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Roots's avatar

Though I used to be interested in “The Benedict Option” way of life, I now understand that the people promoting it seem to have no awareness of when a group of ideologically connected people can become cult like. I’ve heard of many young adults now who have (or have been convinced by a controlling , abusive spouse) to join one of these Catholic utopia villages AND DISCARD THEIR LOVING, GOOD FAMILY OF ORIGIN. So many Catholic grandparents and adult siblings are suffering the grief of losing an adult child to a Catholic utopia village. Anymore, I want to ask promoters of these Catholic villages “how many of the young wives/husbands meaningfully maintain relationships with their family of origin?. How many of the super Catholic men/women isolate their kids from loving, safe grandparents on wife’s/husband’s side —- saying they aren’t Catholic enough, even though in fact they are good people (and good Catholics) and in fact the abusive spouse is escaping accountability for their actions by holing their nuclear family in a Catholic utopia who refuses to hear/see/speak about the abuse they enable. Don’t facilitate the destruction of good extended families by making piety more important than family bonds.

A traditional community included generations of interconnected extended families who could keep people accountable and do long term character assessment . I’m concerned that in the midst of well meaning people, These new Catholic utopias are a place bad people are hiding. Until they start building awareness and make it ok to talk about the indignity of cutting you off from people who love you, they are not good humans, let alone good Catholics.

The Benedict Option has at least one very incorrect belief: the nuclear family is not what is being attacked right now. The EXTENDED family is. Look up parentalDiscard.com or any estrangement support group. We don’t need more pious looking disconnected 30 year olds, or more fertile families. We need grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins who are willing to call out coercive control and abuse.

James Green's avatar

I know people on both sides of this debate, including the person (Charles Haywood) on which Lindsay (slightly unfairly) bases most of his attempts to define the woke right.

While it probably is a real thing, I have concerns about James Lindsay as well, as he himself has to a certain degree become what he complains about, but in support of classical liberalism. Lindsay is right to warn us, but I think his paranoia is unhelpful for solving the problems before us. The real "woke right" are characters like the Tate brothers and Nick Fuentes, and while I do have concerns sometimes about Tucker and ilk, they only lean in the direction of a "woke" epistemology and still seem to retain Christian grounding principles.

I wrote about it here:

https://grainofwheat.substack.com/p/dont-be-woke-about-the-woke-right-7f4?r=1mcpmt

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