controversies because Christians weren't committing all manner of sins?

St. Paul was dealing with the very first generation of Christians, and seeing as he was the "Apostle to the Gentiles," it was within his purview to condemn their pagan customs and debaucheries.  I don't think anyone has ever claimed that the early Christians were perfect or pure or entirely without sin; obviously they struggled with backsliding into their old secular ways—or, with the subsequent generations, finding the allure of the secular world sufficiently tempting.  That's why the Early Church Fathers were addressing all these things in the first place: they were delineating the ways in which a Christian properly holds his or her self apart from the world.  They were speaking to both inspire and to instruct.  It was a confusing time; Christianity was splintered into many different sects: Judaizers, Gnostics, Ebionites, Arians, what have you.  What every Catholic or Orthodox Christian presumably accepts, however, is that the Early Church Fathers recognized by the Church, taken as a whole, are the testimony of the early traditions and disciplines.  There are internal disagreements among them (anyone who insists that the Fathers be in accord on every last jot or tittle is going to have to conclude that the Church defected in the first century).  But collectively they do have a healthy unity, and they are unified across many questions in being not lax on how much worldliness was appropriate for a Christian.

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 08:05:55 AMI don't think they would like the descriptor erring on the side of caution, but rather preferring nothing to the Love of Jesus Christ.  There is a big difference though between St. Jerome mocking women who where makeup in a letter to a widow or a virgin and you drawing the conclusion that the Church must then have become Apostate because St. Albert examined the question in detail and concluded that women could wear makeup to please their husbands.

nmoerbeek, I may have unintentionally caused some confusion for you.  When I said, "if Jerome is right, then the Church has defected," I was referring to a former user on Suscipe Domine, not St. Jerome.  When it comes to something like make-up, it's unclear whether the Church Fathers who spoke against it would have believed that the Church would be apostate if she did not agree with them (they probably would not have).  But if St. Albert contradicted St. Clement, St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, and Tertullian on make-up, then that just goes to show that the disciplines had become ripe for relaxing a thousand years later.  I don't think the Church necessarily defected in that instance.  And I will certainly concede that the Church is more or less united through history in terms of doctrine.  But in terms of both doctine and practice, the Early Church has to be considered something of a dead religion.  The only people who have recovered the early praxis are disparate sects who consider each other heretics: from Russian Old Believers to Mennonites to traditional Catholics.  Anathema sit.

Quote from: Maximilian on January 01, 2018, 11:22:16 PM
"Après nous, le déluge," might as well have been spoken by the last of the Jansenists as they were hounded to their deaths by the new ultramontanist establishment, under which we still live.

(https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmymemes.biz%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F10%2Fgrumpy-cat-good-meme.jpg&hash=2d722e1bbb892092d65c1199e40a71eca7bd0347)

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 11:25:06 AMPlease then do explain  in the Apostolic Age or in the Early Church how these communities specifically mirror the rejection of worldliness of  those early Christians?  I am somewhat familiar with the the writings and history of that Age and don't see it myself.

We may be getting astray from my original point.  I don't claim that the Old Believers or the Amish are in every aspect the mirror image of the Early Christians.  I was simply saying that if you take the examples from the Early Church on modesty in dress, jewelry, and make-up, you will find Early Christianity better reflected in Mennonites than Catholics.  I am by no means saying that the doctrines and every last practice of the followers of Menno Simons represent authentic Early Christianity.  I am saying that where the Catholic Church abandoned the Fathers on these particular things, various Protestant sects recovered them simply by reading scripture.  The Fathers themselves were following the gospels and epistles.  I don't think that's controversial.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 11:25:40 AM
Jayne,

It is in a human's nature to be self-interested.

I'm honest enough to admit that I have/adopt/accept moral values for my own benefit and the benefit of the society around me which in turn benefits me.  If God is not there to benefit me, then I have no motivation to love God.  It's a two way street.

God created you and the entire universe that you enjoy.  God became man and suffered and died that you might be saved.  God gave the Church, the Sacraments and too many blessing to say.  Why is that not enough motivation to love God and to obey him to the best of your ability? 

The other explanation for this is that Christianity is a false cult and after 2000 years, and with the freedom to study it and hold such a view the west is now abandoning it.

That would also explain how it can go though so many transformations of what good Christian behavior is and isn't and end up where we are today.  Only a true religion established by an all powerful being has any rational requirement to be consistent in praxis, doctrine and belief since the reasonably assumption is that the all powerful being wants the same things from humans over time.

A false one can claim any old bollocks and people will just accept it because it helps them marry, do business, feed themselves or not get thrown off a building.

If I had a time machine and could look to the year 2500 and see that Christianity was a tiny cult centered in Sub-Saharan Africa and secularism had won for the next 500 years I'd lapse.  I'd be disappointed though because I was looking forward to seeing those perverts in Rome slaughtered.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 11:45:37 AM

If I had a time machine and could look to the year 2500 and see that Christianity was a tiny cult centered in Sub-Saharan Africa and secularism had won for the next 500 years I'd lapse. 

And it would make almost no difference to the way you live your life.

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 11:42:25 AM

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 11:25:40 AM
Jayne,

It is in a human's nature to be self-interested.

I'm honest enough to admit that I have/adopt/accept moral values for my own benefit and the benefit of the society around me which in turn benefits me.  If God is not there to benefit me, then I have no motivation to love God.  It's a two way street.

God created you and the entire universe that you enjoy.  God became man and suffered and died that you might be saved.  God gave the Church, the Sacraments and too many blessing to say.  Why is that not enough motivation to love God and to obey him to the best of your ability?

how do we know we are loving God with or whole heart

how do you know you are doing enough how w do you know if you love godenough.  there is no enough.  do we chase ideals that we know are impossible for our state in life.  you can never be prepared enough to receive holy communion for example this has led to me going years without receiving

you can never do enough penance.  we can never beat ourselves hard enough or fast enough or suffer enough.  suicide is a mortal sin yet the ascetic ideal is to teeter totter on the verge of death.  The scriptures tell us to be joyful but then then there are saints who preach against taking pleasure in anything worldly.... even being sexually attracted to your spouse.  We have to be completely without attachment to prepare our souls for death but how do we live in the meantime without forming attachments to our children--somwthibg the human body is wired to do.  Either way life is a miserable vale of tears and then you die and 99% of people never make it to heaven.

I am going to make my reply in line so I can respond to your points.

Yes, faith, not morals in which we are all in agreement that was universally taught and lived correct? I illustrated disagreements on morals.  I could illustrate more disputes on morals as well beyond the example of Chess.  I agree that not coveting your neighbors wife has universally been taught, but whether that means that young monks must not read sections of scripture to stir up passions I don't know.

Questions of faith can be easily developed through the kernel of praxis, and other saints who have more of a developed sense of the divine. I'm not advocating apokostatasis because enough Fathers taught it so.  St. Gregory the great teaching on the question of gluttony is exceptionally strict beyond that of other peoples and illustrates a lack of uniformity when it comes to questions of morals.  The same thing with Augustine on certain sections of the Goods of Marriage.  Theology can be quite nuanced as to particulars which can mean a great deal and do not violate the laws of nature. But this is a distraction from the argument which is a pretext for your next argument which was woven a bit disingenuously to be upfront with you as you conflated several topics to make a pretext for the next.  You used one example with far reaching implications.  I thought all of my points touched about the implications of what you said.  St. Augustine comes down harshly on those who continue to have relations after the women can no longer bear children, and this from reason seems to be in conformity with the laws of nature.  Yet, later authors including St. Alphonsus strongly disagree on this point.

In regards to morals you have clear text and practice. I don't know what you mean by that Unless man has changed the moral law cannot change. Yet, their is a lack of harmony between the Fathers on certain Moral Points, Medieval Pentitental Manuals, and Moral Theology Manuals on many points We aren't discussing finer soteriological points but aspects of lust, avarice, etc.. Which once again is my overall point, lust is always bad how we specifically avoid that path of damnation is going to be have to viewed from certain points

Again, not to beat the path of nudity, you have to point to particular individuals I thought you had wanted specific examples, but not the culture because both culture and history are against you Who said I am in favor of nudity?  I am just not prepared to condemn tons of people and say that I am right and they are wrong.  Rather I acknowledge the tension and leave the matter to peoples conscience. This is the antithesis of common sense in these debates which I find to be unfair. Sure one could point to a guy committing adultery too who was pious and maybe Amoris Laetitia could be the end result where God wills the adultery 1700 years later. I think it is unfair for you to compare this debate of nudity in sacred art that is in tons of Church's in Europe and many I have visited myself to the sin of adultery.  What moral parameters you have for it, is it okay if the genitals are covered, or is it only okay if they are mostly clothed Like I said moral theology has become time + reason = anything My friend I am sorry you have reached that conclusion but while their are tensions between the Fathers and perhaps the moral manuals of the 20th century there is a great deal more harmony than disagreement.

Particulars don't make general laws or culture, that's faulty logic.  If we are arguing about how early Christians lived then we have to be able to evaluate early Christian evidence for what their beliefs are, if the Early Christians in Rome had nudes in the Catacombs that is an important consideration. 1 woman who is a saint committed accidental suicide to avoid being raped It was intentional and that was why it was so debated and why St. Augustine addressed it in City of God, certainly I'm not advocating suicide either are you? Of course notThat's why I only want to discuss the general praxis, not particulars which is usually 1 "gotcha" moment after another. Forgive me if you thought I was engaging in this.

Also, you did the "all" trick which is also a bit unfair as well. Certainly I would exclude 90 yr old women. I never said all Christians ripped down nudes, but many men did and many did not survive antiquity and to avoid the clear case of this happening throughout the Roman empire is to avoid history. But you must admit, and I assume you know as well that this is a poor piece of evidence to make a point as many of those nudes where destroyed because they represented pagan gods. 

I think in order not to have this to go from menstruating women (which had nothing to do with the moral law, but temple purity) the same standard should be set:

-Would you recommend Our Lady to be used as an example and ask her to be a model for the artist in a nude? No If not her how about your mother? No  Would you show your friends afterwards?

-Would you take Our Lady to see such art? St. Augustine thought that the Saints in Heaven walked around in the Naked, so I guess it wouldn't matter.  However, I did go with Our Lord and Our Lady when I went to the various Churchs and Shrines in Europe to prayer at Various Altars and in front of certain relics.  So, yes.
-What would the saints we revere think of it?  I suppose it would depend on the painting Can you think of any father or doctor of the Church in particular?  I think every Doctor or Saint worth his salt always yielded to the judgement of the Church

I have a few questions of my own

Would you not enter a Church in Rome because of nudity in Sacred Art?
Would you not allow a Priest in your house who was in charge of such a Church?
If you were a priest would you instruct your faithful not to visit certain Church's in Rome because of the Nude Artwork?
Would you hold as a public sinner a person who had posed nude or partially nude for the sake of completing a piece of sacred art?
Would you view someone who held a different opinion to have a hardened heart or having a reprobate sense?
Would you cease friendship with someone who kept in their house a piece of Sacred Artwork that had nudity in it?  Such as the Last Judgement?

"The Church" has defected.

If you wish to define "The Church" in some nebulous fashion such that no defection can EVER be pinned on it, then sure it 'hasn't defected'.  No True Scotsman has ever defected either.  Nor can you show me any evidence he has.

But I don't see how 'The Church' gets to both define its mission and its four marks and then fail in that mission and then lay claim that is hasn't defected.  If you or I are defining what "the Church" is, then that is really no different than the True Scotsman defining himself.

Surely the thing in Rome that defines itself as the Roman Catholic Church has the natural right to define itself.

Does it practice, believe or teach consistent to the past or the diametric opposite of the past?

Quote from: Chestertonian on January 02, 2018, 12:01:37 PM
How do we know we are loving God with our whole heart?

If you are not, Jayne will tell you.

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 11:42:25 AM

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 11:25:40 AM
Jayne,

It is in a human's nature to be self-interested.

I'm honest enough to admit that I have/adopt/accept moral values for my own benefit and the benefit of the society around me which in turn benefits me.  If God is not there to benefit me, then I have no motivation to love God.  It's a two way street.

God created you and the entire universe that you enjoy.  God became man and suffered and died that you might be saved.  God gave the Church, the Sacraments and too many blessing to say.  Why is that not enough motivation to love God and to obey him to the best of your ability?

Yes, but that is the point - we love God because He created us, gave us all these wonderful gifts and died for our salvation. Therefore, in all honesty, we love Him and practice our faith because it brings benefits, so are responding to incentives to love Him. If God did not give us all these graces and possibility of salvation, practicing Christianity would be pointless.

I remember a Calvinist on a Protestant website saying that if it turns out he is not elect but a reprobate, it is still OK, and he would still want to glorify God by his suffering in Hell. This is of course nuttery - if Calvinism were true and I somehow had an infallible knowledge of being a reprobate, there would be zero reason for me to love God. One of my secular friends said to me recently that to him Christianity is like a stick and a carrot, since you receive Heaven for obediance and Hell for disobediance. Of course, there are people who are able to achieve perfect contrition and love God unconditionally, but for great many Catholics it is indeed sort of stick and carrot I think (i.e. they are practicing the faith because it promises benefits such as Heaven, and warns about severe penalties for failure to do so). At the end of the day, love between man and a women is, to some extent at least, transactional as well. It is human nature and the Church recognizes that - which is why imperfect contrition (i.e. out of fear of Hell) is sufficient for valid confession, and thus salvation.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 11:38:32 AM
We may be getting astray from my original point.  I don't claim that the Old Believers or the Amish are in every aspect the mirror image of the Early Christians.  I was simply saying that if you take the examples from the Early Church on modesty in dress, jewelry, and make-up, you will find Early Christianity better reflected in Mennonites than Catholics.  I am by no means saying that the doctrines and every last practice of the followers of Menno Simons represent authentic Early Christianity.  I am saying that where the Catholic Church abandoned the Fathers on these particular things, various Protestant sects recovered them simply by reading scripture.  The Fathers themselves were following the gospels and epistles.  I don't think that's controversial.

I would disagree with it.  (Although that might not be proof that it is controversial. :) )

Sometimes Scripture gives moral principles illustrated by the practices of the culture in which it is written.  One approach to Scripture (this tends to be the Catholic one) is adopt the underlying principle, while not necessarily imitating the practice of the past. Another approach is adopt practices at the time Scripture was written even though the cultural significance may have changed (which is common among Protestant sects). For example, an injunction to be modest might be illustrated with a prohibition against wearing pearls in a culture in which pearls were worn primarily by prostitutes.  Those taking the first approach to Scripture would follow it by striving after modesty, but would not necessarily have a problem with wearing pearls.  Those following the second approach would forbid pearls.

The Early Church, being chronologically soon after the time Scripture was written, shared most of the cultural assumptions, so there would not be a question of taking the first approach.  This only becomes an issue as we get farther away in time.  I, therefore, do not think it is fair to describe those who take the first approach as abandoning, either Scripture or the Fathers.

What an interesting topic!

I was just transcribing a personal letter by Carol Jackson where she touches on the question of rigorism in association with The Grail Movement. In the mid to late 40s, she wrote a letter describing the effects of this rigorism which relied more on human efforts than the grace of God. She made a curious statement that usually this type of rigorism ended up in mediocrity. I'll try to finish transcribing it and post it here.

QuoteThe Grail is, I think, "Integrist", they have set up a perfect, little Christian community, but isolated -- especially psychologically.... The two errors in the apostolate are to accommodate yourself too much to the world (at the expense of Christianity), or to be Christian in your culture, mores etc. (not holy necessarily), at the price of separating yourself. Anne, having tasted one error, may be surging into the opposite one by reaction.

....There is another thing, that so far it seems as though all the splendor of the Grail ends in mediocrity. This is as it would be expected from a movement which depends too much on humans rather than grace.

Quote from: Chestertonian on January 02, 2018, 12:01:37 PM

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 11:42:25 AM
God created you and the entire universe that you enjoy.  God became man and suffered and died that you might be saved.  God gave the Church, the Sacraments and too many blessing to say.  Why is that not enough motivation to love God and to obey him to the best of your ability?

how do we know we are loving God with or whole heart

how do you know you are doing enough how w do you know if you love godenough.  there is no enough.  do we chase ideals that we know are impossible for our state in life.  you can never be prepared enough to receive holy communion for example this has led to me going years without receiving

Enough for what?

We can never love God as much as He deserves.  My constant prayer is that I love Him more each day, knowing that it will never be as much as I ought. 

I explicitly stated that we should love and obey to the best of our ability and yet you are asking about doing what is impossible to one's state of life.  Obviously one does what is appropriate for one's state of life.

Your ideas about Holy Communion come from a troubled mind and not from the teaching of the Church.  Most of know that we do not receive because we are worthy but because God is merciful.  We do not approach the Blessed Sacrament because we have earned it by perfect behaviour but because God wishes to heal us.  It is relatively simple to prepare to receive.  If one is in a state of mortal sin, go to Confession.  Pray for help to receive with as much reverence and devotion as possible.  Then trust in God.

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 12:26:53 PMSometimes Scripture gives moral principles illustrated by the practices of the culture in which it is written.  One approach to Scripture (this tends to be the Catholic one) is adopt the underlying principle, while not necessarily imitating the practice of the past. Another approach is adopt practices at the time Scripture was written even though the cultural significance may have changed (which is common among Protestant sects). For example, an injunction to be modest might be illustrated with a prohibition against wearing pearls in a culture in which pearls were worn primarily by prostitutes.  Those taking the first approach to Scripture would follow it by striving after modesty, but would not necessarily have a problem with wearing pearls.  Those following the second approach would forbid pearls.

Were pearls primarily worn by first-century prostitutes, though?  Maybe the high-class hookers of the Roman Empire wore pearls, but pearls have always been seen as pretty costly (and "cast not your pearls before swine" seems to indicate that pearls were considered precious at the time of the New Testament's composition).  I would be surprised if pearls were typically associated with your average trollop.  The examples that St. Paul uses in the bible aren't really things you'd associate with prostitutes necessarily but with flash and dazzle and showoffiness in general.  Essentially he is talking about "finery."

