In no sense is that true of a Catholic Mass. Nor, from what I hear, of an Orthodox liturgy though I’m no expert there. It might be true of some Evangelical Sunday worship services but they cannot be called a “Mass”
Sorry, can you help me understand what you mean here?
I attended a Catholic mass from 1-18 (and occasionally since then), and there was definitely a bunch of moral reflection from the readings, gospels and the sermons.
So I'm struggling to understand how this would differ across other Christian denominations, so I'd really appreciate a better awareness of what you mean here.
> I attended a Catholic mass from 1-18 (and occasionally since then), and there was definitely a bunch of moral reflection from the readings, gospels and the sermons.
Have you ever gone to a mass on random Thursday? There is often no sermon during daily, non-Sunday mass. Yes, there are readings, but the central part of the mass is the Eucharist, which the Catechism (¶1324) calls the "source and summit of the Christian life".
> Yes, there are readings, but the central part of the mass is the Eucharist, which the Catechism (¶1324) calls the "source and summit of the Christian life".
Again, super confused. Like yeah the Eucharist is clearly the most important part for many Catholics, but the notion that the readings don't contain moral teachings is very strange to me.
The mass and the preaching are two separate things. The mass is the ritual liturgy part and can be performed without the preaching. It is not some kind of rare thing either.
Yes, they tend to be combined on Sundays, because that is practical and many believers want both on Sunday anyway. But that does not make them the same thing.
> You seemingly attended the invalid new "mass" of antipope Paul VI which is a protestant service (was designed by protestants at vatican II), that's probably why you can't tell the difference.
My brother in Christ, I recommend against calling people anti-popes based on theological difference.
God basically doesn't care about this, and it's just an example of humans being humans and nitpicking around pointless abstractions.
I suppose that if one accepts that only the Catholic church is the path to salvation, and that the pope is supreme within the church, then one might get very upset.
Don't get me wrong, the Tridentine mass is a phenomenal spectacle, but mass in the vernacular has it's own benefits which I think that you're under-rating.
Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, “Cantate Domino,” 1441, ex cathedra: “The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the Church before the end of their lives; that the unity of this ecclesiastical body is of such importance that only those who abide in it do the Church’s sacraments contribute to salvation and do fasts, almsgiving and other works of piety and practices of the Christian militia productive of eternal rewards; and that nobody can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.
In the same way that all conspiracy theories are all slightly different in their own unique interpretations, making them fun to learn about, I am fascinated by the fractal nature of religious heresies and schisms. I had to look up this one because it's pretty damn obscure and I ended up spending all afternoon trying to figure out exactly what flavor of crazy the "Most Holy Family Monastery" are.
TLDR: they are a fringe group of sedevacantists who think all other sedevacantists and catholics are heretics and promote lots of insane infowars-tier conspiracy theories, run by two brothers living in an isolated compound in upstate New York. SPLC lists them as a hate group for being holocaust deniers.
So, the background context: in the 1960s the Roman Catholic Church held a big reform council (Vatican II) where, among other things, they decided to switch from the old Latin Mass to the modern one which celebrates mass in the vernacular, which is what nearly all of the world's 1.4 billion Catholic attend today.
A small fringe, called "sedevacantists", hated Vatican II so much they declared it was heresy, and that every pope since then is fake and there hasn't been a real pope since the 1950s. Hence the name: sede (chair) vacante (empty). Wordlwide, sedevacantists probably number around 30,000 (maybe as many as 200,000) and include all sorts of groups with various wacky beliefs.
Another small fringe is "Feeneyism", the belief that only baptized Catholics can go to heaven, with no exceptions for e.g. good people who never heard of the Church or who died before they could be officially baptized. The Catholic Church rejected this view in 1949 and the founder was excommunicated for disobedience. There are a few thousand of them left, mostly in rural New England. Some of them are still in communion with the mainstream Church, which quietly tolerates them.
This brings us to Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM), currently run by brothers Michael and Peter Dimond in New York (which the above poster linked extensively). Neither of them is ordained, and no bishop recognizes them. The MHFM was founded by a guy named Joseph Natale in the 60s. He was a benedictine drop-out who broke away from the Catholic Church. Natale started an unofficial traditional latin catholic monastery in New Jersey which preached that Vatican II was a secret plot by the freemasons and the communists to destroy the Church, and predicted the world would end in 1999.
