The Catholic alternative to MTV hedonism for young people today

[Boleslaw]

"Faithful to the mission she has fulfilled for two millennia, however, the Church still holds out a moral alternative to young people immersed in a culture that relentlessly teaches them to pursue immediate gratification. The Church recalls the great men of Christendom - like Charlamenge, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Saint Francis Xavier, to name a few - and holds them up as models for how true men live. Its message? Essentially this: you can aspire to be one of these men - a builder of civilization, a great genius, a servant of God and men, or a heroic missionary - or you can be a self-absorbed nobody fixated on gratifying your appetites. Our society does everything in its power to ensure that you wind up on the latter path. Be your own person. Rise above the herd, declare your independence from a culture that thinks so little of you, and proclaim that you intend to live not as a beast but as a man."
-- Thomas E. Woods How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 214-15

[Lenny]

How is this a "Catholic alternative"??? As if Protestant churches did not offer the same "alternative"? Or any other religious organization!


Rise above the herd, declare your independence from a culture that thinks so little of you, and proclaim that you intend to live not as a beast but as a man."Interesting that they would say this because they themselves want the same exact thing for people in the Catholic Church as they claim to condemn in secular society! They want Catholics to stay in the herd (Catholicism) and they dont want them to "declare their independence" from the Catholic Church, which also thinks little of them. (Protestants always valued individual liberty, not Catholics. That's why the independent US government [Protestant] made a society based on liberty, and why other Western Hemisphere nations after independence, Mexico etc, always had dictatororial governments that did not value liberty)

[Jimbo Gomez]

Lenny you dumbass. As if the Catholic Western European nations are stalinist dictatorships. Mexico is what it is because its traditionally white ruling class did not think very highly of its mestizo underlings.

[Lenny]

As if the Catholic Western European nations are stalinist dictatorships.Is it true or is it false that Protestants historically valued and strove for individual and state liberty more than the Roman Catholic Church and Catholic nations? (hint: the answer is true)

Mexico is what it is because its traditionally white ruling class did not think very highly of its mestizo underlings.This is wrong. But if you dont want to examine Mexico then just look to every other Catholic country in the Western Hemisphere, and you will see more of the same. The Protestant United States (also Canada) on the other hand, built and fought for a free republican government that valued liberty higher than almost anything else. That's one of the reasons that Americans were historically fierce opponents of Catholicism, because Catholicism wanted to stamp out Protestant liberty and seize political power here for itself. They continue to have the same goal today I might add!

[Boleslaw]

Is it true or is it false that Protestants historically valued and strove for individual and state liberty more than the Roman Catholic Church and Catholic nations? (hint: the answer is true)
Lenny, did you read my thread concerning Medieval totalitarianism? Largely that it was a myth?

And concerning individual liberty and such, I suggest you read Emmanuel Mounier and his theories of Personalism.
http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4269

Protestantism helped lead to excessive individualism(ie narcissism) which has plagued the Western world for generations. Catholicism on the other hand has always placed individuality in its proper place.