"The End of Christendom" (FBN)

Sometimes it looks as though the civilization which began in our Europe is lying on its bed of death.

Christendom, that is, Europe, or Western Civilization, was fathered by ancient Rome and mothered by the Faith. The Roman Empire, in time, came to cover most of Europe; and, when the Empire was declining, and had proceeded too far in that decline for the Faith to save it altogether, it was gradually converted from a by then decrepit Paganism to Catholicism, renewing and revivifying its spirit. Who knows what barbarism Europe would have descended to if it had lacked the Faith? (Hint: look around you.)

The soul of Europe, then, is Catholic and is Roman. The last to assume the title of Emperor in Europe was, I think, Napoleon. But things are to be judged as they are, as things, and not by their names: and the Empire, which is Christendom, which is Europe, still exists - for the time being.

We are all aware of the great religious disaster of the sixteenth century - which is miscalled "The Reformation" - and how it destroyed the unity of Western Christendom. It need hardly be said that the only feasible manner of gaining Christian unity is by a return to what was lost at that time. But that is by the bye. We are aware, I say, of the lamentable revolution which is glorified in anti-Catholic books, pamphlets, documentaries, on websites and by cities and by nations. We know how that came as near as anything to destroying Europe, and how in a manner it succeeded. We are aware, also, of the secularization of much of Europe (though not of Ireland, South Germany, or Poland) by the present day; and we are aware of the vacousness and imbecility of the New Secularism. It is difficult to know whether to laugh or to cry: we feel like Gargantua when Pantagruel was born and Badebec died, though the parallel stops there.

We are aware, of course, of the immorality, emptiness, and despair, of the generation in which we find ourselves. We live in an age in which the use of the reason seems to have come to end, an age in which men gratify themselves at the expense of all else, an age in which the meaning of the word love is not known, in which people are bewildered by a lack of purpose in their lives, in which there is rampant impurity, in which many people are mentally ill: an age of self-will and self-idolatry: and the explanation is simple. God is not loved. This lovelessness is a disease and a contagion. It is like a heresy; nay, it is a heresy; a disease of the intellect, which will spread over all the earth like the plague that it is if it be unchecked.

We, we of the Faith, and we alone, have the remedy for this demonic evil. For we alone possess the Truth of God; and we alone have the efficacious remedies for sin, thanks to the love of God, His Truth (which we alone possess in its entirety), and the power He has given to His Priests. The Catholic alone is sane: for he is in tune with reality.



We are aware of these evils - the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, the decline of morality in the twentieth, the despair of the beginning of the twenty-first - and they may tempt us to think that our civilization is approaching its end. Indeed it looks more likely than at any previous time in our history.



While this notion has some justification, I think it may be exaggerated by a misreading of history.

We tend to imagine that for a thousand years before the so-called Reformation the Catholic Church existed in unquestioned and unparalleled splendour. I doubt if that era lasted for two lifetimes (say 1220-1350, that is, from after the victory at the Battle of Muret (1213) to the time of the Black Death); and perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Church's zenith was but one long lifetime - from 1220 to 1300. But in any case at the Black Death there came a crash, as is hardly surprising, and perhaps it was that shock that was the ultimate cause, in terrestrial terms, of the Reformation.



The Church has always, we must never forget, been hated by its enemies, and always has the potential to do so. When we think what the Church claims to be, and indeed is: the expositor of revealed Truth, taught by God, and reprimanding man for his lust, for his avarice, for his ambition, for his pride; and when we think what man, of himself, is: then it is not difficult to understand why there should be such a conflict between man's sinful nature and the Catholic Church.

The Church has, therefore, always had enemies within and without, terrestrial and infernal.



I think one of the reasons we think of the Church as having been an impregnable monolith for a thousand years is because from the Council of Trent until the Second Vatican Council the Church had a certain monolithic character to it: and that was necessary, to preserve and renew the life of the Church. But the Church does not need to be always as monolithic as it then was; it needs to live and to breathe in the present.

But the Church has often had a precarious life; and if we had lost the Battle of Muret to the Albigensians, then Europe would have been stifled and destroyed by a peculiarly vile creed indeed. Were it not for the conversion of the great Clovis, we might be Arians who say that Jesus Christ is not God. We were nearly wiped out by Islam in the seventh century, and by the Scandinavian Pagans, and by the infamous Mongolian hordes - "the Huns:" perhaps this all-out attack from all sides was the fiercest we have ever had to endure. These attacks lasted on and off for centuries. It is true that the Faith itself stands immovable in the midst of these things, and that the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed; but this does not mean that it could not at any time be, for instance, destroyed in a whole nation, or a whole continent. The Church, and the civilization she has mothered, very frequently looked as if they were doomed to extinction.



And we find ourselves at the present time in a similar predicament. It looks as though our civilization is doomed. Our families, which are microcosms of the State, are breaking down. Our society is coming apart like the pieces of a jigsaw-puzzle. These things have their roots in doctrine, of course: in the minds of men. We can trace, if we will, the history of how people thought: the process whereby divorce became acceptable (it was introduced into English law in 1669 and was made generally legal for all in 1857); the process whereby so many became indoctrinated in the contraception mentality; the process whereby our nation apostatized; the process whereby cohabitation became not only socially acceptable but almost universal; I could go on and on. I am not going to.



I think we shall endure. We have lived through times of peril in our past history, and we have weathered the storm. This is no guarantee, it is true; and this seems to be the greatest storm through which we have had to pass. But all is not lost, and there are Saints upon this earth yet. God will not destroy Sodom for forty good men, nor for thirty, nor for twenty, nor for ten: and God knows that we deserve a worse fate than Sodom did. But there is much to hope for: not least the Mercy of God. And if we hope in that Mercy, and only if we hope therein, we shall be saved.



For my part, I think we shall endure.



(13th October, 2010.)