Indifference : A consequence of the Progressive Movement's understanding of man.
Indifference : A consequence that can likewise be found among Catholics for much the same reason.
It's not uncommon now to enter a coffee shop with every table filled packed with patrons, but dead silent because every last patron is indifferent to the other patrons at their table, conversing instead on their laptop. The first time I saw this strange sight I was rather taken aback by its unnaturalness. I did however upon walking back outside find one couple sitting at the tables on the sidewalk joined in conversation, but inside the clatter of dishes contrasted starkly with the muffled silence.
Coffee shops used to be filled with smoke and conversation, the perfect setting to spend hours gazing into the eyes of a girl while she in turn filled the air with stories and cigarette smoke. Paris On the Platte in LoDo, my favorite coffee shop from years gone by remains somewhat that same way, filled with conversation sans the delicious smoke. In those days it was The place to be among the art crowd with art studio lofts on the floors above, and that past artsy influence still lingers.
Years ago my oldest daughter tried to start a youth group at our FSSP parish. And there were several meetings, but all that ever occurred was the boys would sit at one table in the parish hall. The girls would sit at a different table and the pastor would at each meeting give a long lecture on chastity. The real problem the pastor should have addressed was that his chastity talks were not in the least needed because the boys were socially indifferent to the girls.
Teaching swing dancing to the kids in the youth group would have been far more helpful because it would have moved the boys away from their unnatural indifference. Because the function of dancing is socialization. A socialization which by nature includes touching hands or more as in the waltz, as well as conversing.
In contrast to the swing or waltz, Irish step dancing is a folk dance befitting modern progressive society. Arms straight down virtually unused, faces turned straight forward, bodies stiff and erect, no emotions, each dancer virtually indifferent to all others on the floor. It's a dance style where technical proficiency is prized above all else.
It's also a dance style with all the intimacy and human interaction one would expect to find in a science fiction film depicting 'life' among the androids.
Indifference is the all too common parental practice of having babies cry it out It's a common american practice which goes against the natural bond of mother and baby breaking that same natural bond of mother and baby. Richard Ferber and Benjamin Spock, who both advocated crying it out, advocated nothing less than child neglect.
Crying it out, babies sleeping away from mother in a crib, baby bottles, baby daycare, leaving babies in a carseat, and similar practices all break the natural human bond babies need to develop naturally into the social creatures we are. All these practices of indifference cause irreparable harm in the child. Are they, when used as a normal preferable practice, anything less than child neglect?
Because our society is inundated with these parental practices, our society in turn suffers from selfish self indulgence where social relations, like the all too common fornication, isn't grounded in love but in self gratification.
By nature we have empathy, and sympathy and mercy and similar wants for our neighbors. We desire their good. In contrast, indifference is self centered, and uncaring. A man intent on seducing a girl, or the femme fatale with her intent, are both indifferent to the good of those caught by their allure. Indifference can be passionless, but it also signifies indifference to the greater good.
Similarly, our children, especially the boys, are forced to endure long days sitting still at desks doing rote assignments designed to destroy their manly nature.
Catholic parents who take their little ones to 4 hour Good Friday services expecting them to be quiet and sit still for the entire service are indifferent to the suffering of their own children. Or what of the weekly practice of forcing little ones to remain still and silent throughout an entire Mass? Where movement or noise is swiftly and severely punished. Is child neglect too strong a word for this behavior that ignores a little ones capacity to endure such hardship?
And as we sow, so shall we reap.
Will such practices by Catholic parents teach their children to love others and to love the Faith? Or will those same children instead grow up to either hate the Faith associating it with misery, or be indifferent to it?
Some who are attracted to the FSSP have the same social sensibilities as extreme Christian fundamentalists. So it's not surprising their errors, and subsequent consequences of their errors, are similar to those same extreme fundamentalists.
As I've written previously, Catholicism really is all those aspects that Protestants abhor. Little Black Cordelias, dripping blood crucifixes, wine and spices, incense and rituals. It's a Faith that luxuriates in God's creation. It’s shadow and light, procession and sanctuary.
It's a Faith that abhors the sterility of indifference. A sterility which comes right out of Progessivism, whose roots are Protestant, i.e. modernist, not Catholic.
It's said that the opposite of love isn't hate. It's opposite is indifference. Indifference
Indifference is lukewarm.
We rightly reject sterile progressivism with its consequent indifference, and with good reason. And instead we embrace our Catholicity with it's holistic understanding of man.
We engender the Faith in our children by loving them, and nurturing them, and caring for them, and teaching them, and in so doing, we impart the Faith to them as sign of that love we give them. And part of what we impart are our traditions, sacramental and the like, because they give outward visible sign and memory, for our children to hold on to. They give us Catholic cultural memory.
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