Weirdly, despite believing that Vatican II was a Communist Freemason conspiracy, the MHFM weren't sedevacantists under Natale; Natale just believed the pope was real, just a puppet controlled by the conspiracy. when Natale died in 1995, Michael Dimond took over with his brother Peter. They moved the operation to a rural hamlet in western New York and promptly declared that actually, the Pope wasn't just a puppet, he was a fake pope. Under them, MHFM became sedevacantist (which by their own logic makes their founder a heretic). But they also decided to become Feeneyites! So, being sedevacantists puts them outside the Catholic Church. Being Feeneyites means they consider every other sedevacantist group heretical, and vice versa. And being Sedevacantist makes them heretical to other Feeneyites, who mostly still accept the pope.
Some of their actual beliefs, as far as I can tell:
- Most everybody is going to hell except for them and and maybe some of their youtube followers
- Stage magicians use real magic, not illusions, which they get from demons
- UFOs are real and actually they're demons
- The covid vaccine was a cover-up
- John Paul II was the antichrist
- Holocaust denial. (if I had a nickel for every time I look up a sedevacantist group and find out they are holocaust deniers...)
The Southern Poverty Law Center lists them as a hate group due to that last point.
Thanks for the links btw, I have no idea if your comment was a joke or not but I had never heard of them before and I had a fun time going down this rabbit hole
This is the wildest part to me, JP2 was a super, super conservative pope potentially put in to avoid the potential ructions associated with some of the more liberal beliefs of JP1.
Like, I'd have expected a group like this to be much more upset by Francis rather than John Paul.
Well, I imagine they aren't fans of Francis either, and the Gospel of John does say "many antichrists have come", so it's entirely possible Pope Francis is also the antichrist.
That said: while he was conservative in many ways, Pope John Paul II was well-known for his ecumenicism, especially mending relations with Jews and Muslims, which might ruffle the feathers of the sort of sedevacantist whose problem with post-Vatican-2 Catholicism is that they got rid of the antisemitism.
I have down voted that comment because HN is not Reddit and that comment is nothing but a cheap shot with no substance. If the commenter had explained why they feel that way then the comment would have been just fine.
Considering it responded to cheap incorrect analogy and was actually correct, I find it ok. Disagreeing with one liner low effort comment should not require whole essay. It should require exact same effort as was put into the original comment.
OP did not explained why they think it is the same either. They just fired something.
I disagree with the idea that it was "actually correct". I suspect there is a cultural miscommunication regarding the word "Catholic" (as another commenter suggests). And because I disagree I would love to engage with their criticism, but I can't because the entire counter-argument was "no".
The original comment may be short but it's also thought-provoking. The reply, on the other hand, is not (per the FAQ) "a good critical comment [that] teaches us something".
> I suspect there is a cultural miscommunication regarding the word "Catholic
I meant Catholic as in Catholic Church - the huge hierarchical organization lead by Pope. The mass is the ritual part, the bread, wine and the ceremony. Then there is the preaching which is separate thing. You can have mass only, the preaching only or the combination of the two. Catholicism is really big on rituals and tradition, they have meaning by themselves.
The Midnight Mass for example does not have much preaching. That is not the point of going there. The point is to celebrate.
Among the moderns really only the Quakers could be said to follow The Way in who they follow, all the rest follow some different teacher of their choosing.
>> Among the moderns really only the Quakers could be said to follow The Way […]
> I feel that there's a lot of truth to this, except that there are lots of actual Christians amongst the various denominations.
I don't think this is a good take. I think C. S. Lewis got in better in Mere Christianity:
> We must therefore stick to the original, obvious meaning. The name Christians was first given at Antioch (Acts xi. 26) to “the disciples,” to those who accepted the teaching of the apostles. There is no question of its being restricted to those who profited by that teaching as much as they should have. There is no question of its being extended to those who in some refined, spiritual, inward fashion were “far closer to the spirit of Christ” than the less satisfactory of the disciples. The point is not a theological or moral one. It is only a question of using words so that we can all understand what is being said. When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
A "Christian" is someone who believes certain things (e.g., Nicene Creed), and that he should do (or not do) certain things. The inability to live up to one's ideals does mean you reject those ideals (or make them invalid).
