It's frustrating reading the NY Post article about the Braves reporter getting a woman's phone number.
I am amused by how vapid and unoriginal the quoted female sports reporters are, NPCs that have the same catchphrases: "Misogyny is alive and well." They say this not in response to anything that actually happened to a woman but because in their imaginations this man would be severely criticized if he were a woman, and yet here they are severely criticizing him.
These kinds of women in media are some of the worst and I can only think they have an inferiority complex. They know they have that job because they are conventionally attractive females, not because they are knowledgeable about sports or ask good questions or anything like that.
Peter Thiel on Ross Douthat: "When considering ways out of our impasse, he singles out religious revival and technological acceleration—specifically, interstellar travel. Thus his final sentence: “So down on your knees—and start working on that warp drive.”
Jesuits -- Matteo Ricci, Ignatius Loyla, Marquette -- went literally to the ends of the earth across all the continents in order to convert the locals. That's pretty forward-looking! Indeed, the missionary impulse shared by Protestants, RC and EO is pretty forward-looking. A nice symbol of this is the San Francisco Bay Area where the Russian, Spanish and Yankee Empires all met, and the Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox frontiers all coverged.
As a Catholic convert from a multidenominational background (everything from Baptist to Episcopal), I'd like to offer a different perspective on the conservative movement in the Catholic Church from that of the WSJ and other mainstream media. At my university-serving Catholic parish, we have been blessed with numerous young adults coming into the Church each year (53 this Easter, a new record, a majority of which were young men). We are not a "Trad" Catholic parish, at least in terms of offering a Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). (There is a another church in town, however, that does offer an authorized but unadvertised TLM.) Rather, we are a parish that is trying to live out the positive (and actual, vice, alleged) changes brought about by Vatican II while resurrecting long-neglected practices that help create an authentic Catholic community. I believe our converts are drawn to the reverent worship using the Novus Order (New Mass) in English, intelligent and thoughtful homilies (we are blessed to be served by five Dominican priests - the Order of Preachers), and the beauty of our new Romanesque sanctuary, statues and iconography. They are also drawn to seriousness with which our parishioners, including our hundreds of students, practice the faith. Confession is offered multiple times a week by 2-4 priests and waits of 30 minutes or more are the norm. Adoration (the practice of praying in what we believe to be the physical presence of Christ) is offered each weekday and on special occasions throughout the night. Many of the male students serve as altar boys at Masses, particularly the High Mass on Sunday that features incense, bells and organ-lead hymns (ironically most of which are Protestant in origin.) A not insignificant number of the young (and older) women wear head coverings at Mass. Finally, our OCIA classes (the six-month instruction in the Catholic faith for most converts) offer an intellectual and coherent explanation of what the Catholic Church actually teaches. All this to say that my experience and reading and discussion of the Church with others, has lead me to conclude that the TLM and the communities formed around that Mass are but a part (and perhaps not even the largest part) of the "conservative" renaissance in the Catholic Church. It is the serious, thoughtful and joyful expression of the Catholic faith by Catholic Churches, regardless of the form of the Mass, that is the ultimate draw.
I, too, have been thinking a lot about divides within Christianity and the decline in Christianity as measured if Church attendance. Said decline seems to scare church leaders more in lost revenue than in the possibility of lost souls. Decline in Church memberships is an encouraging trend in my thinking. But, mor relevant to your discussion, I think that you're on to something in mentioning that Evangelicals, especially, are increasing the loses by doubling down on dissing tradition. The incredibly ugly 'worship' music they have adopted to replace traditional church music, intended to attract younger people, attracted only those young people most addicted to self-referencing and danceable sexual crap. In most such churches attendees are restricted to 12-18 year-olds and those over 65. Nothing is more disgusting to see in church than old women humping on the back of a pew and waving their arms in pretend ecstasy. And sermons are not much more than 10 minute watered down homilies. The young leave off attending as soon as they get married, get pregnant, or leave for college.
Many American Catholic churches have similar styles and similar results. The only Churches that buck that trend are Easter Orthodox and traditional Catholic ones. Young married couples and middle aged people feel out of place in either. I grew up in Evangelical circles but could not stomach the fake youth culture that has invaded it. The majority of the boomers and older generation was infected by the sexual and other 'liberation' of the sixties, as a result they tend to cling to it however they are able, I guess.
I might phrase it differently: evangelical megachurches appeal to a select demographic. That demographic is apparently quite large and there are quite a few gigantic, packed megachurches just where I live. But definitely there are other groups that are not attracted or are even repelled by this.