As a point of fact, both the Early Church Fathers and the Mennonites did not take St. Paul on the specifics of the passage we're talking about (1 Timothy 2:9).  He doesn't mention make-up at all there, but the essence of the passage is that one should reject finery and glitz in favor of the plain and the simple.  St. Clement and St. Cyprian and the others were actually following the spirit of the injunction, if not the letter.  What has happened since is that the spirit of this exhortation has been abandoned, and replaced with a Pharisaical parsing of the letter: "St. Paul didn't mention make-up, so I can wear make-up."  "Pearls can't be verboten, I love my pearls; he was probably talking about prostitutes."  I mean, for crying out loud, prostitutes have always worn jewelry of some kind.  It's a profession where it pays to be noticed, and glittery shiny things have drawn the attention of human primates since the dawn of the species.  Saying St. Paul must've been referring to prostitutes is the most shameless blanket cop-out ever devised.  You can do better, Jayne.

The bottom line, though, is that as soon as you make it about "customs" you instantly lose the spirit, which is timeless, and you're doomed to Pharisaism and relativism.

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 12:07:48 PM
-Would you recommend Our Lady to be used as an example and ask her to be a model for the artist in a nude? No If not her how about your mother? No  Would you show your friends afterwards?

End of story really unless you advocate hypocrisy. If something is objectively good shame never comes into play if what is to be done is made for the public forum. Anything made for the public should be decent for all in public.

-St. Augustine thought that the Saints in Heaven walked around in the Naked, so I guess it wouldn't matter.  However, I did go with Our Lord and Our Lady when I went to the various Churchs and Shrines in Europe to prayer at Various Altars and in front of certain relics.  So, yes. In the physical manifestation of her on earth you would have her look at her son naked? You do realize that tradition says she covered Him, so you go with afterwards to undo what she did?

-I suppose it would depend on the painting Because you can't point to one teaching from saint, or father you have to go back to ambiguity

-I think every Doctor or Saint worth his salt always yielded to the judgement of the Church Certainly not in every instance both in practice and belief. Many cardinals, bishops and priests thought Rome's nudes were disgusting. In fact when they came back it was to cover the pudenda. If they just agreed you might have an argument, but history again is in my favor. And when the popes didn't do so does that also mean they also agreed with the Church's judgement or does the judgement of the Church mean one does and does not do something at the same time? Are you also saying the saints always agreed with the Pope's personal decisions? That's a novel belief. I mean AL is now a teaching of the authentic Magisterium and ecumenism is something all Catholics "must" do

I have a few questions of my own

Would you not enter a Church in Rome because of nudity in Sacred Art?  Yes and I've left afterwards many times (I've stayed there for 2 weeks, I know the place)
Would you not allow a Priest in your house who was in charge of such a Church? 100%, but I would talk to him first about why
If you were a priest would you instruct your faithful not to visit certain Church's in Rome because of the Nude Artwork? 100%
Would you hold as a public sinner a person who had posed nude or partially nude for the sake of completing a piece of sacred art? 100%
Would you view someone who held a different opinion to have a hardened heart or having a reprobate sense? Confused because of poor leadership, but certainly down the wrong path and happy to tell them the truth of the saints and fathers which I could present to them. I'd love to see your documentation too.
Would you cease friendship with someone who kept in their house a piece of Sacred Artwork that had nudity in it?  Such as the Last Judgement? I already have.

(this is me and not Noah)
The point of the OP was this and I'll represent it clearly: when is the history of the faith of any importance if we can't present it as our own? You've used the magic of particulars, many of which I can do too but I refuse because it's an obfuscation of the point. When is a truth no longer a truth because time eradicates it? When is a common belief no more than an sheet of paper or an electronic image because people stopped caring or believing? Also when people use deliberate obfuscations based on emotional particulars to make a false narrative?

Without realizing it we make a mockery of our faith by doing this. The church has become nothing more than who's the pope and everything else is worthless. The "io sono tradizione" is now Catholicism. We see it rotting and dying and if our only response is the past shows this or that inconstancy therefore it's kinda worthless makes a mockery of the whole.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 09:10:45 AM
The same God who tells us to "judge a tree by its fruits" and gives The Commandments to men cannot then turn around and become some wishy-washy liberal, with a mushy mind like you, who judges everyone on some secret "female intuition" basis as though the commandments and fruits no longer matter.

Wait! What?  I thought I was on the rigourist side.  Does somebody have a programme?  I need to look this up.

Quote from: bigbadtrad on January 02, 2018, 01:10:39 PM

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 12:07:48 PM
-Would you recommend Our Lady to be used as an example and ask her to be a model for the artist in a nude? No If not her how about your mother? No  Would you show your friends afterwards?

End of story really unless you advocate hypocrisy. If something is objectively good shame never comes into play if what is to be done is made for the public forum. Anything made for the public should be decent for all in public.

-St. Augustine thought that the Saints in Heaven walked around in the Naked, so I guess it wouldn't matter.  However, I did go with Our Lord and Our Lady when I went to the various Churchs and Shrines in Europe to prayer at Various Altars and in front of certain relics.  So, yes. In the physical manifestation of her on earth you would have her look at her son naked? You do realize that tradition says she covered Him, so you go with afterwards to undo what she did?

-I suppose it would depend on the painting Because you can't point to one teaching from saint, or father you have to go back to ambiguity

-I think every Doctor or Saint worth his salt always yielded to the judgement of the Church Certainly not in every instance both in practice and belief. Many cardinals, bishops and priests thought Rome's nudes were disgusting. In fact when they came back it was to cover the pudenda. If they just agreed you might have an argument, but history again is in my favor. And when the popes didn't do so does that also mean they also agreed with the Church's judgement or does the judgement of the Church mean one does and does not do something at the same time? Are you also saying the saints always agreed with the Pope's personal decisions? That's a novel belief. I mean AL is now a teaching of the authentic Magisterium and ecumenism is something all Catholics "must" do

I have a few questions of my own

Would you not enter a Church in Rome because of nudity in Sacred Art?  Yes and I've left afterwards many times (I've stayed there for 2 weeks, I know the place)
Would you not allow a Priest in your house who was in charge of such a Church? 100%, but I would talk to him first about why
If you were a priest would you instruct your faithful not to visit certain Church's in Rome because of the Nude Artwork? 100%
Would you hold as a public sinner a person who had posed nude or partially nude for the sake of completing a piece of sacred art? 100%
Would you view someone who held a different opinion to have a hardened heart or having a reprobate sense? Confused because of poor leadership, but certainly down the wrong path and happy to tell them the truth of the saints and fathers which I could present to them. I'd love to see your documentation too.
Would you cease friendship with someone who kept in their house a piece of Sacred Artwork that had nudity in it?  Such as the Last Judgement? I already have.

(this is me and not Noah)
The point of the OP was this and I'll represent it clearly: when is the history of the faith of any importance if we can't present it as our own? You've used the magic of particulars, many of which I can do too but I refuse because it's an obfuscation of the point. When is a truth no longer a truth because time eradicates it? When is a common belief no more than an sheet of paper or an electronic image because people stopped caring or believing? Also when people use deliberate obfuscations based on emotional particulars to make a false narrative?

Without realizing it we make a mockery of our faith by doing this. The church has become nothing more than who's the pope and everything else is worthless. The "io sono tradizione" is now Catholicism. We see it rotting and dying and if our only response is the past shows this or that inconstancy therefore it's kinda worthless makes a mockery of the whole.

Before responding could you answer one more query is the nudity you despise full nudity only or is it just the showing of a substantial portion of the flesh?  If you could perhaps provide an image of what in your view would be acceptable it would be helpful to me. 

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 01:16:45 PM

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 09:10:45 AM
The same God who tells us to "judge a tree by its fruits" and gives The Commandments to men cannot then turn around and become some wishy-washy liberal, with a mushy mind like you, who judges everyone on some secret "female intuition" basis as though the commandments and fruits no longer matter.

Wait! What?  I thought I was on the rigourist side.  Does somebody have a programme?  I need to look this up.

You are on the side of nonsense.  Like liberals the world over.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 01:08:35 PM

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 12:26:53 PMSometimes Scripture gives moral principles illustrated by the practices of the culture in which it is written.  One approach to Scripture (this tends to be the Catholic one) is adopt the underlying principle, while not necessarily imitating the practice of the past. Another approach is adopt practices at the time Scripture was written even though the cultural significance may have changed (which is common among Protestant sects). For example, an injunction to be modest might be illustrated with a prohibition against wearing pearls in a culture in which pearls were worn primarily by prostitutes.  Those taking the first approach to Scripture would follow it by striving after modesty, but would not necessarily have a problem with wearing pearls.  Those following the second approach would forbid pearls.

Were pearls primarily worn by first-century prostitutes, though?  Maybe the high-class hookers of the Roman Empire wore pearls, but pearls have always been seen as pretty costly (and "cast not your pearls before swine" seems to indicate that pearls were considered precious at the time of the New Testament's composition).  I would be surprised if pearls were typically associated with your average trollop.  The examples that St. Paul uses in the bible aren't really things you'd associate with prostitutes necessarily but with flash and dazzle and showoffiness in general.  Essentially he is talking about "finery."

I was speaking hypothetically.  While I do vaguely recall hearing that passage was about practices associated with prostitutes, I would need to do some research to discover if this were actually the case.  The point I am making is that one approach to Scripture is to see the prohibition of pearls not as directed at pearls in themselves but at what pearls represent. 

Let's say that you are right that when the passage was written, it represented "showoffiness in general".  Would it then apply at a ball in Regency England, where a string of pearls was considered a simple and modest ornament suitable to a young unmarried woman. I am saying that some of what we are assessing on a lax/rigourous scale actually comes differences in exegetical principles.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 01:08:35 PM
As a point of fact, both the Early Church Fathers and the Mennonites did not take St. Paul on the specifics of the passage we're talking about (1 Timothy 2:9).  He doesn't mention make-up at all there, but the essence of the passage is that one should reject finery and glitz in favor of the plain and the simple.  St. Clement and St. Cyprian and the others were actually following the spirit of the injunction, if not the letter.  What has happened since is that the spirit of this exhortation has been abandoned, and replaced with a Pharisaical parsing of the letter: "St. Paul didn't mention make-up, so I can wear make-up."  "Pearls can't be verboten, I love my pearls; he was probably talking about prostitutes."  I mean, for crying out loud, prostitutes have always worn jewelry of some kind.  It's a profession where it pays to be noticed, and glittery shiny things have drawn the attention of human primates since the dawn of the species.  Saying St. Paul must've been referring to prostitutes is the most shameless blanket cop-out ever devised.  You can do better, Jayne.

This is not so different from what I was trying to get across. Understanding the spirit of an injunction often requires having information about the culture in which it was written.  One then needs to decide what the equivalent is in one's own culture.  Does the prohibition against pearls mean only pearls, all jewelry, or any ornamentation at all, such as colour in one's clothing. Does the prohibition against braided hair mean only braided hair, any elaborate hair style, or mean that women should keep their heads covered in public so nobody can see their hair?  Figuring out what Scripture means in one's own time should not be equated with not following it.  And, since the Fathers did not need to go through this process, at least not to the extent that we do, it is not surprising we come to different conclusions than they.  It is not necessarily a sign we follow Scripture less than they did or are not following them.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 01:08:35 PM
The bottom line, though, is that as soon as you make it about "customs" you instantly lose the spirit, which is timeless, and you're doomed to Pharisaism and relativism.

We are talking about how to put that timeless spirit into practice.  That means we must consider customs.  You seem to think that the Scriptural exhortation to modesty should be taken as including make-up.  Another person might not.  Disagreeing about what a passage means does not make one lax or not.  Laxness would be saying that there was not really much of an obligation to follow Scripture.

For what it is worth, I do not normally braid my hair, wear jewelry, or wear make up.  None of these things, however, are based on how I understand Scripture and the Fathers.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 02:06:43 PM

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 01:16:45 PM

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 09:10:45 AM
The same God who tells us to "judge a tree by its fruits" and gives The Commandments to men cannot then turn around and become some wishy-washy liberal, with a mushy mind like you, who judges everyone on some secret "female intuition" basis as though the commandments and fruits no longer matter.

Wait! What?  I thought I was on the rigourist side.  Does somebody have a programme?  I need to look this up.

You are on the side of nonsense.  Like liberals the world over.

It has been years since it would have been reasonable to refer to me as a liberal  It sounds like you need a programme too.

Personally, I find the idea of owning two houses repugnant and would never do it.

Given the shortage of housing, zoning laws, and cost of homes (in most western countries) it seems to me a very selfish act to own more than 1 house.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 02:31:39 PM
Personally, I find the idea of owning two houses repugnant and would never do it.

Given the shortage of housing, zoning laws, and cost of homes (in most western countries) it seems to me a very selfish act to own more than 1 house.

One of our homes is part of the eco-village we co-founded.  We rent it out to people who want to live in the community but cannot afford to buy a unit.  We try to break even, but most years we end up taking a loss.

We actually would to prefer to sell our home there and share of the land, but have not been able to find a buyer.   The community has become progressively more pagan over the years so we are no longer comfortable living there.

Not that this has anything to do with the discussion topic.  You really like to make personal attacks when you are losing an argument, don't you?

What personal attack was I making?

ecovillage?  Is the house partially underground like my Kansas dream home

are there geodesic dome dwellers and yurts and a barter economy?

Why on earth would you want to live underground Ches?

In your wheelchair the ideal place would be Teletubbieland or somewhere with no steps.

(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/supermarioglitchy4/images/9/9d/TubbytronicSuperdome.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140825021640)

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 02:18:05 PMI was speaking hypothetically.  While I do vaguely recall hearing that passage was about practices associated with prostitutes, I would need to do some research to discover if this were actually the case.  The point I am making is that one approach to Scripture is to see the prohibition of pearls not as directed at pearls in themselves but at what pearls represent.

Let's say that you are right that when the passage was written, it represented "showoffiness in general".  Would it then apply at a ball in Regency England, where a string of pearls was considered a simple and modest ornament suitable to a young unmarried woman. I am saying that some of what we are assessing on a lax/rigourous scale actually comes differences in exegetical principles.

By the time you get to Regency England, the plot has been hopelessly lost.  I should think it was obviously lost by the time you get to the ostentatiousness of the 18th century, with its powdered wigs and frilly garments and gilded everything—the age of Barry Lyndon.  The case was compellingly made by Savonarola that the plot was already lost by the Renaissance, with its languorous nudes and nods to lush paganism.  I'm going to have to beg your pardon here, Jayne, but you seem to be making the Scipio fallacy: that what is modest is relative to the time. 

As for England, I am pretty certain that there were black-clad Noncomformist sects who took the passage about finery and adornments seriously, and who did not acquiesce to the mainstream sentiment that "oh, lighten up, a string of pearls is a simple and modest ornament for a young lady."  The Anglicans, then, would have to answer for why sacred scripture had disdain for women wearing pearls.  If their answer (which appears to be yours, also) is that St. Paul was using an example common to his time, and that what he really meant was "extravagance," then that only raises the painful question of why the Holy Spirit didn't just inspire him to use the word "extravagance" in the first place, and not create all this confusion over whether it was first-century customs being condemned, or all wearing of pearls, or what.  You really have two options here: either pearls are discouraged, or the passage is a clever test as to who can suss out the correct "exegetical principles" (a test the Church Fathers, apparently, failed).

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 02:18:05 PMUnderstanding the spirit of an injunction often requires having information about the culture in which it was written.  One then needs to decide what the equivalent is in one's own culture.  Does the prohibition against pearls mean only pearls, all jewelry, or any ornamentation at all, such as colour in one's clothing. Does the prohibition against braided hair mean only braided hair, any elaborate hair style, or mean that women should keep their heads covered in public so nobody can see their hair?  Figuring out what Scripture means in one's own time should not be equated with not following it.  And, since the Fathers did not need to go through this process, at least not to the extent that we do, it is not surprising we come to different conclusions than they.  It is not necessarily a sign we follow Scripture less than they did or are not following them.

I'm not sure what you're saying here.  Human nature hasn't changed that much over the past two thousand years: women still want to style their hair, adorn themselves with jewelry, and wear make-up.  That is a universal common to nearly every human culture on earth.  Everything the Early Church Fathers wrote on these subjects is just as relevant today as it was back then.  They weren't tilting against make-up and jewelry because they didn't like the looks of the make-up and jewelry of their time; they were tilting against these things because they considered them vain, worldly, ephemeral, and pointless.  It's no difference whatsoever to consider them in the same manner today; it's just more difficult for a modern Catholic because you're not just going against the secular world, but you're going against a Church that has been permitting this stuff for many centuries.  It's like the geocentrists: they have to say that the Church got it right the first time, and then they have to concede that the Church has been making a mistake of attrition for three hundred years.  It's like I said in my first response: there's no going back from this.  Once the Church permitted make-up, it was all over, and now it's an authentically Catholic attitude to say, "do we really want a Church where women don't wear make-up?  Does anyone want to see that?"  As if the Alexandrian Christian women of St. Clement's day were somehow hideous in their simplicity.  Hence my inability to see Early Christianity as anything other than a dead religion.

What do rigorists ignore themselves?

Aside from there being zero one handed masturbaters or blind former pornography addicts in the Trad world what other former Catholic Traditions do the rigorists ignore?

"Let your women keep silence in churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law".  Pretty sure I hear lots of women making responses and even leading the Rosary in Church.  They are certainly not backward in coming forward on Catholic forums either.

As early as the fourth century it was decreed by a synod that women should neither send nor receive letters in their own name (Synod of Elvira, Canon 81 ).

A wife has no power of her own, but is to submit to her husband's dominion in everything.
It is fitting that a woman be subject to her husband's dominion and have no independent authority [cf. Col. 3:18]. She is not to teach him, testify against him, bind him, or judge him [cf. 1 Cor. 14:34-35].
(Decretum gratiani, Case 33, q V, C17)

Do any female rigorists obey that?  The rigorist men all seem to be looking for a wife like this but they never seem to find one if CathInfo is any guide.  They seem to be forever complaining that Trad women are all feminists even the rigorist ones.

