The Dunbar Number of 150 Makes an Appearance in This Essay

Personalism, Small Churches, and Building Community by Archpriest Lawrence Farley |(originally published at No Other Foundation)

But here in North America, we have a number of Orthodox churches which are less Imperial in their architecture and numbers, churches which can hold only a few hundred people, if that. That, I suggest, is no bad thing, for it allows us to recover the important personalism from the early church which was increasingly lost in the Church’s Byzantine period. We have the possibility once again of actually getting to know the fellow members of our local church community and of praying for them all by name. Church growth is good, and we are called to grow. But we must take care in our growth not to lose this personalism, which is so important to internal spiritual growth.

In particular, if a congregation grows to a size of about 200 people or so, they might consider splitting and founding another daughter church somewhere else (obviously with the bishop’s blessing), so that the local church never gets above 150 in number. Church growth gurus teach us that 150 is the maximum number in which authentic community can occur. In any church much bigger than that, it becomes hard to really know your fellow worshippers, and one fades into the anonymity of the mega-church. We have emerged from Byzantium, and are increasingly marginalized in our pluralistic North American society. That brings with it its own sorrows. But it also brings with it the possibility for recovering true community in our churches, and with it, a spirit of love.

Actually, Charity is the Firewall

along with a healthy sense of the order of charity. But charity does not require massive political integration.

Appropriately Danielou-esque. The goal of Christian politics is Christian peoplehood. That concept, by the way, is a mighty firewall against race hatred. https://t.co/yvrmoCVKDP

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) August 18, 2020

What does charity require?

I have no reason that even for Christians the liberal assumption that all people are equally rational is true, or that all Christians are capable of dialectic, as opposed to being accustomed to rhetoric. Are we required by charity to maintain the pretense that Christians are? Or should we instead relate to them according to how they actually are?

Charity is not opposed to justice.

CRS

At least it's better than Red Cross... still one would think that institutional bloating and SJW convergence would affect even Catholic organizations, especially as the liberal gospel pushes out the true Gospel.

A Reminder to Myself

Yes. Lord have mercy!

Posted by Orthodox Christian Network on Friday, July 3, 2015

The Philanthropic Revolution

Front Porch Republic: The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity by Jeremy Beer

Toxic Charity

Post by Orthodox Christian Network.

Orthodox Advice on the Use of the Internet and Social Media

Keeping our Faces in a Facebook World by Fr. Lawrence Farley
The Spiritual Life and the Virtual Landscape: Technology, Internet Addiction, and the Society of Simulacra by Valeriya Posashko

What is the Foundation of the New Evangelization?

Zenit: Pope's Q-and-A With Movements
"Don't forget: never a closed Church, but a Church that goes out"

But man is the image of God! Because of this it is a profound crisis! In this moment of crisis we can't be concerned only about ourselves, shut ourselves in solitude, in discouragement, in the sense of impotence in face of the problems. Don't shut yourselves in, please! This is a danger: if we shut ourselves in in the parish, with friends, in the movement, with those with whom we think the same things … do you know what happens? When the Church becomes closed, she gets sick, she gets sick. Think of a closed room for a year; when you go in, there's a smell of dampness, there are so many things that are not on. A closed Church is the same thing: it is a sick Church. The Church must come out of herself. Where? To the existential peripheries, whatever they are, but go out. Jesus says to us: "Go into all the world! Go! Preach! Give witness of the Gospel!" (cf. Mark 16:15). But what happens when one comes out of oneself? What can happen is what might happen to all those who leave home and go out to the street: an accident. But I say to you: I prefer a thousand times an 'incidentata' Church, involved in an accident, than a sick Church because she is closed! Go outside, go out! Think also of what Revelation says. It says a beautiful thing: that Jesus is at the door and knocks, he knocks to come in to our heart (cf. Revelation 3:20). This is the meaning of Revelation. But ask yourselves this question: how many times is Jesus inside and knocks on the door to go out, to go outside, and we don't let Him go out, because of our securities, because so many times we are in obsolete structures, which only serve to make us slaves, and not free children of God? In this "exit" it is important to go to the encounter; this word is very important for me: encounter with others. Why? Because the faith is an encounter with Jesus, and we must do the same thing that Jesus does: encounter others. We live a culture of clash, a culture of fragmentation, a culture in which what isn't of use to me I throw away, the culture of rejection! But we should go to an encounter and with our faith we must create a "culture of encounter," a culture of friendship, a culture where we find brothers, where we can speak also with those who don't think like we do, also with those who have another faith, who don't have the same faith. All have something in common with us: they are images of God, they are children of God. We must go out to meet everyone, without negotiating our membership.