I really don’t like the idea of rejoicing over someone going to hell, it’s an incredibly nasty instinct. God doesn’t take pleasure in the death of the wicked as I recall.
Next, by evangelical standards all it takes is belief in Jesus Christ to be saved, you don’t know if someone did or didn’t. People aren’t meat computers where they always and at all times go by the doctrine they were taught, or always have a perfect understanding either (see Galatians).
It seems related to what John Eldredge calls “hard ass Christianity” where like it says in the Screwtape letters men ask what is strong, or stark, or bold, not what is true, or prudent.
Enjoyed all the thoughts on the RCC/Protestant divide here.
As for this statement:
>Catholicism is a religion of the past, with trad Catholicism almost explicitly being positioned in those terms. Protestantism is a religion of the future, indeed which has created the future, the modern world in which we live.
I can't help but think this statement is doubly true for EO, which has always struck me as being structured in a way that would make a lot of sense if you thought the discovery of the New World was an inconvenient and temporary fact that would work itself out without need for further action.
By contrast America is the exemplar of Protestantism. New World Protestantism is Protestantism unfettered, Protestantism taken to its natural conclusions; both its best and its worst can be found here, regardless of what you think its best and its worst *are*.
I think the forces in the RCC that tried to modernize it, that pushed ahead with Vatican II, saw what Aaron sees here. They were dissatisfied with the position of being a faith that merely attracted intellectual converts with reactionary inclinations -- "Medieval history nerds," in my parlance (which I say with all due respect as a medieval history nerd myself).
But the lesson of Vatican II's failure is that structurally, in the contest of better adapting to modernity, a bureaucratic Old World organization can't keep up with the decentralized and entrepreneurial New World approach. The RCC survives, in the face of Protestant competition, by accepting this reactionary niche, with EO surviving by occupying an even more reactionary niche.
Sure, there is a sense in which converting to RC as opposed to EO is a sort of half-measure, and who likes half-measures? Maybe if you attend TLM or SSPX masses, it's somewhat less of a half-measure (I've never personally visited either of those).
At least in part for this reason, I'll admit that I have never personally known someone who has converted to RC, while I've had two friends who converted to EO. Of course, Francis has been Pope for most of my adult life, and I think that has something to do with EO being more appealing than RC. Still, in elite right circles, that doesn't seem to be stopping the JD Vances of the world, who converted to RC and then immediately found themselves at odds with Francis. The weirdness of converting to EO is still bad branding for a politician, I think. A Catholic who butts heads with the Pope is relatable; maybe even better politics than to be seen as someone who takes the Pope too seriously, whether as a sycophant or an enemy.
Though per my other comment, when it comes to shifting your family's Christian tradition, I think there's a case for half-measures as opposed to more radical breaks from your past and from your family's well of faith. My unheeded advice to my friends, when they started feeling conviction to go this direction, was to ask themselves if they could be happy going Anglican, balancing the Protestant familiar with the high church alien; the accomplishments of the Reformation with the connection to the medieval past.
Yes, but I wonder if Eastern Orthodoxy can survive the influx of Americans pouring into it! I can hardly imagine a more fundamental clash of mindsets. Americans may be enamored by the traditions of an ancient denomination, but can they really grasp what that means, when in this country, REALLY OLD is maybe 250 years??
Sooner or later, the American in them is going to get impatient, and begin expecting change.
Though I don’t have evidence, I’ve long had the suspicion that when you embrace an alien tradition, it’s less likely to take root and stick around in the next generation.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t embrace an alien tradition if you are thoroughly convinced it is correct. At some point Christianity was an alien tradition to our ancestors.
But I do think that on the margin, we should have a bias towards staying in our Christian tradition, if our conscience will allow. We are Baptist. My maternal side were Northern Baptists. My wife’s family is entirely Southern Baptist. I think this makes it rather easier with kids, if grandparents can help reinforce Christianity as family tradition. When we go to funerals, they are Baptist. Generations of our family are buried in a certain Baptist church graveyard in Illinois, where you can still hear the same Gospel preached any given Sunday.
For both me and my wife, extended family was instrumental in introducing us to the Gospel.
If I suddenly decided that conscience required me to convert my family to EO, I know none of the grandparents would get it at all. To them it would be a bizarre choice we made that they would just try to keep their mouths shut about. I’m sure this is a familiar experience to many who go down this path.
It's frustrating reading the NY Post article about the Braves reporter getting a woman's phone number.
