There are a million possible points-of-no-return: Luther, Darwin, WWI, Vatican II seem to be popular answers.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41349881)

All in Philly area, so maybe a regional thing.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41350132)

If so as beckerstead says it's probably region-dependent. My SSPX church doesn't allow it earlier than age 12 and most kids are around 16. It's left up to the parents, and if parents want earlier than 14 or so the priest has to agree.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41350985)

the true trads are doing 8 yo confirmation

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41357052)

You are right about mainline protestantism, by the way, I don't see how they survive. I drive by these impressive Anglican churches and wonder who still goes to them. These denominations are little more than social clubs now-- like the Jaycees or the Lion's Club

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41349910)

I was at a novus ordo parish and didn't even go to church during the summer. Once I joined a more traditional church I looked forward to Sunday Mass and never skip now.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41350998)

Luther signaled the church's inability to contain reform. There was no good reason Rome couldnt have accepted that corruption had gotten a little out of hand and kept Europe under one church. It had managed this for centuries.

After Luther, there was literally room to do something different without total social opprobrium. Whatever his good points, the path to dyke pastors in trans-acceptance-colored gowns playing mini-golf in empty cathedrals was a direct line.

Darwin ushered in the notion that to be "smart" was to be hostile to the church. Proles have been retarded forever, but before the scientific and tech stuff they assumed their betters were men of faith. With the popularization of Darwin and Science, the guiding assumption of proles was that it signaled intelligence to be a non-believer.

In ww1 the church showed that its moral teaching could not prevent the near-extinction of a generation of men. Christianity's european fortress watched its youth slaughtered not by any outside enemy, but by itself, and Christianity could offer no way out. After that war, no one could go forward with any full-hearted sincerity anymore.

And, of course, VII just signaled the final capitulation. Traditions that had held firm for a thousand years bent the knee to acoustic guitars and modernism.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41349929)

I think this is the main thing. WWI was the death knell of the West and it never fully recovered.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41350012)

go back a little bit and it's not true

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41350034)

The world wars have nothing to do with anything here.

This is about culture and the general decline of the West

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41349977)

The West is in decline for other reasons.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41349994)

The Catholic Church is in decline because it has a liberal socialist as a Pope. Basically, everything that happened since JP2 was a disaster. Mainline churches also libbed out and now have purple haired dyke ministers. Reformed Judaism is just as bad but Jews don't see it as an issue because your culture is beyond hope.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41350039)

an outsider might not *like* these, but they are central to the life-force of any vital society.

btw, your very standard for criticizing them is a christian one (you should be LOVING your enemies!)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41350004)

this gets to a really interesting thread in christianity, imo.

as a religion developed by a colonized, powerless people, it developed its ethic as a kind of moderating function. Jesus of the NT doesnt say overthrow the system and implement economic equality, he says give more to the poor. He doesnt say tear down the prisons, he says visit the inmates. He doesnt say liberate women, but just be merciful to prostitutes.

These arent moral rules that you can use to run an empire, they are rules you can use to humanize an empire someone more ruthless is already running.

It may be an inherent flaw that seeded Christianity's fall, I dunno. But im interested in int

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41350138)

Material circumstances have psychological and ultimately spiritual effects.

"For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten and are full and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, and despise me and break my covenant."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41350127)

When Luther did his thang

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4687218&forum_id=2#41350728)