Catholic ping!
I’ve recently moved from a very conservative place to a very, very progressive city.
I’m terrified for the future of this country. I had no idea the situation was this bad. Hate, sheer, unadulterated hate foams out of people if you disagree in even the most innocuous subjects. Their reactions are completely out of proportion to anything “other.”
There is the problem and the solution in a nutshell.
Don't be mere consumers of culture. Build the culture you want to live in. Be the patriarch you were waiting for someone else to be, or you thought we no longer needed. You are needed, by your family and by the people who surround you as you go through the course of your day.
Stop letting the culture raise your kids for you, and define your priorities, and decide the talking points of the day.
This takes a slightly more determined people and a slightly more muscular Christianity than many people are used to. But it really just means being who you say you are, and letting God lead you as you lead your own family.
2 Corinthians 6:14-18
14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.
18 And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
Was Dreher a Nevertrumper? Chaput was.
Chaput and some others seem to think Catholics can just take a holiday from the world and create a kind of Catholic Amishland. If you don’t vote for either Trump or Hillary, you keep yourself pure and nothing can hurt you. There’s no real difference between a candidate who wants to kill babies and a candidate who wants to control the borders.
Chaput, for years and years, has put ALL of the blame for the condition of the Church in the laity.
bumpus ad summum
Benedict lived in a era of petty rulers, without ideologies, interested in their own wealth and power only.
Today we have conflicting totalitarian worldviews—which demand full compliance. Unlike ca. AD 500 we cannot go and build an Abbey somewhere and expect to be unmolested by regulation and taxes—down the the smallest detail.
Look at the experience of the Little Sisters of the Poor with Obama Care. NUNS forced by the government to pay for abortifacients. Absurd. Utopian idealogues—totalitarians—will not leave Christian communities alone.
A “Benedict” option, is simply not an option.
Rod Dreher is NOT Catholic - or at least he wasn’t since he left the Church several years ago - so who exactly is this “we” that is referred to?
We have not been in this position since Constantine. The remnant, the salt, the leaven, will endure.