As membership declines, just wondering what happens to all the cash the Churches are sitting on, from property, to art, to chuch tax collections. Going to be interesting to see what the next (younger) gen of church leaders do with it...maybe they need an innovation center to modernize the useful aspects of religion.
Europe is in a post-christianity phase, it's going to be interesting.
I'm guessing they would have no choice but to sell off property and land to pay their clergy?
In the UK lots of churches have either been converted to housing or commercial venues. It's really weird going to a kid's play center in an impressive old church but it happens:
There's also a business of subletting church buildings to other churches. I once wandered into St Dunstan in the West, just off Fleet Street in London, and found that there was a Romanian orthodox service in full swing.
But will the membership decline continue in the long-run?
Within the Catholic church, there is a traditionalist/conservative minority, who are growing basically through having a high birth rate – rejecting contraception and pre-marital sex, they tend to marry young and have lots of kids. Not all of those kids will follow in their parents' footsteps, but the majority of them probably will. Though these conservatives/traditionalists are a minority now, as the decades pass by their numbers will grow and grow, and may eventually grow to the point of no longer being a minority within Catholicism[1], but instead becoming the new majority. At that point, the decline may rebound into a new period of growth.
[1] a minority in wealthy countries like Germany. Leaving Catholicism in places like Africa out of the discussion, because the situation there is very different
Europe has entire countries where pretty much 100% of the population were extremist Catholic zealots with huge families by modern standards just a couple of hundred years ago.
Today those countries have some of the lowest birth rates in Europe, e.g. Spain and Italy[1] pretty much trail the pack. The data suggests that your hypothesis is false.
The above commenter was referencing specific populations, not entire countries. A good comparable example might be Orthodox Jews, which are projected to become the majority of the Jewish population in a short period of time (because of high birth rates, among other reasons.) However I'm not sure if the equivalent Christian groups are as prevalent in Europe.
High birth rates are an important aspect of Orthodox demographics: They are the most reproductive of all Jews, and ultra-Orthodox communities have some of the highest rates in the world, with 6 children per an average household. Non-existent levels of intermarriage (unlike some liberal Jewish denominations, Orthodoxy vehemently opposes the phenomenon) also contribute to their growing share in the world's Jewish population. While American Orthodox are but 10% of all Jews, among children, their share rises immensely: An estimated 61% of Jewish children in New York belong to Orthodox households, 49% to ultra-Orthodox. Similar patterns are observed in Britain and other countries. With present trends sustained, Orthodox Jews are projected to numerically dominate British Jewry by 2031, and American Jewry by 2058.
However, their growth is balanced by large numbers of members leaving their communities and observant lifestyle. Among the 2013 PEW respondents, 17% of those under 30 who were raised Orthodox disaffiliated (in earlier generations, this trend was far more prevalent, and 77% of those over 65 left). It is estimated that over 20% of those raised religious Zionist in Israel disaffiliate, and greater numbers adopt a secularized lifestyle and define themselves as "living on the spectrum (of religion)". Loose observance among young adults is common even when they retain formal affiliation.
I'm not sure the idea that "100% of the population were extremist Catholic zealots" is really true. Rodney Stark [1] argues that people overestimate the religiosity in past decades and centuries. The genuinely devout have never been the majority. The difference is, that even if the average person back then wasn't hugely interested in religion, there was strong social pressure to give the appearance of caring about it. Nowadays, that social pressure is gone, in many countries, and people who are disinterested in religion are free to be honest about their disinterest.
And should big families in Catholic-majority countries 100-200 years ago be attributed to Catholicism? Well, other countries, with completely different religious beliefs (e.g. Muslim-majority countries, India, China) also had big families. Most people back then, whatever their religion was, had big families due to primitive contraceptive technology, high infant mortality, economic value of child labour, less years spent in education, lack of educational and career opportunities for women, etc. Nowadays, there is a correlation between religiosity and family size, but that link is historically novel; for most of human history, the devout and the non-devout had big families alike.
> Most people back then, whatever their religion was, had big families due to primitive contraceptive technology, high infant mortality, economic value of child labour, less years spent in education, lack of educational and career opportunities for women, etc.
It's interesting that religion has remained relevant for many whose lives today match what you describe. This isn't to blame religion for those problems, but it doubtless plays a role as both cause and effect, especially when the state is unable or unwilling to provide an adequate level of life security for the populace.
With the growing educational opportunity of catholic women, many decided to not have large families. Many people believe that this trend will continue. In my experience however it will not. The traditionalist Catholics tend to be more highly educated than their laxer counterparts. The women are educated but have rejected their mothers desire to put work ahead of family.
I think the sudden decline in catholic family size is mainly due to the suddenness of the changes to educational possibility for men and women and the rapid industrialization the world experienced in the past century. However we're at the tail end of that and educated catholicd are no longer making the same choices as their parents. I think this demographic effect will be a short blip in the history of the church.
Speaking from my own experience as a rather traditional catholic (we dont use contraception and dont plan on it which puts us firmly in the crazy category according to most), all our friends and their wives who are also forgoing contraception and are planning for large families are highly educated. We are graduates from top schools. Mothers often have advanced degrees in stem subjects. Others are actually working towards their doctorates. Still want kids and as many as God gives.
This is my experience in the san Francisco bay area and the fact that there are so many traditional catholics here in the knowledge sector despite the bay areas reputation of ireligiosity is telling. Catholics are quite a cosmopolitan bunch as well and we get quite a few international catholics popping through (including many from spain) and i think the trend checks out -- even among the Spanish catbolics, the highly educated ones are more likely to be traditional
I might not get the point you're making but isn't that conflating religious membership in general with going into a monestary too much, the latter usually being bound by celibacy in catholicism?
Projections in pop-culture religious affiliation seem to make the argument of a christian fundamental majority kind of doubtful, even in the long run, there's still plenty of people in the church. Even though I'd guess a large part of those only visit church on christmas and maybe easter. Source:
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/701006/umfrag...
> I might not get the point you're making but isn't that conflating religious membership in general with going into a monestary too much, the latter usually being bound by celibacy in catholicism?
There is a connection: people who have five, six, seven kids, tend to be less upset when one or two of those children chooses a celibate lifestyle (like a monastery), than parents with only one or two children tend to be. In the later case, there can be a great reduction in the odds of having grandchildren (and their number); the reduction in the former case is more modest.
Also, traditionalist Catholics tend to value celibacy, whereas Catholics at the more secular/progressive end tend to view it as a relic of a bygone age. So if Catholicism became majority traditional, the attitude of the "average" Catholic towards celibate religious orders may become much more positive, and their membership might experience a rebound.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. It's definitely plausible that Traditionalist Catholics will become the majority of practicing Catholics, as well as a small but growing minority in Europe.
Culture is not genes. It's not necessarily true that all the children of traditionalist/conservative Catholics will themselves grow up to be traditionalist/conservative Catholics, so even a higher birthrate in that subgroup doesn't guarantee cultural reproduction.
Of course, there is an attrition/defection rate, and I acknowledged it isn't zero – "Not all of those kids will follow in their parents' footsteps, but the majority of them probably will" – a high birth rate group can still grow exponentially even in the presence of a significant degree of attrition.
What is the attrition rate for traditionalist/conservative Catholics? I don't know. I have seen some figures given for traditionalist/conservative groups of other faiths. [1] suggests the attrition rate for ultra-Orthodox Jews is 20-25%; the ultra-Orthodox birth rate is so high, they are still growing exponentially even if 25% of their children leave. (Most of those will move to less religiously demanding forms of Judaism–Modern Orthodoxy, Conservative/Masorti, Reform–rather than leave the Jewish religion altogether.) Similarly, the Amish have a retention rate of around 85% [2].
For the ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Amish, there are certain barriers to leaving (lack of secular education, limited English skills due to using Yiddish or Pennsylvania German as their main language), for which traditionalist Catholics don't have anything similar. But, I think traditionalist parents try hard to pass on their religious outlook to their children; they don't always succeed, but they probably do have more success than many lukewarm religious parents who aren't trying very hard. Some of them run their own schools–mainstream Catholic schools tend to be moderate-to-progressive in outlook, but there are Catholic schools affiliated to groups like Opus Dei and SSPX who are very conservative–which helps imprint their mindset on to their children (it won't stick with all of them, but to sustain their high growth rate, it isn't necessary that it sticks with them all). I also think that conservative religious groups who aren't as socially isolated as the Amish and the ultra-Orthodox Jews will of necessity tend to build up counter-narratives and memorised counter-arguments (whether or not those arguments are sound) to secular progressive modernity, which does give them some degree of "memetic immunity", and some of their children will culturally inherit that "memetic immunity".
In my Dutch town, there are churches that have been converted to hotels, a night club, several bicycle parkings, an award-winning bookshop that promptly went bankrupt, an indoor playground and a slew of restaurants. Others are just torn down. It seems the church has a preference for the last, but many of the expensive ones to maintain (i.e., the ones they want to get rid of first) are monuments and have to be preserved. There is one I can see from my window that has been under renovation for 20-something years; every couple of years there is a 'competition' to find someone with the best plan of what to do with it, and they never find anyone because a) it's a monument so you're very restricted in what modifications you can do with it; and b) it's very expensive to maintain (let alone renovate).
So yeah, whatever money they have remaining in art etc has been dumped into pretty much worthless property over the last decades. A few of the remaining nuns around my corner distribute a door to door church flyer once every few months (blissfully ignoring any 'no advertising' stickers on any mailbox, bless their hearts), and they report on the financial state of the parish in it every once in a while - judging from how excited they sound when they've collected a few 100 at a service that drew a large crowd, it's not all glitter and gold in the church (at the lower levels at least). Oh and another church around the corner (I have literally a dozen within a 1km radius from my house) sells christmas trees from their parking lot every year to keep the heating on - not exactly a sign of opulence either.
In the meantime, Poland is not only building lots of new churches, it even builds new cathedrals adorned in gold[0]. Even the little town I'm from(only 20k population) has 3 churches, and they are all full of gold and it's common knowledge that the local priests are most likely one of the wealthiest people around.
[0]This was only finished in 2004, and is the most disgustingly oppulent building I have ever seen:
You'd think all of this would turn people away from the church, but it doesn't seem that way - each church usually has to hold 4-5 masses every Sunday and for every one the church is full to the brim, with people standing outside because there's no more room in the church itself.
That makes sense. Here in Germany, if you go to a church on easter, christmas, etc. you'd be surprised that most of the people in church are Polish immigrants and their German children.
I don't know why, but Polish people are the most religious community I know here.
Because Poland has a long and complicated history with the Catholic church. For a lot of people, the Catholic Church represented the only oasis of freedom during the communist rule after WW2 and before 1989, and can be credited with accelerating the end of communism in Poland, especially with a Polish pope being elected merely a decade earlier.