Thomas Aquinas taught that women were defective men, imperfect in both body and soul. They were conceived either because of defective sperm or because a damp wind was blowing at the time of conception. Canon law decreed that women could not witness a will. Neither could they testify in disputes over wills, nor in criminal proceedings.  Generally women suffered the same sort of legal disabilities as children and imbeciles.  Have any trad Catholic rigorists taken Thomas Aquinas seriously here, or are you just picking and choosing your own Jansenist preferences?  Cafeteria style rigorism.

But the natural reason is that she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations. And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives.


Women were not free to choose their own marriage partners in the Catholic past.

Has any rigorist women in Tradom had a spouse picked for her by her parents?  Why not?  Catholics used to do this.

By what standard do you pick the rules and teachings of some Church Councils and Saints and ignore others?

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 03:30:40 PMAside from there being zero one handed masturbaters or blind former pornography addicts in the Trad world what other former Catholic Traditions do the rigorists ignore?

I don't know why you keep repeating this non sequitur, since the passages talking about cutting off your hand or plucking out your eye were never taken literally.  Only if they had been would you have a point.  Historians have wondered whether it's true or a libel that Origen ever actually castrated himself in order to become "a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven," but even if he had, he would not be representative of how the Early Church Fathers took that passage (and it would be strange if he did, since Origen was the least literalist of all the Fathers).

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 03:14:55 PM
Hence my inability to see Early Christianity as anything other than a dead religion.

This being the case it has been dead for a very long time.  So what power endorses what replaced it, unless truth is mutable?

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 03:45:11 PM
Since the passages talking about cutting off your hand or plucking out your eye were never taken literally.

They wouldn't be would they.  The literalists and rigorists are all for scripture, until it involves hacking off a limb.  Then it's conveniently 'symbolic'.

Practically speaking, however, self-abuse would be terribly difficult without hands.  And porn addiction much harder to make habitual when you are blinded.  Were one to take it literally it might very well solve the addiction problem.  But instead we worry about the dangers of middle aged women wearing pants because it's the pants that cause you to sin and not your own body parts.

It has always struck me as very odd that 50% of the clergy are queers, probably 75% of the upper hierarchy and yet Trads are worried about middle aged women wearing pants or their skirt not coming down to their ankles.  What's that about?  As a teenager I never really understood why I would lust after relatively modestly dressed women at Church (whether in pants or skirts) when there was a whole street full of young women dressed like hookers all summer long wandering around London.  Seemed to me like nobody had thought it through properly.  If I am going to lust after someone then surely I'll go for the secular street whore since she is MUCH more likely to fornicate with me.

QuoteIf the sterile way Anglo saxons do weddings it the ideal way according to God then the Catholics of most nations are all damned.  Try finding a Catholic wedding in Sicily or The Philippines or Africa where they don't dance and drink like fish.

At the Wedding of Canna the Lord provided wine to drunk wedding goers.  The chief stewart comments that normally you get the wedding drunk on good wine, then bring out the lesser quality, while the wedding goers were drunk on the poorer wine when the Lord provided the quality wine.

It appears that the neo-Jansenists provide no alternative.  What activities do they provide so that teenage boys can learn how to deal with young ladies?  All such encounters by definition have a sexual element involved.  The sane way is to teach the young adults how to deal with it.  The insane way is to lock up the kids, then send them out at 18 with no experience.

Here's the deal.  Teenagers naturally want to socialize.  A healthy parish provides social activities for teenagers so they can have FUN.  Then these teenagers go out in the world and see all of the perversion, and they notice that the people are not happy, and they recall their happy youth and close social bonds in the community.  So they reject the perverse society and decide they want to continue being Trad.

Also, did someone criticize ballet?  That's about one of the few hobbies that is good for young girls.  I'm talking about classical ballet.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 03:11:07 PM
Why on earth would you want to live underground Ches?

In your wheelchair the ideal place would be Teletubbieland or somewhere with no steps.

(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/supermarioglitchy4/images/9/9d/TubbytronicSuperdome.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140825021640)

I'll have to dig up the picture of my dream house in Tradlandia

An idealized Trad community:

1.  Weekly gatherings with cookouts.  Alcohol available.

2.  A parish Teen center that is chaperoned.  Wholesome movies, popcorn, pool table, etc...

3.  Swing dancing with an instrumental band (no lyrics).  Parents and teens go together, so it is a mixed crowd.

4.  Classical ballet taught by a Trad lady. 

5.  Sports for the boys including baseball and football.

6.  Hunting/Fishing clubs for men.

7.  Mothers-Day-Out clubs.

I've seen elements of this.  The result is that the kids stay Trad, get married, and have kids.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 03:52:40 PM

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 03:45:11 PM
Since the passages talking about cutting off your hand or plucking out your eye were never taken literally.

They wouldn't be would they.  The literalists and rigorists are all for scripture, until it involves hacking off a limb.  Then it's conveniently symbolic.

Practically speaking however, self-abuse would be terribly difficult without hands.  And porn addiction much harder to make habitual when you are blinded.  Were you to take it literally it might very well solve the problem.  But instead we worry about the dangers of middle aged women wearing pants.

I would imagine the Church considered the problem that "practically speaking" a lot of other tasks would be compromised by being handless and blind as well.  Perhaps they took your view that "results matter" in some sense, as a religion would die out very quickly if nearly every male involved in it was hacking off his hands and gouging out his eyes.  It would die out faster than the Shakers, who committed their members to celibacy and who only accepted the making of converts as a way of spreading their faith.

But scriptural literalism is not necessarily the same thing as rigorism.  The Early Church Fathers took many passages figuratively; one pretty much has to in a religion whose founder taught in parables.  And yet those Fathers were rigorist.  So your beef is with practice, not doctrine.  And if your criteria is that "results matter," then your work is cut out for you.  One of the most "phucked up" religions in the world, as you see it, is nevertheless the second most populous religion in the world.  If traditional Catholicism is your product, then you're only successfully selling to less than one percent of the world's population (and some of the incoming class are rigorists themselves, persuaded by something other than your own claim that traditional Catholicism is a recipe for making one's life excellent: "dancing, drinking hard, and sinning").  The Early Church Fathers, on the other hand, evangelized a continent.

this is my dream house https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=18636.90

Quote from: Chestertonian on January 02, 2018, 03:07:23 PM
ecovillage?  Is the house partially underground like my Kansas dream home

are there geodesic dome dwellers and yurts and a barter economy?

Our first design had partially underground houses but we ended up with something else.

None of those things you ask about, but passive solar design, in floor heating, a heat pump, and consensus decision-making.  My daughter lives in a yurt somewhere else though.

For a long time the Church sent Catholic missionaries to very dangerous lands where they were martyred.

Have any Traditionalist rigorists decided to escape the materialism of the western world and immitate their hardline Catholic heros by going and preaching in various Islamic countries, North Korea or North Sentinel Island?

Why not?  Why has this opportunity to live out one of the core messages of the Gospels not been a nettle you are willing to grasp?  These nations need teaching.  Their people are not mindless materialists.  Nor have they rationalised God away.  Surely some of the rigorist Trad singletons with no children to worry about, who like to cherry pick certain behaviors of early Churchmen and tough minded saints would relish the idea of converting the heathens and perhaps getting martyred in the process?

Why no resistance Martyrs trying to save souls in PNG or Pyongyang? Rather than resisting Bishop Fellay why not go and resist Kim Jong Un?

Can Bishop Williamson retired in his million dollar house in Broadstairs be compared to a Jesuit being skinned alive and eaten by cannibals? 

Talk is cheap.  If you really want to be taken seriously go and put your balls on the chopping block.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 04:09:21 PM
One of the most "phucked up" religions in the world, as you see it, is nevertheless the second most populous religion in the world.

In name only.

In reality, between what I believe, what the Pope believes and what some nig-nog in Uganda believes, there is such a gulf that we might as well have three different religions.  The only common factor is the word Catholic, but it is rather meaningless.

And Africa and the developing world is where the practicing Catholics are and are growing.  In Europe the Catholic Church is dead.

The majority of western "Catholics" are pro-abortion and pro-homo marriage.  So I don't see how they are associated with my beliefs.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 03:14:55 PM

By the time you get to Regency England, the plot has been hopelessly lost.  I should think it was obviously lost by the time you get to the ostentatiousness of the 18th century, with its powdered wigs and frilly garments and gilded everything—the age of Barry Lyndon.  The case was compellingly made by Savonarola that the plot was already lost by the Renaissance, with its languorous nudes and nods to lush paganism.  I'm going to have to beg your pardon here, Jayne, but you seem to be making the Scipio fallacy: that what is modest is relative to the time.

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. 

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 03:14:55 PM
As for England, I am pretty certain that there were black-clad Noncomformist sects who took the passage about finery and adornments seriously, and who did not acquiesce to the mainstream sentiment that "oh, lighten up, a string of pearls is a simple and modest ornament for a young lady."  The Anglicans, then, would have to answer for why sacred scripture had disdain for women wearing pearls.  If their answer (which appears to be yours, also) is that St. Paul was using an example common to his time, and that what he really meant was "extravagance," then that just raises the painful question of why the Holy Spirit didn't just inspire him to use the word "extravagance" in the first place, and not create all this confusion over whether it was first-century customs being condemned, or all wearing of pearls, or what.  You really have two options here: either pearls are discouraged, or the passage is a clever test as to who can suss out the correct "exegetical principles" (a test the Church Fathers, apparently, failed).

Aren't you the one who is saying that the verse should not be taken as literally about pearls but about ostentatiousness and therefore why women should not wear makeup?  Scripture is a book in need of interpretation. That is unavoidable. That is why we have a magisterium rather than accept sola scriptura.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 03:14:55 PM
Human nature hasn't changed that much over the past two thousand years: women still want to style their hair, adorn themselves with jewelry, and wear make-up.  That is a universal common to nearly every human culture on earth.  Everything the Early Church Fathers wrote on these subjects is just as relevant today as it was back then.  They weren't tilting against make-up and jewelry because they didn't like the looks of the make-up and jewelry of their time; they were tilting against these things because they considered them vain, worldly, ephemeral, and pointless.  It's no difference whatsoever to consider them in the same manner today; it's just more difficult for a modern Catholic because you're not just going against the secular world, but you're going against a Church that has been permitting this stuff for many centuries.  It's like the geocentrists: they have to say that the Church got it right the first time, and then they have to concede that the Church has been making a mistake of attrition for three hundred years.  It's like I said in my first response: there's no going back from this.

Other wise and holy men have taught more nuanced views than the one you are setting as the Gold Standard.  And they gave good reasons for the positions they took.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 03:14:55 PM
Once the Church permitted make-up, it was all over, and now it's an authentically Catholic attitude to say, "do we really want a Church were women don't wear make-up?  Does anyone want to see that?"  As if the Alexandrian Christian women of St. Clement's day were somehow hideous in their simplicity.  Hence my inability to see Early Christianity as anything other than a dead religion.

I do not think it's an authentically Catholic attitude to say "do we really want a Church where women do not wear make-up?  Does anyone want to see that?" I think it is irrelevant to the question of whether make-up is good or bad.

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 01:22:34 PM
Before responding could you answer one more query is the nudity you despise full nudity only or is it just the showing of a substantial portion of the flesh?  If you could perhaps provide an image of what in your view would be acceptable it would be helpful to me.

Only full nudity, and on a woman showing their breasts to the public. I have no issues with pictures of Our Lord hanging from the cross with a loin cloth, or saints stripped down. Honestly brother I'm not crusading because at this stage of my life we aren't going to convince each other for one reason: I've asked for fathers, saints and doctors who agree with you and no amount of subterfuge or anecdotal arguments will win the day. If you think I haven't tried looking I've tried for years. The more I look the more I'm confirmed in my position not yours.

I also can't imagine a good person like you taking Our Lady by the hand in her earthy life to show her an artists rendition of herself nude, let alone walking her to an artists to pose nude for them; nor would any good man do that with their mother either. So beyond that all there really is subterfuge of arguments escaping the obvious and a whole lot of hypocrisy if we allow the faceless stranger to be the Blessed Mother nude. I have a sneaking suspicion too she wouldn't enjoy someone painting her nude either but I could be wrong since she might have an apparition in the Congo fully nude, but again I highly doubt it considering how she wanted to appear other times in apparitions.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 11:26:51 AM
That's why I look at results.  What works, on average, and what does not work.  If the rigorists who tell their children they are only one mortal sin away from Hell are producing solid, mentally stable offspring 30-40 years later then imitate that. 

Actually Greg after living in many places I can assure you the best kids are the ones told 1 mortal sin will send you to Hell, but they are also told how much Our Lord loves them and has compassion on sinners.

But again the main emphasis is love and enjoying each other's company and having a father who is good at guiding the family to family time where everyone loves to spend time with each other. I play Calico critters with my daughters dressing up rabbits and elephants and legos and checkers with my son, not to mention tickling them daily with stories of my youth fishing and getting bit by various animals which always makes them laugh.

I don't think they ponder the mortal sin, but just like my love of my father I knew that offending him was worse than anything in the world because he cared about me. That's how children best see God is through us.

QuoteOnce you accept that the main ship has sunk and you are in the lifeboat boat rowing your own family towards the horizon then the best thing to do is ignore everyone else's mindless ramblings and row the way you want to row at the speed you want to row.  Ignore the priests and pundits and Cassandras.  They haven't got a  clue.  Behind closed doors their lives are probably more (screwed) up than yours.

I agree with this.

QuoteSo just keep rowing, be friendly to the people and priests calmly rowing in your direction and keep your chin up.  Best case you make it to safety.  Financially support the handful of priests you see eye to eye with.  My goal is simply to help my children make good marriage choices and then let them row in whatever direction their see fit.

I agree with this also but I think, and maybe you won't agree but I have suspicion you do otherwise you wouldn't post here so frequently, is that we would still want to be a lighthouse for their marriage and give our sons and daughters in law good advise we would give our children and truly treat them as sons and daughters so they know they can rely on us while not directly interfering in their marriage, but only give advice we think could be helpful about the pitfalls of dealing with the public (mainly lying and being deceived wink wink).

QuoteThe thing that will MOST influence your children and their moral choices is whether they like you.  My Dad has the advantage that I actually like and admire him.  So 90% of what he does I copy.  If I thought my Father was a miserable Jansenistic tosser, with no sense of humor or fun, I'd just ignore the old fart.

I agree with this too.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 04:23:30 PM

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 04:09:21 PM
One of the most "phucked up" religions in the world, as you see it, is nevertheless the second most populous religion in the world.

In name only.

In reality, between what I believe, what the Pope believes and what some nig-nog in Uganda believes, there is such a gulf that we might as well have three different religions.  The only common factor is the word Catholic, but it is rather meaningless.

And Africa and the developing world is where the practicing Catholics are and are growing.  In Europe the Catholic Church is dead.

The majority of western "Catholics" are pro-abortion and pro-homo marriage.  So I don't see how they are associated with my beliefs.

My apologies, Greg; I was referring to Islam.  I wasn't sufficiently clear on that.  But the Novus Ordo Church, which is as much your religion as Islam is, serves just as well.  My point was only that if "results matter," then in terms of the numbers, there are two extremely perverse religions battling for the title of who has the most adherents.  It seems to be the case that crazy "phucked up" religions can entrance a whole lot of people.  I was only thinking that from your capitalist and salesmanship point of view, traditional Catholicism is less than impressive.  If your version of it is a recipe for well-rounded manhood, financial success, and domestic happiness, I would think that traditional Catholicism would've won over eighty percent of the "bearded hipster manosphere" by now.  Those guys spend a lot of time in front of the mirror, but I guess that wouldn't be a problem if you reject the Early Church Fathers on vanity.

I did, however, enjoy the challenge you issued to the rigorist singletons, to have them go try and convert ISIS or North Koreans or the natives of North Sentinel Island.  A singleton traditional Catholic attempting to evangelize the Sentinelese—that's funny.  It reminds me of that classic Borges story, Brodie's Report.  I hope someone takes up the gauntlet in earnest.

Quote from: bigbadtrad on January 02, 2018, 05:50:46 PM

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 01:22:34 PM
Before responding could you answer one more query is the nudity you despise full nudity only or is it just the showing of a substantial portion of the flesh?  If you could perhaps provide an image of what in your view would be acceptable it would be helpful to me.

Only full nudity, and on a woman showing their breasts to the public. I have no issues with pictures of Our Lord hanging from the cross with a loin cloth, or saints stripped down. Honestly brother I'm not crusading because at this stage of my life we aren't going to convince each other for one reason: I've asked for fathers, saints and doctors who agree with you and no amount of subterfuge or anecdotal arguments will win the day. If you think I haven't tried looking I've tried for years. The more I look the more I'm confirmed in my position not yours.

I also can't imagine a good person like you taking Our Lady by the hand in her earthy life to show her an artists rendition of herself nude, let alone walking her to an artists to pose nude for them; nor would any good man do that with their mother either. So beyond that all there really is subterfuge of arguments escaping the obvious and a whole lot of hypocrisy if we allow the faceless stranger to be the Blessed Mother nude. I have a sneaking suspicion too she wouldn't enjoy someone painting her nude either but I could be wrong since she might have an apparition in the Congo fully nude, but again I highly doubt it considering how she wanted to appear other times in apparitions.

I am not trying to engage in subterfuge and we have gone off on a specific issue rather than my overall point which was the need to not dismiss things like historical context.

Your response is helpful and at the same time confusing.  When we were having this discussion a nude to me means an image that is showing most of the flesh.  To my knowledge Fathers, Doctors and Saints really did not do much on this topic at all, I only know of St. Charles Borremo, and I have seen that people say St. Alphonsus was against it, but I have never seen the actual source from him. And having read some of St. Alphonsus moral theology I know that he examines arguments and normal lists the people who oppose his arguments.   I agree that there is a wrong way to do nudity even in sacred art work, and The moralists I read like Slater, Kelly, and I only recll that Jone discusses it at length and he is decidedly in the pro nude art category.  St. Alphonsus himself belileved in Æquiprobabilism and would have not taken just one Saint or one opinion when every other opinion was different and held it out to be the truth. I am open to reconsidering my nuanced view of don't look at things that move you to lust in art, to never look at a piece of nude art like your soul depends on it if I can see some material for myself that speaks to that.

