I knew  nothing about the Optimist Club but your question made me curious. I was going to wait till someone else came up with the goods but nobody has so far so here goes:

I did a websearch and found that the Optimist Creed was developed by Christian D. Larson.

Christian Daa Larson (1874 – 1954) was an American New Thought leader and teacher, as well as a prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books. He is credited by Horatio Dresser as being a founder in the New Thought movement.

The New Thought movement is a spiritual movement, sometimes classed as a Christian denomination, which developed in the United States in the 19th century, following the teachings of Phineas Quimby. The three major organizations within New Thought movement today are Religious Science, Unity Church and the Church of Divine Science, with an estimated number of some 1,500,000 adherents in the United States between them. There are numerous smaller groups, most of which are incorporated in the International New Thought Alliance,
 
The concept of New Thought (sometimes known as "Higher Thought") promotes the ideas that Infinite Intelligence, or God, is everywhere, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and "right thinking" has a healing effect.
 
Although New Thought is neither monolithic nor doctrinaire, in general, modern-day adherents of New Thought believe that God or Infinite Intelligence is "supreme, universal, and everlasting", that divinity dwells within each person, that all people are spiritual beings, that "the highest spiritual principle [is] loving one another unconditionally... and teaching and healing one another", and that "our mental states are carried forward into manifestation and become our experience in daily living".
 
The New Thought movement originated in the early 19th century, and survives to the current day in the form of a loosely allied group of religious denominations, authors, philosophers, and individuals who share a set of beliefs concerning metaphysics, positive thinking, the law of attraction, healing, life force, creative visualization, and personal power.

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (February 16, 1802 – January 16, 1866), was an American spiritual teacher. Quimby was a philosopher, magnetizer, mesmerist, healer, and inventor, who resided in Belfast, Maine, and had an office in Portland, Maine. Quimby's work is widely recognized as leading to the New Thought movement.[

All quotes come from Wikipedia as the Optimists website tell you nothing about their philosophy.

If you want to introduce your kids to theosophy and the like the Optimists are probably a good start. On the other hand....

I can't remember if it was Chesterton who said this, but it seems apropos:

"A pessimist is an unhappy idiot. An optimist is a happy one."

Catholics aren't called to embrace the idiocy of believing in some oracular maxim about everything being either wonderful or terrible. Things are what they are, and that's how we ought to treat a thing - as it is. That's the Catholic approach.

As for "negative attitudes" (another bit of insidiously popular New Age sloganeering) being prevalent among Traditional Catholics, well consider the condition of the world today: post-Christian, godless, perverse, Judaized, lustful, materialistic, cruel - in short, it's an evil age, the most evil age since the dawn of the Church, in fact - and it ought to be regarded as such.

The ѕуηαgσgυє of Satan has created more than enough diversions and distractions to turn our children into "optimists" - blind, acquiescent, capitulating "happy" (and therefore, useful) idiots. We will have truly handed our children serpents and stones in place of fish and bread if we're willing to do the enemy's work for him in this regard.

I believe the apostles had a pretty negative world view before Pentecost.  Today people are the same and motivations are the same.

Hey I agree with you about that organization.  Mentors that teach leadership skills are always needed and appreciated.  

I believe the apostles had a pretty negative world view before Pentecost.  Today people are the same and motivations are the same.

Firstly, the doubt, lukewarmness, and weakness of faith exhibited by the Apostles before Pentecost are not synonymous with "negativity" in the sense to which you've attributed this concept to Traditional Catholics. Your example is a total non-sequitur.

And as for "negative" and "positive" "world views"...

How about St. John Chrysostom? Which did he have?

Or St. Athanasius?

St. Augustine?

St. Thomas Aquinas?

Pope St Pius V?

Pope St Pius X?

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre?

How about Our Lady of Fatima? Were her words "positive" or "negative?"

What about the fact that Our Lord Himself spoke more about hell in the Gospels than heaven?

Does all of this sufficiently make clear the fact that the "positive outlook" / "negative outlook" paradigm is modernist mush with no basis in Catholic thought?

Quote from: insidebaseball

Hey I agree with you about that organization.  Mentors that teach leadership skills are always needed and appreciated.  

Mentors that who teach leadership skills? Sounds like another way to intercept and interfere with the role of the parent. Maybe I am just being negative!  :furtive:

What is the role of a father? Isn't it to lead by example?

Also, how about godparents?!

Back home we would call this a niger pile.