Nowadays though I would call it what it is - it's cancer growing unchecked on the Polish state. And I don't mean the religion - I mean the Catholic Church of Poland is constantly meddling in Politics, influencing new policies, Polish bishops are almost celebrities with a huge amount of wealth, the church does not pay taxes, they are one of the largest land owners in Poland....it's a frightening insitution that only seems to be growing in strength, you'd think young people would turn away from it, but with the current right-wing government literally saying that those who don't defend the church are not real Poles it's quite obvious what the party line is - either you are with the church or you are not welcome.
Church is also the community of people coming together, it’s nuns and priests going on missions to countries in need, it’s priests doing Sunday service for people who believe. Have you excluded these from your definition of Church or do you think these are also cancer?
That's religion, not church. Church is an institution. The Catholic church (and apparently particularly the Polish chapter of it) is rotten to its core. That there are good or oblivious people working for it doesn't invalidate that.
There is also the important distinction between a church and The Church. The Church (which I agree is rotten) has very little to do with the day to day running of any given church. We're almost at a point where individual churches are trying to isolate themselves from The Church.
Hah, I'm amazed my comment got flagged. The article is literally about _the German Catholic Church_ and we're talking about _the Polish Catholic Church_, which are both formal organisations. I know Americans have more "churches" than people but in Europe local church communities are normally organised in larger, formal structures.
In the case of the German and Polish Catholic Churches, they're even under direct control of the Vatican, i.e. the Catholic Church proper.
Yes, your local community may be good and if it's an independent church like most religious groups in the US are, it may be completely removed from any greater politics but Catholic churches are very much part of the Catholic Church proper (i.e. if a priest steps out of line, they risk being removed -- which btw is exactly what happened when a Catholic priest in Germany in the 1990s openly preached views that the Church considered too progressive).
A small religious community may hold okay views and be nice and dandy, but organised religion (and especially the Catholic Church) is rotten to the core. And I say that as a baptised & confirmed Catholic in Germany.
That's literally how the English language works. It's defined by popular usage. So one person using a word "wrongly" is indeed "wrong", but if most people use a word "wrongly", then it becomes correct.
The conversation was clearly about organised religion, i.e. specifically the Catholic Church (in Poland or Germany but also in general as a larger entity). It doesn't get much more organised than the Catholic Church.
It was also clear that "church" in this context is used in the sense of "a formal religious organisation", especially because churches as formal organisations are legal entities in these countries.
What the term _originally meant_ is interesting but utterly irrelevant given that the meaning clearly doesn't match the intended meaning and the intended meaning is widely enough understood (and matches the Polish and German equivalent terminology).
That said, linking to a website operated by a conservative Evangelical ministry that preaches Young Earth Creationism and considers Catholic "non-Christians" ... in a conversation that's primarily about the Catholic church ... is "funny" to say the least.
> I don't know why, but Polish people are the most religious community I know here.
Historical reasons basically.
For the most part of the past 200 years, Poles lacked their own independent country (first it was partitioned in 1795 by Russia, Prussia and Austria, then it gained indepenence in 1918 only to be again conquered by Soviet Union in 1945). During that time, Church and faith were one of the primary allowed (or at least tolerated by the occupants) expression of one's identity as a Pole - people were singing partiotic songs during masses, priests were leaders of the nationalist opposition (and frequently murdered for that) etc. Hence, historically Catholic Church means much more to Poles than to most other nations.
It doesn’t turn people away since your characterization of priests and church is inaccurate. I agree there are anomalies and outliers but your description suggests these might be norms. Also, I believe people don’t conflate what their belief is at the core with what a particular priest does.
Does this enthusiasm for building gold-plated cathedrals (and religion in general) also translate to enthusiasm for monastic life? Would be interested to hear about that aspect.
Croatia is also regressing back towards middle ages, with a huge influence from the church on politics and everyday life. There are the Croatia-Vatican agreements whereby the church is guaranteed hundreds of millions in funding from the tax payers and there is religious education (catechism) as a regular school subject in public schools. Many monumental churches are being built, and it is well known many priests drive nice cars and live a comfortable, dare I say lavish, lifestyle.
Here is one example in Knin, one of the poorest towns in the country.
> Situated at the site of an old bolt and screw factory, 3 million euros has been invested to construct the Gospe Velikog Hrvatskog Krsnog Zavjeta (Our Lady of the Great Croatian Baptismal Vow) Church in Knin (Šibenik-Knin County). The 1,024 square-metre Church will seat over 700 people when finished, making it Croatia’s largest Church.
Don't worry. Too much opulence and political meddling will see some rando show up and nail a list of "suggestions" to the door of the place. Then the real fun begins.
Do churches have so much money? Young churches are frequently short on money (which they need primarily to rent a building and to hire a preacher). Older churches have lots of buildings, but are rarely swimming in cash these days.
Catholic religious priests (religious here means they are part of an order, like monks) cant be paid a salary. They have to rely on alms and their orders money since theyve taken personal vows of poverty
Churches in America are funded by the people that attend them. I think churches in Europe actually receive tax money, which changes the equation pretty significantly.
Churches in Europe are funded by the people that attend them. At least Dutch churches are, but I think this is true in most European countries. A long time ago, they were indeed funded by tax, at least some churches in some countries, but that's changed with a better understanding of the separation of church and state.
Speaking from experience in the Philadelphia region, the legacy of old buildings is something of a burden.
The area I'm in now was built up before cars were commonplace - implication being churches built closely enough to be within walking distance. Flash forward a century, and the situation is a combination of fewer people attending churches and more ability for those that do to travel. There are also more competing interests for people's time, so there's less ability and desire for parishioners to engage in volunteer activities at churches. Attending church on Sunday morning might mean missing a little league game and attending a work day at the parish might mean missing a school event or similar. (With fewer activities centered around church than before, there's more opportunity for schedule contention that the churches often lose.)
What this means for an individual parish is that there are fewer resources available for maintaining an aging and likely historic building. There are fewer people committing money to the church and fewer people able to volunteer work at the church.
The flip side of this is that there are also fewer practical reasons to maintain an old church. Shutting down a church with 50 people in weekly attendance is easier than shutting down a church with 300 people in attendance. The trouble with this line of reasoning is that it papers over some of the more sentimental reasons for keeping a parish running. Those 50 remaining folks are also the people most likely to have a strong connection to the parish... or they'd have already left. So individual parishes can have more inertia to stay open than you might expect.
Moving up to the diocese level, a parish shutting down can transfer many of the funding/transport issues from the parish to the diocese. The diocese, which may have problems of its own, now has additional burdens to take on as it both loses revenue (from parish remittances) and gains expenses. This implies a potentially strong incentive for a diocese to sell off old properties.
The trouble with a sale is the large number of stakeholders that might be opposed to such a sale. Never underestimate the difficulties that can be thrown up by 'interested parties'. Shutting down a parish can easily involve current and former parishoners, the diocese level, local planning/zoning boards, historical building regulations... the list goes on and on. (And you still have to find a developer with the intent, resources, and ability to take on the property and turn it into something the community wants.)
The reason I go down this path is mainly to illustrate that the notion of churches as pools of free resources is somewhat dubious at best. Whatever resources are there are not only special purpose to begin with, but also can sequestered behind history, regulation, and interests that are difficult to overcome.
Turn them into bed-and-breakfast inns or hotels. Hire some Indians to help (there's a caste that specializes in maintaining hotels/inns/etc. and are very good at it) if necessary. Get the monastery off the public dole if possible.
I would love to see old monasteries turned into various kinds of retreats. The idea of spending a week or a month with no electronics, all my meals prepared, and quiet time to just read, study and think sounds fantastic.
I once visited as a tourist the monastery at Montserrat near Barcelona. I was quite looking forward to rustic home-made bread, cheese, and wine, but unfortunately they'd outsourced the cafe to a secular organization.
Don't retreats like that already exist. Why does it have to be an old monastery. And anyway I thought the whole point of a monastery was that everybody helped out with the cooking, gardening, chores etc. not that you had servants waiting on you.
> The idea of spending a week or a month with no electronics, all my meals prepared, and quiet time to just read, study and think sounds fantastic.
If you just want a hostel / retreat, many monasteries already provide that service through their guest-houses.
I think it would be way more interesting and useful to be able to actually be part of the community save for the religious part: taking part in the preparation and work, and be able to engage in one's secular activity (study, projects, reading, …) during the periods where monks engage in religious activities. Of course the issue with that is there is little incentive for churches to subsidise such inviduals (unlike even the lay brothers of old).
That's... not how a monastery works. If you'd like to experience it, go to a Russian Orthodox monastery and ask to stay for a few days. You'll be asked to do chores to help keep the monastery running, spend several hours of each day listening to incredible choral music, and come away feeling like you just spent time in a different world.
> Religious orders in Germany are disappearing because so few people want to dedicate their entire lives to God anymore
Is there anything weird about this? Entire life is a pretty hefty price to pay, what needs to be changed is religion itself, if it wants to find more new believers to keep itself from disappearing.
I honestly think the acceptance of homosexuality in the mainstream is having a huge influence. A hundred years ago when society would tell you that what you want to do is wrong - and you might even believe it yourself - then choosing a life as a priest or monk was a serious alternative. - You would have a way to paradise and nobody would question you not marrying.
It is of course complete conjecture, although more and more info is coming out on the "homosexual lobby" in the Vatican.
Absolutely. And I consider it a general principle, not limited to homosexuality at all: in preindividualistic times (pretty much coincides with preindustrial), if you were in any way unfit for the path laid out for you by birth, the monastery might be an option. Simple rules and low expectations (industrial armies often fill a similar role during peacetime). Getting into good terms with your imaginary friend would be mostly a rationalisation/excuse for bailing out.
Is there any possible modern approach to a traditional catholic monastery? I think, they are dying out, because of their rigid traditions which rarely make sense in our modern world anymore. The idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to introspection and philosophy, and serving the monastery with its inhabitants, no matter what religion or philosophy. Why are they having so much trouble to keep up with changes? They just accept the changes without adapting? Why?
If you go back to the earliest monasteries, it would be the Pythagoreans of southern Italy c.525BC. They conducted the first attested hypothesis-driven scientific experiments -- while pursuing a simple, spiritual and communal lifestyle. Josephus and Philo of Alexandria described the Essenes and Therapeuts as Pythagorean -- and those monastic groups are largely where Christian monasticism emerged from.
That's an interesting idea. Definitely worth thinking about. An R&D monastery, where the inhabitants support each other by rotating duties and service for day-to-day life, with dedication to science, engineering and philosophy. Sounds great to me.
