The early Church worked at community-it did not "just happen". There were rules, deacons in charge of certain things and cooperation from both priests and the laity. Communities were there for service and not merely to feed the community. Some of the criticisms for certain organizations in the Church is that they are there only to continue. They do not serve, but are merely self-serving.
Community is absolutely essential for the life of holiness and the development of the virtues. God cannot round off the rough edges of our raw stones to make precious jewels without us bumping into each other on a daily basis.
Marriage and family life do this and religious life does this-provides us with opportunities to face ourselves and to repent, to grow, to be healed, to be holy.
Holiness in isolation is a false dream and at worst, self-deception.
Christ called a group of apostles and the paradigm for priestly formation is basically monastic. After ordination, a priest usually belongs to a sub-group, within his deanery, which can meet regularly. His ministries put him into groups of priests. He cannot avoid the healthy, daily interaction which leads to holiness.
I lived in a lay community for seven years a very long time ago in my twenties. I knew I needed others and others needed me to be holy. Those years were great formative years for me and broke me away from the world, the world of the 1970s. The community was large and balanced. In all of that time, I never heard any heresy or a whiff of anti-Catholicism. The only fault was that it tended to be anti-intellectual, but it was in the upper Midwest and that goes with the territory.
The discipline of the community was based on paradigms of what was thought to be that of the early Church. It worked for a long time, but as for so many of these communal experiences, it disappeared, or at least diminished over a period of twenty-five years.
Two-thousand people were in that community at its height and almost all of us were baby-boomers. We came from families with two parents, we were mostly Catholic, and we had a shared cultural background. The discipline was hard for some, coming out of the hippie era or the age of political activism, but on the whole it was a very good experience. I left to go to graduate school at Notre Dame. That was my personal call. Also, I had a vocation to marriage and could not find "that person" in the community. An intellectual girl was not always what a Midwest guy was wanting at the time. Many happy and solid marriages did come out of the community and I went to many bridal showers. Such common backgrounds and focus on Christ and His Church created healthy relationships, focused on God and family. I imagine the SSPX communities, which were not in my area at the time, have similar experiences.
Traditional Latin Mass Catholics have not developed such communities, and I strongly feel this is a necessity. Why this has not happened is a mystery to me. But, if it does not happen, two things can occur.
One, in the very hard times, the traditional groupings will not be sustainable and these good people, myself included, will have no support group.
Two, the traditional groupings will die out from lack of re-building and re-populating. Where there are no marriages and children, the traditional Masses will die out simply because of age in some areas.
The fact that the community I was in for seven years was so large was that it provided what was increasingly missing in the parishes-real care and real love. We loved the Trinity with all our hearts and minds and bodies. We served each other. It was hard but very, very good.
These desires are missing. Part of the problem is the aging of the Church-going population. I have a broken toe, but still I have to walk to the grocery store. It is very painful. But, the vast majority of people I know in my local parish are my parents' age, and they all walk as well. This is an urban parish and few have cars. In fact, I do not know anyone with a car here in Catholic London. A very good and humble Franciscan priest helped me with my shopping. God bless him. I could not ask the ancient ones to do something for me which is also hard for them. In aging parishes. young people may come and go, but unless there is a school or a home schooling group, there is little real community. The remedy is simple. Get together in cross-age groupings. Do not isolate yourselves. Youth groups can create groups for older people as well. There are many, many old people in my parish who live alone and are very faithful Catholics.
Unless traditional Catholics try and form these groupings now, it will soon become impossible to do so. The Recusant Church is England was organized. It had leaders and sustained underground communities and activities. It supported the seminary priests from Europe and helped them in the sacramental life of the Church. Some lay people died for this. But, the Faith survived. This must happen again, or the Faith will not survive in some areas.
The Pope recently told Catholics that every family should "adopt" a poor person in Europe. This idea was overlooked in the press big time. What a good idea; and the building of community would spread. Families are the key to communities and singles could join up with families to form daily prayer for the Divine Office or rosary and shared meals. If the traditional Catholics are not open, they will die out. God did not create us to live alone. And, He, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity showed up the way. Read the Acts of the Apostles, trad Catholics and think on this. The entire Catholic culture is at stake.