In addition I am not in favor of nude modeling which where the first part of your question about Our Lady and My Mother.  Perhaps you do not see a distinction between the two, that is representing something in paint and in drawing, versus relying on a model to do it.

I have never actually seen an image of Our Lady nude even in Rome, I am sorry if I have given that impression.  However, I still feel reluctant to believe based only on what other people have said and not read for my self that Christians forfeit their salvation if they look at an image of St. Agatha's martyrdom, or at nude bodies falling into hell and being tortured.     I am open to changing my mind on this topic and conforming to your opinion, if you could give me your sources that deal with this topic I would be grateful.

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 04:35:43 PMScipio 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.

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 04:35:43 PMAren't you the one who is saying that the verse should not be taken as literally about pearls but about ostentatiousness and therefore why women should not wear makeup?  Scripture is a book in need of interpretation. That is unavoidable. That is why we have a magisterium rather than accept sola scriptura.

But if Scipio became the pope, you would "recognize and resist" him when he wrote his encyclical on modesty, Bikinia est.  The magisterium, in the traditional Catholic view, is bound by tradition.  If the Early Church Fathers don't count for anything, then tradition is mutable, and everything is relative.  What I am saying is that the Early Church Fathers took that passage and followed its spirit: not only did they recognize that it pertained to pearls, and pleated hair, and garish costumes, but that beyond the specifics it called across the board for an honest simplicity.  How hard is it to not style your hair?  How hard is to not wear make-up or jewelry?  Pretty hard, I guess, because eventually these disciplines were ignored.  The tradition became forgotten.  But the passage itself is not difficult.  The Mennonites figured it out just fine.

The results of Islam are absolutely shit.

Lots of homosexuality.  Oppressed women.  Rape.  Profound ignorance and plenty of inbreeding and retardation in societies ruled by fear and threats.  They invent nothing and produce nothing, other than oil, pure luck they happen to be sitting on it, which western engineers have to extract and refine.

Islam would shrink dramatically if the penalty for apostasy was not to be murdered.

Muslims can't even agree what they agree on with each other.  That's why they keep blowing each other up.  They have murdered far more of each other than western militaries have killed them over the past 20 years.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 06:36:31 PM
The results of Islam are absolutely shit.

Backward men.  Lots of homosexuality.  Oppressed women.  Rape.  Profound ignorance and plenty of inbreeding and societies ruled by fear and threats.

No argument here.  I am just saying that if "results matter," then Mohammed was pretty successful in devising a religion, however perverse, that would eventually win over billions.  What constitutes a good result, I suppose, is somewhat subjective.  From the perspective of a seventh-century macho psychotic Arabian visionary warlord, Islam has had pretty good results.

I don't mind if traditional Catholicism is supposed to be a remnant religion.  I am just saying that in terms of results you nearly have to whittle it down to yourself and your family and the partisans who think just like you to claim good results.  Traditional Catholicism itself is fairly splintered, and you share it (much to your dislike, I'm sure) with a good many rigorist singletons.  Like I said earlier, a truly impressive result would be peeling off Novus Ordo adherents at a remarkable rate.  Francis probably doesn't mind the fact that between you and him and the "Ugandan nig-nogs" there is not much unity.  He would surely prefer widespread confusion to a healthy portion of Catholics united against him in the name of tradition.  But there he is on the cover of Rolling Stone, and drawing adoring crowds in Latin America.

Quote from: bigbadtrad on January 02, 2018, 06:08:06 PM

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 11:26:51 AM
That's why I look at results.  What works, on average, and what does not work.  If the rigorists who tell their children they are only one mortal sin away from Hell are producing solid, mentally stable offspring 30-40 years later then imitate that. 

Actually Greg after living in many places I can assure you the best kids are the ones told 1 mortal sin will send you to Hell, but they are also told how much Our Lord loves them and has compassion on sinners.

But again the main emphasis is love and enjoying each other's company and having a father who is good at guiding the family to family time where everyone loves to spend time with each other. I play Calico critters with my daughters dressing up rabbits and elephants and legos and checkers with my son, not to mention tickling them daily with stories of my youth fishing and getting bit by various animals which always makes them laugh.

I don't think they ponder the mortal sin, but just like my love of my father I knew that offending him was worse than anything in the world because he cared about me. That's how children best see God is through us.

QuoteOnce you accept that the main ship has sunk and you are in the lifeboat boat rowing your own family towards the horizon then the best thing to do is ignore everyone else's mindless ramblings and row the way you want to row at the speed you want to row.  Ignore the priests and pundits and Cassandras.  They haven't got a  clue.  Behind closed doors their lives are probably more (screwed) up than yours.

I agree with this.

QuoteSo just keep rowing, be friendly to the people and priests calmly rowing in your direction and keep your chin up.  Best case you make it to safety.  Financially support the handful of priests you see eye to eye with.  My goal is simply to help my children make good marriage choices and then let them row in whatever direction their see fit.

I agree with this also but I think, and maybe you won't agree but I have suspicion you do otherwise you wouldn't post here so frequently, is that we would still want to be a lighthouse for their marriage and give our sons and daughters in law good advise we would give our children and truly treat them as sons and daughters so they know they can rely on us while not directly interfering in their marriage, but only give advice we think could be helpful about the pitfalls of dealing with the public (mainly lying and being deceived wink wink).

QuoteThe thing that will MOST influence your children and their moral choices is whether they like you.  My Dad has the advantage that I actually like and admire him.  So 90% of what he does I copy.  If I thought my Father was a miserable Jansenistic tosser, with no sense of humor or fun, I'd just ignore the old fart.

I agree with this too.

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.

Quote from: Chestertonian on January 02, 2018, 07:12:32 PM

Quote from: bigbadtrad on January 02, 2018, 06:08:06 PM

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 11:26:51 AM
That's why I look at results.  What works, on average, and what does not work.  If the rigorists who tell their children they are only one mortal sin away from Hell are producing solid, mentally stable offspring 30-40 years later then imitate that. 

Actually Greg after living in many places I can assure you the best kids are the ones told 1 mortal sin will send you to Hell, but they are also told how much Our Lord loves them and has compassion on sinners.

But again the main emphasis is love and enjoying each other's company and having a father who is good at guiding the family to family time where everyone loves to spend time with each other. I play Calico critters with my daughters dressing up rabbits and elephants and legos and checkers with my son, not to mention tickling them daily with stories of my youth fishing and getting bit by various animals which always makes them laugh.

I don't think they ponder the mortal sin, but just like my love of my father I knew that offending him was worse than anything in the world because he cared about me. That's how children best see God is through us.

QuoteOnce you accept that the main ship has sunk and you are in the lifeboat boat rowing your own family towards the horizon then the best thing to do is ignore everyone else's mindless ramblings and row the way you want to row at the speed you want to row.  Ignore the priests and pundits and Cassandras.  They haven't got a  clue.  Behind closed doors their lives are probably more (screwed) up than yours.

I agree with this.

QuoteSo just keep rowing, be friendly to the people and priests calmly rowing in your direction and keep your chin up.  Best case you make it to safety.  Financially support the handful of priests you see eye to eye with.  My goal is simply to help my children make good marriage choices and then let them row in whatever direction their see fit.

I agree with this also but I think, and maybe you won't agree but I have suspicion you do otherwise you wouldn't post here so frequently, is that we would still want to be a lighthouse for their marriage and give our sons and daughters in law good advise we would give our children and truly treat them as sons and daughters so they know they can rely on us while not directly interfering in their marriage, but only give advice we think could be helpful about the pitfalls of dealing with the public (mainly lying and being deceived wink wink).

QuoteThe thing that will MOST influence your children and their moral choices is whether they like you.  My Dad has the advantage that I actually like and admire him.  So 90% of what he does I copy.  If I thought my Father was a miserable Jansenistic tosser, with no sense of humor or fun, I'd just ignore the old fart.

I agree with this too.

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...

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

No you are wrong.  Our Lord says "For my burden is easy and my yoke is light".  He has assigned one of His Angels to watch over you and we your friends on this forum are praying for you, the Church is praying for you on earth and in Heaven.  God is with us, and He wants to save us, and He will if we can go to Him in our misery and plead for Mercy with a broken and contrite heart.   

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 06:20:40 PM
I have never actually seen an image of Our Lady nude even in Rome, I am sorry if I have given that impression.  However, I still feel reluctant to believe based only on what other people have said and not read for my self that Christians forfeit their salvation if they look at an image of St. Agatha's martyrdom, or at nude bodies falling into hell and being tortured.     I am open to changing my mind on this topic and conforming to your opinion, if you could give me your sources that deal with this topic I would be grateful.

I can't go any further into this discussion as I run a business and the rest of the week will be horrible for me. My point is roughly the same as yours which is that context matters and if the virgin martyr of St. Agatha torture should be shown at all. If so why were there no nude depictions of her at all until the Renaissance? I find in incredulous that a holy virgin would desire this considering her own life of sobriety. They tortured her in a way to humiliate her, and so to continue the humiliation we show it for the world? Makes no sense. Imagine for a moment she's tortured, breasts ripped off, and then when she is healing we show her images of her torture in which the whole world will see her torture. Again, I have a sneaking suspicion she would want that private as it undermines her purity.

To sum this up nicely I believe Savonarola did more good for Florence in both penance and repentance of sin than the art he burned and destroyed and considering the town went from pagan to fervent. I have more in common with him than his opponent Alexander VI, and with one of his defenders St. Filippo Neri. After his reputation was destroyed and body killed I find it funny how Florence returned to the cesspool of rot it was before. I was there a few years ago for 1 day and just wanted another Savonarola to restore it.

plus just today I listened to music involving percussion, my son went to Russian damce lessons right after public school, I allowed my wife to wear makeup and pants, then we watched Strong Bad Emails which involves a shirtless Mexican wrestler.. so nudity. that's at least 43 mortal sins depending on who you talk to

Quote from: bigbadtrad on January 02, 2018, 07:21:40 PM

Quote from: nmoerbeek on January 02, 2018, 06:20:40 PM
I have never actually seen an image of Our Lady nude even in Rome, I am sorry if I have given that impression.  However, I still feel reluctant to believe based only on what other people have said and not read for my self that Christians forfeit their salvation if they look at an image of St. Agatha's martyrdom, or at nude bodies falling into hell and being tortured.     I am open to changing my mind on this topic and conforming to your opinion, if you could give me your sources that deal with this topic I would be grateful.

I can't go any further into this discussion as I run a business and the rest of the week will be horrible for me. My point is roughly the same as yours which is that context matters and if the virgin martyr of St. Agatha torture should be shown at all. If so why were there no nude depictions of her at all until the Renaissance? I find in incredulous that a holy virgin would desire this considering her own life of sobriety. They tortured her in a way to humiliate her, and so to continue the humiliation we show it for the world? Makes no sense. Imagine for a moment she's tortured, breasts ripped off, and then when she is healing we show her images of her torture in which the whole world will see her torture. Again, I have a sneaking suspicion she would want that private as it undermines her purity.

To sum this up nicely I believe Savonarola did more good for Florence in both penance and repentance of sin than the art he burned and destroyed and considering the town went from pagan to fervent. I have more in common with him than his opponent Alexander VI, and with one of his defenders St. Filippo Neri. After his reputation was destroyed and body killed I find it funny how Florence returned to the cesspool of rot it was before. I was there a few years ago for 1 day and just wanted another Savonarola to restore it.

It does make sense because we are sharing in the glory of her martyrdom by preserving and sharing it for future Christians to have an example to imitate and so that they might know of her story, and the fact that her breasts where ripped off are part of the story, it highlights the degree which we must be willing to suffer for Christ. That is how I see it, and I will hold to my opinion for now, I  respect your opinion has come from a formation on the topic perhaps beyond my own.


Thank you for your time my friend.   :toth:

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 04:09:21 PM
But scriptural literalism is not necessarily the same thing as rigorism.  The Early Church Fathers took many passages figuratively; one pretty much has to in a religion whose founder taught in parables.  And yet those Fathers were rigorist.  So your beef is with practice, not doctrine.  And if your criteria is that "results matter," then your work is cut out for you.  One of the most "phucked up" religions in the world, as you see it, is nevertheless the second most populous religion in the world.  If traditional Catholicism is your product, then you're only successfully selling to less than one percent of the world's population (and some of the incoming class are rigorists themselves, persuaded by something other than your own claim that traditional Catholicism is a recipe for making one's life excellent: "dancing, drinking hard, and sinning").  The Early Church Fathers, on the other hand, evangelized a continent.

I'm fascinated by this thread.  It's airing some dirty laundry better than I could ever make it evident.

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?

(And pretty much for everyone): by what right do you condemn me for holding to a changing/relative truth when you yourself hold to a changing/relative morality?  You're all quick to condemn me if I go against the Fathers on a matter of doctrine.  But then they didn't really "mean it" when it came to morality.  Now that's all historically conditioned, relative, etc.

And as for "results matter": they do except for when they do not.  If, in a given region and time, the Church flourishes, this is proof of her Divine mission and founding.  But if it doesn't, that just proves how evil people are, or that God is letting the evil happen only for the eventual triumph: the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church and all that.  Look, the externals of the Church, were by every measure prior to Vatican II, at least in the U.S., wonderful.  Protestants were converting by the droves.  Vocations were coming out of the woodwork.  Popes at least from Leo XIII onwards saw the enormous potential for Catholicism in the U.S.  But, in the end, it was all a facade.  It would not have collapsed like a house of cards or folded like a cheap suit the way it did if this were not the case.

Jerome was honestly a bit of a jackass when he posted here, and some of the things he said were false and ridiculous, especially on his site.  Yet nevertheless some of the things he said were true.  Why even bother about Tradition in the first place if you're going to watch movies with nudity?

Important thread with some interesting replies, but I think the most important reply so far might be this one by obscurus:

Quote from: obscurus on January 02, 2018, 12:31:11 PM
What an interesting topic!

I was just transcribing a personal letter by Carol Jackson where she touches on the question of rigorism in association with The Grail Movement. In the mid to late 40s, she wrote a letter describing the effects of this rigorism which relied more on human efforts than the grace of God. She made a curious statement that usually this type of rigorism ended up in mediocrity. I'll try to finish transcribing it and post it here.

QuoteThe Grail is, I think, "Integrist", they have set up a perfect, little Christian community, but isolated -- especially psychologically.... The two errors in the apostolate are to accommodate yourself too much to the world (at the expense of Christianity), or to be Christian in your culture, mores etc. (not holy necessarily), at the price of separating yourself. Anne, having tasted one error, may be surging into the opposite one by reaction.

....There is another thing, that so far it seems as though all the splendor of the Grail ends in mediocrity. This is as it would be expected from a movement which depends too much on humans rather than grace.

This links with another important point made by bigbadtrad:

Quote from: bigbadtrad on January 02, 2018, 09:24:34 AM
In conclusion I had this same conversation with my wife but in a different way. She asked how we make our kids into saints if things are so corrupt and the lives of the fathers seem so abstract. I mentioned the analogy of Bishop Sheen's "modern hairshirts" where he showed in times past we imposed penances on ourselves in a Catholic ethos to help conform to God's law against internal dangers. In today's time our neighbor is our hairshirt as it's an attack from without that constantly bombards us with attacks stronger than impurity but against our faith.

That maybe our way back to the ancients is not in linear form, but in the spirit of joy, happiness, spending more time as a family, playing games that are wholesome, restore chaperones over dating, and to make life the most fun it can be so they see the love of God through the family. Maybe the discipline imposed on us is to be as joyful as we can in a fallen world and not to let melancholy and despair take over us.

I've seen Catholicism practiced in 12 countries from Eastern, Novus Ordo, and Traditional perspectives. The only thing I've seen as a thread that binds them when I see the children prospering and growing in the faith is love, patience, compassion, modesty, family activities (which I can't stress enough) sobriety, and vigilance against the world into their homes. Maybe it will be through our joy and by extension the analogy of the compassion and mercy of God that gives them the will to fight in a decimated world and to conclude in the words of St. Paul our salvation is founded upon hope. May we be that for others and that might be the greatest interior mortification which exceeds all other penances.

What we strive for as Christians is sanctity. We have to be holy, as our heavenly Father is holy. The danger of any "movement" is that we become too focused and satisfied with its externals rather than its interior spirit, e.g. being satisfied with mere attendance of the Old Mass without regard for practicing the faith and holiness which the Old Mass teaches. Another danger is that we become slothful and proud in being a mere member of the movement, thinking that in recognising the defects in the wider Church it suffices to make one holy or even acceptable to God. Another danger is that the movement becomes a mere faction more preoccupied with polemics against its enemies or detractors rather than with following its own principles.

Satan's primary method for poisoning Catholic Traditionalism is precisely to make it into a mere human faction within the Church fighting for its own rights and privileges, rather than its members being docile to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost for the restoration of the Church as a whole and willing to suffer persecutions and setbacks for the general salvation of souls. What Carol Jackson in obscurus' quotation and what bigbadtrad are counselling is precisely that we should be preoccupied first & foremost with submission to the Holy Ghost and living our lives as Christians, rather than as campaigners for a sect. If we live our life as Christians, relying on the grace of God and not on our own vain human efforts & campaigns, we will have that joy that bigbagtrad describes which will rescue us from the main sins which plague traditionalists - bitterness and scandal. Because traditionalists are so universally and so unjustly persecuted by members of the hierarchy, it is easy for us to develop something of a persecution syndrome where on the one hand we see ourselves as veritable martyrs by the mere fact of beings traditionalists, and on the other hand we become so bitterly offended by the betrayal of our pastors that we see anyone who is not explicitly for us as being against us (e.g. guiltless "Novus Ordoites"), and sin against charity. This is another of Satan's tactics. It would be beneficial to remind ourselves that there are "Novus Ordo Catholics" who are living more traditionally Catholic lives than many so-called traditionalists, whose traditionalism is vain.