> When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
Much as I dislike disagreeing with C.S. Lewis, my personal nomenclature is to reserve the term Christian for those who live the values promoted by the Gospels. This is clearly non standard though, so I see the potential for confusion.
Built into the very concept of Christianity is the idea that no human can perfectly live the life espoused by Christ. It is why Jesus gave The Twelve (and their successors?) the authority to forgive sins:
There was an early Christian heresy what believed that clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and their prayers and sacraments to be valid:
In some ways your idea would be contrary to scripture (?): since no one can (fully/perfectly?) live those values, then no one can (fully/perfectly?) be Christian. Whereas is in the 'Lewis model' every one can be a Christian, but just a better or worse 'instantiation' of one.
> In some ways your idea would be contrary to scripture (?): since no one can (fully/perfectly?) live those values, then no one can (fully/perfectly?) be Christian. Whereas is in the 'Lewis model' every one can be a Christian, but just a better or worse 'instantiation' of one.
Yeah, I definitely take that point.
That being said, I don't have a better term for the small number of people who actually try to live the teachings of the Gospels, as opposed to those who mumble along to the Nicene Creed, take the Eucharist and go right back to robbing their fellow humanity.
So that's the term I picked.
Like, to be fair, I am almost certainly a heretic from the perspective of the Catholic Church, but if the Source of All judges me based on that, then I guess we have very different priorities.
For context, I grew up in an Ireland where literally everyone was a practicing Catholic, but very few actually lived it in their lives, hence why this annoys me. As Jesus (did not) say, blessed be the hypocrites etc.
I appreciate that the authors didn't go too far into speculation territory, but this being the internet I'll do it anyway.
The survey only explores whether people feel like they became the person they want to be, but it would be great to know many of them actually act in a way consistent with their ideal self. Perhaps it's not that older people feel more comfortable in who they became but rather that, after 50+ years of working at it, they have finally nailed their target and there's not much left to do.
I feel much more at peace now that my sex drive has decreased. Before this feeling it was my primary goal and I was very successful but now I couldn't care less about sex.
So I often wonder about yogis and saints - are they better humans than me? But i dont think so when I read about people like mlk jr and jfk and how they were terrible people when it came to women, even worse than me.
I'm a 62 year old straight man. I've described the change this way.
I've always been able to see a handsome man, say Pierce Brosnan back in the day, and say "he is quite handsome" without have a whit of sexual stirrings. When I was young seeing a beautiful woman would trigger desires, but now it is like looking at handsome men. I can recognize they are attractive but it is purely intellectual with no emotional or hormonal attachment.
If you don't mind, how old were you when that decrease happened? I started working out some years ago and my libido just flew through the roof. I will not say that I don't like it, but I'm afraid of that interfering with future relationships. I'm on the monogamous team, so I would suffer if my future partner could not meet my libido levels
Masayoshi Takanaka is a virtuosic City Pop guitarist who saw a recent renewed popularity while riding the resurgence of the genre's popularity. When asked in an interview if there would be a new album, he stated no, saying that humans lose their creative drive as their sexual energy declines, and this is why he could not produce a new album.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The laws of physics wrote that sentence, it was fated to be written when this deterministic system of a universe was set off like a mechanism. Or maybe not, let me use my non-free will to choose to say.. Aubergine. Periwinkle. Streptococcus.
There's also no evidence that mystical leprechauns exist. Do you seriously consider their possible existence in the decisions you make? But somehow, we all seem to presume free will exists in virtually every part of society.
I relate. There was this one saint, Augustine I think, who, entering puberty, realized that the mind-control orbs dangling between his legs were gonna interfere with his life-goals, so he cut em off.
Maybe that's the smart thing to do. I mean, does "fight and fuck" really enter into your saner agenda? Do you want it to?
That was definitely not St. Augustine, who was well-known for a lifestyle of patronizing harlots before his conversion of heart.
Apparently, this action is attributed to Origen of Alexandria, who was never "canonized" and is not regarded as a saint in any Christian tradition. It has consistently been viewed as a bad idea and a sin to be castrating or mutilating anyone's genitals, even your own.
