Generation X and the Return to Christian Orthodoxy [A Surprise Trend]

Zenit/EWTN ^ | April 29, 2003 | Colleen Carroll

[Salvation]

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[Salvation]

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[nickcarraway]

BUMP

[.45MAN]

ping

[Pippin]

Thanks for the ping, Sal!

[Pippin]

Good morning Y'all!

[Desdemona]

Gen- X bump

[Salvation]

Good morning to all of you, too. Have a blessed day!

[Polycarp]

Thanks for posting this. Its always good to acknowlege signs of hope.

[StAthanasiustheGreat]

I can personally attest to this. I don't know if I classify as Generation X (born in 1982), but my University Catholic Center at Northwestern has a really strong base of Orthodox Students. In fact, one has conservative Catholic students and liberal Catholic Associates. It is quite a sight to see sometimes. I really think that my generation is moving back to Orthodoxy and Tradition because we see a society without it and we do not necessarily like what we see (I know I don't). There is Hope. That Hope is Jesus Christ and His Church and students are embracing the fullness of that more and more. God Bless

[ken5050]

and a good morning to you, as well..nice to see a hopeful story....however, sadly, there are those of those who reside within the Episcopal Diocese of NY....God still has LOTS of work to do here....

[Salvation]

**There is Hope. That Hope is Jesus Christ and His Church and students are embracing the fullness of that more and more. God Bless**

What good news!

[Salvation]

**God still has LOTS of work to do here....**

This is true for many places.

Keep praying for sincere, heartfelt vocations!

[Maximilian]

This was posted quite a while ago. Or maybe it was a different interview of the same author regarding the same book.

The point made by several posters back then still stands: this is absolutely ludicrous. The vast majority of young people 18-35 are so totally clueless that they don't even know what they don't know. I worked with several people in my last position who were late 20's supposed Catholics. They knew nothing, nada, zip, zilch about their faith. They didn't even have a clue about where to start to look.

They themselves recognized that their lives were shallow and empty and meaningless. There was a lot of alchohol and sex to cover up for a lack of any real purpose. They were even interested in finding out why they were so unhappy. But they were so lacking the mental categories to think about something like religion that it was impossible to talk with them about serious subjects. It was like discussing algebra with a primitive tribesman whose language only has words for "one, two, many."

It's nice to know that there may be a tiny cohort of serious committed Christians. But first of all, look at the indifferentism of the author. She lumps fallen-away Catholic who have become evangelicals, traditional Catholics and born-again Christians into one big category of the "new orthodox" (with a small "o" she emphasizes).

It used to be considered standard operating procedure for the Catholic Church to teach and convince an ENTIRE generation. It wasn't considered good news that maybe 1% were getting the message. The adults of the 1950s were all children at one time. Somehow they got the message, and a very large majority went on to become believing and practicing Catholics. Have we become so innured to failure that we praise a random victory now and then but are blase to the millions of souls being lost?

I know I probably sound unduly pessimistic. But it's like an alchoholic -- they can't begin to get better until they admit they have a problem. Let's start by being realistic. An entire generation of souls has been lost for all eternity. More of the same from the Church is going to result in more of the same in the lost souls category.

[TradicalRC]

Interesting. I have a couple of friends who fall into this category. One of the supposed characteristics of Gen-X is a desire for authenticity. They see experimentation in the Church as phony and rightly so. Tradition gets slapped around at every turn.

They go for Traditional worship when they can, however, its slim pickins for them in Iowa City where they live. I went to their church: the stations look like drawings on a chalkboard with the centurions in modern attire (suit and tie).

They are slowly learning to distinguish what beliefs stem from Catholicism and what stems from liberalism. This can be quite a slow process; I have been doing it for years, shedding layer after layer of liberalism in an effort to get at the Truth of Tradition.

I've gone as far back as Thomas Aquinas versus William of Ockham which may or may not be the source of the problems of the modern era.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

The adults of the 1950s were all children at one time. Somehow they got the message, and a very large majority went on to become believing and practicing Catholics.

Or maybe not. The adults of the 1950's were the ones who subjected us to the juvenalia of Vatican II. It wasn't a bunch of 17 and 18 year olds who chaged everything.

Many of us feel that the failings of the present are to be laid directly upon the feet of the so-called "Greatest Generation" who generally ran things into the ground from 1940-1970.

