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I would be considered a conservative Catholic, probably a borderline or "light" tradcath. I'm personally quite against the closed religious communities you describe. My plan is to move to a conservative area to live around people who share my religion and philosophy and to influence my surrounding community to make it increasingly hospitable to those who share my beliefs. For institutions that are simply too rotten, I will support setting up parallel institutions, but whenever possible I will for example vote for a hardcore tradcath public school board (and contribute to Catholic after school programs) instead of working to found new Catholic schools from scratch. As has been pointed out many times here and elsewhere, closed-off religious communities are able to exist only due to the benign neglect of the Eye of Sauron's. Concentrating your people in a single place and in unsanctioned institutions leaves them vulnerable to dispersal and reeducation by carpetbaggers. But if your religion is simply woven into the background culture of the area and infused into its public institutions, it's a lot harder to suppress. The religious should emulate Dearborn or the Free State Project, not the Mennonites. Entryism is the way.
Entryism can be undone by a second group of entryists doing what you did. To keep an open society traditionally catholic, you’d have to limit the number of nonbelievers allowed in, and certainly keep sharp eyes on those who enter “cathedrals” in your community. Harvard was started as a Christian university. It no longer is, and is oftentimes hostile towards the ideology of its founding.
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