Christians are called to love everyone, especially those with whom they come into contact. But if they do not know how to love their fellow Christians and live in friendship with them, how can they really be human?

Last Wednesday's audience: On the Work of the Holy Spirit

Pope Makes Appeal For Catholics in China

What Is the Place of the Monastery?

The Distributist Review: The Gospel of Hospitality by Dale Ahlquist (who visits Clear Creek and Casa Juan Diego)

In medieval times, the monasteries were the center of culture. Wherever a monastery was built a town grew up around it. The monks provided the focus of faith, which always has practical implications that are seen in art, craftsmanship, education, and simple economic stability. Interestingly enough, Catholic families have already started to settle around the edge of Clear Creek Monastery. This is where they want to raise their children. It is the medieval model working perfectly, a place done right, right from the start. Chesterton predicted: “Whenever monks come back, marriages will come back.”

The monastery must be the center, not a satellite, in a thriving Catholic community. The Houston Catholic Worker house also does things right, but in a place where everything has gone wrong, because it went wrong almost from the start. The Zwicks are dealing with one soul at a time in a place where people are cold statistics. Their hospitality cannot solve the large problems that plague huge cities, but it can treat each of the problems that show up at their door each day. Their source of strength and love is their faith. Each house has a chapel. Jesus is always present, both in the souls of the poor and in the Blessed Sacrament.

This may be historically accurate for the spread of growth of monasticism in Western Europe, but if the monastery is to the center, has something gone wrong with the local Church (and the cathedral community)? Monasteries should be places of evangelical witness, but for it to replace the local Church (and its communities) as the center of a Christian community seems less than ideal.

"I desire mercy, and not sacrifice."

During the time of the prayer symposium in February, I was driving to San Francisco and I heard on the radio the audio of an [un-]wise Latina woman promoting herself and her book at the Commonwealth Club. (And now she is hearing arguments concerning same-sex marriage?) I was thinking about how she and her ilk were destroying the country and leading souls astray through their actions. Our Lord told us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us; he did not say that we must pretend that they are not our enemies, or that what they do is not evil. (As for forgiveness, that can be a convoluted question.)

So what of anger and the desire for vengeance? While one may legitimately feel anger at the evil that is done, to be in a perpetual state of anger is not healthy for the soul. One must find a positive outlet for such emotion. If our responses to that evil are limited and we are unable to prevent that evil from being done, we can still exercise charity towards our enemies and pray for them, while striving to protect and defend those around us. We are recipients of God's mercy and should bear it towards others. Charity does not preclude constitutional or political reform, and true growth in charity and its manifestation towards one's neighbor cannot but have an impact on the political sphere, properly understood as the community in which we live.

Related:
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on 'My Beloved World'

Three Pertaining to the Lay Vocation

Begun on November 14.

Russell Shaw on the laity, again - his moneymaker: The Council and the Laity. "The teaching of the Second Vatican Council concerning the laity was an enormous and lasting achievement. But there is much work to do."

Vatican II and the forerunners to the council, various theologians and saints, attempted to restore a better understanding of the Christian vocation, re-emphasizing the universal call to holiness. But I would argue that the council was incomplete, in so far as it did not grapple with questions appropriate to politics. Would it have been possible to do so? Such a treatment should be left to the wise and learned. But with the realization that the scale of contemporary "polities" is too large, the Church could have focused more on rebuilding community at the local level, rather than engaging governments to redirect "national policy" in accordance with Catholic Social Teaching. An elaboration of general principles is not enough, one must apply them properly, and in order to do that one must have an adequate grasp of their particulars, their causes and perhaps their histories.

