You keep predicting these teotwawki scenarios, or piggy-backing on others predictions, and yet never review them when they don't come to pass.

Thing is Matthew, you and I are about the same age and I've heard this "end of the world as we know it" line for 35 years.  It has always been "just right around the corner".  Lots of the people I remember saying it are now dead, or as close to it as makes no difference.

Remember the 1970s and 1980s?  Protect and Survive?  I remember growing up with the threat of nuclear war ever present.  I remember Trads spinning whatever geo-political problems were going on at the time into some societal collapse.

I remember Y2K and the Millenium Bug.  Some of the younger people here don't but I can remember SSPX priests and Williamson himself suggesting that Y2K might be TEOTWAWKI.  Then 911 and let's face it that was a pretty shocking and surprising event.  And then the Boxing Day Tsunami, 1/4 million people suddenly dead.  Then the 2007 banking collapse which, let's be honest, looked pretty much like the end of the capitalist funny money system.  And yet here we all are 7 years later.  The economy in the doldrums perhaps but nothing like the disaster scenario predicted.   The "derivatives time bomb" still unexploded.

There will be a third world war, of that I am sure.  One simply has to look at history to see that wars come and go and are a part of human politics.  But when, who knows?  Will it kill everyone?  Who knows?  Will it kill first worlders or third worlders?  Who knows?

Since you are pitching these disaster scenarios to humans, "right around the corner" applies to a human lifetime, not that of a giant tortoise or a Californian Redwood tree.  Do you accept that along with a warning comes a moral responsibility to review those warnings and temper them with a mental balance and some clarity that there is far more we don't know about what might happen than what we do know.  And we have absolutely no clue as to the timing, as a search of all TEOTWAWKI posts in the last 15 years on the internet clearly demonstrates.  To speak of things being "right around the corner" therefore is misleading hyperbole.  You simply don't know that.

Would you accept that most people considering these potential disaster scenarios are not going to be unaffected in their decision-making.  Would you accept that someone might put of marriage, taking out a mortgage, making a long term investment in say medical school or law school which will only pay back after 6-10 years if they think there is a reasonably high chance of TEOTWAWKI being "around the corner"?

There are some souls who, feeling betrayed by both Church and country, indulge in apocalyptic rhetoric. They find consolation in talking about the inevitable economic collapse, social chaos, war, famine, the great chastisement, etc.

Although, the topic of the end of times and the gloomy general situation can be fascinating and entertaining, it does little to help those of us trying to raise Catholic families, especially if one is prone to despair. For some of us, it is not healthy to always be looking at the gloomy picture. There must be a balance.

Recently read a statement in the SBC Mancipia Press related to this:

"There’s no denying that we find ourselves in a wasteland in Church, State, and family today. But let us not, on that account, engage in handwringing and whining.

Brother Francis used to call some Catholic writers who majored in this, “professional  wailers,” after those Arabs he knew who got paid to set the mood at funeral rites by mourning bombastically. According to Brother, the motto of the Catholic professional wailer is “have you heard the latest?” While it is important to take stock of the wasteland every once in a while — at least to keep ourselves from being wasted — it is much more necessary to “look up,” to remind ourselves of our supernatural goal and to cultivate a clear vision of the way there. Saint Paul tells us that “our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ,” (Phil. 3:20). With so much around us to disedify, we ought to edify ourselves and others. Besides the customary Catholic practices of piety (Mass, sacraments, prayer, spiritual reading, the practice of the virtues, etc.), one way to edify ourselves is to read of the noble episodes in Catholic history.

Thing is Matthew, you and I are about the same age and I've heard this "end of the world as we know it" line for 35 years.  It has always been "just right around the corner".  Lots of the people I remember saying it are now dead, or as close to it as makes no difference.

The thing about contemplating these types of subjects is that we are watching Satan's slow erosion of everything good in the world, one line item at a time.  Some people become fixated on the big picture of it all--which I do not think is a good or a bad thing.  

Personally, I don't dwell on it anymore.  I am quite aware of the horrible degradation of Western Civilization and what Satan has in store for it, which is why nothing horrible in the news surprises me any longer.  I know what's coming, not only because I can put 2 and 2 together from news articles, but also because Christ and the Holy Scriptures tells us these things will happen.  

Therefore, I focus on the near term, try to provide for me and mine, go to confession, Mass, and so on.  But that's just my personal approach.

Here's a little something I read this weekend that I enjoyed considering, though.  It's from the Vox Day blog, which I like:

Christianity will survive its abandonment by Western civilization. Western civilization will not survive its abandonment of Christianity.

It's from The Choice Facing the West.

Personally, I think that at this point, Western society should be taken out into the desert and marched around for 40 years until a generation or two dies off.  Such is my disgust for what we've come to represent.  Our kids are inheriting a wasteland thanks to a collective gaggle of idiots.