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.
