The Irenist writes True Truth in my comboxes:<\/p>\n
Very few Christians of any denomination in the contemporary West take their faith very seriously, or know very much about it.\u00a0 This leads Catholics, e.g., to vote, contracept, divorce, etc., in much the way that any other Americans would:\u00a0 there is *nothing* \u201ccountercultural\u201d about most contemporary Catholicism because the days of the thick cultural web of the ethnic Catholic ghetto when Catholicism could be learned in part by osmosis are long gone, and no way to effectively catechize or enliven the faith of atomized assimilated American individuals has yet been found.\u00a0 I am beginning to fear that until we address this, all our inside-St. Blog\u2019s squabbling about whether to vote for, e.g., Mitt Romney or Joe Schriner is a pernicious distraction, akin to the \u201cChristianity AND vegetarianism\u201d in the Screwtape Letters.\u00a0\u00a0 Consider this, fellow Catholic political obsessives:\u00a0 Successful third parties and movements within established parties do not start by running for the Presidency.\u00a0 The non-flash in the pan ones start by running for local school board, or whatever.\u00a0 The Catholic application of this insight is that we need better Christians in better parishes before we have the sort of disciplined disciples of Christ countercultural enough to even\u00a0 *form the idea* of taking a battle to the culture, much less winning it.\u00a0 In brief, my advice is to skip the election news today and go read Sherry\u2019s Weddell\u2019s far more important than the election news \u201cForming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus<\/a>\u201d or something like it ASAP.\u00a0 I will most likely now return to my regularly scheduled paying too much attention to politics. But I do think all us Shea regulars need to at lest consider that we\u2019re overdoing it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He\u2019s right.\u00a0 Listen to him.\u00a0That book is one of the most important things written this year, if not this decade.\u00a0 Tolle, lege!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Irenist writes True Truth in my comboxes: Very few Christians of any denomination in the contemporary West take their faith very seriously, or know very much about it.\u00a0 This leads Catholics, e.g., to vote, contracept, divorce, etc., in much the way that any other Americans would:\u00a0 there is *nothing* \u201ccountercultural\u201d about most contemporary Catholicism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-38593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-forming-intentional-disciples"],"yoast_head":"\n
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