“‘It sends this really strong message to everyone in America that they can come to this program, they can bring their authentic self, they can be who they are and they will be welcome here.” (Jamie Stengle, “Boy Scouts of America Changing Name to More Inclusive Scouting America After Years of Woe,” Associated Press (May 7, 2024))
“‘Perhaps you’ll tell me then,’ Tommy went on, ‘why you wormed your way into this camp under false pretenses. You’re not a Boy Scout at all!’” (G. Harvey Ralphson, Boy Scouts on Old Superior (1913)”
There is no escape from postmodern America, where every single place, person and institution is essentially one and the same. You may think there is a difference between Boise, Idaho and Boca Raton, Florida, but that would be before you paid pointless visits to these manifestations of Platonic sprawl. You may think there is a difference between a priest, a scoutmaster, and a professor, but that would be before these spiritual triplets opened their mouths and showed that you are wrong. You might enter a church in the hope of finding something different than you find in a museum, a university, or a legislature, , but you would leave that church sadder and wiser because the same spirit moves every institution..
The spirit of Leviathan.
You have seen that the Boy Scouts is now inclusive, being no longer limited to boys, or scouts, or even to persons who are making some effort to be “brave, clean and reverent.” As the spokesman for soon-to-be Scouting America explains, everyone in America can come to this program and “bring their authentic self” with them. Cowards are not only welcome in Scouting America, they are welcome to “be who they are” and remain cowards. Likewise persons who do not wash or boast what our unenlightened ancestors called a “dirty mind.” And reverence always was an elastic word that, when you really think about it, dose not exclude mockers whose reserve their reverence for irreverence., who in their own way very piously sneer.
“All are welcome! All are welcome! All are welcome in this place!”
The Orthosphere 
What has astonished me, over the course of my lifetime, is the swiftness with which all of our social institutions have collapsed, once the key institutions of church and state decided to abandon their original mission. It’s like all of a society’s institutions stand or fall together.
The deck is being cleared, so to speak. There is no single cause, but the information revolution is certainly a very large part of the explanation. In any case, the market for what these old institutions are selling is going away, and no amount of hype and rebranding will change that. It was assisted suicide in the case of the Boy Scouts, but it was also deeper changes in American boys. The same changes that made them O.K. with a gay scoutmaster made them not O.K. with wearing a uniform and pledging to stay “brave, clean, and reverent.” I was talking to my uncle the other day about these things. He is retired and head of a small-town Rotary Club in the upper Midwest. He’s been stuck running the club for years because everyone else in the club is even older and more tired than he is. The actuarial tables are also catching up with the churches. The idea that young people will return to church when they have children is partly true but mostly a cope. Young people think it is stupid to getting dressed up and drive to a building to get information, and although I love some of those old buildings, I kind of see their point.
I don’t know. I belong to one of those traditional congregations that has refused to get with the new program, and we’re doing all right. We’re not converting many heathens, but have often served as a haven for those Catholics who are horrified by the utter collapse of the larger Church. And we don’t seem to have a big problem with the young’uns drifting away; it is not uncommon to see three or even four generations of the same family in church on Sunday. I suppose that could change, and that eventually we will go the way of the dodo too, but as of now we seem to have a reasonably bright future. I’m hoping we’ll get a discount for fidelity.
I recently went to my son’s church, which is large and apparently robust, although I do not think it is typical. I think successful parishes may strip parishioners out of neighboring parishes, so they appear to grow while hastening decline elsewhere.
TLM parishes across the US are overflowing, whether they be diocesan, ICKSP, SSPX, or other, and they are packed to the rafters with young families.
The young people who have any faith at all want Tradition – at least in my experience.
They are refugee camps.
I’m also blessed to be able to attend a TLM parish. While many of the congregants (including myself) are “refugees” as you say, many were raised traditional and are now raising their children the same way.
Good for you. I hope the parish continues to prosper. I’m genuinely happy when traditionalists can find a bubble, but they should not confuse entering a bubble and change in the outside world.
For some meanings of the word “all.”
This is a common pattern, that the new mission is at least possibly true for some participants if we squint hard enough. Because it is possible that this could signal a gentle acceptance and tolerance of all, we are expected to accept that it IS true for all, even when the evidence accumulates against it.
What you say is exemplified by the opening of women’s sports to “all” who identify as women. This clearly closes women’s sports to the biological women who do not make the new cut, or who are in one of many ways disgusted by the whole business. Opening the Boy Scouts to “all” is going to close Scouts to boys who are looking for male bonding, which is a very sizable number of boys. The older boy scouts are supposed to be leading and teaching the younger boy scouts, but in a co-ed troop they are going to be flirting with the girls. I think the Boy Scouts were already battling a strong cultural headwind, but this is assisted suicide.
Yes, when they say “all are welcome”, they don’t really mean all are welcome. They mean “anyone who is unwilling to get with the new program is unwelcome”. I’m pretty sure that anyone who objected to the rainbow flag hanging from the “All are welcome” sign in front of the church would receive a chilly reception. The purpose of the sign isn’t to welcome, but to advertise how virtuous that church is (not like that deplorable church down the street).
Maybe the goal shouldn’t be to change the world (or even the church), but to bear faithful witness to Christ in the way we live. If we can only do that in a refugee camp, so be it. It’s quite possible, as some trads believe, that the refugee camp IS the church. To be a Christian is to be called out of the world, and maybe even to be called out of what passes for the Church.
Trads might scream to hear it said, but they are essentially Catholic Puritans. The Puritans began as a rigorist reform movement within the Church of England and became separatists only after their bid to take control of the C of E failed. The Trads, TLM’s, and Sedevacantists are all likewise headed for either supremacy or schism. It is hard to believe that the present ecclesiastical powers that be will let them gather strength on the margins forever. I don’t follow these things closely, but miracles seem to be indispensable in their planned path to power. Maybe miracles will happen and the Red Sea will part a second time. But if God leaves these Catholic Puritans to their own devices, they are going to need their Oliver Cromwell and they cannot wait forever. Power crushes a rival that is not bold.
Yes, I have sometimes shocked my Trad friends by telling them that they have far more in common with the original Protestant Reformers than with post-Vatican 2 Catholics. Not so much in doctrinal matters (though possibly even there), but in their basic attitudes about God and Man, the church and the world, steadfastness versus accommodation, etc. They don’t like Luther, but he would probably like them. As for the present ecclesiastical powers, screw them. Their own arrogance and stupidity will see them fall — no miracles needed.