If participation in the life of the community is a central part to the lay vocation, then perhaps the Orthodox and the Protestants have Catholics beat and we should be learning from them.

I would claim that much of the loss in the West of the understanding of the lay vocation is tied to the growth of the modern state, the rise of wage slavery, the loss or deliberate destruction of communities. Man (and now women) have been increasingly dispossessed of their natural roles within a community; or, their awareness of these roles has been obliterated through bad culture or the lack of proper formation.

As Shaw points out, Lumen Gentium reminds us that Catholics are called to act in the secular world for the salvation of others. What is the "secular world" but the "temporal" or "natural" political community? We should be witnessing to Christ and living out [the order of] charity in our political communities (and I don't mean with a vague reference to the nation-state, but rather, the local community, and maybe the state). (We should keep in mind the distinction between the political community and the "world" which is rightly derided by our Lord. They are not the same thing. The city of man is not identical to the civitas.)

Despite the constant propaganda about [American] freedom and democracy (put forth even by the bishops), there has been a loss of true citizenship. We are blind to  our current state of subservience, possessing little economic or political freedom (at the national level). Those Christians who lived under other regimes may have had a better understanding of the lay vocation - living with others in community, carrying out their responsibilities to others in charity, and so on, despite having no share in public office.  It is true that the lay vocation is not identical to citizenship, as defined by Aristotle. But for men, the lay vocation does require the exercise of the same virtues proper to the citizen, even if it does not include the same duties: prudence and ordering his affairs and that of his family, cooperating with other men for the sake of the group, and so on. To the extent that men must be concerned with and care for the community, they will need the political virtues; even more if they are engaged in decision-making about the well-being of the community.

There can be no subsidiarity (or recovery of the common good) unless men are willing and able to do this at the local level, going beyond what our impoverished Uhmerican understanding of citizenship requires.

Charity brings about the diffusion of the good. Not just the obvious corporal and spiritual works of mercy, but whatever action within the community that is ordered to the good of others can be sanctified through God's grace. In the Politics, Aristotle defines the perfect community as that which supplies for all the necessities of the good life, and it includes civic friendship. We are accustomed to liberal modes of thinking and to living in aggregate, an arrangement that is not scaled humanely, and so often we think of friendship as being merely one good among the others. We aim for a healthy "life balance," so that our relationships with family and friends are not diminished because of concerns for career and the like. But the common good is really the good life of the whole; living well with others. All other things which the civitas creates or makes possible is ordered to the good of the members.

The private good of the members is not the same as the social good (the good of friendship, community, etc.) but the common good is more than the sum of the private good of the members of the community, and the community exists for the sharing of higher goods. It is the good of the group as a whole, which includes the social good as its foremost manifestation, the members living well with one another. It also includes the sharing or communication of the other goods, which should be directed by the desire to live well with others, or love. In the polis, Aristotle's complete or perfect community, we are able to achieve [temporal or natural]  happiness, securing not only the necessities for survival, but the social good and other goods, leisure, the fine arts, and learning.

We should not [need to] pursue private goods at the expense of friendship, but rather we should do so in concert with others so that we can share those goods with them. "To be a friend is to share," a lesson we may have learned in kindergarten. The civitas may have a division of labor, with the resulting exchange of necessities or products being regulated by justice, but we are oblivious that we should be acting not only for our own benefit but for the benefit of others. Why? Because we have a weak sense of the group and of civic friendship. For instance, that which is aimed at intellectual perfection (scientiae, the products of art, and so on) is not merely for the elite, but should benefit all in some way. (The truths studied in theology and the liberal arts can be transmitted to the community through preaching by an educated clergy)

The natural inclination to the social life finds its fulfillment in civic friendship, and civic friendship (or charity) urges us to work for the perfection of each other. This inclination is naturally met through families joining one another in community, leading to natural affection for the other members, which is developed through civic friendship or sublimated through caritas. In sum, we naturally band together, associate not because  we seek help or benefit from others, but because we are drawn to living with others. One could even claim that cooperation and the division of labor is a consequence of living with others, as everyone in the group seeks to improve the lot of themselves and of the group.