They would be somewhat different to a modern university. In the monastery, you don't get paid, you just get free accommodation and food (and presumably electricity, computer and Internet access, in the tech version). The monastery would perhaps also attempt to be self-sufficient as far as possible, by making its own food and electricity, perhaps taking in materials for recycling.
They just accept the changes without adapting? Why?
From a religious point of view, 'adapting' the core idea of what you believe to be Gods will might be seen as far worse than just quietly dying out with dignity.
> I think, they are dying out, because of their rigid traditions which rarely make sense in our modern world anymore.
Living a monastic life has never been appealing to the broad population. But to say that an ascetic life devoted to introspection doesn't 'make sense' is misguided.
The modern world in predominately a sedentary lifestyle spent between a cube and a couch, interspersed with frenzies of gluttony, consumption and mindless distraction to stave off feeling of emptiness.
> predominately a sedentary lifestyle spent between a cube and a couch, interspersed with frenzies of gluttony, consumption and mindless distraction to stave off feeling of emptiness.
One of the core tasks of the contemplative lifestyle (which can certainly be practiced outside of monasteries) is to be awakened from all of the things we think we need and desire. These are usually the things that the (societally constructed) ego needs to feel secure and comfortable - hence so many contemplative traditions stress the importance of "dying to yourself". This is not 'negative' or even necessarily introverted - in fact, dealing with the insecurities that you have inherited from the expectations of the society around you can make you comfortable both alone and with people. There is no need to impress anyone; no need to feel insecure or alone; you're at peace with yourself and the world.
The contemplative tradition has a lot to teach our world - no manner of scientific or technological progress is going to help us before we're comfortable with being ourselves.
You misunderstood. It's not the idea of living in introspection that isn't making sense anymore. It's the traditions that I meant, the rigid traditions of serving god and faith inside a monastery. Those aren't making sense to the most people today. Because the have failed to adapt to a modern understanding of how the world/anything works.
> The idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to introspection and philosophy, and serving the monastery with its inhabitants, no matter what religion or philosophy. Why are they having so much trouble to keep up with changes?
Because the core idea is dumb, the change is that more people with more access to knowledge about the world realize that, and monasteries are adapting by dying out.
Monasteries are basically communes. Great for people that have nothing, but more and more people actually have something even if it's "just" a smartphone.
Our western societies fundamentally value extroversion, exchanging with the world and participate in the group. A monastry is the opposite.
It worked when praying for the world was largely accepted as having some effect. Nowadays thoughts and prayers doesn’t cut it for the general population.
In a way high level research institutes could be seen as the new monastries, with people shutting down in buildings everyday, searching for new truths that could benefit mankind.
> Our western societies fundamentally value extroversion, exchanging with the world and participate in the group. A monastry is the opposite.
Monasteries absolutely require participation in the group. Monks are not hermits, much of their activity is working for the monastery and interacting with other monks.
But not interacting with people outside the monastery. Monks are sort of collectively introverted. Indeed, even within the monastery, interaction is often limited to the essential - consider rule of silence adhered to by some orders.
hrktb is quite right about the general principle of monasticism. Here's the start of the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on it [1]:
"Monasticism or monachism, literally the act of "dwelling alone" (Greek monos, monazein, monachos), has come to denote the mode of life pertaining to persons living in seclusion from the world, under religious vows and subject to a fixed rule, as monks, friars, nuns, or in general as religious. The basic idea of monasticism in all its varieties is seclusion or withdrawal from the world or society."
EDIT although in the entry on "monk" [2] there is considerably less certainty about the origin of the name and idea. Imagine your primary reference work being internally inconsistent like that! Can't imagine where these bible-bashers got that idea.
I think you're missing the point of why monasteries exist. The goal of a monastery is to provide a place where those who want to retreat from the world to spend their life praying; it's not for everyone. From my view point as a Catholic, the decline of monasteries is more linked to the decline of religion/religious practice than a matter of adaptation to the modern time: there's just less people who could be interested in such a life.
Why address such a comment to someone who has made clear they believe in the existence of God? There is no reason to provoke peoples' religious beliefs.
Can I try to convert you? Great! Thanks for your implied consent. Here goes:
The "One" god of Christianity comes more from Neoplatonism than Judaism. The Neoplatonic Oneness, which was washed out in various times in Christian history, is fully commensurable with contemporary science. Oneness can be experienced as the common mystical experience of "we are all one, man!" But for Neoplatonists, it only made sense that the ineffable and impossible to fully understand "One" was the origin of the universe and the basis of divinity.
This notion of Oneness is different from typical conceptions of the one god as a person. It is not. To understand true, original Christianity, one must reject the idea of personhood -- god isn't a person (and actually, neither are we--it's just a useful illusion)
In a nutshell: in the beginning of time, there was the Oneness and the emanation from the Oneness, which was known as the Logos. It makes sense here to think big bang: the whole universe in a single point. But from there, the emanations, the logos built everything else. The emanations can return to the Oneness through the creation of new wholes and harmonies (think molecules, stars and solar systems -- onenesses made of parts). This wholeness/harmony is the source of divine goodness. Here's the Christian part: when a person believes in the Logos they have eternal life because they recognize that their life is part of the eternal Logos.
That's what Christianity was to early church fathers like Origen or Clement. I forgot to mention -- Jesus was described as the incarnation of the logos.
Fun fact: Logos is equivalent to "Dao" in Daoism.
So, How'd I do? Are you more open now to the mysteries of Christianity?
"... individual soul (called Atman) is not different from Ultimate Reality (called Brahman). He also taught that there is only one essential principle called Brahman and everything else is a kind of expression of that one Brahman..... "
As an atheist, I really liked your comment, and yes, I am more open to what you wrote, but... I am not one bit more open towards the Religion, because that is as far removed from what you wrote here as it is possible, I think.
Nice! Success. I too am an atheist of person gods. This ineffable oneness of the universe, though... It's got me intrigued. It's not a person. It's like, I'd imagine that most alien civilisations would have at some point a spiritual belief system aligned to it. And, I'd argue that it hits at the core of Christianity -- and holds some hope for its future. Like, wouldn't it be nice if Christianity could somehow evolve?
It's not hard, either. They just have to reject the idea that the Bible was written by God, which is farcical on the face of it. Then religion is about allegory, cultural traditions and having something to do with your kids on Sunday morning.
I'm sure you're also a fan of Baruch Spinoza then - he was expelled from his Jewish community for having very similar thoughts about God, however he never converted to Christianity. His books were also put on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Catholic Church.
There is something of a bait-and-switch when you segue from neoplatonic "oneness" to Christianity. The concept of "oneness" is vague enough that it cannot be in opposition to science, since it doesn't describe anything consequential or observable. It is basically a feel-good phrase, which is of course perfectly fine.
But Christianity implies certain ideas which are absolutely consequential, primarily that a certain historical person was the "Son of God" and that he literally rose from the dead. The idea that a single specific person could be God or the Son of God (as opposed to everybody else) is in direct opposition to any reasonable idea of God as "oneness".
Right. "Oneness" does feel good, doesn't it? It's not unmeaningful, either. It is the "perennial philosophy".
But you are right, there is a bait-and-switch. I don't claim to describe the beliefs of current Christians, but ancient Christians, often of the near-heretical type (Origen was never sainted for a reason). Just keep in mind that there is no source of truth in Christianity. That's what all the wars were about! And no one was "right."
Early church fathers described Jesus as the Incarnation of the Logos ("the word made flesh", in highly misleading English translations).
And, the logos worldview meant that everything was an emanation of the oneness. So the logos/jesus lives in all of us.
"Son of God"=emanation of the One. See that? That is what son of God originally meant! See Philo of Alexandria for his judaeo-greco depiction of the logos as son of God in 10BC.
Rising from the dead... born of a virgin... Well, those are classic tropes in mystery religions. Fine for allegorical purposes.
Thanks! I wish someone could put it all together in a book. It is very much a mystery. The best scholars can provide the info, but not the interpretation.
Wouter Hanugraff (read "western esoterism, a guide for the perplexed")
Shwep.net
Pythagorean Sourcebook
Oration on the dignity of man
Iamblicus
Origen
Plotinus
Philo of Alexandria
Many more. It is so fulfilling to read these old texts!
Not bad, but the Alexandrian tradition was not the only way to interpret Christianity. The idea that Christianity's understanding of God's oneness was merely borrowed from Neoplatonism is an old cliche, but it leaves too much out. Without going into this too much, I would say that the early Christian thinkers accepted the Platonic and Neoplatonic problem of trying to answer how the one related to the many, or how it became many, but their aswers were often their own and quite creative. E.g. Athanasius's distinction beween essence and will.
Right, definitely not claiming this is the only way to interpret christianity. But, the design constraints are: how to interpret christianity in a manner that is commensurable with modern science and ancient traditions?
Hence...
Note that there is no need to find the original interpretation (impossible), only an early, valid, and widespread interpretation. And whatever it is, it should provide spiritual meaning AND not conflict with empirical reality.
I would not treat Athanasius kindly, considering his role in the Arian heresy. But I'll check out his work.
Also, I don't mean to claim that Christianity "merely borrowed". Christian thought had a huge influence on Neoplatonism (Origen and Plotinus were schoolmates). I'm only saying that interpreting Christianity without Platonism is really missing out. (Platonism was actively removed from later Christianity, as it was seen as pagan.)
I agree with your assessment that people are missing out when they don't consider the Neoplatonic influence on Christianity, especially when stating it this way is the only way of getting people to look at it from a different perspective.
"Eastern Christian philosophy," or simply "Eastern Theology" really came into its own, and while it is absolutely valid to study Church writers in contrast and relationship to Neoplatonic philosophy, they developed their own tradition. Thus, parsing the logos tradition as if Origen, the Cappadocians, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, etc., were "philosophers" in their own right is actually quite a fruitful endeavor.
Yes! I came into all this from Pythagoreanism, which had such an impact on Plato. It was a scientific religion, essentially, with no fixed doctrine. And it played a huge role in Neoplatonism, early Christianity and the renaissance. Pythagoras, the same guy we all learn about in middle school!
You might like shwep.net
I am a subscriber. He is a really good historian -- and interviews even better ones.
Also the book "Western Esoterism: a guide for the Perplexed".
Because this whole Oneness concept is right at the thumping heart of "the esoteric". There are real mysteries there, like you wouldn't believe. And, humanistic magic, I'm telling you!
This Oneness is what the followers of Advaita(Non-dualism) call as Brahman or the Buddhists call as Nirvana(Nothingness). I have seen arguments that Plato was also influenced by Eastern philosophy, but I don't know much about it.