I am amused by how vapid and unoriginal the quoted female sports reporters are, NPCs that have the same catchphrases: "Misogyny is alive and well." They say this not in response to anything that actually happened to a woman but because in their imaginations this man would be severely criticized if he were a woman, and yet here they are severely criticizing him.
These kinds of women in media are some of the worst and I can only think they have an inferiority complex. They know they have that job because they are conventionally attractive females, not because they are knowledgeable about sports or ask good questions or anything like that.
A couple of counterpoints to the idea that RCs are only backward-looking:
Chris Arnade thread on the synthesis of manufacturing and Catholicism in Lombardy
https://x.com/Chris_arnade/status/1916376456160051443
Peter Thiel on Ross Douthat: "When considering ways out of our impasse, he singles out religious revival and technological acceleration—specifically, interstellar travel. Thus his final sentence: “So down on your knees—and start working on that warp drive.”
https://firstthings.com/back-to-the-future/
Jesuits -- Matteo Ricci, Ignatius Loyla, Marquette -- went literally to the ends of the earth across all the continents in order to convert the locals. That's pretty forward-looking! Indeed, the missionary impulse shared by Protestants, RC and EO is pretty forward-looking. A nice symbol of this is the San Francisco Bay Area where the Russian, Spanish and Yankee Empires all met, and the Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox frontiers all coverged.
As a Catholic convert from a multidenominational background (everything from Baptist to Episcopal), I'd like to offer a different perspective on the conservative movement in the Catholic Church from that of the WSJ and other mainstream media. At my university-serving Catholic parish, we have been blessed with numerous young adults coming into the Church each year (53 this Easter, a new record, a majority of which were young men). We are not a "Trad" Catholic parish, at least in terms of offering a Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). (There is a another church in town, however, that does offer an authorized but unadvertised TLM.) Rather, we are a parish that is trying to live out the positive (and actual, vice, alleged) changes brought about by Vatican II while resurrecting long-neglected practices that help create an authentic Catholic community. I believe our converts are drawn to the reverent worship using the Novus Order (New Mass) in English, intelligent and thoughtful homilies (we are blessed to be served by five Dominican priests - the Order of Preachers), and the beauty of our new Romanesque sanctuary, statues and iconography. They are also drawn to seriousness with which our parishioners, including our hundreds of students, practice the faith. Confession is offered multiple times a week by 2-4 priests and waits of 30 minutes or more are the norm. Adoration (the practice of praying in what we believe to be the physical presence of Christ) is offered each weekday and on special occasions throughout the night. Many of the male students serve as altar boys at Masses, particularly the High Mass on Sunday that features incense, bells and organ-lead hymns (ironically most of which are Protestant in origin.) A not insignificant number of the young (and older) women wear head coverings at Mass. Finally, our OCIA classes (the six-month instruction in the Catholic faith for most converts) offer an intellectual and coherent explanation of what the Catholic Church actually teaches. All this to say that my experience and reading and discussion of the Church with others, has lead me to conclude that the TLM and the communities formed around that Mass are but a part (and perhaps not even the largest part) of the "conservative" renaissance in the Catholic Church. It is the serious, thoughtful and joyful expression of the Catholic faith by Catholic Churches, regardless of the form of the Mass, that is the ultimate draw.
I, too, have been thinking a lot about divides within Christianity and the decline in Christianity as measured if Church attendance. Said decline seems to scare church leaders more in lost revenue than in the possibility of lost souls. Decline in Church memberships is an encouraging trend in my thinking. But, mor relevant to your discussion, I think that you're on to something in mentioning that Evangelicals, especially, are increasing the loses by doubling down on dissing tradition. The incredibly ugly 'worship' music they have adopted to replace traditional church music, intended to attract younger people, attracted only those young people most addicted to self-referencing and danceable sexual crap. In most such churches attendees are restricted to 12-18 year-olds and those over 65. Nothing is more disgusting to see in church than old women humping on the back of a pew and waving their arms in pretend ecstasy. And sermons are not much more than 10 minute watered down homilies. The young leave off attending as soon as they get married, get pregnant, or leave for college.
Many American Catholic churches have similar styles and similar results. The only Churches that buck that trend are Easter Orthodox and traditional Catholic ones. Young married couples and middle aged people feel out of place in either. I grew up in Evangelical circles but could not stomach the fake youth culture that has invaded it. The majority of the boomers and older generation was infected by the sexual and other 'liberation' of the sixties, as a result they tend to cling to it however they are able, I guess.
I might phrase it differently: evangelical megachurches appeal to a select demographic. That demographic is apparently quite large and there are quite a few gigantic, packed megachurches just where I live. But definitely there are other groups that are not attracted or are even repelled by this.