That is what we must avoid: vain and superficial traditionalism. We are not an art movement concerned with the preservation of a beautiful ritual or baroque craft. We are here to keep the faith whole and entire, and to practice it.

Revival of traditional Catholic doctrine and practice in faith & morals - orthodoxy AND orthopraxis - should be the supreme end of Catholic Traditionalism. The Old Mass is our rallying banner and our most effective means for accomplishing this end, but Satan has worked to attract false brethren to that same banner and to make us proud and satisfied with the banner itself over and above what it signifies and what it points to: an integral & holy Catholic life. The primary reason that this is being frustrated is the upper hierarchy's betrayal of the faith, with the consequent lack of Catholic leadership. The shepherd is struck, the flock is scattered. When our superiors do not maintain their charity for us, it becomes ten times harder for us to maintain charity among ourselves. Traditionalists priests are affected by this problem perhaps more than the laity, because they are hampered more by modernist prelates than even we are; so it's easy for them to lose charity and for that to spill over into their parishes too. However, despite this failure of charity in the Church as a whole with its consequences for Catholic Traditionalism in particular, it does not make living a Catholic life impossible even if it makes it more difficult. We simply have to rely more and more on the Holy Spirit's guidance and in maintaining charity the best we can among ourselves, with our neighbours, and with our enemies (especially those in the Church).

What Greg points to as the failure of "Jansenist" trads to keep themselves or their children practicing the faith is due, I suspect, to them focusing more on the exterior trappings of traditionalism rather than the spirit of Catholicism in the first place, which is essentially one of rejoicing in God and the redemption He has worked for us in Christ. This is why the early posts in the thread decrying the triumph of the Jesuits and virtually lamenting the defeat of the actual Jansenists is a very grievous error: the Jansenists portrayed themselves as reviving the rigour of ancient Catholicism, but in reality their dark and sinister spirit was a Satanic inversion of the true spirit of the faith. The old saying about the Jansenists is that they were "pure as angels, and proud as devils." This is the devil's intention for Catholic Traditionalism as well: he would be very glad to see us pure as angels, if it also meant we were proud as devils (incidentally I heard Fr. Ripperger say in an online recording that trads generally struggle with purity, and that God allows it to punish their pride). Jesuits may have gone too far with moral laxism, I don't know; but they certainly didn't go too far in opposing the diabolical movement of Jansenism - and in tirelessly promoting its antidote given to the Church by God, devotion to the Sacred Heart - which over 150 years after it had been condemned by the Church, still had such an overall influence that a saint like St. Thérèse of Lisieux was being obstructed against receiving Holy Communion by her post-Jansenist influenced confessor. Those of you who feel sympathy with Jansenism ought to reflect that they often used to brag about not receiving Holy Communion for years due to their self-professed unworthiness and depravity - it was a demented sect.

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.

Many have commented on the fact that we are swamped by a modern culture awash with indecency and occasion of sin. We're not in Jerusalem anymore. I think Catholics in the modern world ought to be comparing themselves to the Jews in Babylonian exile: "Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept: when we remembered Sion" / "How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! how is the mistress of the Gentiles become as a widow: the princes of provinces made tributary! Weeping she hath wept in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: there is none to comfort her among all them that were dear to her: all her friends have despised her, and are become her enemies." The problem is that the core idea of the pastoral council Vatican II is to pretend not that we are in Neo-Babylon but that we are in the early stages of New Jerusalem; to pretend that the modern world somehow wasn't established in direct opposition to God and the Church, to divine and natural law. Anyhow, seeing as we truly are surrounded by so much filth we have to avoid two errors: 1. rolling in the filth ourselves, 2. expecting each of us to live the austere lives of monks, even those not called to a monastic life. "I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly." We cannot adopt the sinful mores of our pagan contemporaries, but that does not mean that we must abandon any and all recreation or comfort; instead, we should try to live as we would if we were living in a more fully Christian society like in the Middle Ages, and adopt recreation and comfort that wholesome and consonant with the faith.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmTrFat--cU[/yt]

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-rWrI9I0w[/yt]

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_6KlCDFzBc[/yt]

Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on January 02, 2018, 08:05:21 PM

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 04:09:21 PM
But scriptural literalism is not necessarily the same thing as rigorism.  The Early Church Fathers took many passages figuratively; one pretty much has to in a religion whose founder taught in parables.  And yet those Fathers were rigorist.  So your beef is with practice, not doctrine.  And if your criteria is that "results matter," then your work is cut out for you.  One of the most "phucked up" religions in the world, as you see it, is nevertheless the second most populous religion in the world.  If traditional Catholicism is your product, then you're only successfully selling to less than one percent of the world's population (and some of the incoming class are rigorists themselves, persuaded by something other than your own claim that traditional Catholicism is a recipe for making one's life excellent: "dancing, drinking hard, and sinning").  The Early Church Fathers, on the other hand, evangelized a continent.

(And pretty much for everyone): by what right do you condemn me for holding to a changing/relative truth when you yourself hold to a changing/relative morality?  You're all quick to condemn me if I go against the Fathers on a matter of doctrine.  But then they didn't really "mean it" when it came to morality.  Now that's all historically conditioned, relative, etc.

This has been a bit of a thread hasn't it?  My examples used early on became topics unto themselves.  I don't subscribe to a relative morality, I rather acknowledge that the Faith has certain underlying and consistent principles that due to things that do change: time, region, cultures and circumstances are going to lead to different answers at different times for proper living in specifics: like playing chess.

I dont believe that tomorrow or yesterday it was ok to steal my neighbors chess board, or that I can club him to death with it while he sleeps, or that I can hide love notes to his wife on the underside of it.  That never has changed and never will change. 

I don't recall condemning you recently though I admit I was very surprised when you appeared to support the practice of receiving communion while living in a non sacramental second sexual union.  Wearing pearls might be a fault even a venial sin  if you want to follow St. Pauls admonition to women in a literal way, but Adulterers will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 01:12:40 AM
My perspective is coloured by my near 40 years of experience of Tradom.

Jansenistic trads are not, usually, able to keep their children on the straight and narrow.  They might convince ~30% of their offspring to remain catholic in their Jansenistic bent, but I rarely see a wholly functional large Catholic family of Jansenists passing that down multigenerationally.  I have lived in Australia, UK, America and followed the path of Trads over a generation.

If I think back to the Jansenistic families of the 1980s and 1990s their children are, in the most part, disappeared.  And of those that remain, many are not Jansenistic.

I doubt many became modernists which means they mostly lapsed.  I am Kung Fu, so I go to every Latin Mass in a 50 mile radius.  If they went to Mass I would spot them eventually or hear about it through the Trad grapevine.  And yes, I do ask, because I am nosey.

The dancing, hard drinking, sinning Trads deliver the goods more often.

Results matter.

Where would one find these 30% remaining Jansenist trads?

Simple rule of thumb: Would you feel comfortable watching/doing something with Jesus in the room? If the answer is no, then it may be wise to consider why and act accordingly.

I wouldn't pick my nose in front of Jesus.  Does that mean I should not pick my nose?

We have no broadcast TV in the House. Our Nanny got Netflix so since it costs me nothing I downloaded it to the Wii.  The only thing my wife and I do together to relax is watch "The Crown" when the children are in bed. I watch the dramas about Mexican and Colombian drug dealers.  I agreed to Netflix because you could pick the programs and not have them broadcast at you.  I ditched TV decades ago because it was getting ridiculous.

We watched House of Cards but quit watching when Frank Underwood started kissing a man.  Now I have ditched El Chapo too, because the Mexican chief of police is a queer and there are long queer scenes.

Yesterday in "The Crown" Lord Snowdon's character had a gratuitous sex scene with a Chinese photomodel and then later was shown in bed with married couple.  So now Netflix is going too, because you can't even get a story without porn being shown.  You can fast forward but it means sitting there with your hand hovering over the Wii Control which kind of defeats the purpose of having a cuddle on the couch and something to talk about in bed or at breakfast the next morning.

But where to draw the line?  Is there any TV or movie I can watch with my own wife to wind down at the end of the day 1 or 2 days per week?  Even Downtown Abbey has nudity and sex scenes, homosexual butlers etc.  She doesn't like much on TV.  "Call the Midwife"?.  Pretty sure I have seen tits and bums in that too and frankly it's not the sort of entertainment that entertain me.

The Sound of Music is pornography according to Bishop Williamson.  Following that line means throwing out my entire DVD collection.

And even the good Bishop who once warned us that "nothing good can come from the internet", and to "stay away from it", now publishes his blogs and writings on the platform from which we are all just a few clicks away from any level of depravity we wish to see?  How can the Internet be anything other than a massive near occasion of sin?  You are literally connected to PicoBytes of free porn, dating websites and people who will strip down and wiggle their naughty bits at you as part of "Social Networking"?  The internet's overloads, mostly Jews, can even control the pop up adverts you see based on your age and demographic.

It's easier, less embarrassing and less risky to find debauchery on the internet than ever it was to stretch up to the top shelf magazines or sneak into a 8th Avenue peep show or the local titty bar.  If you would avoid the red light district or the newsagent who sold porn 30 years ago, then why the hell would you have an internet connection at home?

Even Bishop Williamson who warns us of the dangers of Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer ventures into this digital ocean of filth with his YouTube videos and Blog postings.  Why tempt us your grace ?  Stick to printed mailings, VHS videos or a dial up bulletin board.

Would Jesus do that?  Would Jesus Vlog on the same platform that carries more porn than any other type of data?

We could all live without the Internet.  It would be difficult but certainly possible.  I'd have to quit my job and work in some other field, lower paid, but what's that when compared to your immortal soul?

So when I have moved my children to the boonies, and cut them off from the internet and we spend our evenings reading Victorian era novels and playing parlour games and we cannot get to mass because that would involve living near the great unwashed or porn addicted masses, then what?  Who do my kids socialise with and marry?  How do they communicate with them?  Writing letters by candlelight?  Many people under 30 can't even use the telephone anymore.  I have candidates who want to do first job interviews by text message.  Seriously.  They don't know how to speak to a stranger on the telephone and conduct themselves.

After the Holy Spirit came down why did the major disciples and apostles not set up a commune far out in the boonies of Jordan or Syria, to avoid occasions of sin?  Why on earth would they go and set up shop in pagan Rome that had pagan depravity on every street corner and prostitutes flashing themselves from first floor windows in the 1st Century's equivalent of pop-up ads?

Two things - please don't follow someone like a Jerome or an Ibranyi off a cliff, until you or your family loses the Faith or ceases to practice; on the other hand, take someone like St. Padre Pio, who not only knew but manifestly lived the teaching of the early Fathers; now, he deserves to be emulated; he was very stern against immoral fashions and pagan conduct, sometimes even refusing absolution to those impenitent and obstinate in displaying and promoting them. He had many manifest miraculous gifts, including that of reading hearts, he rebuked both lax laity and religious who in his words were "denaturing themselves" by trying to imitate the world. Manifestly a tradionalist on morality through and through and a prophet for our times.

If we don't see that civilization has gone from Christian to heathen again in the last 50 to 100 years, we're burying our heads in the sand. Just look at the increase in rates of fornication, contraception use, proliferation of pornographic images on display in the media everwhere and other widespread forms of impurity and immorality.

The early Christians deserve only measureless praise. They lived in a culture as barbarous as ours; a heathen culture where the killing of children was legal; where men were killed for sport in gladiatorial theatres; where prostitutes served in pagan temples; where evil and wickedness seemed triumphant everywhere. And yet, they were the victors! The victors because they rejected the world as the bride of Satan and considered all its vain allurements as nought; desiring to live only for Christ and His Church, heroic and glorious martyrs like St. Agnes did not fear public shame to preserve their fidelity to Christ.

And boy, were the Romans amazed at such power! They practically worshipped power, yet in all their conquests, they had never seen anything like this! How could anyone remain calm and even joyful when being thrown to lions or stripped naked? What new and divine power was this which all the might of heathendom was powerless to overthrow?

And before long, God miraculously intervened, giving Constantine the Great visions of His Holy Cross. As Christianity rose triumphant over a vanquished paganism, orphanages replaced infanticide; the councils willed hospitals to be established wherever there were churches, the Christian hospitals that were "the world's first voluntary charitable institutions" . This history is recounted by Prof. Tom Woods in "How the Catholic Church built western civilization" and "How Christianity changed the world" by Prof. Alvin Schmidt.

Against modern pagans and apostates from the Faith today, we must recall the way to victory over heathenism; it is by heroic sacrifices, by gratefully accepted suffering, by voluntary penances and lifelong martyrdom; Christ has done it before in the early Christians and He will do it in us again.

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 12:45:01 AM
I wouldn't pick my nose in front of Jesus.  Does that mean I should not pick my nose?

We have no broadcast TV in the House. Our Nanny got Netflix so since it costs me nothing I downloaded it to the Wii.  The only thing my wife and I do together to relax is watch "The Crown" when the children are in bed. I watch the dramas about Mexican and Colombian drug dealers.  I agreed to Netflix because you could pick the programs and not have them broadcast at you.  I ditched TV decades ago because it was getting ridiculous.

We watched House of Cards but quit watching when Frank Underwood started kissing a man.  Now I have ditched El Chapo too, because the Mexican chief of police is a queer and there are long queer scenes.

Yesterday in "The Crown" Lord Snowdon's character had a gratuitous sex scene with a Chinese photomodel and then later was shown in bed with married couple.  So now Netflix is going too, because you can't even get a story without porn being shown.  You can fast forward but it means sitting there with your hand hovering over the Wii Control which kind of defeats the purpose of having a cuddle on the couch and something to talk about in bed or at breakfast the next morning.

But where to draw the line?  Is there any TV or movie I can watch with my own wife to wind down at the end of the day 1 or 2 days per week?  Even Downtown Abbey has nudity and sex scenes, homosexual butlers etc.  She doesn't like much.  "Call the Midwife"?.  Pretty sure I have seen tits and bums in that too.

The Sound of Music is pornography according to Bishop Williamson.  Following that line means throwing out my entire DVD collection.

And even the good Bishop who once warned us that "nothing good can come from the internet", and to "stay away from it", now publishes his blogs and writings on the platform from which we are all just a few clicks away from any level of depravity we wish to see?  How can the Internet be anything other than a massive near occasion of sin?  You are literally connected to PicoBytes of free porn, dating websites and people who will strip down and wiggle their naughty bits at you as part of "Social Networking"?  The internet's overloads, mostly Jews, can even control the pop up adverts you see based on your age and demographic.

Even Bishop Williamson who warns us of the dangers of Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer ventures into this digital ocean of filth with his YouTube videos and Blog postings.  Why tempt us your grace ?

Would Jesus do that?  Would Jesus Vlog on the same platform that carries more porn than any other type of data.

We could all live without the Internet.  It would be difficult but certainly possible.  I'd have to quit my job and work in some other field, lower paid, but what's that when compared to your immortal soul?

So when I have moved my children to the boonies, and cut them off from the internet and we spend our evenings reading Victorian era novels and playing parlour games and we cannot get to mass because that would involve living near the great unwashed or porn addicted masses, then what?  Who do my kids socialise with and marry?  How do they communicate with them?  Writing letters by candlelight?  Many people under 30 can't even use the telephone anymore.  I have candidates who want to do first job interviews by text message.  Seriously.  They don't know how to speak to a stranger on the telephone and conduct themselves.

After the Holy Spirit came down why did the major disciples and apostles not set up a commune far out in the boonies of Jordan or Syria, to avoid occasions of sin?  Why on earth would they go and set up shop in pagan Rome that had pagan depravity on every street corner and prostitutes flashing themselves from first floor windows in the 1st Century's equivalent of pop-up ads?

It is simply a rule of thumb, my friend. My point is not to overcomplicate things. Also, I said to examine why one might say "no," not necessarily throw it out. Your wisecrack on nose picking proves that exact point.

The internet is another example of what I mean. There is a plethora of beneficial things online, too. And lots of things at least indifferent. The idea is to actually think and use judgement based on a well formed conscience rather than relying on a list of dos and don'ts that may be fine for one, but problematic in practice for another, as your internet example shows.

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?

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 01:11:52 AM
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.

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.

QuoteThe 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.

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.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A_tITaP1QA


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSbUpyQtemk


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoCImPe9pVI



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.

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

QuoteS.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/

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.

Quote from: Xavier on January 03, 2018, 06:21:45 AM
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.

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.

Quote from: Xavier on January 03, 2018, 06:21:45 AM
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.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 02, 2018, 06:28:22 PM

Quote from: Jayne on January 02, 2018, 04:35:43 PMScipio 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. 

Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on January 02, 2018, 08:05:21 PMJust 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 (https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=19186.msg427163#msg427163):

QuoteBut 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.

Quote from: Chestertonian on January 02, 2018, 07:12:32 PM
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. 

Quote from: Arvinger on January 03, 2018, 05:54:11 AM
Here is the relevant section of the interview with Bishop Sanborn which I mentioned in OP:

QuoteS.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.

Quote from: John Lamb on January 02, 2018, 08:53:39 PMPon 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.

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.

Quote from: Jayne on January 03, 2018, 07:43:35 AMNo, 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.

I understand all this.  But let's just take pearls and Regency England.  Let's say the original stricture is "don't wear pearls," on the grounds that pearls are just needless glitz that draws attention to yourself.  Then, at some point in history, some popular English girl (admired by the ladies and desired by the men) defies that and starts wearing pearls, and others begin to follow her lead, until it becomes a trend and then by the nineteenth century it's the norm.  The original stricture fades into distant memory, and pearls become an acceptable form of bodily decoration in that culture.  Pearls become "modest" by virtue of no one seeing them as any big deal, which you are contending.  That's relativism, because you now accept a cultural norm that began by flaunting the stricture.

