What does Veeky Forums think of this New York Times bestseller?

islam beat you to the punch

Not too late to get in on the game, though. Anything that hurts and beats down secularism is a good thing.

ok. enjoy sharia law

Savage
Dreher is a naive fool and moralist who ideas about withdrawal are counter to every scrap of biblical and historical christian ministry with the exception of monasticism, which again existed as an ideal for the layman to look up to.

Also his level of shilling is top tier. I would like to thank him for introducing me to Laurus though

clearly you havent been following the sheer amount of "satire" pouring out of "The American Conservative"

I would prefer it to being subservient to the crowd over at evergreen state. Even as dhimmi.

We'll just convert Muslims, user, like we've converted everyone else.

I actually read the book and reviewed it. And Dreher has repeatedly denied the charges that his book is about retreat.

He maintains that building intentional communities alongside a public that does not want Christianity is not retreating. He uses Benedict as the model.

My .02:

1) Dreher is a former Catholic turned Orthodox who is writing a book for Protestants and Catholics and Orthodox folks. And we are surprised that it is fuzzy?

2) some Chistians are simply unable to take his advice. He advocates moving cities/states if you dont have access to a thick community. Really Rod? Just leave? That might work if you have money...

Ama I guess. Seminarian and teacher here.

Separation of church and state christcuck. As long as the constitution stands you will never have a complete religious state. A good thing too.

this

>tfw only non-conforming christianity is possible these days

So much for "CATHOLIC" christianity

Kelly B. Vlahos is my girl you fucking faggot.

>durr I speak for the entire userbase of a Veeky Forums board because I can type snarky

>American history – at the global frontier of atomization – is thickly speckled with elective communities. From the Puritan religious communities of the early colonial period, through to the ‘hippy’ communes of the previous century, and beyond, experiments in communal living under the auspices of radicalized private conscience have sought to ameliorate atomization in the way most consistent with its historical destiny. Such experiments reliably fail, which helps to crank the process forward, but that is not the main thing. What matters most about all of these co-ops, communes, and cults is the semi-formal contractual option that frames them. From the moment of their initiation – or even their conception – they confirm a sovereign atomization, and its reconstruction of the social world on the model of a menu. Dreher’s much-discussed ‘Benedict Option’ is no exception to this. There is no withdrawal from the course of modernity, ‘back’ into community, that does not reinforce the pattern of dissent, schism, and exit from which atomization continually replenishes its momentum. As private conscience directs itself towards escape from the privatization of conscience, it regenerates that which it flees, ever more deeply within itself. Individuation, considered impersonally, likes it when you run.

I don't know who he thinks he's fooling, it IS retreat and it's a complete abdication of Christ's command to spread the Gospel. A Christian's response to a secular world should be to preach Christ crucified that much more stridently. I have my disagreements with Pope Francis but his approach to a Godless world seems more Christian than Dreher's.

The christian, specifically catholic, desire for a unified and spiritual American culture is noble, but unless it tackles the root of the problems (apathy, the left) and its own it will be unsuccessful.

ITT: almost no one has read the book

He's not selling withdrawal, you fucking baby boomer Catholics, he's saying Christians need to form their own institutions that can be wholly Christian in morality. There is no necessary withdrawal, you triggered cucks.

I don't know why this triggers people so much (actually I do, they want to stick their hand in the sand and keep thinking that public institutions are not only sustainable but not anti-Christian... because if they admit reality then they're forced to do something).

It's very strange to see Christians, especially Catholics, respond with "muh missionary" when all that is happening is liberal culture continually withering down Christianity. When are the big conversions gonna happen, folks? What you waiting for?

He wrote a good book that is unfortunately hated by Christians and secular liberals alike.

yeah laurus was kino

Dreher is right, good book.

(You)

I'm not Christian, but:

This isn't a Jack Chick comic dude, literally everybody in America and Europe knows who Jesus is. "Spreading the Good Word to the unwashed masses" doesn't quite work when the unwashed masses have heard the good word and said "Yeah, nah". The Gospel has already been spread, and because you (for whatever stupid reason) attempt to combat secularism with Rational Materialism the Gospel ends up losing.

