Let's be a little more specific here. Fiftiesism, at least in America, should not be mentioned without pointing out that the Roman Catholic Church sold out to the social progressivism of FDR and the Democratic Party.

Was this "the love of the world?" It was in the largest sense; but the largest sense is a bit too general to provide much insight in the specific case. The precise manner in which this happened is a source of genuine curiosity.

I'm not going to affect that I know the answer in full, but I think it has a lot to do with the "slave morality" that Christianity produces when it is present only under the form of hypocrisy. Nietzsche's critique of Christianity was directed toward this hypocricy, not at Christianity itself; and it was dead-on. When the Christian counsels concerning charity toward the poor, the value of suffering, "neither Jєω nor Greek," etc., are understood apart from their Divine inspiration, and the attempt is made to turn them into a system of worldy values (which is necessarily an inverted system of worldy values) then slave morality ensues and the religion becomes ironical and self-contemptuous.

Here I wish to draw attention to a point which is at the nucleus of so much controversy and confusion running rampant in the world today: Self-sacrifice is the result of either charity or irony. There is no middle ground.

Now charity is nothing but a Divine gift, a theological virtue. It is the supernatural life of God becoming effective in us through our being baptized into His body, and cooperating with the graces given. It is not the result of our own efforts.

(That is why exhortations to "act more charitable" have something offensive about them. They are not meant for our betterment, but meant to condemn us and exclude us from a certain "club" to which the exhorter himself wishes to belong. Have you ever had a friend to whom you were true, but who would resort to mocking or ignoring you when a more popular person was around, in an effort to exclude you from the association he wished to form with them? Do you remember how bitter that sense of betrayal was? That is what it feels like when others tell us that we are uncharitable. It is in effect saying, "You're not cool enough; you don't rate. But Gaw-awd loves me, neener, neener, neener.")

Thus charity can not really be done "on purpose" by somebody who lacks the virtue. However, charity does have an outward form which can be mimicked by anybody, even the very base. A saint can give food and shelter to the destitute, and so can a tarty debutante who needs it to polish her college application. The difference between the two is whether or not it is the love of God which motivates their activities. If it is not the love of God, then the action is intrinsically valueless and unmeritorious. That is why it makes no sense to abstract a certain behavioral element from Christinity, call it "doing good," and then set that up as a religion unto itself, having first divorced it from its Divine origins, which one then attempts to replace by rooting the entire ediface in Kantian rationalism or "the dignity of the human person." Yet we live in a society which has done precisely this: deny God, but insist upon (albeit shallow and misunderstood) Godly behavior.

In any case, such attempts at mimicking virtue are doomed to fail, for they lead only to hypocrisy, the strip-mining of public trust, frustration, and the pain of loss. One may manage to keep up the illusion for awhile by believing that his frustrations are the purgatorial sufferings of a saint, a sign of his election. But to everyone not beclouded by his own peculiar understanding, he simply looks like a fool. This is the irony of false charity. The world will eventually have its revenge on these pseudo-saints and soi dissant martyrs by making them contempuous of themselves as well as of the objects upon which they previously lavished their affection.

Socialism is nothing but one giant attempt at imposing pseudo-Christianity by legislative fiat and the secret police. It is the will to spread and engineer irony. FDR's soft socialism was highly compatible with the piety of hypocritical Christians, for it corresponded with the ironies they were inflicting and had been inflicting upon themselves for some time. So, returning to the point, it seems that Fiftiesism was the result of irony having taken over the spiritual life of the Church and producing a slave morality which then passed as legitimate Christianity. This slave morality was sweepingly disregarded by most of the laity, who proceeded to "do their own thing" and just enjoy the pleasures of Vanity Fair. The few who remained devoted to the Church were devoted to a false image of it, and this is where we got the pedophile priests, lesbian nuns, and socialist bishops who were simply thrilled when the Second Vatican Council came along.

And yet...

