First, a disclaimer: This isn't meant to become an SSPX bash-fest. That means you, Telesphorus. I know this topic is RIGHT up your alley.

I would like to have a philosophical discussion about something which is certainly an issue.

I believe there are two kinds of priests:
1. Those who focus more on rebuilding Catholic culture, promoting Catholic lifestyle, etc.
2. Those who focus on the vocation of the layman being to earn money to help build up the Church that way. (In other words, we all must help/build up the Church, but only some can/will join the religious or clergy)

So you have some priests who would be OK if all their parishioners had well-thumbed copies of Integrity books (My Life with St. Thomas Aquinas) talking about family, Catholic culture, etc. and they spent lots of resources to acquire land, classic literature, homeschooling, an integrally Catholic home life,  allowing the children to see their parents working, etc. but these families probably wouldn't have a lot of extra money.

Summary: Churches will be rustic or humble, but all the parishioners live solidly Catholic lives, and are "low risk" for losing the Faith.

Then you have some priests who would rather have laymen having to kick and scream every inch of the way to being Catholic -- having to constantly hold up a shield to deflect the fiery darts of the world, in particular while studying in a very anti-Catholic college environment. But when all was said and done, these families would have more "resources" to give to the Church, so the Churches would look a little nicer.

Summary: The Churches are beautiful and elaborate, and many parishioners have successful careers, but most parishioners show plenty of battle scars from dealing with the World. They are "high risk" for losing the Faith, or at least compromising with the world too much. Example: Indult.


Now I'm not saying you necessarily have to lose the Faith if you become a doctor, or go to college. I'm saying you are HIGHER RISK for at least becoming a bit more lukewarm in the battle with the World. It's a question of statistics.  

Ask Bishop Williamson -- there are ways to increase your chances, and ways to LESSEN your chances for sanctity. Living on acreage doesn't make you a saint, but if you put 1000 people on acreage, and 1000 people elbow-to-elbow with worldly people, you're going to have more holy people in the first group. That's what I'm saying.  Grace builds on nature.

These two different "priority types" express themselves differently all the time, in every situation.

Type A (Catholic Culture) type would advise a young, unmarried lady to learn the domestic arts -- how to bake bread, how to sew, etc. so she will be best able to run a house and raise children.

Type B (Success) type would advise a young woman to go to college, so she can work as an accountant or nurse instead of having to work at Target.

You really can't PRIORITIZE both, which is why I believe everyone can be sorted into these two "camps".

Catholics don't exist to earn money for priests.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Now if priests are teaching and acting differently, then they have a serious problem.  

So Matthew this attitude is becoming prominent in the asps in the Usa?

Like I said, it depends on the priest. Some focus on one "good"; others focus on another "good".

Sometimes you have to choose one or the other.

There is one prominent SSPX priest who often lambasted traditional Catholic young men for not being ambitious enough, in terms of a career. He lamented how all the "professionals" in the congregations were converts from the Novus Ordo, or some other Protestant sect.

I wonder why that is? Perhaps there's a fundamental reason for this.

I feel that the problem is not a supposed lack of ambition on the part of young Catholic men but rather a pronounced vein of anti-intellectualism, alarmist pseudoscientific thought, and no small degree of pharisaical envy and pride of blue-collar mentality that in my experience permeate the traditional Catholic community.  Just as sedevacantists are so often theologically lambasted as having thrown the baby out with the bathwater, so are those of a potential intellectual or scientific bent, those most apt to seek and find work in professional occupation, impressed upon that such knowledge leads to evil and ought to be avoided at all costs.  They assert that some basic truths can be counted upon (this is even a matter of debate to some on this forum) but the rest is part of the godless atheist conspiracy to overturn the truth of biblical inerrancy.  Is it any wonder that our Catholic men so often avoid professional occupations altogether?

Something that I find equally and profoundly disturbing is the notion that a man's faculties exist purely for attainment of material prosperity in executing his duty as husband and father.  Certainly such faculties are gifts from God and, when so given and recognized, are justly used for that end.  But isn't it also just to cultivate those faculties simply for their own merits, purely in thanksgiving?

Catholics don't exist to earn money for priests.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Now if priests are teaching and acting differently, then they have a serious problem.  

Well said and succinct.

This idea was prominent when I was a Protestant, that should be all one needs to know.

I have an eye for it and I definitely see this 'prosperity gospel'-ism (to use a protestant term) amongst the neos more andmore without any recognition of the protestantism of it.

As I  alluded  to in another thread, I'm a former freemason as well, and the apologia of achieving worldly success for the noble goal of helping 'widows and orphans' and of course to put one's self  in a better position to assist a fellow mason in his own similar pursuits was described as 'the craft' itself at time.

This too should be all one needs to know.