I was interested in Advaita for a long time, and used to read Upanishads which expound about it. but recently I have come across a different school of thought, which calls this Oneness/Brahman/Nirvana as Self/I. Ramana Maharishi who died 70 years back was a recent proponent of it. but I have seen references to it from different cultures too, like the hebrew word YHWH meaning Self, and the Persian word for God "Khuda" meaning Self in Old Persian.
I recently came across Bernadette Roberts, who is a Catholic Nun, who seems to have not heard of the concept of Self from Advaita/Hinduism, but have reached to similar opinions about Self from her own contemplation/Prayers in her monastery. and in this video she explains it from her perspective as a Christian Mystic. She also has some books, which I haven't read.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb5496uQ3lk
You are correct barring non-monotheism pendantry but there are multiple purposes including what was originally intended.
Another purpose was to dump awkward heirs and spares in a primogeniture inheritance - certainly not an offically endorsed one - akin to a butcher's knife being meant for livestock and their products.
I suspect it is the regimentation which is what truly killed them when combined with less rigid constraints on thought. There is still a substansial minority who would happily dedicate themselves to introspection and contemplation but they would prefer a space to follow their own guideance. Why bother with a life of thinking if the conclusions are already foregone?
The rigid scheduling is an artifact of agrarianism in a quad-seasoned climate and the calender as it becomes essential to have the time aligned. Likewise in the past not being a farmer itself was essentially a luxury - prison without slavery was only affordable if you had a hostage whose ransom was worth far more.
While before they may have been a refugee of sorts for those to devote themselves to study while being socially acceptable and self-supporting.
The time for reforms was a century or more ago during industrialization - if they would want survival over purity having known the peril coming. Now I suspect the options are either accept their demise as inevitable but take all latecomers, half-hearted reforms which likely will fail to stop the death spiral or a "Neomonastic" which fundamentally be an imitation of the past by the present out of its context or contains a glimmer of the spirit - such as a collective living of Catholics who may or may not have children, which pools funds to maintain a working class standard of lifestyle but may make more as a result of being composed of mainly college educated professionals such as doctors.
Theoretically there may be a Neomonastic sort of movement which emerges on its own in another sphere but if they didn't emerge on their own already why not?
"Why bother with a life of thinking if the conclusions are already foregone?" is a quite peculiar thing to say considering the state of affairs of today's world where there is literally very little left of chance anymore and you are not in control of your own life, ever increasingly with every passing day as the global ruling class cinches down on humanity more an more through technology, that makes everything more or less a foregone conclusion.
What you may want to consider is the reason and fact that why, as the western culture has been infested with the religions and values and spiritual practices of mostly the far east while their take-over is celebrated and cheered on, their domestic equivalents in the monasteries and churches has been utterly vanquished and destroyed and polluted and salted to the point that people like you don't even have a rudimentary understanding for them.
Today throngs of gullible women, predatory men, and xenophilic people in general pursue various forms of Hindu spiritual practices called Yoga, while Christian and even other pagan spiritual practices are denigrated and polluted and destroyed as the cultural genocide washes over the western world in an odd kind of suicidal mania.
There is no reason why Monasteries could not have been elevated to a cult status like Shaolin Monks, or various Yogis, were it not for the relentless communist subversion tactics that both destroyed and infested the western world with relentless cultural pathogens to destroy the native cultures and elevate cultures that groom people to allegiance with their interests.
So much has already been lost by various means to the point that people do not even have any sense whatsoever for the magnitude ... like having no idea just what was lost when the library of Alexandria was burned, even if we have a deep sense that literally centuries worth of knowledge and technologies that probably had to be reinvented decades if not centuries later were lost. In many ways, so humanity is losing massive amounts of knowledge and skill and spirituality through the abdication and abandonment of one's own culture, for a fraudulent propaganda tool farce version of another. It's sad actually, what is will be lost as this craze of communist washes over the western world that has been driving humanity forward for around 3,000+ years ... and doing so with nothing even remotely similar to a suitable replacement.
I know that may not make sense to you, but the children of the heirs of what will be left of the western world will have to suffer for it regardless.
First off "already determined" wasn't about predestination or the future but conclusions for thinking as the exercise.
There is so much wrong with that post it isn't funny - putting aside that it looks like the rant of an archtypical Neal Stevenson character on the fence who gets seduced into the service of a regressive ideology doomed to failure. There is even the same failure to accept change and anxiety over growing old in a different world.
Culture is a Ship of Theseus, period. Even the staunchist traditionalists fail at it fundamentally from the outset because they either seek to keep stagnant what were reforms in the first place or they seek to preserve that which didn't exist even back then. Nothing makes it through the Millenia untouched. A culture which never changes is best known as a dead one.
Do you lament and blame Christianity for destroying paganism? Consider pants barbaric? Consider those from temperate climates too stupid to be civilized? What you either consider that list batshit insane or recognizd the references? Congratulations you have already destroyed a great culture spanning thousands of years already. Except we know these details. Traditions dying out is in no way comparable to losses of archives.
The description of modern European languages cultures and clothings even with the tech difference obscured would beconsidered vastly implauisble by Romans. The languages would be like a bad fanfic.
Also the communists undermining monks with eastern mysticism before Karl Marx was even born! This ridicule is being charitable for it forgets the Protestant reformation, a reaction to corruption within the Catholic church, and their role in destruction along with cynical nobles looking to seize monk maintained properties.
Ones once entrusted to them because the godly celebate were assumed most trustworthy akin to the role of Court Eunuchs among hereditary dynasties but with the emasculation kept symbolic with tonsures. There is a reason for that. While there may are differences they are based on the same.
That Western Civilization was considered a separate entity is a flaw. The concept at its best was a post-hoc explanation for rise to colonial dominance that accidentally paints things in in and out groups. At worst it was deliberate.
Marx himself demonstrated some nonsensical ideas of the day about "Asiatic Tyranny as being a more controlled society centered around artifical control of irrigation water instead of force of arms". Showing that the exoticism is continuing an old tradition of consciously or unconsciously using the exotic as a mirror to project what ifs onto.
It is like Neopaganism in a way - historians are interested in how they were but most practitioners make it fit to their world. You don't see any
They were always interconnected beyond any tidy sections or categories on maps. The people of the past sure as fuck didn't consider themselves to have a special kinship over those further abroad - hell pre-nationalism they were likely top enemies.
It also explains why the "center of Western Civilization" is all over the place with no remotely consistent metric as it is a sharpshooter's fallacy.
We can try turning old monasteries into concents à la Neal Stephenson's Anathem. People can go for a year in a unarian math to just study. Maybe a four consecutive years in such a math get equivalent recognition to a university degree. Whether it is the traditional monastic discipline or the Cartasian discipline, the required basic infrastructure is probably similar. Jeejahs stay outside, of course.
Particularly determined professors can populate a decennarian, maybe even a centenarian. Also, isn't there only about 9 years before our scheduled visit by the Icosahedron?
This phrase "Religious orders in Germany are disappearing because so few people want to dedicate their entire lives to God anymore." is not accurate at all. We have a lot of people wanting to dedicate their entire lives to God, but eventually not for the Catholic Church. It's 2019, 6% of the German population is Muslim, Spiegel!
The village I live in has a "Kloster", with nuns making up about 15% of our population. The article is accurate in that the number of practicing nuns is sinking and certainly not sustainable.
Here they have diversified in a number of directions. There is a school, an old folks home, and a hotel. The picturesque location, combined with the historic buildings makes all these quite competitive, and successful. I'd go so far as to say the church here is thriving despite the declining popularity of dedicating your life to it.
Keep in mind that in Germany these "church operated" services are heavily subsidised by the German state via regular taxes (not the "church tax" registered church members pay directly to their church via the tax office). In some cases this can be as much as 100% of the operating costs and salaries (although the business is operated in accordance with church labor laws rather than secular laws, allowing e.g. certain forms of discrimination and removing certain protections).
Maintaining churches, monasteries and church operated services is almost never about finances.
- School: Germany mostly has public schools. If you have operated a private school for a few years, you can apply for subsidy. You will receive roughly the amount per pupil that would otherwise be needed to fund the pupil's place at a public school. So this is more or less a zero-sum game for the state. All schools have to obey public school regulations (e.g., on curriculum and exams) regardless who operates them.
- Elderly home: there is no direct subsidy by the state. Germany has established a mandatory insurance ("Pflegeversicherung", nursing care insurance). This insurance will pay for nursing care, regardless who operates the elderly home.
- Hotel: no subsidy by the state at all.
Summarized, there exists no special deal by the state for church operated services, with respect to funding/subsidy.
This is correct, but also needs to be put into context. You only pay church tax if you are member of one of the churches eligible to collect taxes via the German state tax system. Non-Members don't pay church taxes. So there is again no subsidy involved (except that churces save administration costs because they can use the public tax collection system for free).
Hospitals and elderly homes are NOT primarily financed by the insurance of their patients. Public hospitals are funded by the government. Church operated hospitals are funded by the government AND the church, with churches often paying the smaller share. Additionally churches themselves as public organisations receive public subsidies when providing public services, so even the money they do pay into operating these services partially comes from the state.
But in some cases the state literally subsidises the clergy directly:
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/spardebatte-staat... (€ 442 million paid for clergy wages based on a contract from 1803 that was meant to reimburse the Catholic church for lands that were claimed by the state to prop up the aristocracy -- note that this contract with no expiration date was between the Catholic Church and the German Empire, not modern Germany)
Also, "Germany mostly has public schools" -- yes, but child care is often operated by churches while being mostly funded publicly. Note that "Kindergärten" are often considered part of the school system (but definitions for pre-primary education are hazy so I admit I should have clarified).
The point is that the "special deal" church operated services get compared to regular public services is that they get to apply church law, which is uniquely privileged to override common labor protection and anti-discrimination laws. As a "user" they appear almost indistinguishable from non-church operated public services.
Great article, but I think it misses one key aspect of why monasteries are dying out: the lack of lively church communities which used to encourage dedicated people to join the monastic life. Monasteries don't exist in a vacuum, they have an intricate interdependency with normal parishes of families and, more generally, people "in the world." It should not really be the responsibility of monastics to do public relations to get people to choose this kind of life. A good example is the abbot from the article, he grew up a parish, was an altar server, etc., that made it possible for him to even conceive of this kind of life style--something that is just too big of a chasm for most non-church people nowadays.
Wasn't it the case that a lot of second sons became monks because they weren't going to inherit the family title/land/business/farm, and they had to find some way to survive? For the upper classes, monasteries were replaced by militaries, when second sons could go off and have adventures, and perhaps win a fortune of their own. For everyone else, the advent of wage economies did the job.
The impression that I always got was that the church, in some role or another, was it's own high quality occupation.
It was a good option that provided education, stability, potentially a source of power, and was a prestigious path to go.
I think in modern times we sometimes see the church as this side organization, but in the past it was its own industry of sorts and central to life, economics, education, prestige, potentially power.
