It’s Friday, so to lighten the mood from the heavy topics we’ve been covering this week, please enjoy the following highlight reel of me ratioing internet atheists.
It all started with this piece of circular cringe:
The natural response was, of course …
To be honest, I’d intended that meme as a fire-and-forget response that I thought might get a dozen or so likes.
So imagine my surprise when I logged on to X this morning and found …
The Lord has vindicated His holy Name. Praise God for victory!
OK, that’s kind of tongue-in-cheek. But consider the huge disparity between the size of the atheist’s account and mine.
Fedora tippers can cope all they want. Ratioing one of their own whose following exceeds mine by sevenfold suggests a decline in influence.
Though I will say that X has been messing with my follower count. Over the past few weeks, it’s cracked 4,950, only to return to the 4940s every time for no discernible reason. And that’s despite having had two or three viral posts, this one included.
Anyway, not only did my post ratio the dude who tried to countersignal the Ten Commandments, the other heathens who showed up to white knight for him turned in lackluster performances.
One guy did try to sow FUD by posting this old saw:
But as longtime readers know, I was ready.
As the same source the religion black piller cited shows, Christianity is doing fine worldwide. Meanwhile, atheism is shrinking faster than any religion.
Even in America, 80% of adults profess belief in God – the highest percentage of any developed nation.
But just look at those anemic comebacks to the meme I posted. Having dealt with internet atheists since at least the aughts, I can tell you that unbelievers these days lack the fire … the – dare we call it – zeal of their neckbearded forebears.
Internet atheism is not a movement with the confidence of its convictions.
It was a Trojan horse used by the Death Cult to weaken Christendom so a new, Satanic religion could take over.
And everybody knows it.
Remember when these guys used to promise us “Stop believing in Bronze Age superstition, and earthly techno-paradise is just around the corner” ten years ago?
I remember. And when I look out my window, I don’t see a shiny, sexy utopia.
What I see is closer to this:
Anybody with a shred of intellectual integrity who’s not delusional can see that internet atheism failed.
And it didn’t fail because some great Christian apologist gave a silver bullet theological argument.
Internet atheism died because atheists went on the internet, and people saw that they were like this:
That might not be a silver bullet, but it was a stake through online atheism’s heart.
Which is why the Cult-controlled media outlets are stirring up schism within the Church. Christ’s external enemies failed, so they’re sowing division within His Mystical Body.
And they’ll fail with this tactic, too. Because Our Lord has seen fit to raise up holy antibodies to fight the infection.
So don’t despair, and remember: God already won.
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From causal observation, people who want the schism, who like the idea, and spend a lot of time on the new fangled Intrawebs promoting it are retired Boomers, along with some older Gen X. They are the ones who have all time to be on social media without it once occurring to them to maybe read source documents (or being willing to listen to someone who is sympathetic to the Church who has). If I going looking for people who have been prominate Catholic apologists who are now schismatic or sympathetic, they are very grey haired and usually been around since the 1990’s in the public eye. They also come from Protestant backgrounds generally, another interesting pattern.
I would also offer that the TLM movement is simply the opposite side of the LibCatholic, generated from the same mindset and rebellion. It’s “Everything was perfect when I was kid, so this is the best. I want my experience”* It’s the “Mass of the Ages” to them, even though it’s official name is the Missal of 1962. It’s a lot like how supposedly their great-grandchildren will be listening to the Beatles because “timeless”. Personally I think they will be scratching their heads over the mass appeal, if they know the name at all.
Yes, some youngins got caught up in all of that. That’s always the way of it and certainly given modern society the appeal is natural. We do need more traditional reverence and in that they cannot be ignored entirely. There are more young, growing families at tiny TLM parishes/communities than LibCatholic ones. It does not follow that endless growth is available or the babies stay. They didn’t in 1950 some odd.
*Their parents hardly cared about any of it at all, which was a different problem entirely.
“They also come from Protestant backgrounds generally, another interesting pattern.”
Interesting but not a surprise. If you think about it, Catholicism was founded by Christ with the intention of [uniting] all nations under the banner of heaven. Protestantism was formed by [breaking away] from the true church. This is why you see a stark attitude difference between Catholics and Prots. The style of their church’s founding is in their DNA.
“I would also offer that the TLM movement is simply the opposite side of the LibCatholic, generated from the same mindset and rebellion. It’s “Everything was perfect when I was kid, so this is the best.”
Despite going to Novus Ordo, I consider myself more traditionally leaning. I love the TLM and I recognize the strength and zeal the community has which has been a boon in bringing people deeper into the faith after libcaths have damaged it. If anything, I’ve seen some parishes only become stronger in the faith because the TLM is allowed to thrive. However, even I will admit you have some jackasses in that community who lord over everyone else like elitists and ruin the beauty it all. I’ll still go to TLM for time to time, I try to be as reverent as possible, upholding the ways of old, but I won’t be a jerk about it like some of my peers or internet trads. They don’t realize this is why Francis rescinded the creation of any more TLM parishes – trads were using TLM as a dividing force in the church, not a unifying one. If I was Pope, I’d still let TLM parishes be made, but I’d tell those extreme trads to -in all charity- jump in a lake.