Political communities, like religious communities, are schools of charity for Christians. For those who are not yet united to God, political communities can nonetheless still be schools of love and friendship, the way for us to practice loving others well. The political community is the pinnacle of natural friendship, and so those who aspire to be statesmen or to be practically wise must be cognizant of the conditions that are necessary to bring this about, and this includes the role of culture and group identity. Friendship is not a happy by-product of successful politics; it is one of its aims. One might even say that the first concern of men is the good of the group - what is my group? How do I preserve it and work for its welfare? Who is included in my group and who is not? The outsider is not automatically the object of hatred or enmity, but such distinctions are necessary for following the order of charity.

As lay people striving to rebuild the local community, we need to relearn the primacy of civic friendship, and start from the  beginning, with men and their families networking with each other, rather than presuming that community (or mutual solidarity) exists. We may be aware of some of the trials and problems of living with others through our families, but life is not supposed to be free from difficulties, and these difficulties are occasions for us to grow in grace and holiness through the exercise of caritas.

Caritas...

Rome Reports: Pope: Christianity is more than a set of morals. Christianity is love


Zenit: ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
"God Inspires and Accompanies our Efforts to Know Him and to Find Our Happiness in Him"

Part 1D of Back of the Stone Age

Here

Something from Mark Richardson: Planet nation

More on Hospitality

In the latest issue of the Houston Catholic Worker there is an essay by Carlos Diaz, "Hospitality Takes Us Beyond Our Limits." It called to mind Mark Mitchell's "The Culture of Hospitality." Alas the essay is not available at the CJD archive.

Hospitality is the virtue which permits us to break that narrowness of our fears and open our homes to the stranger with the intuition that salvation is coming to us. Hospitality transforms the weak into strong witnesses, those who are suspicious of everything into generous givers, and the fanatics whose minds are closed into recipients of new ideas and perspectives. We live in a desert with many solitary travelers who look for a moment of peace, a refreshing drink and a sign of encouragement in order to continue their mysterious search for freedom. What does hospitality require in order to become a healing power? That the one given hospitality feels as if he is in his own home, a free place without fear. Hospitality is the ability to serve the guest, something which is very difficult if our own stress impedes us from distancing ourselves from our own preoccupations.

As this was published in the HCW, one would expect that the author shares the same view on [illegal] immigration as those who run the newspaper and the organization, though this is not explicit in the article, nor does he explicit draw the implications of his view on hospitality on how we should treat illegal immigrants.

When we become conscious that we do not have to escape our suffering, but rather when we put it in movement, united with us in our shared search for meaning in life, these real sufferings change from expressions of total disillusion and discouragement into signs of hope. Thanks to this shared search, hospitality is transformed into community when it takes us so far beyond our limits. This is not because it cures, but because the scars and pains are changed into doors and open spaces and a new vision. This way, reciprocity is transformed into a mutual deepening of hope, and the weakness in anything that we remember personally and communally becomes the strength that we will receive.

For the ancient Greeks, xenia, hospitality, was linked to piety and service to the gods. While the host was obliged to take care of his guest, the guest was also under obligation to the host. He had an even greater obligation not to kill his host or steal from him than would otherwise be the case, since he was in debt to the host for his hospitality.

Would most illegals prefer to keep the freedom they now have rather than submitting to communal supervision and accountability in exchange for true hospitality (as opposed to government benefits)?

Some throw out as proof of assimilation that children of immigrants are more likely to speak English than Spanish to dismiss concerns with Hispanic immigration to the United States. Just because the children are more proficient in English than the native language of the parents does not mean that they have assimilated - culture and, more importantly, group identity and allegiance are more than the language one speaks.

Various documents have referred to the Holy Family's seeking refuge in Egypt as having some relevance for [contemporary] immigration policy (including something by Pius XII). But the Holy Family did not demand to be given citizenship or to be treated as equals to the natives in all respects or to be reckoned as Egyptians. Nor did they seek welfare assistance from the rules of Egypt. Did they blend in with the natives and other visitors (other Jews?) in a large urban area, seeking to be left alone, for the most part, while doing some labor in order to make a living and survive while they were away?

