now that I think about it, we were quite the 4T nation for a while (very briefly)

[Eric the Green]

(09-30-2021, 07:23 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(09-30-2021, 06:58 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Further development of that aspect of a new order will have to wait until the next prophets arrive. But "new order" here refers to a majority consensus and shapes the predominant movements in society, especially political, economic and cultural/social ones. You can continue to pursue and develop your religion and relationship to God among your minority of believers, but you can't hope for it to become part of a restoration narrative during this 4T.

Your more restrictive, doctrinaire, dogmatic approach to religion, especially one able to be imposed upon others, at the expense of democracy, may never be the majority consensus narrative or worldview again in The West or most of the Orient. But that does not mean at all that spirituality won't assume a greater role and position in culture and society than it has now within today's predominantly secular, pro-scientific society of millennials and the fourth turning. Spirituality and even relationship with God is not limited to the sort of religion that you believe in.

Why wouldn't it though? The traditional Catholics among my generation can convert the children of the secularists who see their parents as having empty values. The empty void their kids feel is something we can use to mass convert. This conversion can happen in the 2T. Then we can use that as a springboard to make the secular Millennials live by these rules and even convert because they want to conform. It will be justice after seeing Christians mocked and shunned by the normal culture. The secular Millennials that abused religious Millennials will suffer the consequences when the backlash happens.

"Traditional" Catholics as you describe them are not really the only Catholics, either. A wide range of people are Catholics, including many who support democratic socialism and social change. People who support Catholic charities are not political conservatives either. Catholics don't all have your conservative views, nor are they against democracy as you say you are, and they don't have to think their role is to convert others or to have the state impose Catholicism on others. The Pope himself today is a liberal on many matters.

Catholics are supposed to be followers of Jesus, who does not teach revenge and backlash like what you hope for, but forgiveness. I have attended benefit services to celebrate Albert Schweitzer, and sang in a choir there organized by my organist friend at our local bishopric and main Catholic Church in my city of San Jose CA, originally founded as a Catholic city, which religion is still (or still was recently) the dominant one here even though now it's the capitol of Silicon Valley. The priest's homily there that day did not talk about coverting atheists, but about Jesus who made himself poor. My organist friend took communion that day and became a member. Later he played a concert there which included one of my favorite pieces which its composer, a French Catholic named Louis Vierne, called "his Marseillaise"-- hardly a conservative reference.

There will indeed be an empty spiritual void by the time the next 2T comes around. But it will be the fulfillment of the previous 2T, and the spiritual void then was filled for a while by the new age and human potential movements, as well as by a fundamentalist revival. As human evolution continues, repressive and restrictive religions will disappear, even as genuine moral and spiritual teachings and practices develop further.