Origen was anathematized because some people believed he taught universal salvation, i.e. everybody, regardless of belief, will ultimately be reunited with god. Whether he taught that is debatable, but certainly much of his exegesis was quite abstract, which tracks with this argument that Origen likely didn't castrate himself: https://medievalhistorygeek.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/did-ori... Likewise, he was a polarizing figure during a formative time in the development of Christianity, so it's quite believable his opponents would spread gossip about him. In the first few centuries there were some virulently anti-sex (and anti-women) Christian cults that preached that any sex, including marital sex, was dirty and demanded things like lay continence or lauded castration.[1] Despite clerical continence being normative, mainstream Christianity forcefully rejected the notion that there was anything inherently wrong with (marital) sex, so to claim Origen castrated himself would be to insinuate his beliefs aligned with radical, non-orthodox, sexually deviant (in a sense) groups.
EDIT: [1] I originally used celibacy. But celibacy and continence are distinct. Celibacy implies continence, because only only married couples are permitted to have sex, but even married couples can be continent. Therein lies the confusion about the origins of modern-day Roman Catholic clerical celibacy and its relation to early clerical practices, including practices of the apostles.
You're likely thinking of Origen although people question whether it's true.
>Maybe that's the smart thing to do
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols:
"The Church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds: its practice, its “remedy,” is castration. It never inquires “how can a desire be spiritualised, beautified, deified?”—In all ages it has laid the weight of discipline in the process of extirpation (the extirpation of sensuality, pride, lust of dominion, lust of property, and revenge).—But to attack the passions at their roots, means attacking life itself at its source: the method of the Church is hostile to life."
At risk of sounding insensitive, MLK Jr. and JFK were only on the farm team as far as being yogis and saints.
For the pro league some names you need: Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Brahmananda, Sri Yogananda Paramahansa, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (yes, really), Chogyam Trungpa (yes, really). And many more names beside.
Francis of Assisi, Lao Tzu, Gurdjieff (yes, really), Blavatsky (yes), Zhang Guolao, Nasreddin, Jesus of Nazareth.. These last three all have been known to ride a donkey backwards.
I would guess you're being sarcastic, but it depends on your worldview I suppose. I haven't found any of his writing to be insightful or even entertaining.
I’m nearly 40 and my sex drive has always been insane and to this day is higher (much higher) than young people I know. I don’t have sex any less than I did when I was younger but being less angry and less dissatisfied with one’s life just seems to be part of getting older. I know there’s that (hilarious) line in The Republic from the old man about not being a slave to his sex drive anymore but I always took that as more of a ‘women are more trouble than they’re worth’ kind of thing. Surely sex is a sine qua non of being satisfied with one’s life.
Libido motivates so many things in life that I’m not sure that I’d be bothered getting out of bed without it.
Makes sense, believers are on a journey of sanctification. The first battle is won when your soul is saved. The second battle is a lifelong struggle between the flesh and the spirit.
In a sense, Sunday mass is just an all-hands where you're told the CEO's vision and you get to think about how aligned you are with the vision.
In no sense is that true of a Catholic Mass. Nor, from what I hear, of an Orthodox liturgy though I’m no expert there. It might be true of some Evangelical Sunday worship services but they cannot be called a “Mass”
> In no sense is that true of a Catholic Mass.
Sorry, can you help me understand what you mean here?
I attended a Catholic mass from 1-18 (and occasionally since then), and there was definitely a bunch of moral reflection from the readings, gospels and the sermons.
So I'm struggling to understand how this would differ across other Christian denominations, so I'd really appreciate a better awareness of what you mean here.
> I attended a Catholic mass from 1-18 (and occasionally since then), and there was definitely a bunch of moral reflection from the readings, gospels and the sermons.
Have you ever gone to a mass on random Thursday? There is often no sermon during daily, non-Sunday mass. Yes, there are readings, but the central part of the mass is the Eucharist, which the Catechism (¶1324) calls the "source and summit of the Christian life".
> Yes, there are readings, but the central part of the mass is the Eucharist, which the Catechism (¶1324) calls the "source and summit of the Christian life".
Again, super confused. Like yeah the Eucharist is clearly the most important part for many Catholics, but the notion that the readings don't contain moral teachings is very strange to me.
Am I missing something in your point?
The mass and the preaching are two separate things. The mass is the ritual liturgy part and can be performed without the preaching. It is not some kind of rare thing either.
Yes, they tend to be combined on Sundays, because that is practical and many believers want both on Sunday anyway. But that does not make them the same thing.