Just replace "pearls" with "bikinis" and you have effectively become Scipio.  You will argue that bikinis are different because they "stimulate lust," but the defenders of bikinis will simply say that in an all-bikini culture, people will have become conditioned to seeing all that skin as no big deal, in the same way you currently have traditional Catholics who mock the earlier standards on stimulating lust.  I am sure you are familiar with it: "oh noes!  Exposed knees!  I'm scandalized!"

QuoteLeave 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?

False dichotomy: Jansenism vs. Libertine.  Which is odd as you quote Belloc, i.e. red wine.

Merry Old England was merry because they were drinking pints and going to dances.  The Church acted to keep it in check, but you could be social and have fun.

Vice is in the extremes.  Too lax, and you are a libertine, too rigid, and you are Jansenist.

Turns out this thread is superbly popular. Like it's on fire.

Keep the discussion going, folks. It's intellectually simulating in many ways. (Just saying. :D )

I just wanted to say a few things. About the terms "Jansenist rigorist" and "Jesuit laxist" I did not really mean them seriously, they were used jokingly because they are insults used to attack the other side. I actually do not even know what the beliefs of the Jansenists and Jesuits really were. I once considered reading the Letters Provinciales by Pascal to learn more about the debate but alas they were placed on the index so I gave up my desire to read them.

About being a rigorist and I say I am on that side of the debate, but no Jerome, who I loved. My influences were not the Jansenists, but from reading certain lives of the saints and thinking it would be a good idea to try to imitate them. Two of my influences were reading about the Cure of Ars and the desert fathers. So for example I learned that the desert fathers would eat only one meal a day and eat simply, perhaps a couple of biscuits or a bowl of lentils or how the Cure of Ars would eat a few boiled potatoes to the point that the devil would appear to him and call him "potato eater" and I thought we should try to imitate their examples in our own lives. As for it being hard, in some ways it was. Living in the world, as I mentioned before, it was too difficult to never look at women dressed immodesty because they are everywhere and I have to leave the house, but I would try to look at them without falling into lust. I do try to avoid most immodest movies and TV shows because I can avoid that, which means not watching television and rarely watching new movies. About eating, I was surprised that it was not that hard to eat less food in imitation of the desert fathers, though I had to stop doing that because I was losing too much weight. I found it harder to eat more and maintain moderation than to eat less and cut off all temptation. I have found that I would be happy living in isolation as long as I had access to the Mass and sacraments, "subsiting on tea and toast", a phrase Pon used that I loved so much that I am repeating it here. But I am not a normal person, not that I am better than other people, but that I am different from other people because I am ill and because of my illness I am unable to live a normal life of independence and work and marriage and raising children so in the world's eyes I am a loser of no account. Even here, sometimes people talk about hypothetical men as being losers and the hypotheticals match my own life pretty well.

About early Christianity being a dead religion. I don't know if that is an accurate thing to say because there have always been some in every age (even today there are Carthusians) who took up the call to rigorism. How could there be a Cure of Ars in the eighteen hundreds if the fire was dead? I find it interesting that he was made the patron saint of parish priests in modern times considering his life. Or perhaps it is a dead religion that is revived in every generation by a few nutcases who read the lives of the saints and think "I could do that" and have the goal of becoming one of those souls who eats no food except for daily Communion. But I guess those who do that will always be open to the accusation of pride and "prelest".

And Pon, you really did love AustrianOrthodoxCatholic who seems to be your favorite poster even though he only made a few dozen posts. I liked him also and thought his beliefs were interesting and would have loved to have learned more from him.

QuoteSo for example I learned that the desert fathers would eat only one meal a day and eat simply, perhaps a couple of biscuits or a bowl of lentils or how the Cure of Ars would eat a few boiled potatoes to the point that the devil would appear to him and call him "potato eater" and I thought we should try to imitate their examples in our own lives.

Non sequitur.  Both were priests.  We are discussing State in Life, in particular a layman with a family to raise.

If due to your illness your State in Life is a single person, there is nothing wrong with practicing rigors under the direction of a Spiritual Advisor.  It is a good choice and I applaud it.  However if you decide to raise your infant on lentils  and biscuits, you will retard his development and even kill him.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 03, 2018, 09:56:02 AM

Quote from: Jayne on January 03, 2018, 07:43:35 AMNo, 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.

I understand all this.  But let's just take pearls and Regency England.  Let's say the original stricture is "don't wear pearls," on the grounds that pearls are just needless glitz that draws attention to yourself.  Then, at some point in history, some popular English girl (admired by the ladies and desired by the men) defies that and starts wearing pearls, and others begin to follow her lead, until it becomes a trend and then by the nineteenth century it's the norm.  The original stricture fades into distant memory, and pearls become an acceptable form of bodily decoration in that culture.  Pearls become "modest" by virtue of no one seeing them as any big deal, which you are contending.  That's relativism, because you now accept a cultural norm that began by flaunting the stricture.

I don't think it is relevant that the cultural norm began by flaunting the stricture.  It was wrong to do that but years later when people saw wearing pearls as modest, it was, in fact, modest.  It is not relativism to say that circumstances can change the moral nature of an act.  Killing an enemy soldier might be good.  Killing one's child is bad.  The only exception to the need to consider circumstances is acts that are intrinsically evil.  I do not see that we have reason to believe that wearing pearls is intrinsically evil.  It is only relativism if one is dealing with a moral absolute.

Saying that whether modesty is a virtue depends on the culture would be relativism.  Saying that how modesty is expressed depends on the culture is (in most cases) not relativism.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 03, 2018, 09:56:02 AM
Just replace "pearls" with "bikinis" and you have effectively become Scipio.  You will argue that bikinis are different because they "stimulate lust," but the defenders of bikinis will simply say that in an all-bikini culture, people will have become conditioned to seeing all that skin as no big deal, in the same way you currently have traditional Catholics who mock the earlier standards on stimulating lust.  I am sure you are familiar with it: "oh noes!  Exposed knees!  I'm scandalized!"

As I recall, Scipio was not talking about some theoretical all-bikini culture, but claiming that bikinis were modest in our culture because they were common.  I think this is a different issue than the one you are talking about. 

In any event, I disagree that allowing for cultural differences is identical to relativism.  Culture is a legitimate factor to consider, but not the only one.

Quote from: james03 on January 03, 2018, 10:39:51 AMNon sequitur.  Both were priests.  We are discussing State in Life, in particular a layman with a family to raise.

Yes, and his standards were different for people of different states. He would recommend priests to fast every day and sleep on the bare floor and use the discipline. But he was more lenient with laymen and women who had to work as far as fasting and penances went. But there were some areas where he was very strict for all, such as refusing absolution to young people who did not promise to never go to dances. So swing dances and ballet were out of the question for the youth or Ars in his time.

Quote from: Matto on January 03, 2018, 10:32:01 AMAnd Pon, you really did love AustrianOrthodoxCatholic who seems to be your favorite poster even though he only made a few dozen posts. I liked him also and thought his beliefs were interesting and would have loved to have learned more from him.

AustrianOrthodoxCatholic really was an interesting poster.  He came and left during my self-imposed ban and it appears he's not coming back which is pretty disappointing.  I would've liked reading more from him as well.  And I thoroughly enjoyed the exchanges between him and PdR  -- would've liked reading more of those, too; but alas, such is life!

I have to say, that when I see African tribal women with their saggy boobs hanging down or spend time on the beaches of France or Italy, (though topless bating is much reduced now thanks to Muslim males being everywhere in the EU), it never gets my needle off zero.

These things vary with age too, as well as context.

We recently visited a 44 year old married lady who I knew as a young Trad.  Hadn't seen her for 19 years.  She was the best looking women I have ever seen in UK Tradom when she was young.  And I have never seen a better looking Trad woman since either.

I used to walk down the street with her when we went out to places and car drivers would nearly crash into other cars because she was so distracting.  It was actually pretty funny at the time.  Think Cindi Crawford in her heyday.  She was stunning.  When we visited, she dug out an old crumpled photograph ( at my insistence ) to show her teenage boys what a looker she was back then.  To them she was just "mum" of course, as is the way.  Before I saw the crumpled photograph I questioned whether she really looked as good as I remember, but the photo confirmed she did.

The only practical way she could have avoided being a distraction or "occasion of sin" would be to wear a burqa.

Quote from: Matto on January 03, 2018, 10:47:40 AM

Quote from: james03 on January 03, 2018, 10:39:51 AMNon sequitur.  Both were priests.  We are discussing State in Life, in particular a layman with a family to raise.

Yes, and his standards were different for people of different states. He would recommend priests to fast every day and sleep on the bare floor and use the discipline. But he was more lenient with laymen and women who had to work as far as fasting and penances went. But there were some areas where he was very strict for all, such as refusing absolution to young people who did not promise to never go to dances. So swing dances and ballet were out of the question for the youth or Ars in his time.

The French are a pretty passionate lot and I always wonder whether it is the dancing taking place in public that is objected to here, or the chance of meeting up and fornicating in a nearby hackstack or barn which would pretty much be the likely outcome unless people were watched like hawks.  Parents back then were too busy to chaperone their children.

Perhaps "dances" at that time were really just a cover for meeting up with the opposite sex for other means.  Unlike modern writers, Catholic writers in the past left a lot of things unsaid for fear of scandalising the reader.

What were these dances?

Just a dance with the opposite sex?
The historical equivalent of flirting on a social network platform today?
Or the 19th Century's equivalent of a modern nightclub, complete with booze and bawdy songs?

Two other beliefs of the Cure of Ars which seem strict today to me were that he condemned taverns that sold alcohol to the men of the town and accused them of stealing the money of the poor women who were married to the men who went to the taverns. So he would not have liked trads meeting at the local tavern to drink whiskey, smoke pipes and talk about Pope Francis. And that the farmers used to sell lots of produce and they would put the good looking vegetables on the top of the pile and the lesser quality vegetables on the bottom so that the buyers could not see the lesser quality vegetables and would be deceived into buying lower quality produce. The Cure condemned this as stealing and said those who did it owed restitution towards those who bought the goods even though this practice was expected and everyone knew about it.

Perhaps modern day traditional Catholics are like squirrels in alien territory digging in the ground looking for nuts buried by other squirrels. There are the red squirrels and the grey squirrels and the white squirrels and the black squirrels all looking for the same nuts. I say that but I don't really know what it means it just thought interesting at the time I thought of it.

I'd like to resurrect him and bring him to this time just to see the look on his drawn out face when he learned about the canonised "saints" JP2, P6 and humble Pope Francis' teachings.

Then take him for a Trad's square dance, with booze, and see whether he was still nitpicking about those peccadillos or ended up ranting all night long about "How the Church could have gone to hell in a hand-basket like this".  Then, when he was drunk enough, we could tell him about Assisi 2 and the Satanic enthronement ceremony at the Vatican, all the stories of clerical paedophilia, and watch his face turn double-ashen again.

I would bet good money he wouldn't give a shit about taverns when he saw the damage the Church's own hierarchy inflicted.  No publican ever did as much damage as the clerics serving poison to the laity over the last 50 years.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 03, 2018, 09:15:49 AM

Quote from: John Lamb on January 02, 2018, 08:53:39 PMPon 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.

I think you're forgetting that "Catholic" means "universal."  We have a 2,000 year history and I think it's silly to think that there is one perfect time in the Church that we should all recreate and return to.  I can't be too worried if the current traditional movement isn't frowning on the same things that St. John Vianney or St. John Chrysostom frowned on.  They were taking care of their flocks, and I have my own priests who are taking care of me.

I am not going to tell you how to make sense of the crisis, the only thing I can say is that the story isn't over yet, and we just have to trust that the gates of hell will not prevail.  Our Lord wouldn't have had to say that if it He didn't have the foreknowledge that there would be a time in which it would appear that the gates of hell were prevailing. 

I realize that not everyone is lucky enough to live near an Institute parish, but my solution to the crisis is to find the best place I can to be Catholic and raise my children.  For me, that means trusting the Canon at my parish and soaking in their spiritual advice.  I also have another traditional priest who resides at my parish who has been my spiritual father for years.  Between him, and the Canons who staff our church, I don't feel the need to spend hours combing over homilies given by saintly priests from another time and cultivating a "countercultural" lifestyle that is going to make me into such a freak that no one in my family or surrounding community can relate to me.  My priests have never said anything about my makeup (or the lack thereof).  I've never been turned away from confession because I was wearing pants or nail polish.  The closest thing was when I showed up to spiritual direction wearing yoga pants, a messy bun, and no makeup, giant dark circles under my eyes from the sleep deprivation, and Father asked if everything was OK.

Right now I'm trying to get back into shape and am realizing that growing in holiness and pursuing fitness are very similar.  Some people can just join a gym and see good results by winging it and following the advice in one of those standard diet books, but we all could benefit from a personal trainer to give us an individualized plan.  One set of exercises might be the perfect thing for one person, but for another person it might destroy their joints for life.  I am lucky that I went to the doctor BEFORE embarking on a fitness plan, because apparently my blood pressure is so high, that it's not safe for me to do just any excercise and I have to stick to really gentle stuff until my BP can be regulated with medication.  If I followed generic exercise advice, it would probably backfire on me.  The doctor told me to lose one to two pounds per week.

Some people who go to the gym are already bodybuilders.  There are women there who look like supermodels.  If I were to idolize these stick thin women, I would never succeed because I'd feel so bad about myself that I wouldn't go back to the gym.  I have to aspire to be the healthiest version of myself I can be.  I have to accept that there will always be jiggly parts and I will never have that perfect body that some women have, but I am aiming for the best version of myself in light of my genetics and physical capabilities.

Spiritual growth is the same way.  Everything I read on the internet has to be tempered with what my own spiritual Fathers have to say, as well as my husband.   While I admire the austerity of the ancients, it just doesn't carry as much weight as the advice I get from my own spiritual director right in front of me, as well as the sermons that they preach to our congregation, which are focused on the things we need to hear.  I have to trust that God is guiding the real priests He has put in my life and that if I follow their advice and seek to please Him through my state in life, I will be the type of saint God wants me to be. 

If the things you did back when you were a "Jansenist" helped you to detach more from the world, that's great, but detachment from the world means NOTHING if we're not attaching ourselves to God.  We all have things we need to detach from in order to have union with God, but detachment is the means, not the end.  It makes perfect sense to me that the modes of detachment would vary according to time, place, and person, but the end goal is always the same throughout the ages.  What if you could accept that the Church is big enough to accomodate the spirituality you've cultivated for yourself alongside many other ways of living the Gospel? 

How useful was rigorism if you're not even Catholic anymore?  If you're not even going to Mass and receiving the sacraments anymore, then it doesn't take a rigorist to conclude that your soul is in grave danger.

Quote from: ServusMariae on January 03, 2018, 10:20:46 AM
Turns out this thread is superbly popular. Like it's on fire.

"Women in pants" and derivative topics are time-honored and beloved here at SD and its predecessor fora.

Time and time again I have seen families take such a harsh stance on the outside world who end up in a worse state than the first. One lady I have known ended up leaving Tradition, starting wearing pants, and eventually leaving the Faith. She was super-staunch and dictated what all the young women should wear. Well, a person can only act this way for such a time. Stretch a rubber band too much and tell me what happens.

You can't do such violence to nature. I am not talking about coddling our fallen human nature. Penance is necessary, prayer is necessary, but so is (true) charity, and so is healthy recreation.

We live in society and we must learn to deal with the outside world with intelligence and humor. What was that famous saying of Chesterton? "The secret of life is laughter and humility". I work with people who are far from the Faith and while I lament that I can't have an intelligent conversation with them about the mystery of the Trinity and the Crisis in the Church, I have to cooperate with them by not putting on some pious front. I can't be a loner at work. If I was not confident in the truth of the Faith, I simply would have joined the hedonism of my peers.

Are we really convinced of the Faith? I am but I need to be humble about it.

Quote from: obscurus on January 03, 2018, 01:23:46 PM
Time and time again I have seen families take such a harsh stance on the outside world who end up in a worse state than the first. One lady I have known ended up leaving Tradition, starting wearing pants, and eventually leaving the Faith. She was super-staunch and dictated what all the young women should wear. Well, a person can only act this way for such a time. Stretch a rubber band too much and tell me what happens.

You can't do such violence to nature. I am not talking about coddling our fallen human nature. Penance is necessary, prayer is necessary, but so is (true) charity, and so is healthy recreation.

We live in society and we must learn to deal with the outside world with intelligence and humor. What was that famous saying of Chesterton? "The secret of life is laughter and humility". I work with people who are far from the Faith and while I lament that I can't have an intelligent conversation with them about the mystery of the Trinity and the Crisis in the Church, I have to cooperate with them by not putting on some pious front. I can't be a loner at work. If I was not confident in the truth of the Faith, I simply would have joined the hedonism of my peers.

Are we really convinced of the Faith? I am but I need to be humble about it.

the woman started wearing pants?!?!?!?!  *GASPS AND CLUTCHES PEARLS*  oh wait....no......

;)

Quote from: JubilateDeo on January 03, 2018, 12:25:31 PMIf the things you did back when you were a "Jansenist" helped you to detach more from the world, that's great, but detachment from the world means NOTHING if we're not attaching ourselves to God.  We all have things we need to detach from in order to have union with God, but detachment is the means, not the end.  It makes perfect sense to me that the modes of detachment would vary according to time, place, and person, but the end goal is always the same throughout the ages.

In reference to your point that the end goal is the same for all (union with God), from a Catholic perspective, the knowledge of who or what exactly the God is that one is supposed to be "attaching" to is already basically predetermined and set forth by the Church.

So all Catholics then should have the same concept of who God (the "end goal") is, etc. But do they? 

The predestination and theodicy debates within the Church in particular, but not exclusively, make it pretty clear to me anyway that it's not really so cut and dry.  And perhaps this is also part of the reason that there isn't much agreement among traditional Catholics about what is necessary to detach from, and what doesn't matter so much. 

So I suppose the concept of what God even is, is more the question for me these days rather than whatever practices one chooses to engage in or not engage in.  Not that you asked or were even addressing me in your post, or that I've articulated my thoughts very well here (I'm pretty sure I haven't) but just something I was thinking of when I read your post.