Bishops who think that Hispanic immigration is good because the Church is getting new blood should take a look at their parishes where Hispanics are the majority and judge for themselves how much assimilation is actually taking place. They should also remember that they should respect the rights of natives (i.e. non-Catholic whites) to their own culture, rather than using this strategy to effect some sort of "conversion" of the country.


Related: The Catholic Worker: A Model for Church and World

(via Casa Juan Diego)

Despite their position on immigration, I do think Catholics have much to learn from the Catholic Worker movement. As for Dorothy Day retaining leftist sympathies even after her conversion, I still have to investigate that...

Rod Dreher on Southern Xenia.

Counterculture

Mark Mitchell, The Culture of Hospitality

It's a good strategy for traditional localists and Christians as well. Moreover, Christians should rely less on organizations, professional charity-givers and more on "informal" communal bonds.

Might the movie about St. Augustine, Restless Heart, be helpful in helping us get some perspective about how to live as Christians in community? Might Blessed Frederic Ozanam be a model for layman, even though he was living in a nation-state in its heyday? Saints can resist the dehumanizing tendencies of expanding political units through love and the protection of community, but they must realize in some fashion what they are up against. It is not sufficient to accept the way things are and live like everyone else because it is "normal."

Louis Bouyer's dichotomy between the church of the faithful and the church of numbers is not a pastoral problem arising from the tortuous history of Church-State relations per se, but because of the nature of the polities and political power when coupled to the inclination to sin? What check can there be on the desire for power than for other men to be organized and to protect their communities? Should the Church be trying to keep up with the state, engaging it on its level through "power politics" or the ballot, instead of pushing it towards a more humane scale by fostering local communities, which can be the bases of evangelization that they should be? If any "institution" is capable of protecting communities, the small, humane group, it is the Church. Rather than accepting the "inevitable" expansion of polities on the terms set by those in power, the Church should have zealously guarded the rights of local communities. (Too often bishops were content to go along with consolidation and the imposition of one culture as being superior?) Subvert the state through love. Legal protections will not be enough, if the laity do not care about protecting the Church.

Has the treatment of hunter-gatherer groups by the "civilized" world been rather inhumane, for the most part, even by Christian missionaries? We do not need to become anarcho-primitivists to recognize that men have a better life in smaller groups, though there may be some arguments about how big an ideal city should be.

Looking through a recent issue of Valley Catholic, I see that most of the lay leaders getting recognition are women. What feminism in the Church?

How about the argument that since the Incarnation it is no longer possible... I can't remember the rest of the argument.

To have separate nations since all are one in Christ? Some cannot see how diversity can be reconciled with universality and oneness proper to the Body of Christ. They can only envision uniformity and a single culture and government.

Related:
Christian Democratic Party (FB)
Christian Democracy and America's Future

Being Civil in Mean Times by Robert Woods

We're all Uhmerican now.

KoreAm: Dying Alone: An Elderly Korean Immigrant’s Worst Nightmare Not all are guilty of senior abandonment, but we do overvalue "independence" as well as mobility for the sake of "prosperity." And sometimes, the seniors prefer to live on their own. (Like in the case of my grandmother.)

Primer on Lay Spirituality

While I was visiting Holy Cross Chapel and its bookstore, I did have some time to skim through Eric Sammons's book on "the practical Spirituality of St. Josemaría Escrivá." As I suspected, it did not go into questions of social justice (the rectitude of the political economy and various professions, especially within FIRE and the corporate world) or discuss the order of charity. One might argue that the order of charity is obvious, and so it doesn't need treatment in a beginner's book on spirituality. Is it so obvious to mobile American Catholics who move far away from their parents and family? The American Church needs to start talking about what our priorities as lay people should be and acknowledge the difficulties we have in living in accordance with the order of charity. Only then can we start looking for solutions (for the improvement of the local parish community and the civic "community" at large).

