Posted on 04/14/2002 8:01:03 PM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
The law of diminishing returns is a business/economics concept that has application in our apostolates, and maybe specifically the FR Catholic Caucus' efforts here.
It refers to the fact that, in the short run, as the amount of one variable input increases, all other inputs held constant, the addition to output from each new input diminishes. This production law cannot be avoided -- if it could, we could feed the world from a flower pot!
What does this all mean?
In application to our energies and efforts here, it means spend your time where your efforts will bear the most fruit.
It is increasingly obvious that the segregation of the FR Forum has driven religious discussion into a "Religion Forum" ghetto.
Previously, religious discussions were posted within the General/News forum under Culture/Society: Discussion of health, education, welfare, drugs, abortion, environment, housing, unions, employment, social security, religion, arts, humanity, sports, and other cultural and societal issues. topic.
Thus, religious discussions were visible to all on the Free Republic Forum, and policing for bigotry and vile attacks and outright lies was more even and appropriately applied.
Now that religious discussions have been exiled to the Religion Forum ghetto, for all intents and purposes, we are no longer part of the vast majority of discussions and interchanges on the overall Free Republic forum.
Furthermore, because they finally exiled us here so that these discussions will not "bother" the rest of the Forum, they have applied a "hands off" policy that allows behavior and words that never would have been tolerated while religious discussions were part of the general Free Republic Forum.
some would say, with some merit, that we are all adults and that we should be allowed and able to engage in bare knuckled debate here.
There is a case to be made for this.
Yet this same bare knuckled debate will only scandalize the folks we really need to reach. See below for a review of "who" our real enemy is and thus where our most energy and efforts should be spent.
Previous to the exile of religion to the Religion Forum ghetto there were vibrant and intense threads on culture of life issues here on the general/news forum. These threads seemingly are few now, with all of us fighting for our lives on pointless theological debate and disparage threads, within the Religion Forum ghetto, and the culture wars are remaining unfought in the general/news forum, and religion has disappeared from that forum.
Admittedly, the scandals have served to cause this as much as the forum structure change.
My humble recommendation?
If you are truly changing someone's heart within a Religion Forum thread or have reason to think you must defend some aspect of our belief against yet another set of lies and slanders, then by all means, engage the fight. Remember though, the more they attack without charity, the more they undercut their own cause.
However, if the thread does nothing but make ALL Christians look like uncharitable folk, kooks and cranks, who are a bunch of infighting hypocrites, shake the dust off your feet, leave quietably, humbly, and charitably, and don't look back. (I've made the mistake far too many times of descending into the mire myself.)
Take a brief respite in those threads where we have been given our marching orders by our very own FR Chaplain, Father Elijah (especially Roman Catholic Concern: Action Plan Repost). Call upon our Patroness for her intercession.
Then break out of this Religion Forum ghetto.
Search all your favorite sites for articles that are appropriate for the General/News forum, stressing culture of life issues. Enter the secular threads about the scandals, pray for wisdom and understanding, and engage the debate there.
Cultivate the General/News forum threads you post or those in which you engage so that, by intellectual debate and informed discussion on their turf, you can still convey the eternal truths this world needs to hear.
Its time to break out of this Religion Forum ghetto, hold your head high as a soldier in Christ's Church Militant, and take back the field.
The scandals are not going to end soon.
But neither can we be idle waiting for a "chance" or a "change" in order to fulfill our mandate to preach the gospel. We have the only thing available to help this world. Lets share it unashamedly, without embarassment, and with Pride to call ourselves members of Christ's True Church!
I think the point has been reached in the the Religion Forum ghetto where the law of diminishing returns takes effect. It does not matter how much more effort we expend in this Religion Forum ghetto, our victories are limited by the small number of those on Religion Forum threads, and our Christian witness is undermined by the vitriol and violence of others calling themselves "Christian." (Incidentally, it was the same recalcitrant and unrepentant vitriol and violence of others calling themselves "Christian" that drove all of us into this ghetto in the first place. Let them stay here and debate how many Calvinistic angels can dance on the head of a pin. We have work to do.)
Below are two excerpts we must read and apply to our efforts here.
Mea culpa.
I like the Free Republic, because I like the truth. If I see a bold-faced lie or a misunderstanding, I will attempt to correct it. If you suggest that we roll over and accept the Protestant propaganda, or just want someone to be a "yes-Man" for you, then you shouldn't be participating in FreeRepublic discussions.