QuoteWhat if you could accept that the Church is big enough to accomodate the spirituality you've cultivated for yourself alongside many other ways of living the Gospel?

Weelll, as long as the women are wearing makeup then the Church is big enough to accommodate most any spirituality, right?  ;) 

Quote from: Jacob on January 03, 2018, 01:03:11 PM

Quote from: ServusMariae on January 03, 2018, 10:20:46 AM
Turns out this thread is superbly popular. Like it's on fire.

"Women in pants" and derivative topics are time-honored and beloved here at SD and its predecessor fora.

Liar liar.

Pants

On fire.

Quote from: MundaCorMeum on January 03, 2018, 01:43:48 PM

Quote from: obscurus on January 03, 2018, 01:23:46 PM
Time and time again I have seen families take such a harsh stance on the outside world who end up in a worse state than the first. One lady I have known ended up leaving Tradition, starting wearing pants, and eventually leaving the Faith. She was super-staunch and dictated what all the young women should wear. Well, a person can only act this way for such a time. Stretch a rubber band too much and tell me what happens.

You can't do such violence to nature. I am not talking about coddling our fallen human nature. Penance is necessary, prayer is necessary, but so is (true) charity, and so is healthy recreation.

We live in society and we must learn to deal with the outside world with intelligence and humor. What was that famous saying of Chesterton? "The secret of life is laughter and humility". I work with people who are far from the Faith and while I lament that I can't have an intelligent conversation with them about the mystery of the Trinity and the Crisis in the Church, I have to cooperate with them by not putting on some pious front. I can't be a loner at work. If I was not confident in the truth of the Faith, I simply would have joined the hedonism of my peers.

Are we really convinced of the Faith? I am but I need to be humble about it.

the woman started wearing pants?!?!?!?!  *GASPS AND CLUTCHES PEARLS*  oh wait....no......

;)

Haha. I made sure to include that, lol.

Quote from: obscurus on January 03, 2018, 01:23:46 PM
Time and time again I have seen families take such a harsh stance on the outside world who end up in a worse state than the first. One lady I have known ended up leaving Tradition, starting wearing pants, and eventually leaving the Faith. She was super-staunch and dictated what all the young women should wear. Well, a person can only act this way for such a time.

No Trad should be taken seriously until they have done at least 10 years without a break in the Trad world.  There's a lot of comers and goers and Johnny Come Latelys.

One should have to serve their time in Tradland before they get a credibility pass.  That would avoid a lot of angst and give the power to people who had, a least, been around the circuit and seen the best laid plans of mice and men fail.  Those people make better judgements and decisions.

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 02:02:37 PM

Quote from: obscurus on January 03, 2018, 01:23:46 PM
Time and time again I have seen families take such a harsh stance on the outside world who end up in a worse state than the first. One lady I have known ended up leaving Tradition, starting wearing pants, and eventually leaving the Faith. She was super-staunch and dictated what all the young women should wear. Well, a person can only act this way for such a time.

No Trad should be taken seriously until they have done at least 10 years without a break in the Trad world.  There's a lot of comers and goers and Johnny Come Latelys.

One should have to serve their time in Tradland before they get a credibility pass.  That would avoid a lot of angst and give the power to people who had, a least, been around the circuit and seen the best laid plans of mice and men fail.  Those people make better judgements and decisions.

We will have been "trads" for 9 years this coming June.  So, in a about a year and a half, I'm going to remind you of this, and you will have to start taking me seriously then!  Enjoy your next 17 months....it will pass all too quickly

My novena for the Comet of Chastisement starts tonight.

To which saint is that novena said?  Perhaps I'll get my kids on board....they are novena ninjas!

Quote from: JubilateDeo on January 03, 2018, 12:25:31 PMIf the things you did back when you were a "Jansenist" helped you to detach more from the world, that's great, but detachment from the world means NOTHING if we're not attaching ourselves to God.  We all have things we need to detach from in order to have union with God, but detachment is the means, not the end.  It makes perfect sense to me that the modes of detachment would vary according to time, place, and person, but the end goal is always the same throughout the ages.  What if you could accept that the Church is big enough to accomodate the spirituality you've cultivated for yourself alongside many other ways of living the Gospel?

I could easily accept that.  I currently accept something even broader: that all things return to their source, and that all souls will return to the Soul.  I was insufficiently clear if I gave the impression that detachment was the end and not the means.  Although it's true that detachment can be aesthetically beautiful in its execution, from a young Quaker girl meditatively peeling potatoes in a barn, to an elderly Buddhist monk calmly sweeping the stone floor of a temple, it is absolutely not the end in and of itself.  I am not an atheist, and I know full well that there are spiritual fruits to contemplation.  That is what I meant when I spoke of having a "mental clarity and focus"—not that I was somehow sharper or intellectually boss, but that I had a keen sense of the ephemeral nature of the world and a kind of "consolation of the spirit," an assurance that there was more to things than just the material.  It was a clarity that caused me not to worry about pointless things so much (which I think probably has something to do with why someone like St. John Chrysostom was perplexed over why Christians could be so fond of vain and useless endeavors).  Anyway, it was probably the closest I ever came to mysticism outside of some mystical experiences I had when I was much younger.

I realize that most traditional Catholics here will probably conclude that my so-called "Jansenism," which they will consider prideful and perverse, opened me up to demonic influence, and that the consolations I received were diabolic trickery.  I understand that.  There is nothing I could possibly say to dissuade anyone from that view, and we will just have to end it at that impasse.  I just wanted to say that it was not the demands of rigorism, or a disordered mind resulting from those demands, that caused me to give it (rigorism) up.  It was just a calm and rational realization that traditional Catholicism was not what I thought it was.  (There were other factors besides just the "Jansenist" issues, of course, but they're not germane to this discussion).  I actually agree with you that a Catholic should not expect their religion to be similar to how it was in the third century.  It is clearly one that changes and evolves over time.  QMR is deadly right about that much, even if no one else sees it.  At any rate, I'm sorry to have sidetracked the discussion, but I have, as I am wont to do, mucked things up as usual.  It wasn't my intention to make this about me and my issues with Catholicism; I just wanted to contribute to an objective discussion of "be not conformed to this world," since I see Early Christianity as probably the most sublime expression of that notion.  So I will bow out at this point—and none too soon, either, as I notice that Jerome himself has returned to the forum (https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=1181.msg428354#msg428354), his ban having been lifted.  The thread can now go one of two ways if he decides to weigh in: either Jerome's opponents will rise to the challenge and refute him on his arguments, or things will devolve into a terrible chorus of snark and detraction.

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 01:59:54 AM
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.

A few pages on, but this is still a good post.  I want it to be seen again. 

Quote from: Kaesekopf on January 03, 2018, 02:38:26 PM

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 01:59:54 AM
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.

A few pages on, but this is still a good post.  I want it to be seen again.

Really? I mean, really...

QuoteA few pages on, but this is still a good post.  I want it to be seen again.

A close second, but my vote is for "The Comet of Chastisement"^(TM).

Quote from: trentcath on January 03, 2018, 03:28:25 PM
Really? I mean, really...

(https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/good-to-be-king.gif?w=650)

Quote from: trentcath on January 03, 2018, 03:28:25 PM

Quote from: Kaesekopf on January 03, 2018, 02:38:26 PM

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 01:59:54 AM
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.

A few pages on, but this is still a good post.  I want it to be seen again.

Really? I mean, really...

Unless you or someone else can substantially refute what he's saying, yeah.

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 02:02:37 PM

Quote from: obscurus on January 03, 2018, 01:23:46 PM
Time and time again I have seen families take such a harsh stance on the outside world who end up in a worse state than the first. One lady I have known ended up leaving Tradition, starting wearing pants, and eventually leaving the Faith. She was super-staunch and dictated what all the young women should wear. Well, a person can only act this way for such a time.

No Trad should be taken seriously until they have done at least 10 years without a break in the Trad world.  There's a lot of comers and goers and Johnny Come Latelys.

One should have to serve their time in Tradland before they get a credibility pass.  That would avoid a lot of angst and give the power to people who had, a least, been around the circuit and seen the best laid plans of mice and men fail.  Those people make better judgements and decisions.

Yep. I vividly recall many people who burned out, are now orthodox, home alone, weirdo everyone is damned sede, or lost the Faith entirely. For many, I don't blame them.

Quote from: Xavier on January 03, 2018, 03:17:09 AM

QuoteThe Catholic Church is failing the world over

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.

Spare me. Hell no it's not "growing." Have you been to these Asian or African countries, and witnessed this "growth?"

My wife is an immigrant from one of the "most Catholic" countries in the world. Everything is Novus Ordo, the traditional Mass is rare (apart from a few SSPX chapels), and even "neo cons" are hard to find.

Quote from: Bonaventure on January 03, 2018, 04:47:33 PM

Quote from: Xavier on January 03, 2018, 03:17:09 AM

QuoteThe Catholic Church is failing the world over

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.

Spare me. Hell no it's not "growing." Have you been to these Asian or African countries, and witnessed this "growth?"

My wife is an immigrant from one of the "most Catholic" countries in the world. Everything is Novus Ordo, the traditional Mass is rare (apart from a few SSPX chapels), and even "neo cons" are hard to find.

"The Third World is the real future of the Catholic Church" is a funnier meme than "Democrats are the real racists!", though...

These men are the future of post-Comet Catholic male fashion.

http://www.smwa.org/hst/HST_017/HST_17_The_Warning.htm

(https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smwa.org%2Fhst%2FHST_017%2FF88T0102.jpg&hash=039b03e0ec51ef19f764f756265b36a71b32b050)




But ....  at least we now can finally understand WHY the living will envy the dead.

Quote from: Greg on January 02, 2018, 06:36:31 PM
The results of Islam are absolutely shit.

Lots of homosexuality.  Oppressed women.  Rape.  Profound ignorance and plenty of inbreeding and retardation in societies ruled by fear and threats.  They invent nothing and produce nothing, other than oil, pure luck they happen to be sitting on it, which western engineers have to extract and refine.

Islam would shrink dramatically if the penalty for apostasy was not to be murdered.

Muslims can't even agree what they agree on with each other.  That's why they keep blowing each other up.  They have murdered far more of each other than western militaries have killed them over the past 20 years.

Afghan boys recruited for sodomy. This is in the heart of Taliban-land.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM-xe6wHjnw

Glasshouses and stones comes to mind there Bonaventure.

The Catholic Church hardly has a great track record when it comes to rent boys, child rape and covering up some serious sexual abuse; including threatening and blackmailing the victims and their families.

How can we expect more from a bunch of ignorant mountain dwellers in the dry and dusty butt crack of central Asia when the people claiming the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven can't get child rape off their weekly todo list.

Quote from: tradne4163 on January 03, 2018, 01:17:47 AM

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 01:11:52 AM
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.

Yet you are exactly the type of trad burnout that Greg is warning against. From FSSP to SSPX to Sede and now a schismatic.

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 05:28:03 PM
Glasshouses and stones comes to mind there Bonaventure.

The Catholic Church hardly has a great track record when it comes to rent boys, child rape and covering up some serious sexual abuse; including threatening and blackmailing the victims and their families.

How can we expect more from a bunch of ignorant mountain dwellers in the dry and dusty butt crack of central Asia when the people claiming the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven can't get child rape off their weekly todo list.

Was just showing that contra Pon's claims for Islam.

Quote from: Bonaventure on January 03, 2018, 04:43:00 PM

Quote from: trentcath on January 03, 2018, 03:28:25 PM

Quote from: Kaesekopf on January 03, 2018, 02:38:26 PM

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 01:59:54 AM
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.

A few pages on, but this is still a good post.  I want it to be seen again.

Really? I mean, really...

Unless you or someone else can substantially refute what he's saying, yeah.

There is a lot of truth in the substance of the post. 

I have seen it with my own eyes as well.  I just haven't really seen people who were wishy washy fair much better. Grant you I am referring to my own vision of what wishy washy is. Children are going to be tempted and some choose to go the right way and some the wrong. I also think real penitence and discipline motivated for Love of God also sees the importance of hiding it in conformity with various parts of the Gospel such as the Chapter 6 of St. Matthew.  I am not sure that perhaps people even are aware of those who are the real penitents in their midst, and thank God for it. 

However, one can be strict with oneself and be fun with others and especially children.  St. Philip Neri and St. John Bosco are great examples of that.  I am not so sure that these Jansenists are really Jansenists so much as being sour faced saints, that even St. Theresa of Avila prayed to be delivered from.  However, I also think we should not be too condemning, for many it is a phase that a good friendship can help shake them out of.  Its not even unique to just a wild laymen with a copy of the Ascent of Mt. Carmel, but to Priests and Religious as well. 

St. Bernard once wrote that if a monastery did not have a discontent, cranky, complaining, rude (and such like) monk in it they aught to go out and pay a laymen his weight in gold to play the part, for it is to the benefit of the community to learn to bear that person in patience and to love them.  I know Greg from previous posts over the years has indicated his own desire and even efforts to help people in the past, so this is not a criticism of anyone but just a reminder that these sour faced saints are truly unhappy and are in need of much patience and help.  Perhaps God puts them in our life for our benefit.

Quote from: Bonaventure on January 03, 2018, 05:40:33 PM

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 05:28:03 PM
Glasshouses and stones comes to mind there Bonaventure.

The Catholic Church hardly has a great track record when it comes to rent boys, child rape and covering up some serious sexual abuse; including threatening and blackmailing the victims and their families.

How can we expect more from a bunch of ignorant mountain dwellers in the dry and dusty butt crack of central Asia when the people claiming the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven can't get child rape off their weekly todo list.

Was just showing that contra Pon's claims for Islam.

What was Pon's claim for Islam?  I can't recall.

Islam is obviously utter shit because they haven't invented anything or had a fresh useful idea they could share with the rest of the world for 1000 years.  They are to global culture what Kim Kardashian is to particle physics.

At least the Nazis gave us space travel and VW Beetles.

Quote from: Bonaventure on January 03, 2018, 05:35:24 PM

Quote from: tradne4163 on January 03, 2018, 01:17:47 AM
Figure it out for yourself. I'm in no mood to argue. Frankly I have better things to do. Good day.

Yet you are exactly the type of trad burnout that Greg is warning against. From FSSP to SSPX to Sede and now a schismatic.

(https://www.memecreator.org/static/images/memes/3828914.jpg)

That's not a kettle Jayne.

It's a post-op pot.

Quote from: Bonaventure on January 03, 2018, 05:40:33 PMWas just showing that contra Pon's claims for Islam.

Sorry to return, but just for the record, I made no claim for Islam other than it was the second largest religion in the world in terms of numbers.  When Greg posted a litany of everything that is wrong with Islam, I assured him he would get no argument from me.  I think our misunderstanding was that I thought Greg would consider a religion successful if it managed to convince more than a billion people of its claims.  It seems to me that success in persuasion would be the only objective way to judge a missionary religion.  Obviously the results would only be considered good if one judged them by Islamic criteria, just as Greg judges everything by a Greg criteria.  "Trump delivers results."  Well, a liberal would say Obama delivered results. 

Greg corrected my misapprehension when he made a post saying what "results matter" means—a post in which he basically scorched his own religion, saying that a lot of his fellow traditional Catholics are "massive tossers with screwed up past lives or still living in your mum's basement" and that the clerics were "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."  It's fine if that's what he thinks, but he appears to believe that even traditional Catholicism itself delivers poor results, and that the only people in it worth a damn are the ones who are willing to see things as he does.  Which (again) is fine.  But I can see why he hopes for fireballs from on high.  He wants to watch all the non-Gregs running and screaming for their lives.  In Greg's view, God is a cosmic Greg.

The main reason is that I like seeing materialistic selfish idiots suffer.  Vengeance is the Lord's.  But I'm going to jolly well enjoy it.

I am pretty sure the billion aborted babies will be cheering too.  If someone murdered me in the womb I'd want to see them suffer.

Point taken.  But isn't it the sin of presumption to imagine that you yourself won't be on the receiving end of God's wrath, too?  I thought everyone was supposed to tremble on the Day of Judgment.

QuoteIn Greg's view, God is a cosmic Greg.

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Great line; I wish I had said it.

Quote from: Kaesekopf on January 03, 2018, 04:27:52 PM

Quote from: trentcath on January 03, 2018, 03:28:25 PM
Really? I mean, really...

(https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/good-to-be-king.gif?w=650)

Alas you are not. He is.

(https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fthefunstons.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F11%2Fchristusimperat.jpg&hash=ee601637c26e653caa49208eeb1c210e399a84aa)

Quote from: Bonaventure on January 03, 2018, 04:43:00 PM

Unless you or someone else can substantially refute what he's saying, yeah.

Given that's it about half 1 in the morning I shouldn't and I'm also surprised I have to but here goes.

Quote from: Greg on January 03, 2018, 01:59:54 AM
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.

Can't see anything to disagree with here.

Quote

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. 

Again, nothing to particularly object with.

Quote
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.

Slightly problematic, but still probably justifiable on the basis of "Judge a tree by its fruits"

Quote
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?

Herein lies the problem. If he cares so little why exactly is he here? To enlighten us poor lost souls who believe that lying is wrong and to direct us to the great truth that will set us free, namely that lying is fine if it makes you money? The problem is that here and elsewhere Greg goes to the other extreme of arguing that "minor" sins don't matter and if not sinning is an inconvenience, well just sin. He then spends 10 or 20 pages arguing with everyone who disagrees with him and ignores any arguments that are made, any saints or theology that is quoted and continues arguing for the next 10 or 20 pages. This is both a) slightly worrying behavior, because it shows that the person doesn't care a whit about finding out the truth, and b) slightly odd for someone who professes to care nothing about the views of others. Why then does he argue for so long and expend so much effort to convince others to change their mind? Because c) deep down he knows the view is wrong and needs others to approve of his view or behaviour. It is d) a cause of scandal and frankly a pretty long running one.

Now I can't pass judgment or claim to be better and I may well be misinterpreting but I fear I am not.

