It turns out…

…people are more likely to embrace a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience in a community that actually believes in these things than in communities that treat such things as outdated nonsense.

In other news, bridge clubs attract bridge players and not Monopoly enthusiasts, Italian restaurants tend to get customers who like Italian food and theatres that specialize in the most boring forms of European cinema tend to go out of business.

Why on earth should anyone (except liberal Catholics) be surprised that liberal orders which perpetually reject belief are dying while traditional orders are thriving? What’s the fun of *being* a nun or priest if your whole life consists of saying, “I’ve thrown away my life for this pointless exercise in things I despise and don’t believe?”

I can’t help but think of this poem:

THE SONG OF THE STRANGE ASCETIC
G.K. Chesterton

If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have praised the purple vine,
My slaves should dig the vineyards,
And I would drink the wine.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And his slaves grow lean and grey,
That he may drink some tepid milk
Exactly twice a day.

If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have crowned Neaera’s curls,
And filled my life with love affairs,
My house with dancing girls;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And to lecture rooms is forced,
Where his aunts, who are not married,
Demand to be divorced.

If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have sent my armies forth,
And dragged behind my chariots
The Chieftains of the North.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And he drives the dreary quill,
To lend the poor that funny cash
That makes them poorer still.

If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have piled my pyre on high,
And in a great red whirlwind
Gone roaring to the sky;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And a richer man than I:
And they put him in an oven,
Just as if he were a pie.

Now who that runs can read it,
The riddle that I write,
Of why this poor old sinner,
Should sin without delight-
But I, I cannot read it
(Although I run and run),
Of them that do not have the faith,
And will not have the fun.
(G. K. Chesterton – 1913)

If you are going to be a nun who refused to repent and believe the Good News of Jesus Christ and instead goes in for goddess worship or wants to pretend to be a priest, then for heaven’s sake, leave the Church and go do the pagan thing in style. This tedious betwixt and between business of dour nuns in sensible shoes and iron gray hair doing embarrassing displays of liturgical dance without even lasciviousness to spice up the proceedings is excruciating. It’s like the way so many liturgists still tend to think that 1963 music from juuuuust before the British Invasion is hep and speaks to Today’s Generation. It’s as if the whole thing is trapped in amber, neither fully Catholic nor gutsy enough to be pagan. And yet, theologically, a lot of it is now thoroughly pagan, rejecting not merely “Catholic particulars”, but the God of Abraham (Patriarchy!) and even monotheism (Lack of Diversity!). Yet these dying orders of nuns linger around the rectory, using the xerox machines and spreading a boring message that the rising generation of Catholics could not care less about.