[dead]
> You seemingly attended the invalid new "mass" of antipope Paul VI which is a protestant service (was designed by protestants at vatican II), that's probably why you can't tell the difference.
My brother in Christ, I recommend against calling people anti-popes based on theological difference.
God basically doesn't care about this, and it's just an example of humans being humans and nitpicking around pointless abstractions.
I suppose that if one accepts that only the Catholic church is the path to salvation, and that the pope is supreme within the church, then one might get very upset.
Don't get me wrong, the Tridentine mass is a phenomenal spectacle, but mass in the vernacular has it's own benefits which I think that you're under-rating.
Ultimately, many paths, one mountain.
no.
Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, “Cantate Domino,” 1441, ex cathedra: “The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the Church before the end of their lives; that the unity of this ecclesiastical body is of such importance that only those who abide in it do the Church’s sacraments contribute to salvation and do fasts, almsgiving and other works of piety and practices of the Christian militia productive of eternal rewards; and that nobody can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.
You have imbibed heresy and must course-correct.
https://endtimes.video/john-paul-ii-assisi-1986-apostasy/
In the same way that all conspiracy theories are all slightly different in their own unique interpretations, making them fun to learn about, I am fascinated by the fractal nature of religious heresies and schisms. I had to look up this one because it's pretty damn obscure and I ended up spending all afternoon trying to figure out exactly what flavor of crazy the "Most Holy Family Monastery" are.
TLDR: they are a fringe group of sedevacantists who think all other sedevacantists and catholics are heretics and promote lots of insane infowars-tier conspiracy theories, run by two brothers living in an isolated compound in upstate New York. SPLC lists them as a hate group for being holocaust deniers.
So, the background context: in the 1960s the Roman Catholic Church held a big reform council (Vatican II) where, among other things, they decided to switch from the old Latin Mass to the modern one which celebrates mass in the vernacular, which is what nearly all of the world's 1.4 billion Catholic attend today.
A small fringe, called "sedevacantists", hated Vatican II so much they declared it was heresy, and that every pope since then is fake and there hasn't been a real pope since the 1950s. Hence the name: sede (chair) vacante (empty). Wordlwide, sedevacantists probably number around 30,000 (maybe as many as 200,000) and include all sorts of groups with various wacky beliefs.
Another small fringe is "Feeneyism", the belief that only baptized Catholics can go to heaven, with no exceptions for e.g. good people who never heard of the Church or who died before they could be officially baptized. The Catholic Church rejected this view in 1949 and the founder was excommunicated for disobedience. There are a few thousand of them left, mostly in rural New England. Some of them are still in communion with the mainstream Church, which quietly tolerates them.
This brings us to Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM), currently run by brothers Michael and Peter Dimond in New York (which the above poster linked extensively). Neither of them is ordained, and no bishop recognizes them. The MHFM was founded by a guy named Joseph Natale in the 60s. He was a benedictine drop-out who broke away from the Catholic Church. Natale started an unofficial traditional latin catholic monastery in New Jersey which preached that Vatican II was a secret plot by the freemasons and the communists to destroy the Church, and predicted the world would end in 1999.
Weirdly, despite believing that Vatican II was a Communist Freemason conspiracy, the MHFM weren't sedevacantists under Natale; Natale just believed the pope was real, just a puppet controlled by the conspiracy. when Natale died in 1995, Michael Dimond took over with his brother Peter. They moved the operation to a rural hamlet in western New York and promptly declared that actually, the Pope wasn't just a puppet, he was a fake pope. Under them, MHFM became sedevacantist (which by their own logic makes their founder a heretic). But they also decided to become Feeneyites! So, being sedevacantists puts them outside the Catholic Church. Being Feeneyites means they consider every other sedevacantist group heretical, and vice versa. And being Sedevacantist makes them heretical to other Feeneyites, who mostly still accept the pope.
Some of their actual beliefs, as far as I can tell:
- Most everybody is going to hell except for them and and maybe some of their youtube followers
- Stage magicians use real magic, not illusions, which they get from demons
- UFOs are real and actually they're demons
- The covid vaccine was a cover-up
- John Paul II was the antichrist
- Holocaust denial. (if I had a nickel for every time I look up a sedevacantist group and find out they are holocaust deniers...)
The Southern Poverty Law Center lists them as a hate group due to that last point.