Arguing that Christians should embrace virtue signalling and one-upmanship is idiotic. There will BE no Christians to spread the Gospel if you don't look after your flock. It's why the Cardinals WILL be electing a Conservative next election.

Exactly. Christians have the worst response.

> L-Let just spread the Gospel!
> meanwhile the Gospel isn't spread
> meanwhile these Christians go watch hollywood films
> Dreher advocates withdrawal! How blatantly anti-Christian!

What Dreher points out, and what Christians subtly recognize, is that they're not fully Christian. No one will get converted to Christianity by half-ass crypto-liberal cultural Christians.

I agree with you, but to be fair to Dreher, St. BENEDICT himself was only a few hundred years after Constantine, so it is likely that most of the Roman empire and its provinces had heard of Jesus also. And Benedict still decided that monastic life was necessary.

Not him but your critiques are pretty weak. Not convinced you've read the book. Why is it fuzzy because he's ecumenical? It's a problem for all Christians. The problem with money is something that has to be dealt with in its situation. At the very least you should begin creating a communal network wherever you are.

I feel like /out/ people and even preppers would appreciate the book more than Christians, who are mostly too far gone at this point.

It's like telling someone they should work towards the goal of having all their food come locally, and they respond with, "I don't even want to take a baby step in that direction, because, deep down I have no faith and gave up a long time ago so I keep going to the super market

I think it's basically right. You're not going to be able to achieve significant political or cultural influence without having your own house in order first. The current battle being fought is a losing one, as the last several decades have clearly demonstrated.

By politicizing themselves, Christians destroyed any chance of this happening. It's impossible these days to have conversations with normies about Christianity without them saying immediately "but Christians hate women and gays." Islam has tended to stay away from electoral politics, which has helped them IMO

>without them saying immediately "but Christians hate women and gays."

Not the user you're responding to. I think political efforts have definitely caused harm in this area, but there's more to it than that. People today are utterly committed to the idea that the human body has no moral significance or purpose. The idea that your body in any way determines what actions are morally right is seemingly unfathomable.

This, there seem to be a growing number of Christians, mostly of a liberal persuasion, who take attitudes such as

>You can still be Christian if you don't believe in God or Jesus!
>Jesus is just an example of how to live, you don't need to take any of that theological stuff seriously to be a Christian!

For people like this, you just have to think Jesus was a kind of cool guy with some good ideas to be a Christian, it doesn't matter even if you actually believe in other faiths. Dreher is concerned that Christianity will become meaningless if it makes these changes just in order to stay viable.

That said, I don't think Dreher has the right idea, aside from monastic orders and the like, Christianity has throughout its history been engaged with the world, albeit not to the extent that Islam has been.

>Islam has tended to stay away from electoral politics, which has helped them IMO

eh...only the tip of the iceberg...

>Christianity has throughout its history been engaged with the world

how many times do you need to be told, he's not advocating withdrawal

His concept of church is inherently fuzzy. Not even Protestants as a group agree on what the institutional church should do vs. what the church should do as individuals. Are we supposed to gain clarity by adding Orthodox and Catholics to the equation?

For instance, Dreher says the church is under threat by the loss of religious freedom in the political realm. That is a tough pill to swallow. Just because an individual Christian baker might be forced to go against his conscience, this means the work of the church is under threat? Word and sacrament are politically threatened? I cannot make that leap.

was it written by a catholic or orthodox christian? if so, i love it.
was it written by a protestant? if so, i hate it.

I would actually almost argue that "religious freedom" may be hostile to Christianity because it invariably confines Christianity to a subordinate role in the state. Christianity isn't exactly Islam with sharia, but it does in its full form have an active role to play in the way a state is run. Look at the role of the Church in the Middle Ages, for example.

I'm a Christian myself, but when other Christians talk about protecting religious freedom, I find it a bit disingenuous. Christianity got along just fine without that for quite a while.

Feels more like 1517 in here than 2017. :)

delusional seminarian

well, at least some christians will enjoy the spiral downwards, i guess

Dreher is an idiot though, you wasted your time if you take him seriously.

I'm not even going to attack Christianity or anything, its Dreher specifically who is bad here.

What about just basic self-restraint?

