Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Apostasy: A Social Contagion?


 Have you ever thought it funny/weird that yawning seems to be totally contagious, especially in closely-bonded groups? One person in a group can literally set off a proverbial yawn-fest! 

Contagious yawning is one of those curious/quirky phenomenon, of course. But did you also know that divorce is contagious too, especially when it occurs among friends? That is, if your friends are divorced, you are 75% more likely to follow suit in your own marriage. Scary!

The fact that divorce among friends seems to spread as a kind of social contagion made me think of something my dad used to say: "you are the company you keep." I used to think he was just being overly-strict in regulating who we hung out with as kids, but looking back he was probably trying to stave off issues down the road. 

I was having a discussion via text with some of the guys in my men's group the other day. Half of the guys attend the N.O., and half the Latin Mass. We were talking about our kids and behavior, and I (and a couple other TLM guys) brought up the point that our kids fell in line pretty quick behavior wise when we started attending the Latin Mass. This is because, I think, of the sense of reverence, and that the other kids are for whatever reason, seem to be behaved and so the social contagion of good behavior spreads. I wrote about our experience with this here.

We are fortunate that we have strong, well-balanced friends of faith that our kids can play and grow with in their co-ops and our various local circles. All these kids, and their families, are what I would consider "good influences" for our kids. In contrast, my wife and I were talking not long ago about the class she went to high school with in Catholic school, and that virtually no-one practiced the faith any more in any serious way. The social contagion of "this is all bullshit" in Catholic school seemed to spread and settle, leading to eventual apostasy, essentially.

I think the spread of the mass-delusion of trans-everything among peer groups these days is also hard to deny:

"In 2016, Brown University public health researcher Lisa Littman was scrolling through social media when she noticed that a group of teen girls from her small town in Rhode Island — all from the same friend group — had come out as transgender.

Intrigued by the statistical unlikelihood, Littman began to study the phenomenon and, in 2018, published the results. She hypothesized that transgender identification had become one more peer contagion among adolescent females. Anxiety-ridden, middle-class girls who once engaged in cutting or anorexia were now wearing “binders” (breast-compressing undergarments), taking testosterone and undergoing voluntary double mastectomies

I have interviewed over four dozen families whose teen daughters became caught in this current. Their stories follow a pattern: A girl never expresses any discomfort with her biological sex until puberty, when anxiety and depression descend. The girl struggles to make friends. She immerses in social media and discovers transgender gurus. Or her school holds an assembly celebrating gender journeys, or hosts a Gay-Straight Alliance club pushing gender ideology. At first, she tries out a new name and pronouns. Her school encourages her, keeping all this a secret from her parents. Then, she wants more."

There is a guy I know who used to be Catholic, and now I'm not sure what he is. But he maintains a big platform/social presence online, albeit with contempt and ridicule for the Church and all things Catholic. I still find him to be an interesting, smart and thoughtful guy, and I benefit in some ways from the things he writes. 

But I worry about this social contagion of his newfound agnosticism (for lack of a better word) among those who read what he writes--myself included. If I continue to tune in, will his contempt for the faith rub off on me? Make me question things? Force me to face unanswered speculations that don't get challenged in my Catholic social groups? I do see it happening in some of of his followers. Like, "I used to believe this nonsense, and now I'm enlightened to life on the other side." And it spreads like a yawn--a divorce from faith, if you will.

You could make the argument that these folks were maybe disaffected already by bad experiences in tradworld, or the larger Church, or trauma/abuse, or by doubt, and suddenly they are finding solace in the experiences of others that confirm they are not alone, not crazy for losing faith. In this way, the facilitation of leaving the faith (that this particular guy is greasing the slide of) is seen as a positive "throw off your shackles of mind-oppression and control" phenomenon. But if it's all true, all real, the world of heaven and hell, well...I wouldn't want to be this guy at the Final Judgement. 

As I wrote in Apostasy and the Casualties of War

"I was thinking about apostasy, the spectre that seems to hide in every closet, every corner, under every lampstand I encounter these days. The smell is nauseating and unnerving; it gets in your clothes like cigarette smoke. Faith in this age is under siege, and I'm not even talking about the collective faith of Catholics or Christians in America; in the heart of each and every man, his faith is under fire. Someone or something is seeking to wrench it from his being, cause him to lose heart or strip him of faith or consolation, hope and fortitude. My buddies and people I know are lying all around me, getting picked off by snipers, getting legs blown off, getting mowed down by machine guns, losing their souls one skipped prayer, one missed Mass, one self-justifying excuse, one innocent click at a time.

Why do people abandon the Faith? Who will endure to the end? Is it just a matter of time before I join their ranks? Will I lose my children to the age? A friend of mine, a once faithful Catholic and family man, stopped going to Mass. Family members too. People experiencing loss and suffering, instead of doubling down and tying themselves to the mast, gradually stop praying altogether and simply drift away or run aground. For some it's a sin they can't let go of, or a past, or a trauma, or a hurt, or a betrayal, or seeing too much of how the sausage is made. For some it's the old question of why bad things happen to 'good people,' or why God would allow someone they love to suffer, or some earnest but unanswered prayers. I feel like the guys to my left and to my right and in front of me and behind me are just being shredded by machine gun fire, and whose to say I'm not next, my family, my children."


I used the word 'spectre' because apostasy makes people of faith uncomfortable when they are faced with it. "How could so-and-so who was so faithful, had so many kids, believed so hard, was so invested fall?" It is unnerving. Maybe that is why the ancient Israelites expelled people from their midst, banned sinners from their community--to stave off a spiritual infection of the greater whole. Maybe it is the medicine St. Paul prescribes to the church to "not even eat with such a (immoral) man" (1 Cor 5:11), lest this spiritual contagion of immorality spread to the other members. Maybe it is why our Lord tells us to cut off the hand and gouge out the eye in a kind of spiritual amputation, that prevents the gangrene from spreading to the healthy parts of the body. 

Apostasy is a kind of divorce--a divorce from faith. It severs the bond and vow, voluntarily, when one "falls out of love"--that is, they "no longer believe any of this stuff." You could imagine a man or woman who built a life and had children with their spouse saying "I can't believe I ever loved you. What was I thinking!" So, they move on in a seeming fit of enlightenment, and like a yawn or divorce, spreads like a contagion among those they are close with. I don't know why this is, but it might be prudent for those who may be weak in their faith not to associate with such people for their own self-preservation.

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