There were and are many reasons why people became monastics. But to think that the only reasons were inheritance and property laws shows that someone only knows about monasticism from the perspective of modern medieval histories, which tend to present it this way. Not to deny that these reasons existed and made many consider monastic life as an option, but it can't be the whole story.
Think about it, monastic life really was and is monastic. It included many hours of prayers and other contemplative practices (and other minor inconveniences like celibacy). Yes, there was great variance in different orders, but many people (if not most) chose this life because they were true believers. The only way to prepare them for this life was that the church as a whole was universally present so that monasticism became just one option between many different ones within the church, albeit a quite intense one.
I agree that many people chose to become monks "because they were true believers", but I know two facts that show that religious belief was not the only factor for living in a monastery.
First, monks were not the only men to live and work in monasteries. There were many "sub-ranks" (for instance "frère convers" in French, someone that shared most of their life without taking the religious vow) as well as external workers (for centuries, many monasteries had vast domains where monks ruled over peasants, at various degrees).
Then, becoming a monk was a social ascension for many. This was still true a few decades ago. My peasant grand-mother had ten children over twenty years, and the only ones who did not stop their studies early, were the three boys who wanted to become priests. The will to study and to change their way of life was a strong incentive. Times changed, and they all found other ways.
And third and fourth sons too. (And later daughters joined convents). But smaller families mean there are no fourth, third and even second sons (or daughters).
Europe, and especially the east and north, is nearly cured from religion. Cold air and higher education keep people level-headed and reduce the need to invent comforting fantasies to deal with reality.
And when people in Germany say they are ”religious“ by German standards, they are not at all actually religious, e.g. by US or Saudi Arabia or Israel standards. It’s merely a cultural residue they were born into. That actually existed way before Abrahamic religions spread to Germany. They only ever enter a church for a birth (sometimes), marriage (often) or death (usually).
East Germany is pretty much 100% free of religion. And Berlin is the least religious place in Europe. (Unless you count veganism. ;)
We prefer to concern us with things, that are actually observably real and hence useful.
I read that Religion got pretty hammered by WWI and WII in Europe. Especially the state religions all in support during WWI. Soldiers came back unwilling to submit to the church that had told them the war was their sacred duty. Because machine guns and artillery don't care about your god.
All over the Netherlands and Germany, and Austria, old churches are being converted into homeless shelters and co-working spaces .. and clubs.
I think this should be applied to the cloisters, too. I look at some of these 800 year old buildings and marvel at what they could provide, in terms of startup-hub scene.
For all those in this thread talking about monasteries without having ever been in one, please try the experience. If there's an Orthodox monastery near you, try seeing if you can stay for a few days. They generally aren't rich by any stretch of the imagination, but even staying for a few days and following the lifestyle will give you insight into why the monastic life is a valuable and valid choice in our increasingly chaotic and bombastic society.
The peace you feel when in one and the sinking feeling going back into "the world" are both experiences everyone should have.
As someone who spent a decade in depression and near the edge of suicide, there are two things I ask people to try before killing themselves.
1) A silent retreat
2) An Ayahuasca ceremony
Those two things helped more than years of therapy and anti-depressants.
A pretty intense exercise regimen also helped me out a lot, but its hard to get someone to pick that over death when they are close to the edge so I don't include it.
I can understand silent retreat, could you please elaborate on Ayahuasca? I want to do it, but I am also worried a bit about the experience. Also, I am not a physically strong person, not sure if that should be a factor to consider.
Physically strength is not required at all. But you do vomit usually, so if you have some sort of intense fear of that it could be an issue.
I don't believe there is anything mystical benefit to Ayahuasca, although the psychedelic element can definitely fuel your creativity if you want it to.
But certain drugs appear to have long-lasting effects on mental states, even if they aren't administered daily. Ketamine is another drug that shows promise in this area. There needs to be real studies around this, but in my experience the 2 day session is highly effective for at least a year afterward.
Actually it seems to be a growing industry: monasteries are opening up their rooms to paying guests.
We stayed in one in Italy recently, south of Napoli. It was like a very, very quiet hotel with a peaceful garden and a resident cat. I'd have happily stayed longer. I was also in one last year in Belgium, it was part of a larger church establishment but the location was so central it was like staying in a nice hotel. Again - quiet. Both were without luxuries of a 4 star hotel but very well appointed and with excellent breakfasts, and locations.
>It was like a very, very quiet hotel with a peaceful garden and a resident cat.
The cat is a great selling point. They should make sure to point that out on their webpage; it'd be a bonus point for me.
I stayed at an AirBnB residence in Germany when I traveled there, and they had a bunch of cats. Getting to talk to a local, and have cats around, was a nice experience.
>Both were without luxuries of a 4 star hotel but very well appointed and with excellent breakfasts, and locations.
4-star hotels don't have cats, so that's a negative when comparing them to places like this.
You seem to have missed an important word in the grand poster's story: monasteries are opening up their rooms to paying guests. Sanctus Benedictus never set any rule about renting rooms and selling breakfasts.
By the way, monasteries existed long before the Benedict order, and other orders existed in parallel. Some monasteries did not welcome visitors, especially women and couples.
You're making this seem misogynistic, but indeed, typically female monasteries were not (and are still not) open to men.
You're not wrong I was incomplete in my previous statement. Monasteries would often try to render assistance to the exceptionally needy, but have historically operated as regular inns only for those who could stay within the convent walls. This was basically restricted by sex. Even today, if you're going to do a retreat at a monastery, couples typically would have to stay away from the cloister (many monasteries - but not all - offering retreats typically have a separate house for these individuals, a short distance from the main cloister). Only single men would be permitted into a male monastery (behind the cloister for the night) and single women to a female one.
Re the paying stuff. As far as I'm aware (and I've researched a few monasteries in my area and know several monks), the payment is a suggested donation, not a requirement. Of course, that's my own anecdata. I would be interested in knowing if there is a monastery charging for the actual stay, because typically they're not supposed to.
I live in a German population center with many many mosques and it affects me in exactly zero ways. I know _no one_ who regularly visits a mosque, let alone trying to convince others to join.
We have religious freedom in our constitution. Aside from some stupidly minor exceptions, Germans aren't somehow converting to Islam. They are leaving religion in general.
Do you know how little boys, from age 3, are disciplined even in moderate mosques (specifically, Palestinian) in Germany? That was enough reason for me.
Mosques are analogous to churches, not monasteries. Even as a Muslim, I'm not sure what the Islamic equivalent for a monastery is, since monasticism it is discouraged in Islam.
Recently I was in India and certain circumstances connected me with a facility for the elderly run by an order of Catholic Nuns. I visited them quite a few times and while inside those closed gates there was this sense of reverence, peace, and shall I say holiness in many ways truly tangible. And when they bid me goodbye at the main gates, even as we stood there chatting a little while, the town or village people walking by outside the gates would smile and one of the sisters would call out to ask something about them. These sisters were involved with this outside world, and knew them and their needs so intimately! Yes, there is so much to understand about these areas of life us software engineering types seldom think about, it seems.
more than that, I'd say. The young auto-rikshaw man on my way to the bus station from those gates was telling me about his kidney disease and how those sisters helped raise the substantial money for a transplant ...
Good news. Those things are a really bad thing. People isolated by gender. By rules defined 1-2000 years ago and while they are taking it serious, priests don't.
Yes don't forget the horrible stories of nuns sexually raped by priests! Srsly
Why do you think it is a good thing to isolate yourself from modern society and think you can help while not even getting modern society anymore?!
"19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other."
mainly that the 'problems of humanity' (e.g. ethics, morality) dealt with in christianity are period-nonspecific and have little to nothing to do with the current level of technological innovation or form of economy/government, and therefore imply that they 'get' current society.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 216 ms ] threadWas the contradiction between these two sentences an actually intended stylistic device ("retreat from technology" vs. "proper online marketing")?
I'm guessing they would have no choice but to sell off property and land to pay their clergy?
In the UK lots of churches have either been converted to housing or commercial venues. It's really weird going to a kid's play center in an impressive old church but it happens:
https://twitter.com/RainbowFunTqy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_Brew_Works
Within the Catholic church, there is a traditionalist/conservative minority, who are growing basically through having a high birth rate – rejecting contraception and pre-marital sex, they tend to marry young and have lots of kids. Not all of those kids will follow in their parents' footsteps, but the majority of them probably will. Though these conservatives/traditionalists are a minority now, as the decades pass by their numbers will grow and grow, and may eventually grow to the point of no longer being a minority within Catholicism[1], but instead becoming the new majority. At that point, the decline may rebound into a new period of growth.
[1] a minority in wealthy countries like Germany. Leaving Catholicism in places like Africa out of the discussion, because the situation there is very different
Today those countries have some of the lowest birth rates in Europe, e.g. Spain and Italy[1] pretty much trail the pack. The data suggests that your hypothesis is false.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_European_U...
High birth rates are an important aspect of Orthodox demographics: They are the most reproductive of all Jews, and ultra-Orthodox communities have some of the highest rates in the world, with 6 children per an average household. Non-existent levels of intermarriage (unlike some liberal Jewish denominations, Orthodoxy vehemently opposes the phenomenon) also contribute to their growing share in the world's Jewish population. While American Orthodox are but 10% of all Jews, among children, their share rises immensely: An estimated 61% of Jewish children in New York belong to Orthodox households, 49% to ultra-Orthodox. Similar patterns are observed in Britain and other countries. With present trends sustained, Orthodox Jews are projected to numerically dominate British Jewry by 2031, and American Jewry by 2058.
However, their growth is balanced by large numbers of members leaving their communities and observant lifestyle. Among the 2013 PEW respondents, 17% of those under 30 who were raised Orthodox disaffiliated (in earlier generations, this trend was far more prevalent, and 77% of those over 65 left). It is estimated that over 20% of those raised religious Zionist in Israel disaffiliate, and greater numbers adopt a secularized lifestyle and define themselves as "living on the spectrum (of religion)". Loose observance among young adults is common even when they retain formal affiliation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Judaism#Demographics
And should big families in Catholic-majority countries 100-200 years ago be attributed to Catholicism? Well, other countries, with completely different religious beliefs (e.g. Muslim-majority countries, India, China) also had big families. Most people back then, whatever their religion was, had big families due to primitive contraceptive technology, high infant mortality, economic value of child labour, less years spent in education, lack of educational and career opportunities for women, etc. Nowadays, there is a correlation between religiosity and family size, but that link is historically novel; for most of human history, the devout and the non-devout had big families alike.
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3711936
It's interesting that religion has remained relevant for many whose lives today match what you describe. This isn't to blame religion for those problems, but it doubtless plays a role as both cause and effect, especially when the state is unable or unwilling to provide an adequate level of life security for the populace.