I pray one day all sides in this internal strife can reconcile one day. The TLM community has much to offer the faith, but the elitist trads need to be put in their place.
I genuinely admire the reverence and zeal of the traditionally minded Catholics among us. It is a refreshing to have that kind of emphasis on the faith. It is nice to have some standards when it comes to dress at Mass, etc. No arguments that the traditionally minded have much to offer to the Church.
That said, I’m there with Vatican II. I would call the vernacular almost, but not quite a requirement for Mass for the masses. No, I have never attended a Mass in Latin, so I don’t have first hand experience. I do, however, make a sincere attempt to sing the hinge offices via a YouTube channel called Sing the Hours. Paul Rose does a wonderful job combining the English and the Latin, much like the original intent of VII. I cannot recommend the channel enough, if there is interest in praying the hinge offices.
And…when the Magnificat comes up in Latin, I stop, pull out the New Testament and pray it in English. The reason is that I have stopped praying when the Latin appears. The best I can do is the doxology, even after probably close to a year+. I know what’s like in other words to deal with Latin in liturgy as public school educated slob of 2024. 🙂
I am fully aware that there are people more capable than me on the language front. They would actually be praying in the Latin. I have grave doubts, however, that people at large are able to actually pray long passages of Latin, particularly English speakers. Let’s face facts about how easy it is to zone out of Mass when it is in the language of the pewsitters.
In other words, I think the radtrads are the fruit of that liturgy. In part it’s a self selection issue. In part, it’s because they aren’t really getting fed fully at Mass. Yes, they believe in the Eucharist and that is well over half the battle. But Jesus is the Word made flesh, too. The original point of Latin Mass was to reach everyone. The Church doesn’t make us show up to the Liturgy of the Word as a checkbox sort of thing. She has a reason.*
I also have the experiences of my converted husband, who gets frustrated when he is tripping over a foreign language that is very foreign. Not even high school Spanish helps him much. He and all the normal people like him count in these sorts of discussions. He would be much better served in a 100% English Mass. Like the Sabbath, the Mass is for us and our benefit. God doesn’t need them.
Anyway, to me Latin is one of the issues under the issues. The Latin keeps out the Walmart like Catholic riff-raff. (Another attraction for Protestant converts who are abnormally represented at them.) But it’s serving only tiny minority that is language adept and well educated. I remain unconvinced that even the vast majority who genuinely love it are being well fed by it. We need all that love of reverence and zeal over here the current year, in a language that is really theirs.
*Yes, I am aware the readings are often read and/or duplicated in English. Also missals are available. However, that begs the question: Why not just go to the liturgy already in English with a wider selection of Scripture?
May I offer a (late) rejoinder, as a convert from NO Catholicism to Catholicism?
1) The Latin is a false trail. No, I don’t speak Latin well, nor do most of those I know – aside from the clergy and some of the young altar-boys who have been brought up speaking it. That doesn’t mean I can’t rattle off my Rosary, or Confiteor, or Credo with the best of them, and understand what I’m praying. (Who says white boys can’t rap?) But all of this is not necessary, because…
2) Lex orendi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. The law of how we pray is the law of how we believe is the law of how we live. Common saying. You will often hear Trads leveling this crtiticism at the NO. But I digress. It’s all true. But it’s insufficient.
It’s really… lex vivendi -> lex orendi -> lex credendi -> lex vivendi. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle.
The NO is said. The Mass is lived.
You don’t need to understand with your head what’s going on at the Mass – and I say that as an extreme left-brain. You live the Mass. The people’s job at the Mass is to live the Mass, uniting their hearts to the actions of the priest and ministers. This is a totally different paradigm from the NO.
3) and on that subject – the NO is, effectively, a different religio (public rite, pun intended) from the Mass. It’s not just the prayers. The whole lived experience is different. And, again, I say that as someone who thought, for the longest time, the NO Mass and the Mass were the same, just one was a little older and Latin. But that is decidedly not true, because…
4) The NO Mass is, at best, a crippled and multilated version of the Mass. I could go on and on about specific cases, but I’ll present just one.
“The ascension is a Big Deal! We need to go to Mass on the Ascension!” Ok, cool. Go to NO mass, it’s just a Sunday mass in the middle of the week. Jesus is heading back to heaven yay, now back to work on Friday. Abstinence? I thought that was for Lent?
This is not an attack on anyone. This is a relation of my liver experience.
