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In case it helps, here's my experience as an online rightish guy who's become interested in Catholicism, though I don't go around posting le epic Deus Vult memes. Would I feel the truth of it? No, and I worry about that sometimes. Currently, I consider conservative Christianity good, in that it binds families together, brings people together across generations, and have definitely noticed that the Christians I know lead better lives, etc. But I don't know if I can (or will ever) consider it true, which is a source of concern and some despair to me, because if I can't get to that, then I feel like I'm damaging their group by being there. As for the wilder stuff like sedevacantism, I was lucky enough that the group I found seems to have its head screwed on. I spoke to one of the lay Brothers about the Church leadership, and he said that they respect and obey the Pope while disagreeing with him, pray for him a lot to help him make better decisions, hold out hope that things will change, and believe they get the Popes they deserve.
But even from the secular pit I've dug myself into, there's been some interesting moments. Sitting and contemplating the quiet and stillness before Mass has been beautiful, and while I can't say I've felt presence there, it's been wonderful to enjoy the absence of outside noise and chatter. It's also been interesting to have spent a lot of time reading about and working on psychological integration and then have another parishioner just casually mention that "sin divides man from God, but it also divides man from himself". Duh! No wonder we're all such messes!
Just to offer my experience:
Raised Catholic. Became an annoying internet atheist during college. Started drifting back towards it due to the culture war, really started being pulled back largely due to Jordan Petersons biblical series lectures. My sister is also a very devout Catholic and lots of discussions with her.
A lot of influence has been reading about the early church, and the role of the church in maintaining a link between the modern and ancient worlds during the dark ages. (Read: a canticle for leibowitz for a fictional sci fi dramatization of what I’m talking about).
In the time since 2016-17 when this started, I’ve gotten married and had two children.
Obviously you can guess my influences given that history. I was a non believer (and never really believed as a kid), but the approach to the church and apologetics that my wife and I share, in my opinion, does make the miraculous and supernatural claims the church makes become literally true, and that is essentially the miracle.
I'm almost at the same place, time period, devout sister (and brother) and marriage and two children included (but Jordan Peterson not included), expect for Orthodoxy.
Good for you :). I really hope and pray that someday the Catholic and Orthodox churches reunite.
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This part is extremely relatable. That was the biggest thing that made me curious about religion as a tool to organize societies. I had heard about Chesterton's Fence from Scott, become curious about the man behind it and stumbled onto Orthodoxy. Then I looked at some of Bishop Barron's stuff and began irregularly attending local Masses. Started reading Lewis, and discovered many echoes of 2020 in his novel That Hideous Strength. And the more I read, the more interested I become, though I struggle with the actual faith bit and the idea of trusting the men right at the top.
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Now that I am a (functional) atheist, my position is that if someone thinks their life will improve by becoming Christian (or anything else), go for it. Why not? But I find the trend of people heading towards traditional Christianity because they feel it will improve their lives and communities interesting, because it is just about the exact opposite of what I was taught. Granted I grew up Protestant and not Catholic, but what I was made to understand was that you should expect Christianity to make your life worse. "You will be hated by all men for my name's sake." Now yes there was talk about finding peace and meaning in Jesus, and of course there was the fellowship of believers, but the expectation was that when it came to friends, money, love, happiness, even sometimes family, Christians will do worse than unbelievers, since the world is a hellbound, fallen place that rewards the wicked. Christianity was one big exercise in delayed gratification. Suffer now, redeem your suffering points in Heaven (or at the Rapture, if you're lucky).
I remember a tweet a few months ago, I can't find it now, but it said something like, "Jesus doesn't offer heroism, adventure, wives, or children in this life; he offers pain, service, trial, and tears." It circulated on RW twitter and occasioned a lot of blowback along the lines of calling OP a leftist, modernist, soy, etc. and "good luck attracting young men to the church with a message like this." It was sort of baffling to me because while I would have understood if it was something like "Jesus would be pro-LGBT" or "Jesus was a socialist," which I would agree are reading into the Bible things that are absolutely not there, the tweet as it stood was simply what I was told Christianity was by my very Christian and very-not liberal relatives. And of course we were taught that our job as Christians was not to make Christianity attractive to anyone, whether it was conservatives looking for patriotism and tradition or liberals looking for inclusion and egalitarianism, but simply to preach the gospel as it was, and if you didn't like it, well too bad.
Pain, service, trial and tears specifically attract young men. Like, not all young men, but a certain category of young men? Very much so.
I'm paraphrasing, but the gist of it was "don't expect worldly glory or success from Christ." Absolutely though there are plenty of people who are attracted to such a calling, including many young men. I think it was specifically some kind of in-house snipe at the whole "be like Achilles, put cities to the sword" side of RW twitter.
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This is very interesting, and I hadn't thought about it before. Yes, there's the persecution and all that, but I think there's some kind of "don't defect" at play here: teaching people to delay gratification until even after their death means that their communities can have very low time preference, and if you have few defectors you can possibly even get better immediate results than if you actively sacrificed the future for today.
I read an article a few months back about the cult popularity of Master and Commander, and how many young men love that movie. Not because they want to be Capt. Aubrey, but because they want to be in his crew and to sacrifice for each other and for a great cause. I'm also reminded of a video by Bishop Barron where he talks about how he thinks the interest in traditional liturgies has been specifically because it's hard: it's the call to sacrifice and spiritual challenge which seems to make people interested. (There's probably a big diversion about Vatican II here too that I'm not qualified to write.)
The people who did the most to attract me to Christianity never proselytized; they quietly lived their lives of faith, and I happened to notice. Whether that's because the Christian life does better in this world because God looks after his own, or because there are good memes baked into the religion, I don't know.
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