These were also the adults who provided such poor catechesis to their young that most of the youth (Baby Boomers) simply dropped out of the Church like leaves from a tree in fall in the 1965-1980 period. The shallowness of the Baby Boomer generation originated in the upbringing they had from their parents, the genesis of which can be traced to the end results of World War II, and the wave of social libertinism (epitomized by the likes of Dr. Spock, the emergence of Playboy, and the Kinsey Report) that swept through the world after that. This period was also the origins of the ugly architecture movement, and the mindless materialism we are now subjected to. Lastly, the planning of Vatican II and the revolution occurred mostly in the ten years leading up to it - 1952-1962.

Lets not be blinded by the dazzling failure of the 1965-1980 period. Lets keep a focus on the causes. That will help us have a better grasp on the present, and also evaluate the so-called orthodox revival being claimed, especially as regards the pertinent question of "Where is the revival in morals if there is a revival in faith?"

[pseudo-justin]

I've gone as far back as Thomas Aquinas versus William of Ockham which may or may not be the source of the problems of the modern era.

I think Ockham is the primordial source of the problem. More specifically, it is Ockham's notion of freedom that is the source of the problem. Ockham's radical voluntarism is the historical root of the notion of autonomy. Ockham's nominalism is the origin of the attack on metaphysics (especially natural theology). Now, Ockham further replaced natural law theory in ethics (and consequently the Patristic/Thomistic view of salvation as deification) with a divine command theory in ethics. Now, when we join a divine command ethical theory with a vountarism like Ockham's, the result is a huge shift in perception of what it is to be human and what it is for a human to stand before God. I admit, the resulting picture is psychologically intolerable, and so Ockhamism engendered a reaction to Ockham's image of God and Ockham's image of the moral life. That reaction takes the form of, first, Protestantism and, second, atheism.

To see the implications of Ockhamism spelled out in detail, I highly recommend a book by the Belgian Dominican Fr. Servais Pinckaers. Title: "The Sources of Christian Ethics". Catholic University of America Press, 1995. (For those who might be intimidated by the large, scholarly work of Pinckaers, there is an abridged version called "Morality: The Catholic View" available through St. Augustine's Press.)

Pinckaers, I think, was a ghost writer for "Veritatis Splendor", and I am convinced that he wrote the sections of the Catechism on the Beatitudes and the New Law. Once you read him, you will see what I mean.

An essentially Ockhamist view of freedom is what lay behind Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre, the whole gang.

John Paul II knows this perfectly well, and so has made this very theme, that freedom is essentially ordered to truth, a key theme in virtually all of his writings. JPII is striving to overturn the Ockhamist notion of freedom and replace it with St. Thomas' intellectualism.

This is why I am convinced that of all the Popes since Trent, JPII has the deepest critique of modernity. Prior Popes have attacked modernity, but only at the surface level where it was least vulnerable. JPII has gone to the root. The difference between (JPII and St. Thomas')notion of freedom and our own (Ockhamist) notion is so radical that it takes years to purge oneself, and one's interpretation of the Catholic faith, of Ockham's corruption.

Tridentine Catholicism, implemented mainly by the Jesuits, was itself insufficiently purified of Ockhamism. And this insufficient purification eventually caught up with the Jebs. They are now essentially Protestants, and on their way to atheism. This is not to say, of course, that Tridentine Catholicism contained error. It is merely to say that Tridentine Catholicism was band-aid solution to a deep, deep problem that is the root of Protestantism and Secularism. Vat II removed the band aid, and now we have one bloody mess on our hands until the wound of a thousand years is really and truly healed.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

the source of the problems of the modern era

Protestantism and the Enlightenment.

[Alkhin]

I have posted this article on my blog today.

BRAZOS CANTINA PING

[Maximilian]

Many of us feel that the failings of the present are to be laid directly upon the feet of the so-called "Greatest Generation" who generally ran things into the ground from 1940-1970.

I agree with your analysis of the so-called "greatest generation." But you're mixing up the causes and effects in terms of this discussion. The point is that when these people were children, the adults of that time were able to inculcate the faith in them. Later they lost the faith and went haywire after Vatican II.

But the Church of the generation who were adults when the "greatest generation" were being educated believed that their goal was to teach and sanctify every Catholic. They were seeking every soul. They did not assume 100% failure as the de facto standard, and then rejoice if even 1% succeeded.

The approach represented by the author of this book would be like the Good Shepherd who sees his 100 sheep wander away, and then rejoices because 1 sheep found his way back into the fold.