- Oct 31, 2008
- 20,968
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- United States
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- Catholic
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- US-Republican
I love where I live, it's my hometown and it's always been home to me. I moved heaven and earth to move back here after living away for two years. But my love for my life here doesn't stop me from noticing one glaring issue: it's kind of a Catholic wasteland. California's a Catholic state on the whole but the region I live in (highlighted in red below) is overwhelming evangelical. My town in particular was founded by presbyterians back in the mid-19th century. I grew up evangelical and actually only had 1-2 Catholic friends all the way until I was 28 and joined RCIA.
My town has around 100k people in it, and according to bestplaces.net, only about 15k of them are Catholic (I would wager far less accounting for those who have fallen away). We only have two parishes here, and a small SSPX chapel, to accommodate all of that. An unfortunate byproduct of this is the complete lack of Catholic culture. I was blissfully unaware of this until I moved away and lived in much more Catholic areas like DC and Long Island, NY. In those places the prevalence of Catholicism almost seems taken for granted, it's nothing to see Catholic statuary or outdoor stations of the cross or any number of other things very front-and-center. You also can't throw a stone without hitting three parishes. It's easy to find resources like Catholic stores where you can get things for kids first sacraments or baptismal clothing, or even just every day things like a monthly copy of the Magnificat or maybe a sacramental of some sort. I checked online and the nearest Catholic store for me is two hours south in Sacramento, which means it's even further for the rest of my diocese to the north of me.
I want to see my city transformed, terraformed, into a Catholic society. But I don't know where to begin. I'm a guy who works seven days/seventy hours a week to support my family, I have very little free time and even less money. I already give some of that free time to the Church volunteering as a catechist. I realize the best way for the society to transform is the conversion of souls, but on the other side of that it seems hard to convert souls when Catholicism is practically invisible unless you intentionally go looking for it here.
If you would consider adding my community to your Lenten prayers. I wanna see the secular atheistic liberalism that dominates my town completely overtaken by a devout Catholicism. And we're up against a powerful enemy with a much larger foothold than we may have. But, God is on our side.
My town has around 100k people in it, and according to bestplaces.net, only about 15k of them are Catholic (I would wager far less accounting for those who have fallen away). We only have two parishes here, and a small SSPX chapel, to accommodate all of that. An unfortunate byproduct of this is the complete lack of Catholic culture. I was blissfully unaware of this until I moved away and lived in much more Catholic areas like DC and Long Island, NY. In those places the prevalence of Catholicism almost seems taken for granted, it's nothing to see Catholic statuary or outdoor stations of the cross or any number of other things very front-and-center. You also can't throw a stone without hitting three parishes. It's easy to find resources like Catholic stores where you can get things for kids first sacraments or baptismal clothing, or even just every day things like a monthly copy of the Magnificat or maybe a sacramental of some sort. I checked online and the nearest Catholic store for me is two hours south in Sacramento, which means it's even further for the rest of my diocese to the north of me.
I want to see my city transformed, terraformed, into a Catholic society. But I don't know where to begin. I'm a guy who works seven days/seventy hours a week to support my family, I have very little free time and even less money. I already give some of that free time to the Church volunteering as a catechist. I realize the best way for the society to transform is the conversion of souls, but on the other side of that it seems hard to convert souls when Catholicism is practically invisible unless you intentionally go looking for it here.
If you would consider adding my community to your Lenten prayers. I wanna see the secular atheistic liberalism that dominates my town completely overtaken by a devout Catholicism. And we're up against a powerful enemy with a much larger foothold than we may have. But, God is on our side.