Thanks for the links btw, I have no idea if your comment was a joke or not but I had never heard of them before and I had a fun time going down this rabbit hole
> - John Paul II was the antichrist
This is the wildest part to me, JP2 was a super, super conservative pope potentially put in to avoid the potential ructions associated with some of the more liberal beliefs of JP1.
Like, I'd have expected a group like this to be much more upset by Francis rather than John Paul.
Well, I imagine they aren't fans of Francis either, and the Gospel of John does say "many antichrists have come", so it's entirely possible Pope Francis is also the antichrist.
That said: while he was conservative in many ways, Pope John Paul II was well-known for his ecumenicism, especially mending relations with Jews and Muslims, which might ruffle the feathers of the sort of sedevacantist whose problem with post-Vatican-2 Catholicism is that they got rid of the antisemitism.
My comment is no joke, watch some videos.
https://endtimes.video/
The American mind can't comprehend European Catholicism
This is downvoted ... and absolutely true.
I have down voted that comment because HN is not Reddit and that comment is nothing but a cheap shot with no substance. If the commenter had explained why they feel that way then the comment would have been just fine.
Considering it responded to cheap incorrect analogy and was actually correct, I find it ok. Disagreeing with one liner low effort comment should not require whole essay. It should require exact same effort as was put into the original comment.
OP did not explained why they think it is the same either. They just fired something.
I disagree with the idea that it was "actually correct". I suspect there is a cultural miscommunication regarding the word "Catholic" (as another commenter suggests). And because I disagree I would love to engage with their criticism, but I can't because the entire counter-argument was "no".
The original comment may be short but it's also thought-provoking. The reply, on the other hand, is not (per the FAQ) "a good critical comment [that] teaches us something".
> I suspect there is a cultural miscommunication regarding the word "Catholic
I meant Catholic as in Catholic Church - the huge hierarchical organization lead by Pope. The mass is the ritual part, the bread, wine and the ceremony. Then there is the preaching which is separate thing. You can have mass only, the preaching only or the combination of the two. Catholicism is really big on rituals and tradition, they have meaning by themselves.
The Midnight Mass for example does not have much preaching. That is not the point of going there. The point is to celebrate.
Among the moderns really only the Quakers could be said to follow The Way in who they follow, all the rest follow some different teacher of their choosing.
> Among the moderns really only the Quakers could be said to follow The Way
I feel that there's a lot of truth to this, except that there are lots of actual Christians amongst the various denominations.
Sadly, they're not the majority, but living this way is pretty hard so it's not that surprising.
>> Among the moderns really only the Quakers could be said to follow The Way […]
> I feel that there's a lot of truth to this, except that there are lots of actual Christians amongst the various denominations.
I don't think this is a good take. I think C. S. Lewis got in better in Mere Christianity:
> We must therefore stick to the original, obvious meaning. The name Christians was first given at Antioch (Acts xi. 26) to “the disciples,” to those who accepted the teaching of the apostles. There is no question of its being restricted to those who profited by that teaching as much as they should have. There is no question of its being extended to those who in some refined, spiritual, inward fashion were “far closer to the spirit of Christ” than the less satisfactory of the disciples. The point is not a theological or moral one. It is only a question of using words so that we can all understand what is being said. When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_Christianity
A "Christian" is someone who believes certain things (e.g., Nicene Creed), and that he should do (or not do) certain things. The inability to live up to one's ideals does mean you reject those ideals (or make them invalid).
> When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
Much as I dislike disagreeing with C.S. Lewis, my personal nomenclature is to reserve the term Christian for those who live the values promoted by the Gospels. This is clearly non standard though, so I see the potential for confusion.
Built into the very concept of Christianity is the idea that no human can perfectly live the life espoused by Christ. It is why Jesus gave The Twelve (and their successors?) the authority to forgive sins:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_20:23
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrament_of_Penance
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confession_(religion)
There was an early Christian heresy what believed that clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and their prayers and sacraments to be valid:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism
And another belief that humans can be saved by their own efforts, without the need for God's grace:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagianism
In some ways your idea would be contrary to scripture (?): since no one can (fully/perfectly?) live those values, then no one can (fully/perfectly?) be Christian. Whereas is in the 'Lewis model' every one can be a Christian, but just a better or worse 'instantiation' of one.
