Recently came across this gentleman's thoughts about what is happening in the West. While he's an atheist, he seems to have identified the problems we are facing..... https://nationalpost.com/opinion/ga...y-cult-is-killing-the-west-by-a-thousand-cuts
When I was young I used to love reading TAN books. They were old stories about the lives of the saints, Purgatory, Hell, visions, apparitions, locutions , miracles and so. What drew me to them? Well I think they were so totally different from the Catholic culture I was growing up in . I rarely if ever heard homilies about hell or purgatory and if there were any it was very passing. The same thing about apparition sites like Lourdes. If there happened to a Scripture passage about say someone being possessed by the devil it was passed by in an embarrassed silence, a kind of vague surprise that Jesus had gotten it so wrong in not seeing it was a mental illness He was dealing with. So the religion I was encountering through these books and the Traditional Catholic culture at home was so very different from the culture I met in the general Novus Ordo Culture of our parishes. In what ways? Well the Parish culture was so nice and highly sanitized . I think feminised. It was about the relationships between people, about meetings and doing social good. Housing associations, Credit Unions, old peoples homes, schools It was about doing good and being seen to be doing good. The old Traditional Catholicism I encountered I found much, much more appealing as a boy and young man. Why? Well it was much , much more masculine and gritty. It described the soul as being in an Eternal Battle between good and evil.It had a very gritty nose to the grindstone edge. It was if you like in the trenches. Also it was highly mystical rather than social. It was about out relationship with God. In so far as it concerned other people it was as Jesus said, seeking the Kingdom of God first and everything else spring from this. Also it was centured in its spirituality around the Mass. It was simply a continuation of the Faith that Catholics had practiced for Millenia. I would guess any Catholic from any century could come to the Old Liturgy and feel right at home. It had a very Catholic rather than Protestant feel. I would say this kind of Liturgy and practice is very, very appealing to young men in particular. Young people , especially young men like a challenge. They like to go to war so to speak. What bigger call is there than to be a saint? I also think people really are drawn to the mystical and stores of the mystical phenomena. They just are. Look at the life of Padre Pio for instance. The whole of Italy was fascinated by one single Friar. He drew millions. He did not achieve this by being nice, he did it by being challenging and dare I say it fascinating. I think one of the main drivers in the harm to the Church is that so many of our leading clergy are and were homosexuals. This explains much about what has gone wrong..
You know I think homosexuals and especially our homosexual clergy (who are in charge now) make one very tragic mistake. They foolishly believe that they can think and feel like women. Even that they are women. But this is not so. They are , in fact, perverted men pretending to be women and this is something quite different. This is their and our tragedy.
They say behind every good man is a good woman. Imho, at this point it's fair to say that the good faithful clergy right now are safely tucked under the mantle of Our Lady. Same for every other good man. The rest are under something else. The good nuns back in the old days supported the good clergy with their prayers, their work as teachers, nurses etc. They helped the clergy, good men of God, to stay in line.....Something infected many of these orders, which in turn affected the clergy. Evil women, such as the bus nuns, gone unchecked have wreaked catastrophic damage in the spiritual realm. Some sold off the schools and the hospitals they started, with funding from good people, and hoarded piles of cash to fund their "social justice" baloney. Just as the churches were wreckovated after the council, so were the schools and hospitals destroyed. Imho, the leaders of these congregations did not care to have any more vocations as long as their agenda was funded and their "lay associations" followed along. The damage done by these women and their supporters was/is an underlying factor that seems to go unnoticed at times. They were and are working against the Blessed Mother. It's no wonder Mother Angelica, and others, had taken strokes....They were fighting against more than just bad Bishops; they were/are also fighting against the bad sisters who have their own unholy agenda....
I heard Brian Holdsworth who is a Canadian mention the other day say that he has friends who lost their jobs in , 'Catholic Schools' for being Catholic. That is just so telling. It tells us everything we need to know.
Ironically, this atheist (at least in the quoted passage) does not seem to be aware that the 'Suicidal Empathy' that he describes is a product of the atheism that he espouses. Not all atheists react the same way. Most are not intellectual atheists like Saad. Most may not even be aware that they're atheists, but they have no belief in God and are atheists in practice. Let's face it, the indifferent (probably includes most of the effete clergy Padraig describes), which is most people in the West, are atheists. But they still retain remnants of their Christian past through its fading momentum and this is the kind of toxic feel-good thinking it leads to. It is most certainly suicidal, but faith will revive simply by selection, not to mention the help of God. People who believe in God marry more, have more children, contracept less and abort less. This is all statistically provable. In the long run, atheism isn't survivable, but people of faith will get through this. Even many of the atheists will wise up (by realising they need God).
Thankfully, the heretic nuns can't defy God's biological solution. It is so unfashionable to become a nun now, that it ensures a very high proportion of nuns of high quality. Also, the kind of suicidally empathetic do-gooder becomes a lay social worker-still destroying society, but at least not in the name of The Church. The heretic tendency in the Church seems an increasingly geriatric one. They will find it increasingly difficult to keep it going. Of course, there will be far fewer priests and nuns, but they'll mostly be Catholic.