I really don’t like the idea of rejoicing over someone going to hell, it’s an incredibly nasty instinct. God doesn’t take pleasure in the death of the wicked as I recall.
Next, by evangelical standards all it takes is belief in Jesus Christ to be saved, you don’t know if someone did or didn’t. People aren’t meat computers where they always and at all times go by the doctrine they were taught, or always have a perfect understanding either (see Galatians).
It seems related to what John Eldredge calls “hard ass Christianity” where like it says in the Screwtape letters men ask what is strong, or stark, or bold, not what is true, or prudent.
Enjoyed all the thoughts on the RCC/Protestant divide here.
As for this statement:
>Catholicism is a religion of the past, with trad Catholicism almost explicitly being positioned in those terms. Protestantism is a religion of the future, indeed which has created the future, the modern world in which we live.
I can't help but think this statement is doubly true for EO, which has always struck me as being structured in a way that would make a lot of sense if you thought the discovery of the New World was an inconvenient and temporary fact that would work itself out without need for further action.
By contrast America is the exemplar of Protestantism. New World Protestantism is Protestantism unfettered, Protestantism taken to its natural conclusions; both its best and its worst can be found here, regardless of what you think its best and its worst *are*.
I think the forces in the RCC that tried to modernize it, that pushed ahead with Vatican II, saw what Aaron sees here. They were dissatisfied with the position of being a faith that merely attracted intellectual converts with reactionary inclinations -- "Medieval history nerds," in my parlance (which I say with all due respect as a medieval history nerd myself).
But the lesson of Vatican II's failure is that structurally, in the contest of better adapting to modernity, a bureaucratic Old World organization can't keep up with the decentralized and entrepreneurial New World approach. The RCC survives, in the face of Protestant competition, by accepting this reactionary niche, with EO surviving by occupying an even more reactionary niche.
Yes. I've long thought that if it's tradition you want, go with the Eastern Orthodox church, which is the real thing.
Sure, there is a sense in which converting to RC as opposed to EO is a sort of half-measure, and who likes half-measures? Maybe if you attend TLM or SSPX masses, it's somewhat less of a half-measure (I've never personally visited either of those).
At least in part for this reason, I'll admit that I have never personally known someone who has converted to RC, while I've had two friends who converted to EO. Of course, Francis has been Pope for most of my adult life, and I think that has something to do with EO being more appealing than RC. Still, in elite right circles, that doesn't seem to be stopping the JD Vances of the world, who converted to RC and then immediately found themselves at odds with Francis. The weirdness of converting to EO is still bad branding for a politician, I think. A Catholic who butts heads with the Pope is relatable; maybe even better politics than to be seen as someone who takes the Pope too seriously, whether as a sycophant or an enemy.
Though per my other comment, when it comes to shifting your family's Christian tradition, I think there's a case for half-measures as opposed to more radical breaks from your past and from your family's well of faith. My unheeded advice to my friends, when they started feeling conviction to go this direction, was to ask themselves if they could be happy going Anglican, balancing the Protestant familiar with the high church alien; the accomplishments of the Reformation with the connection to the medieval past.
But again, who likes half-measures?
Yes, but I wonder if Eastern Orthodoxy can survive the influx of Americans pouring into it! I can hardly imagine a more fundamental clash of mindsets. Americans may be enamored by the traditions of an ancient denomination, but can they really grasp what that means, when in this country, REALLY OLD is maybe 250 years??
Sooner or later, the American in them is going to get impatient, and begin expecting change.
Though I don’t have evidence, I’ve long had the suspicion that when you embrace an alien tradition, it’s less likely to take root and stick around in the next generation.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t embrace an alien tradition if you are thoroughly convinced it is correct. At some point Christianity was an alien tradition to our ancestors.
But I do think that on the margin, we should have a bias towards staying in our Christian tradition, if our conscience will allow. We are Baptist. My maternal side were Northern Baptists. My wife’s family is entirely Southern Baptist. I think this makes it rather easier with kids, if grandparents can help reinforce Christianity as family tradition. When we go to funerals, they are Baptist. Generations of our family are buried in a certain Baptist church graveyard in Illinois, where you can still hear the same Gospel preached any given Sunday.
For both me and my wife, extended family was instrumental in introducing us to the Gospel.
If I suddenly decided that conscience required me to convert my family to EO, I know none of the grandparents would get it at all. To them it would be a bizarre choice we made that they would just try to keep their mouths shut about. I’m sure this is a familiar experience to many who go down this path.