> In some ways your idea would be contrary to scripture (?): since no one can (fully/perfectly?) live those values, then no one can (fully/perfectly?) be Christian. Whereas is in the 'Lewis model' every one can be a Christian, but just a better or worse 'instantiation' of one.
Yeah, I definitely take that point.
That being said, I don't have a better term for the small number of people who actually try to live the teachings of the Gospels, as opposed to those who mumble along to the Nicene Creed, take the Eucharist and go right back to robbing their fellow humanity.
So that's the term I picked.
Like, to be fair, I am almost certainly a heretic from the perspective of the Catholic Church, but if the Source of All judges me based on that, then I guess we have very different priorities.
For context, I grew up in an Ireland where literally everyone was a practicing Catholic, but very few actually lived it in their lives, hence why this annoys me. As Jesus (did not) say, blessed be the hypocrites etc.
Yikes! Way to raise mammon up to the altar of God.
CEOs are psychopaths.
Some pastors are psychopaths.
Sorry, I forgot pastors existed. I assumed OP meant "God".
Yes, but it is not requirement. You can be a pastor or rise in hierarchy without being psychopath. For CEOs, the selection strongly favors sociopaths.
I appreciate that the authors didn't go too far into speculation territory, but this being the internet I'll do it anyway.
The survey only explores whether people feel like they became the person they want to be, but it would be great to know many of them actually act in a way consistent with their ideal self. Perhaps it's not that older people feel more comfortable in who they became but rather that, after 50+ years of working at it, they have finally nailed their target and there's not much left to do.
I feel much more at peace now that my sex drive has decreased. Before this feeling it was my primary goal and I was very successful but now I couldn't care less about sex.
So I often wonder about yogis and saints - are they better humans than me? But i dont think so when I read about people like mlk jr and jfk and how they were terrible people when it came to women, even worse than me.
I'm a 62 year old straight man. I've described the change this way.
I've always been able to see a handsome man, say Pierce Brosnan back in the day, and say "he is quite handsome" without have a whit of sexual stirrings. When I was young seeing a beautiful woman would trigger desires, but now it is like looking at handsome men. I can recognize they are attractive but it is purely intellectual with no emotional or hormonal attachment.
There is flourishing and detachment - https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-181/lecture-8
And there is flourishing and attachment - https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-181/lecture-7
If you don't mind, how old were you when that decrease happened? I started working out some years ago and my libido just flew through the roof. I will not say that I don't like it, but I'm afraid of that interfering with future relationships. I'm on the monogamous team, so I would suffer if my future partner could not meet my libido levels
Goodness, yes. I’m not even that old yet but just no longer being possessed by the relentless drive of my 20s makes life much more peaceful.
Perhaps Freud was right about the libido!
Masayoshi Takanaka is a virtuosic City Pop guitarist who saw a recent renewed popularity while riding the resurgence of the genre's popularity. When asked in an interview if there would be a new album, he stated no, saying that humans lose their creative drive as their sexual energy declines, and this is why he could not produce a new album.
I have to admit, it is nice when that edge comes off a little bit. Such a perpetual monkey on your back.
There’s no serious evidence that humans or any animal has free will.
Is not the belief that only things with (empirical) evidence are "real" a form of Scientism?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
* https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/science-and-scientism/
* https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-necessity-of-freedom/
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The laws of physics wrote that sentence, it was fated to be written when this deterministic system of a universe was set off like a mechanism. Or maybe not, let me use my non-free will to choose to say.. Aubergine. Periwinkle. Streptococcus.
I didn't say there is evidence of absence.
There's also no evidence that mystical leprechauns exist. Do you seriously consider their possible existence in the decisions you make? But somehow, we all seem to presume free will exists in virtually every part of society.
Category error.
I relate. There was this one saint, Augustine I think, who, entering puberty, realized that the mind-control orbs dangling between his legs were gonna interfere with his life-goals, so he cut em off.
Maybe that's the smart thing to do. I mean, does "fight and fuck" really enter into your saner agenda? Do you want it to?
That was definitely not St. Augustine, who was well-known for a lifestyle of patronizing harlots before his conversion of heart.
Apparently, this action is attributed to Origen of Alexandria, who was never "canonized" and is not regarded as a saint in any Christian tradition. It has consistently been viewed as a bad idea and a sin to be castrating or mutilating anyone's genitals, even your own.