And yet the threat of the slave morality breaking out remains a permanent possibility for Christianity; for Chist's words about giving up the world, about the value of suffering, cannot simply be removed from the Bible. I have often wondered why Christ would use words that, when mixed with a certain temperment, seem almost guaranteed to produce heresy and error. But then I remember that He Himself said it would be so. I remember the parable of the seed that fell by the wayside. I remember that He is both a stumbling stone and a cornerstone, and that those who do not hear His voice are "judged already."

And that seems to be the entire meaning behind the current crisis. The Church needed to be purified of socialism and sentimentality. But let him who thinks he stands take heed, lest he falleth.

This is a typical Bishop Williamson article where he makes a few good thought provoking points and throws in one weird idea, in this case a blanket condemnation of coeducation above the age of eight as Masonic or inspired by the devil.

It worked just fine in many American Catholic grade schools where it was the only option possible. I don't think His Excellency has any business sounding off about it since he has no first-hand knowledge of what it was really like or how these schools were run. You can see why Bp. Fellay gets so annoyed with +W's shooting from the hip!

Such a low cut-off age may not be necessary for most students but there are always precocious children whose needs for separation from the opposite sex should be taken into account.  Certainly coeducation at age 12 is unacceptable from a Catholic point of view.

+JMJ+

I apologize in advance if anyone takes this the wrong way, but I mean this in the strictest, classic sense of the word, not as a shallow perjorative:

Given the pervasive (and perverting) influence of 'pop music', television and movies, anyone who thinks that boys and girls can be co-educated and commingled socially in the context of a public school without the danger of sins of concupiscence and untold near occasions for mortal sin is, in all charity, an idiot.

I mean idiot - by definition: A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers.

It remains the burden of the public 'school', so-called, to prove that coeducation and social commingling is beneficial, let alone MORE beneficial than classical models of education, which were carried on in both parent-led 'homeschooling' models and in parochial school settings.

Although I despise WHAT they teach, credit must be given to the Jєωs, who, in their most conservative sects, continue to insist upon the separation of the sexes for educational and most social purposes.

My wife and I are rabid defenders of home-schooling rights, and I in particular am (almost) as opposed to government infringement upon my DUTIES as a parent and educator as I am opposed to sacrilege in the Church.

I am totally convinced that the mingling of the sexes, even in single-digit age groups, is even more dangerous now than ever in our nation's history, if not the history of the world.

When (as was mentioned in another thread) there are four- and five-year-old girls in minidresses and high-heeled shoes for 'H-ween' costumes, and there are children on YouTube and other sites shown singing and dancing to the filthy lyrics of secular radio, parents have NO business encouraging what amounts to 8 or more hours a day of basically unsupervised inter-gender contact.

Girls have, by necessity of the commands of the Apostles in Scripture, different responsibilities in the home and before God, at least in terms of the ways in which they are able to serve the Church.

Boys, of course, are educated differently because there is not only an expectation of profitable work outside the home (preferably in a trade; Catholics these days had better be training to provide goods and services for a new counterculture if they know what's good for them), but also an expectation of future responsibility in serving the Church, perhaps in a religious vocation, but at the very least in ways that girls are simply not permitted to.

One of the major problems with coeducation is the lowering of the sights of the children, especially of boys, but of both sexes to a great degree nonetheless. When children are routinely exposed to the overtly sɛҳuąƖized, Godless messages of the mass media, they become insensitive to the gentle, beginning nudges of their soul by the Holy Ghost toward a vocation. They imagine themselves only as players in the same game as their 'stars' in TV shows or movies; they no longer see themselves as anyone with any possibility of a higher calling. Religious vocation is often seen as oppressive or the product of a stifled, 'fundamentalist' upbringing, unless, of course, it is a 'calling' to a liberal ideology, which is embraced wholeheartedly by the most powerful backers of public education in history.