I have precisely zero problems with this

>The Catholic Church is infallible until multiple Popes, an Ecumenical Council, and every bishop in the world with ordinary jurisdiction disagrees with me, in which case I know better.

"Traditional" Catholicism, folks.

>implying any of them are legitimate catholics

Either they are the true teaching authority, or there is no teaching authority and Catholicism was false from the beginning, or at least was on the wrong side of the Great Schism. There isn't a competing authority like in the Western Schism, so there's no middle ground. I don't know how you all live with the cognitive dissonance.

A real shame the Jesuits are using their methods on the Church lol

Religious freedom is a part of the documents of the second Vatican Council, but in reality it is completely incompatible with Tradition as a whole, including all the Fathers and Doctors and numerous saints. It really is a break in continuity and the only way to interpret it properly is to de facto ignore it.

If you looked at the issue honestly you would realize that it means Catholicism is false, if an ecumenical council contradicts tradition. Even if you want to argue that the VII documents are somehow not binding on the level of extraordinary magisterium, religious freedom is the current teaching of the bishops and thus is infallible as part of the ordinary universal magisterium. Being this is universal throughout time, you can look at any period of time in the church and find that the teachings will not contradict. If they contradict Catholicism is false. They of course contradict, as you know.

What exactly is wrong with Sharia? It's pretty much the law of Old Testament.

>he's saying Christians need to form their own institutions that can be wholly Christian in morality
Do you seriously think you will be allowed to do this in a modern Western country and people will just let you be?

There's no alternative to Catholicism (outside the pit of despair) and nobody talks about this so there's really no reliable source for information on this topic, but ordinary magisterium is not infallible (otherwise Catholics could not associate with Jews for example, or could not have until recently), which is, theoretically speaking, the only thing holding my faith atm.

It's not, but the main problem would be that it's a temporal law posing as eternal and not exactly a good law across time.

>There's no alternative to Catholicism

Perhaps you're looking for a degree of certainty that God never actually decided to give anyone. Eastern Orthodoxy certainly exists, and the idea that the West was so clearly the correct side in the Great Schism that there are no other possibilities, is frankly absurd. I say this as a non-Eastern Orthodox.

>but ordinary magisterium is not infallible (otherwise Catholics could not associate with Jews for example, or could not have until recently)

I believe the situation with Jews is an issue of canon law, which is mutable and not infallible.

How long until Catholic church allows gays to marry? I give it 30 years tops.

And then we'll get to hear 1.) about how they *always* allowed it, and 2.) they forbid it in the past but allowing it is okay and Catholicism is still true, because xyz

God did decide to give the amount of certainty to the Catholic Church, as the one true Church and it has existed until recently and now we are in a time of turmoil, much like the 16th and 4th and 11th and many other periods of doctrinal uncertainty. The only difference is that the Church in this case sadly allowed itself to be infiltrated and assumed the good faith of heretical or borderline heretical theologians like Kung, Lubac, Balthasar and so on. They did manage in creating a mess precisely because nobody can tell what about the V2 is actually binding and on what level because it's all about being unclear. There are many ways people have 'solved' the problem, but I still haven't and will probably simply wait for the next council (because every great heresy brings a renewal and new condemnations of error). And we won't have to wait too long because the architecture of people inside the Church itself is amongst the young generation and almost all intellectuals extremely traditional.
Eastern Orthodoxy is just stuck in a limbo because of their lack of unity and are simply infinitely intellectually inferior to the Catholic counterpart- it's not an option because they simply cannot hold their positions with an argument, as shown time and time again (think Ukraine) where to defeat Catholic theology you can only ban it and suppress it, unless you want your entire intellectual structure to lead the rest back to the Catholic Church.
And the situation with the Jews is on the same doctrinal level as most of V2, a non dogmatic ecumenical council, which clearly isn't taken to be infallible and is dealing with temporary problems (where religious liberty could be easily placed as it's the best defense of our own freedom at the moment).

How can the New York Times let people know about this

It works for Orthodox Jews, people ought to learn a bit from them.

STOP POSTING THIS CHRISTIAN SHIT

I only just stopped myself from converting, I DONT WANT YOU JESUS STOPP FOLLOWING ME

Man yells at cloud.