There are misunderstandings here. There are those seeking clarification. There are difference of opinion. Fine. This is not "bashing".
However, I have found that there are a few Protestants here who need self-justification for their Protestantism by pointing out why they are not Catholic. They are not really Protestants but they are non-Catholics. These few "bashers" choose to remain ignorant, and their ignorance does no service to Catholicism, Protestantism, Christianity or the Free Republic whatsoever. And I will point them out for who they are, when I can. No, I don't feel persecuted, I have contempt for those who choose to remain ignorant, whether they be liberals, Protestants or Catholics.
I have wandered into this field of speculation myself, and realized one thing: The Century of Satan is past. Perhaps this is God's way of exposing all the lies committed in His Name in the century that traditionally was given over to the Father of Lies. Perhaps we are seeing the vindication of God and His Truth. Pray for mercy, and pray for JUSTICE.
Becky
This is generalization. We are individuals, and each of us has his own walk with God. Not ONCE, in all the posts I have made to any "Catholic" thread, have I ever whined about "Catholic bashers/haters/bigots/anti-catholics," nor have I ever heard even one of the REAL Catholic posters to the threads make such a remark. If this is all you appear to be getting out of these threads, maybe they are not the threads you should be on. I'm not saying I don't want you here, but I am saying that sweeping generalizations of this kind do us all a grave and unChristian disservice.
This new organization is one of those changes.
It is increasingly obvious that the segregation of the FR Forum has driven religious discussion into a "Religion Forum" ghetto.............Now that religious discussions have been exiled to the Religion Forum ghetto, for all intents and purposes, we are no longer part of the vast majority of discussions and interchanges on the overall Free Republic forum.
While it's true that the first time you come to the forums page, it defaults to the "News/Activism" forum, but on the right side there's a link for the "Religion" forum, even if you're not a member and just a "lurker".
This separation was done to add more organization to the forums, to make it easier for those that don't know FR that well to get to general areas of interest. Thus, to make the argument "We've lost an audience" is false, in my opinion, because it can be argued that you never had the audience to begin with (there's no way to know what the number of lurkers were before the change, so you can never really know) However the point remains: It's only one click away. And, once you're in the Religion forum, you can refresh the page all you want and you'll stay there. If so many people are put off by a simple click, do you really think they want to engage in any highly intellectual discussion? Would you want to engage such a person in such a discussion?
In conclusion, I think you are being unfair to the creators of this site, because Jim and John's original intention was to create a whole new area that could expand the number of religious discussion, and make it easier to find them!
I think they've succeeded.
It has been my experience that while I may clear up some untruths on a Catholic bashing thread, many are not open to looking at the other side of the coin, and so the arguments would seem to fall on deaf ears.
What you have posted here is good advice, but sometimes, the Lord does call us to evangelize the unchurched, the Protestant and the inactive Catholic as well.
Looking back 500 years, the church was in turmoil caused by the Babylonian captivity and schism. The church was also weakened during the renaissance by humanism, nationalism, and the corrupting effects of wealth and power.
Church offices provided high incomes, which eventually led to simony. Then, once a Bishop or Cardinal gained office through simony, he often tried to gain as much wealth as he could. Bishops often lived outside the dioceses and totally neglected spiritual duties. A Bishop named Rupert Von Simmern [bishop of strausbourg] held office for 38 years and never once said mass. Nepotism was also running rampant, and many priests and bishops led immoral lives.
Nevertheless, not unlike many good faithful catholics here at FR, many people were loyal and faithful, serving God the best they could. The church was and is free from heresy.
Then as now, it was easy to forget that Christ had made a careful distinction between the powers He gave the head of His church and the morality of the Pope himself. That is one reason why Christ chose the apostle who denied Him to be the first pope: To show that Christ would protect the church even when the Pope [or in this case the bishops and priests] acted wrongly.
Then as now, it isn't enough to calm the fury in those who hate the Catholic church, even though no heresy is being taught. They would rather help to achieve the destruction of Catholicism then help us rid the church of homosexual infiltrators. Many people choose to believe that Christ has abandoned His church and again Christiandom is like a pile of dry tinder, awaiting a spark to set it off into a roaring fire.
Catholics need to get out their rosaries and pray hard.
I concur. God will draw people to the religious "ghetto" just as easily as to the news forum if that's his will.
I for one appreciate not having to read through countless posts calling us religious fanatics and lunatics, as was often the case when religious threads were only on the news forum.