With the growing educational opportunity of catholic women, many decided to not have large families. Many people believe that this trend will continue. In my experience however it will not. The traditionalist Catholics tend to be more highly educated than their laxer counterparts. The women are educated but have rejected their mothers desire to put work ahead of family.
I think the sudden decline in catholic family size is mainly due to the suddenness of the changes to educational possibility for men and women and the rapid industrialization the world experienced in the past century. However we're at the tail end of that and educated catholicd are no longer making the same choices as their parents. I think this demographic effect will be a short blip in the history of the church.
Speaking from my own experience as a rather traditional catholic (we dont use contraception and dont plan on it which puts us firmly in the crazy category according to most), all our friends and their wives who are also forgoing contraception and are planning for large families are highly educated. We are graduates from top schools. Mothers often have advanced degrees in stem subjects. Others are actually working towards their doctorates. Still want kids and as many as God gives.
This is my experience in the san Francisco bay area and the fact that there are so many traditional catholics here in the knowledge sector despite the bay areas reputation of ireligiosity is telling. Catholics are quite a cosmopolitan bunch as well and we get quite a few international catholics popping through (including many from spain) and i think the trend checks out -- even among the Spanish catbolics, the highly educated ones are more likely to be traditional
Projections in pop-culture religious affiliation seem to make the argument of a christian fundamental majority kind of doubtful, even in the long run, there's still plenty of people in the church. Even though I'd guess a large part of those only visit church on christmas and maybe easter. Source: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/701006/umfrag...
There is a connection: people who have five, six, seven kids, tend to be less upset when one or two of those children chooses a celibate lifestyle (like a monastery), than parents with only one or two children tend to be. In the later case, there can be a great reduction in the odds of having grandchildren (and their number); the reduction in the former case is more modest.
Also, traditionalist Catholics tend to value celibacy, whereas Catholics at the more secular/progressive end tend to view it as a relic of a bygone age. So if Catholicism became majority traditional, the attitude of the "average" Catholic towards celibate religious orders may become much more positive, and their membership might experience a rebound.
What is the attrition rate for traditionalist/conservative Catholics? I don't know. I have seen some figures given for traditionalist/conservative groups of other faiths. [1] suggests the attrition rate for ultra-Orthodox Jews is 20-25%; the ultra-Orthodox birth rate is so high, they are still growing exponentially even if 25% of their children leave. (Most of those will move to less religiously demanding forms of Judaism–Modern Orthodoxy, Conservative/Masorti, Reform–rather than leave the Jewish religion altogether.) Similarly, the Amish have a retention rate of around 85% [2].
For the ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Amish, there are certain barriers to leaving (lack of secular education, limited English skills due to using Yiddish or Pennsylvania German as their main language), for which traditionalist Catholics don't have anything similar. But, I think traditionalist parents try hard to pass on their religious outlook to their children; they don't always succeed, but they probably do have more success than many lukewarm religious parents who aren't trying very hard. Some of them run their own schools–mainstream Catholic schools tend to be moderate-to-progressive in outlook, but there are Catholic schools affiliated to groups like Opus Dei and SSPX who are very conservative–which helps imprint their mindset on to their children (it won't stick with all of them, but to sustain their high growth rate, it isn't necessary that it sticks with them all). I also think that conservative religious groups who aren't as socially isolated as the Amish and the ultra-Orthodox Jews will of necessity tend to build up counter-narratives and memorised counter-arguments (whether or not those arguments are sound) to secular progressive modernity, which does give them some degree of "memetic immunity", and some of their children will culturally inherit that "memetic immunity".
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
[2] http://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/frequently-asked-questi...
In my Dutch town, there are churches that have been converted to hotels, a night club, several bicycle parkings, an award-winning bookshop that promptly went bankrupt, an indoor playground and a slew of restaurants. Others are just torn down. It seems the church has a preference for the last, but many of the expensive ones to maintain (i.e., the ones they want to get rid of first) are monuments and have to be preserved. There is one I can see from my window that has been under renovation for 20-something years; every couple of years there is a 'competition' to find someone with the best plan of what to do with it, and they never find anyone because a) it's a monument so you're very restricted in what modifications you can do with it; and b) it's very expensive to maintain (let alone renovate).
So yeah, whatever money they have remaining in art etc has been dumped into pretty much worthless property over the last decades. A few of the remaining nuns around my corner distribute a door to door church flyer once every few months (blissfully ignoring any 'no advertising' stickers on any mailbox, bless their hearts), and they report on the financial state of the parish in it every once in a while - judging from how excited they sound when they've collected a few 100 at a service that drew a large crowd, it's not all glitter and gold in the church (at the lower levels at least). Oh and another church around the corner (I have literally a dozen within a 1km radius from my house) sells christmas trees from their parking lot every year to keep the heating on - not exactly a sign of opulence either.
[0]This was only finished in 2004, and is the most disgustingly oppulent building I have ever seen:
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazylika_Naj%C5%9Bwi%C4%99tsze...
You'd think all of this would turn people away from the church, but it doesn't seem that way - each church usually has to hold 4-5 masses every Sunday and for every one the church is full to the brim, with people standing outside because there's no more room in the church itself.
I don't know why, but Polish people are the most religious community I know here.
Nowadays though I would call it what it is - it's cancer growing unchecked on the Polish state. And I don't mean the religion - I mean the Catholic Church of Poland is constantly meddling in Politics, influencing new policies, Polish bishops are almost celebrities with a huge amount of wealth, the church does not pay taxes, they are one of the largest land owners in Poland....it's a frightening insitution that only seems to be growing in strength, you'd think young people would turn away from it, but with the current right-wing government literally saying that those who don't defend the church are not real Poles it's quite obvious what the party line is - either you are with the church or you are not welcome.
In the case of the German and Polish Catholic Churches, they're even under direct control of the Vatican, i.e. the Catholic Church proper.
Yes, your local community may be good and if it's an independent church like most religious groups in the US are, it may be completely removed from any greater politics but Catholic churches are very much part of the Catholic Church proper (i.e. if a priest steps out of line, they risk being removed -- which btw is exactly what happened when a Catholic priest in Germany in the 1990s openly preached views that the Church considered too progressive).
A small religious community may hold okay views and be nice and dandy, but organised religion (and especially the Catholic Church) is rotten to the core. And I say that as a baptised & confirmed Catholic in Germany.
This is incorrect. Its original meaning is "assembly", "meeting" and refers to a group of people more than a building/denomination/organization: https://www.compellingtruth.org/definition-church.html.
The conversation was clearly about organised religion, i.e. specifically the Catholic Church (in Poland or Germany but also in general as a larger entity). It doesn't get much more organised than the Catholic Church.
It was also clear that "church" in this context is used in the sense of "a formal religious organisation", especially because churches as formal organisations are legal entities in these countries.
What the term _originally meant_ is interesting but utterly irrelevant given that the meaning clearly doesn't match the intended meaning and the intended meaning is widely enough understood (and matches the Polish and German equivalent terminology).
That said, linking to a website operated by a conservative Evangelical ministry that preaches Young Earth Creationism and considers Catholic "non-Christians" ... in a conversation that's primarily about the Catholic church ... is "funny" to say the least.
Historical reasons basically.
For the most part of the past 200 years, Poles lacked their own independent country (first it was partitioned in 1795 by Russia, Prussia and Austria, then it gained indepenence in 1918 only to be again conquered by Soviet Union in 1945). During that time, Church and faith were one of the primary allowed (or at least tolerated by the occupants) expression of one's identity as a Pole - people were singing partiotic songs during masses, priests were leaders of the nationalist opposition (and frequently murdered for that) etc. Hence, historically Catholic Church means much more to Poles than to most other nations.
Here is one example in Knin, one of the poorest towns in the country.
> Situated at the site of an old bolt and screw factory, 3 million euros has been invested to construct the Gospe Velikog Hrvatskog Krsnog Zavjeta (Our Lady of the Great Croatian Baptismal Vow) Church in Knin (Šibenik-Knin County). The 1,024 square-metre Church will seat over 700 people when finished, making it Croatia’s largest Church.
https://www.croatiaweek.com/photos-building-on-biggest-churc...
Or look at this monstrosity in Split (15 million HRK, roughly 2 million EUR)
https://www.24sata.hr/news/novi-dom-skromnih-franjevaca-u-sp...
And lets not forget the luxurious episcopal conference palace covered with marble and onyx, with a cost of 16,5 million euros.
https://www.jutarnji.hr/Fotogalerije/najluksuznija-zgrada-cr...
In the meantime, cities can't even buy new buses without EU funds. It's disgraceful.
It does. Poland is one of the most rapidly secularizing countries in the world according to Pew.[1]
Also mass attendance is at the lowest point since 1980 (36% of Catholics attend mass) [2]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9l3q03/polands_yout...
[2] https://natemat.pl/226659,tak-zle-z-kosciolem-w-polsce-jeszc...
The area I'm in now was built up before cars were commonplace - implication being churches built closely enough to be within walking distance. Flash forward a century, and the situation is a combination of fewer people attending churches and more ability for those that do to travel. There are also more competing interests for people's time, so there's less ability and desire for parishioners to engage in volunteer activities at churches. Attending church on Sunday morning might mean missing a little league game and attending a work day at the parish might mean missing a school event or similar. (With fewer activities centered around church than before, there's more opportunity for schedule contention that the churches often lose.)
What this means for an individual parish is that there are fewer resources available for maintaining an aging and likely historic building. There are fewer people committing money to the church and fewer people able to volunteer work at the church.
The flip side of this is that there are also fewer practical reasons to maintain an old church. Shutting down a church with 50 people in weekly attendance is easier than shutting down a church with 300 people in attendance. The trouble with this line of reasoning is that it papers over some of the more sentimental reasons for keeping a parish running. Those 50 remaining folks are also the people most likely to have a strong connection to the parish... or they'd have already left. So individual parishes can have more inertia to stay open than you might expect.
Moving up to the diocese level, a parish shutting down can transfer many of the funding/transport issues from the parish to the diocese. The diocese, which may have problems of its own, now has additional burdens to take on as it both loses revenue (from parish remittances) and gains expenses. This implies a potentially strong incentive for a diocese to sell off old properties.
The trouble with a sale is the large number of stakeholders that might be opposed to such a sale. Never underestimate the difficulties that can be thrown up by 'interested parties'. Shutting down a parish can easily involve current and former parishoners, the diocese level, local planning/zoning boards, historical building regulations... the list goes on and on. (And you still have to find a developer with the intent, resources, and ability to take on the property and turn it into something the community wants.)
