It turns out the home-alone position isn't new after all --

The Quarterly Review of Business and Economics, London, 1891 --

"As they no longer have any priests to celebrate divine service, they assemble together in their villages, or if they are too scattered they are content to pray in their own houses, before and after the day's labour.  Nearly all of them are agriculturists.  A few weeks ago I passed a week with a Jansenist family of Isere:  and I returned deeply edified by the views of religion held by those upright and devout hearts.  They have no relations with the clergy of their parishes, who they regard as intruders; they marry only among themselves, and they celebrate their own baptisms, marriages, and funerals according to the rites of the Old Church.  Besides the ancient Gallican prayer-book, the books they prefer are Nicole's little moral Essays, and Quesnel's Reflexions ( ! ) They rely greatly on M. Hamon's system of medical treatment, and when there is a death among them they bear the corpse direct to the cemetery, reciting psalms, and preceded by a cross borne by a little clergeon.  They celebrate regularly all the feasts of the Virgin, her Nativity, Annunciation and Assumption, but reject of course the dogma of her Immaculate Conception ( ? ).  Although persecution has made them distrustful and to a degree unsociable, they keep up some measure of intercourse with their co-religionists in other departments."

I can't tell, but it seems like there is a connection between these Jansenists and the Old Catholics, with the mention of the "Old Church."  It should be borne in mind that Jansenists always had an anti-papal streak and were a strange sort of breed of Gallican Republicans.  There is a strain in French Catholicism going back at least to Gerson -- where it actually came in handy for once in ending the Great Western Schism -- that Councils should have the real authority while the Pope is merely a figurehead ( although they don't say as much, that is what he really becomes in their system ).  The dream of a sort of utopian Catholic Republic also reminds me of Savonarola.

"The dream of a sort of utopian Catholic Republic also reminds me of Savonarola. "

why is this a utopian dream and by implication, bad then?? You think Roe vs Wade or Obamacare would be going on in a real, Catholic state......Savonarola would have chased both out.....

oh, and finding a home alone position in the past does not negate your obligation to the sacrements and to the Mass, both, last I heard, you stay away from.....