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Notes -
A poster here recommended a book to us all called “Introduction to Christianity”, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI) a few weeks ago. I recently got a copy of it.
I wanted to share with you all the first few paragraphs from the book, because I found them very interesting:
I’m sure we’ve all felt like that clown at some point or another. Especially with regards to ideas like “just kids on college campuses”.
Here’s a quote, this one from Saint Anthony The Great, one of The Desert Fathers (Early Christian precursors to Christian monks who lived in Egypt in about 300AD).
Anyway I think the relevance to the culture war is obvious here, and could be taken any of many directions. I just read this today and wanted to share. To pull on one culture war thread (perhaps one of the oldest culture war) it is profoundly depressing to me that these parts of our history, especially the history of The Catholic Church, seem to be suppressed or at the very least ignore in modern western society.
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https://www.themotte.org/post/253/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/48121?context=8#context
I’m on mobile, but can try to explain what I mean.
I have a lot of lefty new age, yoga instructing, Bali visiting, “I’m spiritual but not religious” saying, “Buddhism is more of a philosophy” claiming friends.
These people are hungry for something. The age and mysticism of stuff like their misunderstanding of eastern philosophy, is attractive to them because it seems to carry so much weight.
Meanwhile in almost every single town or neighborhood in America, there is a Catholic Church. The church has 2000 years of philosophy to pull on, as well as the most moving art that humanity has ever produced. People associate “meditation” with eastern philosophy, not knowing that their is an equally old tradition of meditation and mindfulness happening in that goofy building with the cross in it.
Not only is the spirituality, the history, the art, the philosophy, etc all there, but all of that philosophy and tradition is what we used to build the modern world. That Church is welcoming people to come into it ever day, or at least every Sunday, and people just…don’t. They don’t even bother to look.
I’m irritated that we have allowed Catholicism to become primarily associated with goofy people in hats, abusive priests, and ugly boring buildings. Im basically just retreading the frustration people have with Vatican 2.
The second thing is that my heart breaks for Protestants. The people attending these awful mega churches and weird youth group pastor things are being deprived of something I think is truly beautiful, and they’re essentially being taken advantage of by people who have a 500 year old hatred of the church. I think Protestants are more than happy to simply lie about Catholicism to maintain this grudge.
Our local Orthodox church has, for some time, seen a number of fervent converts (mostly, not entirely, young women) from New Age and "Eastern" (Buddhist etc.) traditions. Some of my friends have dealt with them quite a bit and, even though those friends are quite a bit more conservative than me, are finding their catechumen's fervor a bit offputting. I've heard that there have been such recent movements otherwhere (not only to Orthodox churches), either, though probably not in demographically measurable amounts.
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