The reason I go down this path is mainly to illustrate that the notion of churches as pools of free resources is somewhat dubious at best. Whatever resources are there are not only special purpose to begin with, but also can sequestered behind history, regulation, and interests that are difficult to overcome.
If you just want a hostel / retreat, many monasteries already provide that service through their guest-houses.
I think it would be way more interesting and useful to be able to actually be part of the community save for the religious part: taking part in the preparation and work, and be able to engage in one's secular activity (study, projects, reading, …) during the periods where monks engage in religious activities. Of course the issue with that is there is little incentive for churches to subsidise such inviduals (unlike even the lay brothers of old).
On guy even made a movie, "Into Great Silence"
Is there anything weird about this? Entire life is a pretty hefty price to pay, what needs to be changed is religion itself, if it wants to find more new believers to keep itself from disappearing.
It is of course complete conjecture, although more and more info is coming out on the "homosexual lobby" in the Vatican.
lukewarm religions are dying out. It's atheism or a religion that makes demands -- and the atheists are not reproducing.
there is a reason universities have 'faculties' (e.g. 'faculties' of the 'body of knowledge') and that key persons are called 'deans'
From a religious point of view, 'adapting' the core idea of what you believe to be Gods will might be seen as far worse than just quietly dying out with dignity.
Living a monastic life has never been appealing to the broad population. But to say that an ascetic life devoted to introspection doesn't 'make sense' is misguided.
The modern world in predominately a sedentary lifestyle spent between a cube and a couch, interspersed with frenzies of gluttony, consumption and mindless distraction to stave off feeling of emptiness.
Nothing could make less sense.
> Nothing could make less sense.
Speak for yourself...
One of the core tasks of the contemplative lifestyle (which can certainly be practiced outside of monasteries) is to be awakened from all of the things we think we need and desire. These are usually the things that the (societally constructed) ego needs to feel secure and comfortable - hence so many contemplative traditions stress the importance of "dying to yourself". This is not 'negative' or even necessarily introverted - in fact, dealing with the insecurities that you have inherited from the expectations of the society around you can make you comfortable both alone and with people. There is no need to impress anyone; no need to feel insecure or alone; you're at peace with yourself and the world.
The contemplative tradition has a lot to teach our world - no manner of scientific or technological progress is going to help us before we're comfortable with being ourselves.
That's the point. Living a life of reactivity to every change it the zeitgeist precludes peace.
Because the core idea is dumb, the change is that more people with more access to knowledge about the world realize that, and monasteries are adapting by dying out.
Monasteries are basically communes. Great for people that have nothing, but more and more people actually have something even if it's "just" a smartphone.
It worked when praying for the world was largely accepted as having some effect. Nowadays thoughts and prayers doesn’t cut it for the general population.
In a way high level research institutes could be seen as the new monastries, with people shutting down in buildings everyday, searching for new truths that could benefit mankind.
Monasteries absolutely require participation in the group. Monks are not hermits, much of their activity is working for the monastery and interacting with other monks.
hrktb is quite right about the general principle of monasticism. Here's the start of the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on it [1]:
"Monasticism or monachism, literally the act of "dwelling alone" (Greek monos, monazein, monachos), has come to denote the mode of life pertaining to persons living in seclusion from the world, under religious vows and subject to a fixed rule, as monks, friars, nuns, or in general as religious. The basic idea of monasticism in all its varieties is seclusion or withdrawal from the world or society."
EDIT although in the entry on "monk" [2] there is considerably less certainty about the origin of the name and idea. Imagine your primary reference work being internally inconsistent like that! Can't imagine where these bible-bashers got that idea.
[1] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10459a.htm
[2] http://catholicencyclopedia.newadvent.com/cathen/10487b.htm
A substantial reduction in religious belief could explain away a large part of monastic decline.
The "One" god of Christianity comes more from Neoplatonism than Judaism. The Neoplatonic Oneness, which was washed out in various times in Christian history, is fully commensurable with contemporary science. Oneness can be experienced as the common mystical experience of "we are all one, man!" But for Neoplatonists, it only made sense that the ineffable and impossible to fully understand "One" was the origin of the universe and the basis of divinity.
This notion of Oneness is different from typical conceptions of the one god as a person. It is not. To understand true, original Christianity, one must reject the idea of personhood -- god isn't a person (and actually, neither are we--it's just a useful illusion)
In a nutshell: in the beginning of time, there was the Oneness and the emanation from the Oneness, which was known as the Logos. It makes sense here to think big bang: the whole universe in a single point. But from there, the emanations, the logos built everything else. The emanations can return to the Oneness through the creation of new wholes and harmonies (think molecules, stars and solar systems -- onenesses made of parts). This wholeness/harmony is the source of divine goodness. Here's the Christian part: when a person believes in the Logos they have eternal life because they recognize that their life is part of the eternal Logos.
That's what Christianity was to early church fathers like Origen or Clement. I forgot to mention -- Jesus was described as the incarnation of the logos.
Fun fact: Logos is equivalent to "Dao" in Daoism.
So, How'd I do? Are you more open now to the mysteries of Christianity?
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta
It's not hard, either. They just have to reject the idea that the Bible was written by God, which is farcical on the face of it. Then religion is about allegory, cultural traditions and having something to do with your kids on Sunday morning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza
But Christianity implies certain ideas which are absolutely consequential, primarily that a certain historical person was the "Son of God" and that he literally rose from the dead. The idea that a single specific person could be God or the Son of God (as opposed to everybody else) is in direct opposition to any reasonable idea of God as "oneness".
But you are right, there is a bait-and-switch. I don't claim to describe the beliefs of current Christians, but ancient Christians, often of the near-heretical type (Origen was never sainted for a reason). Just keep in mind that there is no source of truth in Christianity. That's what all the wars were about! And no one was "right."
Early church fathers described Jesus as the Incarnation of the Logos ("the word made flesh", in highly misleading English translations).
And, the logos worldview meant that everything was an emanation of the oneness. So the logos/jesus lives in all of us.
"Son of God"=emanation of the One. See that? That is what son of God originally meant! See Philo of Alexandria for his judaeo-greco depiction of the logos as son of God in 10BC.
Rising from the dead... born of a virgin... Well, those are classic tropes in mystery religions. Fine for allegorical purposes.
It sounds quite compelling.
Wouter Hanugraff (read "western esoterism, a guide for the perplexed")
Shwep.net
Pythagorean Sourcebook
Oration on the dignity of man
Iamblicus
Origen
Plotinus
Philo of Alexandria
Many more. It is so fulfilling to read these old texts!
Check Perseus project for searching old texts.
Hence...
Note that there is no need to find the original interpretation (impossible), only an early, valid, and widespread interpretation. And whatever it is, it should provide spiritual meaning AND not conflict with empirical reality.
I would not treat Athanasius kindly, considering his role in the Arian heresy. But I'll check out his work.
Also, I don't mean to claim that Christianity "merely borrowed". Christian thought had a huge influence on Neoplatonism (Origen and Plotinus were schoolmates). I'm only saying that interpreting Christianity without Platonism is really missing out. (Platonism was actively removed from later Christianity, as it was seen as pagan.)
"Eastern Christian philosophy," or simply "Eastern Theology" really came into its own, and while it is absolutely valid to study Church writers in contrast and relationship to Neoplatonic philosophy, they developed their own tradition. Thus, parsing the logos tradition as if Origen, the Cappadocians, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, etc., were "philosophers" in their own right is actually quite a fruitful endeavor.
You might like shwep.net
I am a subscriber. He is a really good historian -- and interviews even better ones.
Also the book "Western Esoterism: a guide for the Perplexed".
Because this whole Oneness concept is right at the thumping heart of "the esoteric". There are real mysteries there, like you wouldn't believe. And, humanistic magic, I'm telling you!
I was interested in Advaita for a long time, and used to read Upanishads which expound about it. but recently I have come across a different school of thought, which calls this Oneness/Brahman/Nirvana as Self/I. Ramana Maharishi who died 70 years back was a recent proponent of it. but I have seen references to it from different cultures too, like the hebrew word YHWH meaning Self, and the Persian word for God "Khuda" meaning Self in Old Persian.
I recently came across Bernadette Roberts, who is a Catholic Nun, who seems to have not heard of the concept of Self from Advaita/Hinduism, but have reached to similar opinions about Self from her own contemplation/Prayers in her monastery. and in this video she explains it from her perspective as a Christian Mystic. She also has some books, which I haven't read. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb5496uQ3lk
But religion is indeed in decline in the West. Whether or not this is an argument against God's existence is more questionable.
No, the idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to God, and specifically the God of a specific religion.
Another purpose was to dump awkward heirs and spares in a primogeniture inheritance - certainly not an offically endorsed one - akin to a butcher's knife being meant for livestock and their products.
The rigid scheduling is an artifact of agrarianism in a quad-seasoned climate and the calender as it becomes essential to have the time aligned. Likewise in the past not being a farmer itself was essentially a luxury - prison without slavery was only affordable if you had a hostage whose ransom was worth far more.
While before they may have been a refugee of sorts for those to devote themselves to study while being socially acceptable and self-supporting.
The time for reforms was a century or more ago during industrialization - if they would want survival over purity having known the peril coming. Now I suspect the options are either accept their demise as inevitable but take all latecomers, half-hearted reforms which likely will fail to stop the death spiral or a "Neomonastic" which fundamentally be an imitation of the past by the present out of its context or contains a glimmer of the spirit - such as a collective living of Catholics who may or may not have children, which pools funds to maintain a working class standard of lifestyle but may make more as a result of being composed of mainly college educated professionals such as doctors.
Theoretically there may be a Neomonastic sort of movement which emerges on its own in another sphere but if they didn't emerge on their own already why not?
What you may want to consider is the reason and fact that why, as the western culture has been infested with the religions and values and spiritual practices of mostly the far east while their take-over is celebrated and cheered on, their domestic equivalents in the monasteries and churches has been utterly vanquished and destroyed and polluted and salted to the point that people like you don't even have a rudimentary understanding for them.
Today throngs of gullible women, predatory men, and xenophilic people in general pursue various forms of Hindu spiritual practices called Yoga, while Christian and even other pagan spiritual practices are denigrated and polluted and destroyed as the cultural genocide washes over the western world in an odd kind of suicidal mania.
There is no reason why Monasteries could not have been elevated to a cult status like Shaolin Monks, or various Yogis, were it not for the relentless communist subversion tactics that both destroyed and infested the western world with relentless cultural pathogens to destroy the native cultures and elevate cultures that groom people to allegiance with their interests.
