81–90 of 171 posts
As membership declines, just wondering what happens to all the cash the Churches are sitting on, from property, to art, to chuch tax collections. Going to be interesting to see what the next (younger) gen of church leaders do with it...maybe they need an innovation center to modernize the useful aspects of religion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our western societies fundamentally value extroversion, exchanging with the world and participate in the group. A monastry is the opposite. It worked when praying for the world was largely accepted as having some effect. Nowadays thoughts and prayers doesn’t cut it for the general population. In a way high level research institutes could be seen as the new monastries, with people shutting down in buildings everyday,…
> Our western societies fundamentally value extroversion, exchanging with the world and participate in the group. A monastry is the opposite. Monasteries absolutely require participation in the group. Monks are not hermits, much of their activity is working for the monastery and interacting with other monks.
hrktb is quite right about the general principle of monasticism. Here's the start of the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on it [1]:
"Monasticism or monachism, literally the act of "dwelling alone" (Greek monos, monazein, monachos), has come to denote the mode of life pertaining to persons living in seclusion from the world, under religious vows and subject to a fixed rule, as monks, friars, nuns, or in general as religious. The basic idea of monasticism in all its varieties is seclusion or withdrawal from the world or society."
EDIT although in the entry on "monk" [2] there is considerably less certainty about the origin of the name and idea. Imagine your primary reference work being internally inconsistent like that! Can't imagine where these bible-bashers got that idea.
[1] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10459a.htm
[2] http://catholicencyclopedia.newadvent.com/cathen/10487b.htm
As membership declines, just wondering what happens to all the cash the Churches are sitting on, from property, to art, to chuch tax collections. Going to be interesting to see what the next (younger) gen of church leaders do with it...maybe they need an innovation center to modernize the useful aspects of religion.
The area I'm in now was built up before cars were commonplace - implication being churches built closely enough to be within walking distance. Flash forward a century, and the situation is a combination of fewer people attending churches and more ability for those that do to travel. There are also more competing interests for people's time, so there's less ability and desire for parishioners to engage in volunteer activities at churches. Attending church on Sunday morning might mean missing a little league game and attending a work day at the parish might mean missing a school event or similar. (With fewer activities centered around church than before, there's more opportunity for schedule contention that the churches often lose.)
What this means for an individual parish is that there are fewer resources available for maintaining an aging and likely historic building. There are fewer people committing money to the church and fewer people able to volunteer work at the church.
The flip side of this is that there are also fewer practical reasons to maintain an old church. Shutting down a church with 50 people in weekly attendance is easier than shutting down a church with 300 people in attendance. The trouble with this line of reasoning is that it papers over some of the more sentimental reasons for keeping a parish running. Those 50 remaining folks are also the people most likely to have a strong connection to the parish... or they'd have already left. So individual parishes can have more inertia to stay open than you might expect.
Moving up to the diocese level, a parish shutting down can transfer many of the funding/transport issues from the parish to the diocese. The diocese, which may have problems of its own, now has additional burdens to take on as it both loses revenue (from parish remittances) and gains expenses. This implies a potentially strong incentive for a diocese to sell off old properties.
The trouble with a sale is the large number of stakeholders that might be opposed to such a sale. Never underestimate the difficulties that can be thrown up by 'interested parties'. Shutting down a parish can easily involve current and former parishoners, the diocese level, local planning/zoning boards, historical building regulations... the list goes on and on. (And you still have to find a developer with the intent, resources, and ability to take on the property and turn it into something the community wants.)
The reason I go down this path is mainly to illustrate that the notion of churches as pools of free resources is somewhat dubious at best. Whatever resources are there are not only special purpose to begin with, but also can sequestered behind history, regulation, and interests that are difficult to overcome.
I would love to see old monasteries turned into various kinds of retreats. The idea of spending a week or a month with no electronics, all my meals prepared, and quiet time to just read, study and think sounds fantastic.
On guy even made a movie, "Into Great Silence"
30 years might be enough to become a popular retreat from technology. They just need proper online marketing.
> 30 years might be enough to become a popular retreat from technology. They just need proper online marketing. Was the contradiction between these two sentences an actually intended stylistic device ("retreat from technology" vs. "proper online marketing")?
Is there any possible modern approach to a traditional catholic monastery? I think, they are dying out, because of their rigid traditions which rarely make sense in our modern world anymore. The idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to introspection and philosophy, and serving the monastery with its inhabitants, no matter what religion or philosophy. Why are they having so much trouble to keep up wit…
I suspect it is the regimentation which is what truly killed them when combined with less rigid constraints on thought. There is still a substansial minority who would happily dedicate themselves to introspection and contemplation but they would prefer a space to follow their own guideance. Why bother with a life of thinking if the conclusions are already foregone? The rigid scheduling is an artifact of agrarianism i…
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Plus there is growing consensus that God cannot exist.
Can I try to convert you? Great! Thanks for your implied consent. Here goes: The "One" god of Christianity comes more from Neoplatonism than Judaism. The Neoplatonic Oneness, which was washed out in various times in Christian history, is fully commensurable with contemporary science. Oneness can be experienced as the common mystical experience of "we are all one, man!" But for Neoplatonists, it only made sense that t…
Is there any possible modern approach to a traditional catholic monastery? I think, they are dying out, because of their rigid traditions which rarely make sense in our modern world anymore. The idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to introspection and philosophy, and serving the monastery with its inhabitants, no matter what religion or philosophy. Why are they having so much trouble to keep up wit…
We could try science / engineering monasteries as described by Neal Stephenson in Anathem?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think, they are dying out, because of their rigid traditions which rarely make sense in our modern world anymore. Living a monastic life has never been appealing to the broad population. But to say that an ascetic life devoted to introspection doesn't 'make sense' is misguided. The modern world in predominately a sedentary lifestyle spent between a cube and a couch, interspersed with frenzies of gluttony, consump…
You misunderstood. It's not the idea of living in introspection that isn't making sense anymore. It's the traditions that I meant, the rigid traditions of serving god and faith inside a monastery. Those aren't making sense to the most people today. Because the have failed to adapt to a modern understanding of how the world/anything works.
That's the point. Living a life of reactivity to every change it the zeitgeist precludes peace.
I think this should be applied to the cloisters, too. I look at some of these 800 year old buildings and marvel at what they could provide, in terms of startup-hub scene.