(EXAMPLE: MANY public television programs, including those that openly defy and mock the authority of the Church to interpret Scripture, and those aimed at children, are supported by the Helena Rubenstein Foundation. Rubenstein was an entrepreneur and marketer of cosmetic products, and her company was once one of the exclusive suppliers to the major Hollywood makeup departments at studios, thus ensuring her company's continuing relationship with the Jєωιѕн liberal elite who produce such garbage as we see in theaters and on TV today.)

More often than not, children in commingled societies like public schools are presented with ideas like pursuing jobs only for the ultimate goal of the greatest financial gain. This, of course, is due to the Jєωιѕн/Masonic groundwork that has been laid for public education. The idea of the transcendent, the spiritual, the higher life, is verboten as a subject in public schools because there is no expectation of a religious person's being able to contribute tax dollars from their earnings or revenues for their employers.

I could say more, but I must go for now; suffice it to say that coeducation and commingling of the sexes socially, outside the home, is completely the product of those who would both defy (now) and destroy (their eventual goal) the Church.

St. Frances Cabrini, pray for us.

St. John Bosco, pray for us.

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Quote from: Canute

This is a typical Bishop Williamson article where he makes a few good thought provoking points and throws in one weird idea, in this case a blanket condemnation of coeducation above the age of eight as Masonic or inspired by the devil.

It worked just fine in many American Catholic grade schools where it was the only option possible. I don't think His Excellency has any business sounding off about it since he has no first-hand knowledge of what it was really like or how these schools were run. You can see why Bp. Fellay gets so annoyed with +W's shooting from the hip!

I think you are the one with the weird Ideas, there is no co-education past grade 8 at the SSPX school in New Hamburg, Ontario.

and that is the way it should be.

God Bless Bishop Williamson!

He said age 7 or 8.  Not seventh or eighth grade.

Permitting coeducation in junior high is probably even worse than in high school.

 
Man of the West said:  

Let's be a little more specific here. Fiftiesism, at least in America, should not be mentioned without pointing out that the Roman Catholic Church sold out to the social progressivism of FDR and the Democratic Party.

Was this "the love of the world?" It was in the largest sense; but the largest sense is a bit too general to provide much insight in the specific case. The precise manner in which this happened is a source of genuine curiosity.

I'm not going to affect that I know the answer in full, but I think it has a lot to do with the "slave morality" that Christianity produces when it is present only under the form of hypocrisy. Nietzsche's critique of Christianity was directed toward this hypocricy, not at Christianity itself; and it was dead-on. When the Christian counsels concerning charity toward the poor, the value of suffering, "neither Jєω nor Greek," etc., are understood apart from their Divine inspiration, and the attempt is made to turn them into a system of worldy values (which is necessarily an inverted system of worldy values) then slave morality ensues and the religion becomes ironical and self-contemptuous.

You are really behind the times, my man.  

You are the type of person to call it "socialism" if the government hands out some welfare checks, but you call it  "the free market" when they spend seven hundred billion more bailing out the banks which own them.

The only reason this evil government hands out welfare is to keep people from rioting once they realize that they have been routinely fleeced for decades.  As you can see, it no longer is working out all that well.  

Of course Catholics were Democrats.  The Democratic Party was far more consonant with the teachings of Leo XIII and Pius XI -- Rerum Novarum and Quadregesimo Anno.  While the clergy acknowledged that belonging to unions was not ideal, and the Church should be the primary source of charity, it did support the unions.  Eventually it allowed workers to join even non-Catholic unions.

One of the most deplorable aspects of the present day is that Catholics think that, just because the Democrats become unconscionable by supporting abortion, this means they should accept the crony capitalism and destructive globalism of the aptly-named neo-cons.  Not only does this make them look like hypocrites, since nothing about this form of capitalism is "free" -- in a true free market, almost every American bank would have failed, as would have America itself since we are "number one" through a sheer financial con -- but it makes them look uncharitable, greedy and hard.

When Catholics actually support the likes of Sarah Palin, whose skill is dressing like a middle-class hooker and repeating Israel-friendly platitudes, you know there is a serious problem.