So much has already been lost by various means to the point that people do not even have any sense whatsoever for the magnitude ... like having no idea just what was lost when the library of Alexandria was burned, even if we have a deep sense that literally centuries worth of knowledge and technologies that probably had to be reinvented decades if not centuries later were lost. In many ways, so humanity is losing massive amounts of knowledge and skill and spirituality through the abdication and abandonment of one's own culture, for a fraudulent propaganda tool farce version of another. It's sad actually, what is will be lost as this craze of communist washes over the western world that has been driving humanity forward for around 3,000+ years ... and doing so with nothing even remotely similar to a suitable replacement.
I know that may not make sense to you, but the children of the heirs of what will be left of the western world will have to suffer for it regardless.
There is so much wrong with that post it isn't funny - putting aside that it looks like the rant of an archtypical Neal Stevenson character on the fence who gets seduced into the service of a regressive ideology doomed to failure. There is even the same failure to accept change and anxiety over growing old in a different world.
Culture is a Ship of Theseus, period. Even the staunchist traditionalists fail at it fundamentally from the outset because they either seek to keep stagnant what were reforms in the first place or they seek to preserve that which didn't exist even back then. Nothing makes it through the Millenia untouched. A culture which never changes is best known as a dead one.
Do you lament and blame Christianity for destroying paganism? Consider pants barbaric? Consider those from temperate climates too stupid to be civilized? What you either consider that list batshit insane or recognizd the references? Congratulations you have already destroyed a great culture spanning thousands of years already. Except we know these details. Traditions dying out is in no way comparable to losses of archives.
The description of modern European languages cultures and clothings even with the tech difference obscured would beconsidered vastly implauisble by Romans. The languages would be like a bad fanfic.
Also the communists undermining monks with eastern mysticism before Karl Marx was even born! This ridicule is being charitable for it forgets the Protestant reformation, a reaction to corruption within the Catholic church, and their role in destruction along with cynical nobles looking to seize monk maintained properties. Ones once entrusted to them because the godly celebate were assumed most trustworthy akin to the role of Court Eunuchs among hereditary dynasties but with the emasculation kept symbolic with tonsures. There is a reason for that. While there may are differences they are based on the same.
That Western Civilization was considered a separate entity is a flaw. The concept at its best was a post-hoc explanation for rise to colonial dominance that accidentally paints things in in and out groups. At worst it was deliberate.
Marx himself demonstrated some nonsensical ideas of the day about "Asiatic Tyranny as being a more controlled society centered around artifical control of irrigation water instead of force of arms". Showing that the exoticism is continuing an old tradition of consciously or unconsciously using the exotic as a mirror to project what ifs onto. It is like Neopaganism in a way - historians are interested in how they were but most practitioners make it fit to their world. You don't see any
They were always interconnected beyond any tidy sections or categories on maps. The people of the past sure as fuck didn't consider themselves to have a special kinship over those further abroad - hell pre-nationalism they were likely top enemies. It also explains why the "center of Western Civilization" is all over the place with no remotely consistent metric as it is a sharpshooter's fallacy.
We can try turning old monasteries into concents à la Neal Stephenson's Anathem. People can go for a year in a unarian math to just study. Maybe a four consecutive years in such a math get equivalent recognition to a university degree. Whether it is the traditional monastic discipline or the Cartasian discipline, the required basic infrastructure is probably similar. Jeejahs stay outside, of course.
Particularly determined professors can populate a decennarian, maybe even a centenarian. Also, isn't there only about 9 years before our scheduled visit by the Icosahedron?
Living in a monasteries is strongly coupled with a long and healthy life.
Most nuns look at least 10 years younger than they are.
Here they have diversified in a number of directions. There is a school, an old folks home, and a hotel. The picturesque location, combined with the historic buildings makes all these quite competitive, and successful. I'd go so far as to say the church here is thriving despite the declining popularity of dedicating your life to it.
Maintaining churches, monasteries and church operated services is almost never about finances.
- School: Germany mostly has public schools. If you have operated a private school for a few years, you can apply for subsidy. You will receive roughly the amount per pupil that would otherwise be needed to fund the pupil's place at a public school. So this is more or less a zero-sum game for the state. All schools have to obey public school regulations (e.g., on curriculum and exams) regardless who operates them.
- Elderly home: there is no direct subsidy by the state. Germany has established a mandatory insurance ("Pflegeversicherung", nursing care insurance). This insurance will pay for nursing care, regardless who operates the elderly home.
- Hotel: no subsidy by the state at all.
Summarized, there exists no special deal by the state for church operated services, with respect to funding/subsidy.
About 70% of church revenues come from church tax (Kirchensteuer). This is about €9.2 billion (in 2010).
http://humanist.de/kirchensteuer/krankenhaeuser.html
Hospitals and elderly homes are NOT primarily financed by the insurance of their patients. Public hospitals are funded by the government. Church operated hospitals are funded by the government AND the church, with churches often paying the smaller share. Additionally churches themselves as public organisations receive public subsidies when providing public services, so even the money they do pay into operating these services partially comes from the state.
But in some cases the state literally subsidises the clergy directly:
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/spardebatte-staat... (€ 442 million paid for clergy wages based on a contract from 1803 that was meant to reimburse the Catholic church for lands that were claimed by the state to prop up the aristocracy -- note that this contract with no expiration date was between the Catholic Church and the German Empire, not modern Germany)
Also, "Germany mostly has public schools" -- yes, but child care is often operated by churches while being mostly funded publicly. Note that "Kindergärten" are often considered part of the school system (but definitions for pre-primary education are hazy so I admit I should have clarified).
The point is that the "special deal" church operated services get compared to regular public services is that they get to apply church law, which is uniquely privileged to override common labor protection and anti-discrimination laws. As a "user" they appear almost indistinguishable from non-church operated public services.
Since a recent court decision, this exemption is now quite limited (https://efarbeitsrecht.net/kirchliche-arbeitgeber/, unfortunately only in German).
It was a good option that provided education, stability, potentially a source of power, and was a prestigious path to go.
I think in modern times we sometimes see the church as this side organization, but in the past it was its own industry of sorts and central to life, economics, education, prestige, potentially power.
Think about it, monastic life really was and is monastic. It included many hours of prayers and other contemplative practices (and other minor inconveniences like celibacy). Yes, there was great variance in different orders, but many people (if not most) chose this life because they were true believers. The only way to prepare them for this life was that the church as a whole was universally present so that monasticism became just one option between many different ones within the church, albeit a quite intense one.
First, monks were not the only men to live and work in monasteries. There were many "sub-ranks" (for instance "frère convers" in French, someone that shared most of their life without taking the religious vow) as well as external workers (for centuries, many monasteries had vast domains where monks ruled over peasants, at various degrees).
Then, becoming a monk was a social ascension for many. This was still true a few decades ago. My peasant grand-mother had ten children over twenty years, and the only ones who did not stop their studies early, were the three boys who wanted to become priests. The will to study and to change their way of life was a strong incentive. Times changed, and they all found other ways.
Europe, and especially the east and north, is nearly cured from religion. Cold air and higher education keep people level-headed and reduce the need to invent comforting fantasies to deal with reality.
And when people in Germany say they are ”religious“ by German standards, they are not at all actually religious, e.g. by US or Saudi Arabia or Israel standards. It’s merely a cultural residue they were born into. That actually existed way before Abrahamic religions spread to Germany. They only ever enter a church for a birth (sometimes), marriage (often) or death (usually). East Germany is pretty much 100% free of religion. And Berlin is the least religious place in Europe. (Unless you count veganism. ;)
We prefer to concern us with things, that are actually observably real and hence useful.
I think this should be applied to the cloisters, too. I look at some of these 800 year old buildings and marvel at what they could provide, in terms of startup-hub scene.
The peace you feel when in one and the sinking feeling going back into "the world" are both experiences everyone should have.
As someone who spent a decade in depression and near the edge of suicide, there are two things I ask people to try before killing themselves.
1) A silent retreat 2) An Ayahuasca ceremony
Those two things helped more than years of therapy and anti-depressants.
A pretty intense exercise regimen also helped me out a lot, but its hard to get someone to pick that over death when they are close to the edge so I don't include it.
I don't believe there is anything mystical benefit to Ayahuasca, although the psychedelic element can definitely fuel your creativity if you want it to.
But certain drugs appear to have long-lasting effects on mental states, even if they aren't administered daily. Ketamine is another drug that shows promise in this area. There needs to be real studies around this, but in my experience the 2 day session is highly effective for at least a year afterward.
We stayed in one in Italy recently, south of Napoli. It was like a very, very quiet hotel with a peaceful garden and a resident cat. I'd have happily stayed longer. I was also in one last year in Belgium, it was part of a larger church establishment but the location was so central it was like staying in a nice hotel. Again - quiet. Both were without luxuries of a 4 star hotel but very well appointed and with excellent breakfasts, and locations.
The cat is a great selling point. They should make sure to point that out on their webpage; it'd be a bonus point for me.
I stayed at an AirBnB residence in Germany when I traveled there, and they had a bunch of cats. Getting to talk to a local, and have cats around, was a nice experience.
>Both were without luxuries of a 4 star hotel but very well appointed and with excellent breakfasts, and locations.
4-star hotels don't have cats, so that's a negative when comparing them to places like this.
By the way, monasteries existed long before the Benedict order, and other orders existed in parallel. Some monasteries did not welcome visitors, especially women and couples.
You're making this seem misogynistic, but indeed, typically female monasteries were not (and are still not) open to men.
You're not wrong I was incomplete in my previous statement. Monasteries would often try to render assistance to the exceptionally needy, but have historically operated as regular inns only for those who could stay within the convent walls. This was basically restricted by sex. Even today, if you're going to do a retreat at a monastery, couples typically would have to stay away from the cloister (many monasteries - but not all - offering retreats typically have a separate house for these individuals, a short distance from the main cloister). Only single men would be permitted into a male monastery (behind the cloister for the night) and single women to a female one.
Re the paying stuff. As far as I'm aware (and I've researched a few monasteries in my area and know several monks), the payment is a suggested donation, not a requirement. Of course, that's my own anecdata. I would be interested in knowing if there is a monastery charging for the actual stay, because typically they're not supposed to.
I live in a German population center with many many mosques and it affects me in exactly zero ways. I know _no one_ who regularly visits a mosque, let alone trying to convince others to join.
We have religious freedom in our constitution. Aside from some stupidly minor exceptions, Germans aren't somehow converting to Islam. They are leaving religion in general.
Glad you are not affected.
I also know my neighbors and I'm friendly with them.
Also such stories exists
Yes don't forget the horrible stories of nuns sexually raped by priests! Srsly
Why do you think it is a good thing to isolate yourself from modern society and think you can help while not even getting modern society anymore?!
"19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other."
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians+5&ver...
yep, completely out of touch & with no understanding applicable to the modern world here.
And no I'm not even sure if you mean it what you wrote.
Nonetheless those quotes do not reflect on my arguments at all.