Reader Xavier chimes in to play devil’s advocate regarding yesterday’s post.
Brian.
Outstanding post. Let me play devil’s advocate. I think the Benedict/St Anthony of the desert option is one of the choices in a multifaceted strategy. We also need the Franciscan one of engaging the world the Dominican at the universities and the new movements like Opus dei for work and neighbourhoods. Retreat from the world is ok but it should be for a very small minority.
As for women, the 2 biggest problems is tha the state has usurped the role if the husband provided. How are guys supposed to provide and protect when the state is the buggest alpha male? The biggest obstacle to returning sanity is to radically reduce the state’s intrusion in our lives.
Second problem:deep down women don’t like to work. They’re shocked to discover that work is a man’s world where it’s physically and mentally demanding and sometimes kills. Women have a different kind of resiliency best seen as volunteers at schools, hospitals and neighbourhood organizations and of course at home.
The biggest challenge i see for my kids generation is to recover subsidiarity. The state isn’t civil society
xavier
I answer:
Some of Dreher’s proposals, like urging Christians to pull their kids out of public schools, are spot-on. It’s the cowardice that comes from mixing Liberalism with his Christianity that’s his fatal flaw.
Franciscan engagement is closer to the mark, but most people–especially college kids–are far too ignorant and dialectically illiterate for the Dominican approach to be much use right now. What would really help would be for the bishops to start excommunicating the many fake Catholics who publicly and flagrantly scoff at Church doctrine. To have any meaning, Christianity has to make demands of its adherents.
Yes, the state has replaced husbands and fathers. That’s because a) women voted for it and b) men let them. Women form such a large voting bloc that sufficiently reducing the size of government is effectively impossible unless more women marry earlier, have kids, and stay married. But as Xavier said, the state offers perverse incentives for delaying and avoiding marriage. Repealing women’s suffrage would solve the problem instantly–as Ann Coulter said, if women couldn’t vote, no Democrat would be elected ever again. But that would require women voting away their own voting rights. Once again, we’re not voting our way out of this.
Thought experiment: Imagine what rush hour traffic would look like if 2/3 of the women in the work force quit to be full-time moms.
Yes, subsidiarity is the key. It’s something you don’t hear preached about from the pulpit these days.
Brian.
Thanks! Let me briefly continue and ask this question how can pulprev, superversive,good comics, movies and video/tabletop games help recuperate subsidiarity?
You remind me thst even though the tools have decentralized content creation,distribution is still centralized by converged companies with the state's enthusiastic support.
So how do we outflank in order to fork and replace?
I suspect we'll have to borrow from the samidzat creators and circulate our stuff via sd cards,DVD/CD and encrypted bit torrents.
In short, i advocate that it's through leisure activities where we can recuperate subsidarity; both Josef Pieper's book on leisure and the Homo ludens books needs to be re read with this goal in mind.
xavier
I'll address this question in more detail tomorrow, but the key is that politics is downstream from culture. Producing good, entertaining works is 99% of the battle.
Brian.
I look forward to the post. I'll simply remark that after many years in the workforce i've concluded that women don't make good bosses or supervisors in a mixed workplace. And i hold that
one of the reasons that culture has become shallow and uninteresting is because moms are simply too burnt out to soft through the good and bad while dads are told to back off duectobtoxic masculinity.
I look forward to your post. It'll be quite stimulating
xavier
Subsidiarity, contraception, abortion, marriage, the True Presence, Catholic culture, proper liturgical practice (and music, may God have mercy on us for the crap that passes as sacred music in most churches on Sunday) and corrections on misconstrued teachings of the faith, like "Christians shouldn't judge!" or "Christians must be pacifists at all times!".
This and more is never preached. Due to outright rebellion, or ignorance, or cowardice on the part of the clergy. If the Church is to be saved, it will be done through the laity.
"My people perish for lack of warm, fuzzy feelings and ego massages." – Gomer (the Bible of Judeo-Christ, Pacifist Hippie)
Agreed.