Origen was anathematized because some people believed he taught universal salvation, i.e. everybody, regardless of belief, will ultimately be reunited with god. Whether he taught that is debatable, but certainly much of his exegesis was quite abstract, which tracks with this argument that Origen likely didn't castrate himself: https://medievalhistorygeek.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/did-ori... Likewise, he was a polarizing figure during a formative time in the development of Christianity, so it's quite believable his opponents would spread gossip about him. In the first few centuries there were some virulently anti-sex (and anti-women) Christian cults that preached that any sex, including marital sex, was dirty and demanded things like lay continence or lauded castration.[1] Despite clerical continence being normative, mainstream Christianity forcefully rejected the notion that there was anything inherently wrong with (marital) sex, so to claim Origen castrated himself would be to insinuate his beliefs aligned with radical, non-orthodox, sexually deviant (in a sense) groups.
EDIT: [1] I originally used celibacy. But celibacy and continence are distinct. Celibacy implies continence, because only only married couples are permitted to have sex, but even married couples can be continent. Therein lies the confusion about the origins of modern-day Roman Catholic clerical celibacy and its relation to early clerical practices, including practices of the apostles.
You're likely thinking of Origen although people question whether it's true.
>Maybe that's the smart thing to do
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols:
"The Church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds: its practice, its “remedy,” is castration. It never inquires “how can a desire be spiritualised, beautified, deified?”—In all ages it has laid the weight of discipline in the process of extirpation (the extirpation of sensuality, pride, lust of dominion, lust of property, and revenge).—But to attack the passions at their roots, means attacking life itself at its source: the method of the Church is hostile to life."
My man Nietzsche, of reason and passion, Apollo and Dionysus. Rest in eternal restlessness of the spirit, to live and suffer the beauty.
At risk of sounding insensitive, MLK Jr. and JFK were only on the farm team as far as being yogis and saints.
For the pro league some names you need: Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Brahmananda, Sri Yogananda Paramahansa, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (yes, really), Chogyam Trungpa (yes, really). And many more names beside.
Francis of Assisi, Lao Tzu, Gurdjieff (yes, really), Blavatsky (yes), Zhang Guolao, Nasreddin, Jesus of Nazareth.. These last three all have been known to ride a donkey backwards.
I mean, if we're including Blavatsky, then we probably need to include Crowley (even though he'd have been very upset to be added to this company).
L. Ron Hubbard (yes, really)
I would guess you're being sarcastic, but it depends on your worldview I suppose. I haven't found any of his writing to be insightful or even entertaining.
Were you not able to get laid or something?
I’m nearly 40 and my sex drive has always been insane and to this day is higher (much higher) than young people I know. I don’t have sex any less than I did when I was younger but being less angry and less dissatisfied with one’s life just seems to be part of getting older. I know there’s that (hilarious) line in The Republic from the old man about not being a slave to his sex drive anymore but I always took that as more of a ‘women are more trouble than they’re worth’ kind of thing. Surely sex is a sine qua non of being satisfied with one’s life.
Libido motivates so many things in life that I’m not sure that I’d be bothered getting out of bed without it.
>Were you not able to get laid or something?
The GP did say "and I was very successful", perhaps your gigantic libido has destroyed your reading comprehension.
Yeah maybe. Too much blood flow to the wrong head.
Makes sense, believers are on a journey of sanctification. The first battle is won when your soul is saved. The second battle is a lifelong struggle between the flesh and the spirit.
They are in constant opposition.
> It’s pretty clear that the typical American is always on the lookout for ways to improve their lives on a whole bunch of different dimensions.
This is not clear to me at all.
I'm in my 30s and I'm still a dumbass, six fig job still living check to check
I make 40k and in my 30s and still able to save at least $200 per check, are you that spoiled still?
Or do you still have 5 simultaneous dating app subscriptions you haven't canceled?
No my case is drinking, going out, working on stopping. But also I have a shit ton of debt like $100K of debt.
It is crazy I used to live on $20k/yr as a dishwasher, lifestyle inflation is real.
that feeling will pass, brains keep on developing right through mid-40's. But I implore you to find a great accountant asap, you get what you pay for.
Move out of CA.
fr dawg get outta dodge
August 29, 1997
Judging from the chart the answer is TLDR: We don’t.
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