And although I don't always agree with the sentiments, I do like the fact that we have greater freedom now to express our ideas with less fear of reprisal.
I have also used Luther and Calvin [on my profile] as a means of apologetics because the doctrine they taught was so far removed from Christianity as it had been taught for the previous 1500 years, but they used the scandals plaguing the church to revolt instead of reform.
Luther [a 34-year old augustinian monk] had a despairing belief in his own sinfulness. He meditated often on hell, death, punishment, and Christ as a stern judge instead of a loving savior. He came to feel that his sins were so great that not even God was powerful enough to forgive them, that he could do nothing to make himself holy. Finally he concluded that faith alone could save him. Nothing he could do could possibly persuade God to forgive his sins, because they were so great--but that if he believed in Christ as the redeemer, then God would "overlook" his sins and pretend that they weren't there.
Orthodox Christianity since the time of Christ, has taught that Christ's death on the cross earned grace for us. Grace then made the Christian into a new human being. It wasn't that God overlooked the person's sins, but that they were gone. Any action performed in the state of grace and united to Christ is meritorious. Through these actions, a person earns more grace, growing holier and closer to God.
Luther taught that man stayed the same, that we couldn't earn any more grace or become closer to God. He believed we were evil men, who God would take into His presence anyway if we believed in Christ. He also condemed the whole idea of indulgences, saying that we could never do anything to remove punishment we deserve.
I have a quote from Luther, cited in The Protestant Reformation Doubleday, Garden City, NY-1963, which shows what happens when emotional and intellectual energy is directed toward the destruction of Catholicism.
"As for me, the die is cast: I despise alike the favor and fury of Rome; I do not wish to be reconciled with her or to ever hold any communion with her. Let her condemn and burn my books; I, in turn, unless I can find no fire, will condemn and publicly burn the whole pontifical law, that swamp of heresies."
However, we see the Church has prevailed and will continue to in the future.
I have encountered some people I do not care to respond to because I have felt they were antagonistic, but others who disagree with Catholic teaching really are interested in why Catholics believe what they believe, and I am happy to discuss my faith and the Catholic Church and why I am a Catholic. Sometimes, I will correct a misconception or untruth someone has posted, not because they are lying, just because they don't know and repeat what they have heard, thinking it's the truth about the Church.
Anyway, the point of this is that while I agree some Catholics do feel persecuted -- and in the secular, non-FR world I do believe Catholics are persecuted by the media and others -- except for very isolated posts which I ignore, I have never felt such here on FR.
It's important to remember -- on both sides of the Catholic/Protestant debate -- that we agree on far more than we disagree on. We have so much in common, not only in our Faith but in our politics. The pro-life movement brings Catholics and Protestants together working towards a common goal of ending the murder of innocent children. This is a great and noble goal, and it is something we can do together. That is just one example of our unity, even in our division.
God bless.
P.S. If you were really through with us, you wouldn't bother clicking on any of these threads.
I'm inclined to think that for those of us who enjoy debating religious issues, keeping it separate is a good idea. We may not get a lot of converts, but I don't necessarily think that converting people is the basis for our debates here on FR. I use this forum to hone my own apologetics skills so that when I am off-line, I can better answer detractors of my faith. In addition, I see this forum as an ecumenical tool to bring us closer together by highlighting not only our differences, but where we agree.
I can tell you that I have become a stronger, more devout Catholic since debating my faith on FR. Where I didn't know an answer to a question, I researched and studied until I could answer the question. I have read more religious books and articles this past year -- and more of the Bible -- than I have in the first 31 years of my life. I am ashamed that it has taken me so long to "get with the program", but now that I am I feel more empowered, more energized, and more blessed than ever before in my life.
Anyway, that's MHO. Thank you for your great post ... I always enjoy reading your finds!
Technically you are correct. Now, in reality, this is what happens:
Didn't the management create a special forum for this type of topic?
5 posted on 4/8/02 9:03 PM Eastern by jo6pac
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Yes, the management did create a separate forum for this type of post. ...
13 posted on 4/8/02 10:01 PM Eastern by GovernmentShrinker
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I've seen this happen on several threads now, and the moderators swiftly oblidge they who believe a "Free Republic" should be discussed sans religion.
However, I have not had a problem posting on other threads religious themes provided my comments relate to the topic being discuss.
I believe that religion does play an important role in society, and that sometimes the answers to major political problems can be found in religion and morality.
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