A New Town of St. Francis

The average Catholic is living a secular life, not a life of sharing like Christ.  Not a Catholic life.  We need places to breath in life, nurture our Faith, and grow the beauty of the Church that Jesus created.  We need to worship, to focus on the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Our Blessed Mother.  A new town concept is not a monastery for lay Catholics, but a better formula for authentic Catholic communities.  Where our children will be raised with a focus on God's glory, love for us, and the natural beauty created for us.  Communities that reduce the evils of materialism, individualism, and hedonism.

 

We need to build a new society from the ground up.  Consider, a society centered on increasing virtuous living in a new efficient township with God as the focus of life.  We should learn from the past and present for a beautiful way of living.  Consider a place where efforts are continually focused on building up virtue in each person, family, parish, diocese and therefore in society, in the platform of a new efficient, communal township.  Sounds like another Utopia, and perhaps it is, but the concepts should not stray too far from existence today, or they might be too difficult to implement.  The idea is to transform life over time.  Jesus calls us to this transformation.

 

Most of the world's societies lack purpose and vision.  Particularly in the West where the possible direction of society is towards consumption.  The media continually broadcasts that the goal to life and happiness is getting a new product.  A new phone, a new car, new clothes, or some new drug.  These things are supposed to make us happy, and perhaps they do for a small amount of time, but soon afterward we realize it is just another  noise in our life and look for the next thing to consume.  This is not a lasting happiness, and not a purpose or vision, it is really just a habit or an addiction.

 

Another societal habit or addiction is a consuming love for sports.  While sports are good for the body and teach some teamwork, they are not worth the amount of time poured into them by parents and children.  Sports are often elevated to a place of exceeding honor in society, with numerous hours devoted to its learning and watching, instead of the pursuit of much greater personal growth in God's love.  Sports teach society competition, there is a winner and a loser.  Sports do not directly teach mercy, generosity, kindness, humility, forgiveness and love that are foundations of a good society striving to change for the better.

 

What should society's purpose and vision be if not consumerism and the worship of sports?

To make society a better place each person needs to work individually and communally at virtuous living.  The Catholic Church teaches the cardinal virtues of temperance, justice, fortitude and prudence play a pivotal role for the virtues of faith, hope, charity and love.  Without the practice of these virtues, our society cannot develop a higher purpose of life.  These virtues are not taught by consumerism.  Equally troubling, public schools do not teach these most basic ethics as a center piece for a better life.  Our society needs to focus on each person individually and as a community each day, and as often as possible each day, on increasing virtues in themselves.  Schools do not teach us to contemplate what we did right and wrong each day to become a better person, a better society, that day and tomorrow.  Judeo-Christian teaching does instruct us to increase each day in virtues, but our society is pulling away from these needed sources of good teaching at a rapid pace.  This needs to be turned around, and the pursuit of Catholic beliefs need to be reinforced and focused on as the main stream of a Catholic society.  We need to give our generation, and those yet to come, the opportunity to grow in God's love.  As Christ taught, "What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent;" Luke 11.11

 

If we are right we will have created a better society, ordered toward placing the other above the self, if we are wrong, we will have created a better society ordered toward placing the other above the self.