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Notes -
General decline in religiosity. Religious Catholics(of any tribal affiliation) are just as into adoration and contemplation as they’ve ever been. There are just fewer.
Protestant churches have historically followed an oscillation where a decline in the spiritual content is resolved by a high-spiritualist branching off of it, leaving a far less supernatural original denomination which would have less interest in mysticism tautologically. The mainline->evangelical->pentecostal migrations are a visible example in our own lifetimes; in the past, when social trends were slower, Methodists and pietists, thé great awakening, and the Victorian revival movement were major waves happening in rapid succession. The whole thing is that Protestantism is not a religion that values tradition overmuch, so the new spiritual movement that branches off tends to be ‘new’ enough to drop old timey spiritual practices that were falling out of favor in the original denomination. Megachurchianity of the generic evangelical sort happens to be on the short end of the stick right now.
Vatican II threw traditional piety into a ditch at the time it could be least afforded; fortunately St John Paul II rescued most of the practices in danger of being forgotten, but the fragmentation and refugia remains; modern American commentators(like most of this forum) tend to forget how heavily Catholic American religiosity would have been in the 50’s, and the Catholic Church was not shy about using its cultural power to push basic Christianity, even in a generic way. In non-American locales Catholicism often had much smaller or fewer fragments but I don’t know as much about them. Nevertheless the sickness afflicting ‘the giant’(over 50% of global Christianity is Catholic- and for western Christianity specifically, it’s more like 75-80%) simply makes it harder to just have religious Christianity. WELS members have told me this, as well, so it isn’t 100% due to Catholic bias.
Christian moral beliefs are a bigger ask of a bigger percentage of the population than they once were; thé people who want mysticism without the guilt turn to non-Christian mysticism, partly due to relentless campaigning in favor of liberal values by the media. This in turn makes other things to fill the god shaped hole more common etc.
Yup. It definitely tripped me out when, several years ago, my Dad told me about Fulton Sheen's radio show and how you could find a national broadcast of the rosary at least once a week.
I have also heard anecdotes that some of the midwest catholic strongholds (Cincinnati in particular) had things like fish in public schools on Fridays in Lent. Imagine the blowup that would have today.
In the UK, fish in school (including explicitly C of E schools) and workplace canteens on Friday had been the default since well before I was born, and I am reasonably sure that it became the default back when anti-Catholicism was still part of the national identity. I grew up associating it with Christianity generally, not Catholicism.
Of course, the traditional English fish and chips is not exactly an abstemious meal - and indeed the English Catholic hierarchy has warned the faithful that eating a huge plateful of fish and chips defeats the purpose of the Friday fast. I remember playing bridge on Friday evening against a man who was some kind of Catholic lay minister, and as we stuffed ourselves with fish he explained that his parish was pushing the idea of "eat what you want on Friday, but only 2/3 as much as you normally would".
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Mayor Adams brought meatless Fridays to NYC schools, and the public response was making fun of his veganism.
It's actually interesting to note- most people think of 'Cafeteria Catholic' as a term originating as a metaphor for 'you say yes to this, I'll pass on that, like at a cafeteria serving line'. But that's a backronism(it is too a word, I just invented it); the original meaning was someone who would pick fish on Fridays at the cafeteria but not follow Catholic moral laws he found inconvenient.
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