Last year at the Ascension: this is the solemn feast of Theosis, when the nature of Man becomes perfectly united with that of God. The liturgy is accompanied with continual callbacks to Easter. And the liturgical feast for Ascension only really concludes with the Vigil of Pentecost – which, no joke, is actually a mini-Easter Vigil closing out Easter.
I had no idea. Did you?
5) We were robbed. I was robbed of my heritage, and given Clown Masses. They emasculated and mutilated the liturgy and the doctrine, such that I can hardly attend a NO mass without weeping.
6) Last. If we are to be intellectually serious about our faith, we have to recognize – NO Catholicism, and the Catholicism of the ages, are not the same. In a religion founded upon Truth – that is a fatal defect.
7) I must however acknowledge that I am a part of the “modern-day Pharisees”, as the best homily I have ever had the privilege to hear put it. But. The Pharisees may have ended badly, but they started well. They were the true heirs of the Maccabees, the Faithful, the wall-builders who kept the faith alive until Christ was born. God bless their beginning, and unlike them, may we end well what we have begun.
The Latin Rite of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church celebrates the Mass in two forms: the Ordinary Form, as promulgated in the 1969 Missal, and the Extraordinary Form, aka the Tridentine Mass promulgated by St. Pius V.
Both are equally valid forms of the divine liturgy. And they’re not as different as some think. Both follow the same general structure of the liturgy as laid out in Scripture, the Didache, and the Church Fathers.
Nor is the use of Latin the main difference, because the NO can be celebrated in Latin. In fact, solemn Novus Ordo masses can rival TLM liturgies for majesty and reverence.
And the 1969 reforms of St. Paul VI are in the same spirit as Mediator Dei, Pius XII’s encyclical on the liturgy. Both sought to increase the congregation’s participation in the Mass. That was the main impetus for allowing its celebration in the vernacular.
So I’d caution against drawing a distinction between the Catholic Church and the “NO Catholic Church” or The NO and The Mass. Theology demands careful wording, and that kind of careless language could scandalize those who don’t understand the full context..
I understand your position. Pope Benedict XVI, with his hermaneutic of continuity, held much the same position. But the question is still open. Are they two rites, or one rite with two expressions?
https://youtu.be/kXA-Nsd2VTI?si=8lnFT9qBgq8ryFbz
This clip is one minute nineteen seconds long, and shows in exact detail the violence done to the Mass to transform it into the NO Mass. In light of that violence, I dare anyone to say they are the same rite. And, for the record, I hold personally the NO to be both valid and licit – as permitted by God for a time due to the weakness of our faith.
Not only is the question of whether the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church celebrates the Mass in ordinary and extraordinary forms not open, it was never asked to begin with.
You are confusing the terms Rite and Order.
One filial criticism I did have with Pope Francis was his warning of traditionalism curdling into an ideology that idolizes the past. Don’t get me wrong; I think that Liberal Catholics spreading public, manifest errors are a much bigger problem, but that’s not mutually exclusive with MadTrads doing their best to prove the Pope right.
Nu Atheism was unbearable at the end of the ’00s and probably contributed to the death of the ideology purely through example. Nobody wants to be the bananaman or part of that old “dirtbag left” pseudo-intellectual group which has spent the entirety of the 2010s imploding and contributing to the out of control suicide rates. There hasn’t been any movement on any of their positions except to cave in on whatever corporations or the Good Guy political party says you need to believe at that moment.
The Free-Thinker meme died faster than the YouTube skeptic sphere did (which got replaced with the fed-backed Breadtube . . . funny how that works), which I think contributes to why its mainly been entirely rejected by younger generations. If a young person is an atheist now, you’re probably not going to hear about it, because said person doesn’t actually think atheism will save the world.
Also, you can tell a lot of Twitter followers are bots based on interaction levels. So many accounts have tens of thousands of followers and get almost no likes on any of their posts until a random one randomly gets botted likes and retweets in the algorithm. They do this to try and paint a different narrative than reality and make unpopular things seem more popular than they are. Dead Internet at work.
I believe atheism was never even popular, not even post-9/11 when it was pushed so hard and their OldPub books got hawked on talk shows (Krauss’ “Two different kinds of nothing created the universe” was a particular low point in mainstream thinking capability) which then rolled over into the current communism obsession, all to demoralize the populace even further than 9/11.
Unfortunately, it did hook a particular group of people and twisted them into useful idiots. But if you’re still hawking nu atheism in 2024 then you’re about as useful as a hippie in 1983. Just a burnout that missed the trend and got lost along the way.
The leftover hippie analogy is an apt description. Go and look at the atheist replies to the meme I posted. They range from incoherent rambling to halfhearted parroting of the same Christopher Hitchens line that was already stale in 2013.
It may bear closer investigation, but nuAtheism was one of the biggest establishment-backed cultural movements post Ground Zero. The fact that not even the aesthetic inertia that’s kept cape shit movies and Max Martin slut pop going could sustain the nuAtheists may be a light at the end of the tunnel.