Most lay Catholics probably would not want to read a tome on moral theology that includes a treatment of the order of charity. I have not come across any popular books that deal with the order of charity and community properly, though Dorothy Day does talk about community. Dr. Fleming's book is more philosophical than theological; there are the essays of Wendell Berry. What other books might be helpful for lay Catholics?

Related:
Review of MoEL in Modern Age.

Hate or anger?

Begun on June 9.

In a recent show (May 11) of the Paul Youngblood Show, the men of the Rockford Institute were discussing identity politics. At the end of the second hour, Aaron Wolf was describing the mission of the institute and of Chronicles Magazine as an antidote to identity politics, enabling people to learn about American culture and traditions and to recover an American identity that will unite them once more. Dr. Fleming added that this course of action would prevent people from falling into the white power fantasy or the men's rights fantasy. He included these with other [special interest] groups and movements, like that for blacks, Hispanics, and gays -- all of these movements are based on hate. Is his characterization of the motivation of the people in either group correct? Are they just "hate groups," as the SPLC and other liberals would have us believe? (Of course the SPLC would deny this of the other groups while maintaining that it is an accurate characterization of white nationalists and the MRM.) As the show ended at that point, he was not able to elaborate. I have not listened to any of the following episodes yet, so I do not know if he clarified his point. (Edit. I don't believe he has.)

We need to distinguish between the emotion of hate (and the associated emotion of anger) from the act of the will, which is evil in itself. MRAs (and perhaps WNs too) are reacting at injustices that have been done to them or to those they know. They are not seeking preferential treatment or favoritism, just justice. (I do acknowledge that the homosexual lobby does make the same claim.)

Can the MRM be characterized as emotion-driven? I think there is a keen sense that the [legal] system is unjust and misandric. Now, anger and the emotion of hate can lead to problems if they are not subordinated to reason or if one lacks love/charity. Some men associated with the MRM may be bitter towards women or even misogynistic in their words and such; that much is obvious if you look at some comments on androsphere blogs. Wouldn't it be better to just say that certain attitudes are not beneficial to themselves or others or to warn them against indulging in anger rather than seeking some positive outlet? I think Dr. Fleming is still too dismissive of the movement and its goals of correcting the legal system. The effort may be futile, but it is not opposed to the sort of localism that he favors. How do we take the state out of marriage and the like and return power to the churches? And if the church (i.e. ecclesial community) is thoroughly feminized can it be trusted to look out for the interests of the family and of men? If a couple takes a vow only in church while eschewing the civil license, can the man still be held responsible by  the state and its divorce laws if they do decide to separate? If so, then what would be the point?

Finally, is preference of one's own identity group always accompanied by hatred of people who fall outside the group? Does Dr. Fleming believe this or is he making an exaggeration in order to make a point? Men should be welcome those who want to join them, but trust has to be earned and newcomers have to prove themselves. If people wish to separate, let them go their way, but one should not exclude others simply because they are of a different race or ethnicity. They have to actually show that they do not want to be part of the community. (In which case they should be warned and then accorded a different social status?) The ethnonationalists would hold that ethnicity/race/skin color is a legitimate distinction in the order of charity. "It is natural to prefer one's own kind," they say. I would maintain that love of the community and its members (civic friendship) is paramount, and ethnic origin should not be a consideration if all members of the community are truly members. One may try to justify such a preference on the base of genealogy (and hence "family" ties via genetic proximity), but I think this is a rather weak reason. Forming new alliances through marriage in order to strengthen the family and the community is better than excluding new "blood." Affinity through blood should matter only when you are actually aware that such a kinship exists, not when it is based on a DNA test.

Then there is the claim that one "naturally" wants children "who look like me." Even if that is your desire, by what right can you prevent someone else from marrying someone of a different ethnicity? Are you really going to ostracize such a person, even if he's lived up to his duties to you and the community? Are you really going to accuse him of being immoral because he does not want to keep the race "pure"? Some even say that the differentiation into races is divinely-ordained, and that God does not want interracial marriage. (Did those who supported anti-miscegenation laws make the same sort of argument?)

Augustinian Localism?

Augustinian Reflections on Love and Localism by A.J. DeBonis

I still need to read through City of God all the way through...