I'm also not going to make an argument as to why committing venial sins is wrong because I don't think that's necessary and we all know better. In sum, Jansenism is wrong but so is Laxism.

Quote
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.

Agreed.

Quote
"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.

Mostly agreed.

Well with Greg's affinity for youth groups I think we can conclude Greg is here for the same reason we are all here because deep down we all like a little bit of

(https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundofprophecyministries.org%2Fimages%2Fcf.jpg&hash=72b24f1dec46198288145824c2b588a0851c96b3)


*KK please don't ban me, it is a joke.

I am mostly here just to express my hatred for Jayne.

That cross above looks like it is made of Cadbury's Flake.

Quote from: Greg on January 04, 2018, 01:47:24 AM
That cross above looks like it is made of Cadbury's Flake.

I had that once.. if k get to heaven i hope they have flake bars

Quote from: Greg on January 04, 2018, 01:44:33 AM
I am mostly here just to express my hatred for Jayne.

It's a good thing that I like attention so much.   :-*

Quote from: Chestertonian on January 04, 2018, 03:10:36 AM

Quote from: Greg on January 04, 2018, 01:47:24 AM
That cross above looks like it is made of Cadbury's Flake.

I had that once.. if k get to heaven i hope they have flake bars

Can you still eat Chocolate?  I'm am in New York end of this month.  I'll drop you off a box of Flakes.

They are banned goods there apparently.  Too tasty for Americans.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/11380389/Were-stockpiling-Flakes-Brits-in-US-aghast-at-Cadburys-ban.html

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mYr90nCFZE[/yt]

I do not think Islam has convinced a billion people more so than it has conquered a billion people as did communism and other ideologies that threaten dissenters with immediate death.

---

From my read of Church history it seems to be rather unlikely that the vast majority of historical Catholics took things as seriously as some in this thread do (this is not evidence that either side is right or wrong, of course).  I think most historical Catholics were Catholic just by circumstance - their king converted and so the people converted, they just did what everyone else was doing (and centuries later when everyone started doing something else, they just went along with the new wave as they did before). 

Other means of conversion were the monasteries which in those times were centers of production, agriculture, learning, and civilization in Dark Age & early Middle Age times that were under constant barbarian & Muslim threat.  If the monasteries were not offering such material attractions but rather just strict lives of penance then I doubt very many would join them.  Perhaps their ability to convert back then would be more like their effectiveness today, where they seem to offer nothing material and as a result do not seem to convert anyone.  The place the Church is converting anyone today is in the third world, for the reasons I outlined above - it is bringing them worldly goods & services.

Why do you think today nearly everyone has dropped the faith and now treats science, technology and Wal-Mart as God?  Cause those things deliver the material goods.

People like their baubles and stuff.  The Church used to provide that - monasteries were centers of industry and housed the poor / travelers, cathedrals were schools of regular & higher learning, hospitals gave out bread and cared for the sick and if a king disobeyed the Pope then his excommunication threatened his entire holdings.

There are quotes from 5th century saints indicating that Frankish kings will have their lands prosper if they follow the Church.  Elsewhere bishops write flattering letters to Clovis indicating that he is a bright star and that the his part of the world shines because of his conversion.  This is all materialistic / ego boosting - had the bishops and saints approached those kings and said "alright you gotta give up A through Z, no booze no dancing, no plays no entertainment, fast and abstinence all the time, oh and by the way only a few are saved most all are damned" I think the king would just chop off their heads then and there.

Also medieval Catholicism was filled with feasts and parties that all enjoyed.  Food, drink and general merriment - those were all Catholics and the feasts were numerous.  The knights were in some ways quasi-religious as well, in the sense that their knighting was tied up with the Church as a defender of the faith.  But what did the knight get?  Land, holdings, money, power.

I think the canonized saints are the Saints because they were the rare exceptions among the rest of the ordinary Catholics.  There could be many more saints up there but God is not sending miracles from deceased grandmothers because He wants to hold up the exceptions as role models.

It is human nature for us to have a slippery slope and general societal degeneracy over time.  If the Church wants to keep the faithful at a decent level it needs to hold out a very high bar as the goal.  If it sets the bar at a more realistic level that everyone can reach - we won't simply all reach it and feel great about ourselves, instead we'll just be lazy and be worse than we otherwise would have been.  It is possible that this is related to some of the strict teachings from Church Fathers and saints.

Quote from: Davis Blank - EG on January 04, 2018, 09:16:07 AMI do not think Islam has convinced a billion people more so than it has conquered a billion people as did communism and other ideologies that threaten dissenters with immediate death.

I agree, and this probably accounts for the fact that Islam is not only the second largest religion in the world, but also the fastest growing.  It relies not only on having higher birth rates than the West, but in having greater retention rates in areas where the penalty for apostasy is death or shunning.  Whereas Christianity is stuck trying to retain members in areas where it competes with the free exchange of ideas (including non-Christian and atheist ones), where error has rights, and where the penalty for apostasy is a disappointed mother.  But in the conversation I was having with Greg, I was trying to measure things by results.  Mohammed got results.  You can claim results when your creed is believed by a billion people.  If, from the grave, you are still convincing disciples to follow your program thirteen hundred years later, you can claim results.  Stalin threatened people with death, too, but his program was dead within the century.  Greg is correct, of course, that Islamic society is fairly sick by our standards (and he clarified that he judges results by his own preferences).  But Mohammed was a macho Arabian warlord.  He would probably find Islamic society congenial.

I would only add that Christianity itself did end up being spread by the sword in some instances, and was not always innocent of blood and threat.  The pagans of Saxony who went to war with Charlemagne were given a choice: baptism or death.  And the Catholic Church could probably not claim Latin America today had it not been for the fact that her missionaries there were accompanied by armies of conquistadors.  One of the popes at the time told the Portuguese explorers that the pagans who refused to convert could be made bereft of all land & property and forced into slavery.  That had to be a helpful factor in claiming and converting South America.  Who knows, without that pope's directive there may never have been a diocese of Buenos Aires, from which would one day emerge a grinning Italo-Latino mischief-maker to descend on the Vatican in a white cassock, sipping a yerba mate.  "Call me Jorge."

Quote from: Davis Blank - EG on January 04, 2018, 09:16:07 AMIt is human nature for us to have a slippery slope and general societal degeneracy over time.  If the Church wants to keep the faithful at a decent level it needs to hold out a very high bar as the goal.  If it sets the bar at a more realistic level that everyone can reach - we won't simply all reach it and feel great about ourselves, instead we'll just be lazy and be worse than we otherwise would have been.  It is possible that this is related to some of the strict teachings from Church Fathers and saints.

I don't see how this could possibly be the case—because even if it is, as soon as you concede it, you've given away the game: any bar that the Church sets, you now know you only have to go, say, half as far.  And then five hundred years later your descendants in the faith might be snickering at you: "they went half as far, but let's be realistic, humans are prone to degeneracy so the Church overcompensated.  Really, you only have to go a fourth as far as that."  It's relativism; and then the minute we admit it's relativism, it slides into meaninglessness.  If the whole point of the Church Fathers having these disciplines was all just a psychological trick, then why do moderns get treated to seeing the card up the sleeve, while the Christians of antiquity had to take it at face value?  I am almost tempted to feel sorry for the Early Christians for being duped in this manner.  But I don't, and they probably wouldn't want me to, because their stars burned incomparably bright and will last for as long as memory, while bourgeois Christianity is and will always be something of a laughingstock.

If we're talking real results that made a massive impact to the life of millions of humans then you'd have to include.

The Persian, Roman and British Empires.

Modern medicine and biological science including agriculture.

Modern waste disposal (sewers)

Printing Press

Electricity

Internet

Steam Engine

Powered Flight

And the next big one coming along.  Robots or machine augmentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjjQ5cH_YzI

Imagine when this is perfected and you can speak to any of a billion Chinese people all of a sudden and they hear you in their local tongue?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1oky_nRXNU

The world will change beyond recognition.

Quote from: Greg on January 04, 2018, 12:31:20 PM
Imagine when this is perfected and you can speak to any of a billion Chinese people all of a sudden and they hear you in their local tongue?

(https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Db1oky_nRXNU&hash=5c50b26f12b368d8e6d224cb967c1b62f92e1f25)

The world will change beyond recognition.

Already has and will continue to do so... :)

And the Industrial Revolution sprung from (Protestant, post-Enlightenment) England.  The Luddites and the mystics couldn't stand it, and I have a certain sympathy for their distrust of technology, such as the "dark satanic mills" spoken of by William Blake: looming black towers on the horizon belching smoke.  But without the Industrial Revolution, I would not be enjoying my favorite Christmas present this year, which is a year's worth of Spotify premium.  I essentially have unfettered access to one of the largest music libraries in human history, and if I ever get restless or bored, this library is curated by an A.I. that gauges my tastes and can recommend new music for me.  Thirty years ago I was a teenager relying on the mercy of radio programmers to play something I liked.  That seems like the dreariest dark ages by comparison.  Yesterday, in less than an hour, I created a playlist on Spotify called "80s," which is at 250 songs and counting, and is full of all the songs from my youth that have nostalgia value for me, including the cheesy ones.  There is even a song on it called "The Ballad of Jayne."

The only thing I would add to Greg's list is virtual reality.  The Matrix, of course, is a dystopian movie, because the virtual reality everyone was made to experience was just the dreary quotidian life of the late 1990s.  But if the potential for virtual reality is limitless, and people can experience anything from adventures to sex to Borgesian libraries to time-travel eras, then I imagine everyone would sign up to be happily enslaved to the technology ("ye shall be as gods").  It would be more like the movie Strange Days, only instead of people having brief rushes of VR excitement, it would be a non-stop euphoria.  It's almost as if there's a race between a future heaven and future hell: either civilization will collapse first, and people will live in the rubble of a nightmarish post-apocalyptic landscape, or nano- and bio-technology will succeed quick enough for the human race to get sucked into the endless bliss of a Singularity.  My money is on the first scenario, but I am a pessimist.  I recently read an interesting book called Sapiens, by an author named Yuval Noah Harari, who I am sure everyone here would loathe as he is an atheist evolutionist secular vegan homosexual Jew who teaches at an Israeli university, but he has another book out about potential futures called Homo Deus, and I think I might read that, too.  I find technology both queasy and completely enthralling at the same time.

I find the above about as dull as 72 virgins.

Give me death.

Greg, you are one odd duck.  Why wouldn't you enjoy a virtual reality world?  I remember there was a thread on this forum once where someone asked, "what do you think heaven will be like?" and I thought it was interesting because some of the responses were along the lines of what humans might like to create as virtual realities.  I seem to remember one of your answers was vaguely Mormon-esque-cum-video-game-ish, where you imagined that you might be given your own corner of the universe, and you could just blow up planets all day for fun.  You could have that in a virtual reality.

I don't think the Islamic version of heaven is actually all that dull.  I think the seventy-two virgins bit is mockable, of course.  (Why do they have to be virgins?  And why only seventy-two?)  But essentially it's just "all the sensual delights of earth, uninterrupted by suffering, forever."  That seems like a universally human longing.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 04, 2018, 01:49:34 PM
Greg, you are one odd duck.  Why wouldn't you enjoy a virtual reality world?  I remember there was a thread on this forum once where someone asked, "what do you think heaven will be like?" and I thought it was interesting because some of the responses were along the lines of what humans might like to create as virtual realities.  I seem to remember one of your answers was vaguely Mormon-esque-cum-video-game-ish, where you imagined that you might be given your own corner of the universe, and you could just blow up planets all day for fun.  You could have that in a virtual reality.

I don't think the Islamic version of heaven is actually all that dull.  I think the seventy-two virgins bit is mockable, of course.  (Why do they have to be virgins?  And why only seventy-two?)  But essentially it's just "all the sensual delights of earth, uninterrupted by suffering, forever."  That seems like a universally human longing.

Well I would say it is an acknowledgement of one of the concupiscences we have from the fall and original sin.  One of my favorite St. Bernard sayings is "Soft living makes one dainty hard work makes men hungry ".  Stomachs can only hold so much food comfortably and beyond that is misery, bodies can only engage in coupling so much and then suffer the consequences of too much friction and exertion and so on. 

I think that a matrix like experience where we can have whatever sensual thing (food, drink, smell) we want whenever we want it will lead to an increase of depression after people find out how empty sensual euphoria becomes.

Because I want to blow up real planets with a real Death Star.  I'm a corporal being.  I like getting down and dirty.  I like the shock wave on my chest when stuff blows up.  I like it when you are swimming in the ocean and a massive wave picks you up and nearly kills you by churning you around, but you struggle against it and live to tell the tail.  At those moments you feel most alive.

I don't want to be Captain Christopher Pike in a cage, like some zoo animal.  I want to be Jim Kirk, risking it all on one turn of pitch and toss.  Jim Kirk is a much more interesting character.

If you retained your humanity then you'd always know it was a make-believe world.  If you lost your humanity then you've lost everything.  It doesn't matter how much "fun" it is if it is not me experiencing it.  That's why I would never take drugs.

Why did Jesus get His transfigured body back?  The other two members of the Trinity don't need a body, why does Jesus?  Presumably He wanted it back again because in some important way it defined Him.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 04, 2018, 11:54:40 AM
I don't see how this could possibly be the case—because even if it is, as soon as you concede it, you've given away the game: any bar that the Church sets, you now know you only have to go, say, half as far.  And then five hundred years later your descendants in the faith might be snickering at you: "they went half as far, but let's be realistic, humans are prone to degeneracy so the Church overcompensated.  Really, you only have to go a fourth as far as that."  It's relativism; and then the minute we admit it's relativism, it slides into meaninglessness.  If the whole point of the Church Fathers having these disciplines was all just a psychological trick, then why do moderns get treated to seeing the card up the sleeve, while the Christians of antiquity had to take it at face value?  I am almost tempted to feel sorry for the Early Christians for being duped in this manner.  But I don't, and they probably wouldn't want me to, because their stars burned incomparably bright and will last for as long as memory, while bourgeois Christianity is and will always be something of a laughingstock.

There is relativism, and then there is relativism.  One type of relativism says you think murder is bad but I think its dandy, you cannot tell me I am wrong.  Another type of "relativism" says God will judge us each individually taking into account who we are.  I think of how a specific action is a mortal sin for person X but perhaps not for person Y.

We are called to be perfect as God the Father is perfect.  This is impossible - it must be setting Him up as a role model for us to strive for, but with full knowledge that its clearly impossible.  Why is this example of "relativism" ok but not others?  I use scare quotes because I do not consider it relativism.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on January 04, 2018, 01:09:58 PM
It would be more like the movie Strange Days, only instead of people having brief rushes of VR excitement, it would be a non-stop euphoria.

Inception, the scene where Leo's character is shown the 'opium den' where people sleep all day in the dream state where they can do anything they want.

And I agree with PdR overall, apocalypse or singularity/transhumanism.

Quote from: Davis Blank - EG on January 04, 2018, 05:50:05 PMThere is relativism, and then there is relativism.  One type of relativism says you think murder is bad but I think its dandy, you cannot tell me I am wrong.  Another type of "relativism" says God will judge us each individually taking into account who we are.  I think of how a specific action is a mortal sin for person X but perhaps not for person Y.

We are called to be perfect as God the Father is perfect.  This is impossible - it must be setting Him up as a role model for us to strive for, but with full knowledge that its clearly impossible.  Why is this example of "relativism" ok but not others?  I use scare quotes because I do not consider it relativism.

Understood.  I was speaking of a relativism where a discipline is deemed necessary in one age, and unnecessary in another.  I agree that the example you have given here is indeed not relativism, because as you say, being as perfect as God is impossible.  It was always unambiguously viewed as "a model to strive for," as you well put it; Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth century took the same meaning from it as St. Clement of Alexandria did in the second.  If any Catholic ever taught that someone could be and had to be as perfect as God, god-like themselves, then such a teacher was probably excommunicated for heresy.

But it's different when it comes to disciplines.  The passage from Scripture that I was discussing with Jayne is a good example.  In 1 Timothy, St. Paul says that women should be adorned with "modesty and sobriety," and in giving examples of what not to wear, he lists pearls and fancy clothes and styled hair.  This passage has two problems.  If what St. Paul meant was merely "dress simply; you get the idea," then it is curious that he used particulars, instead of the more generalized phrasing which could be read accordingly from culture to culture and age to age, and not get future generations bogged down in semantic controversies over pearls.  Secondly, the Early Church Fathers took the particulars seriously, and not only that, but further, they found the spirit of the passage to apply to all kinds of personal flash and vanity, not just pearls and styled hair, but things like make-up as well.

We now live in an era where Catholic women are permitted not only make-up, but also pearls and fancy clothes and styled hair.  Mind you, I am not blaming anyone in this age; it has been permitted for centuries.  And aesthetically I'm impartial.  I can see both sides.  There is an earthly allure indeed to make-up and jewelry and teased-out hair, yet then there is a transcendent and minimalist beauty to eschewing those things.  But from the Christian perspective I don't see how the latter could not be preferable, as it bespeaks a serene, unencumbered contemptus mundi and a keeping of one's conversation in heaven.  So relativism would have to be considered here, because the Fathers read it as both a stricture of specifics and a call to an even more devout simplicity, yet current Catholics accept it as merely rhetorical or inspirational, and wear all the things which St. Paul suggested they not.

im just some guy on the internet who hasbt been to a real church in over a year or more msyvr 2years but never have I ever walked into a church and thought much either way about the women other than a general observation that they looked dowdy and frumpy

with an exception for the missus of course. 

and the missus spends a fair bit of time with fancy cosmetics from korea only to look like herself.  I barely notice unless it's the stuff that comes off when you're kissing.   8)  i don't notice a big difference

if the women were all coming to mass done up like the lady from the drew carey show i think the priest would say something

I've moved the discussion of virtual reality to a new thread. (https://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=19304.msg428662#msg428662)

 

Quote from: JubilateDeo on January 01, 2018, 03:12:11 PM
Do you really want a church where no women wear makeup?  Does anyone really want to see that?

;D ;D ;D you darling young lady!