This brief essay by Fr. Tom Collins offers much food for thought. Did God make us to compete with one another or to complete one another? Christian marriage certainly points to the answer. Love seeks the good of the other and, in seeking that good, magnifies its own good. Hence Mary, so totally dedicated to magnifying her Lord, teaches us the proper orientation to life and the secret to true happiness. May we follow in her footsteps which is the quickest way to know, love, and serve God and go straight to the feet of Jesus. The fate of Western Civilization depends on conforming our hearts, minds, and souls to the will of God. Will we embrace the solution?
Observations on the Decline of Western Civilization
by Fr. Tom Collins
It is often noted that the decline of Western Civilization has been accelerated by the catalytic influences offered by the premises expounded by Freud, Marx and Darwin. In recent years, this decline has become increasingly evident in distortions of basic reasoning skills. Below are some examples.
For over half a century, many of our political and judicial leaders have embraced the premise that they fulfill the mandate in the Preamble of the Constitution to secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity children by consigning our children to either death by abortion or to the burden of oppressive debt slavery, which will be required to pay not only our ever-increasing $36,000,000,000,000 national debt, but also numerous underfunded federal mandates. This is sadly reminiscent of the attitude of Nazi SS guards at Auschwitz, who callously consigned those arriving at that concentration camp to either immediate death in the gas chamber or to crushing slave labor.
Such leaders also embrace the idea that money borrowed and spent to cover governmental deficits should be calculated as part of our gross national product (GNP). This is analogous to saying that $30,000 borrowed from the bank to help purchase a new car should be considered as part of a person's income. Thus any report of our nation's GNP growth is intrinsically erroneous and dangerously deceptive. Going more deeply into debt is not a realistic way to increase one's productivity.
A third error, which contributes to the promotion of social division and unrest , is the uncritical acceptance of the underlying premises of societal evolution, supported by the biological theories propsed by Charles Darwin. But such premises are dangerous. They assert that human relationships are impersonal and based on prioritizing power to survive and to impose one's agenda on others. They denigrate the need to develop not only respect for others, but also accountability to objective divinely established moral norms, whereby we can transcend the moral degradation spawned by short-sighted expediency.
In direct opposition to this, faithful religious leaders promote the Gospel premise of human development through evocation (that is, a deepening docility and obedience to God's gracious invitation for all of us, wounded and desecrated as we may be, to share more deeply in His gracious mercy, love, reverence, truth and gratitude).
Thus, while evolution would have me say, "I am better than you", evocation would lead me, through divine wisdom, to say, "I am better because of you". For God has called us not so much to compete with each other as to complete each other by breaking free of all agendas of arrogance and alienation.
In the Gospel, Jesus points out that the truth will set us free. Thus it is that the more we are attuned and conformed to divine truth, the more we will be freed from the clutches and corruption of the Father of Lies.
Since Lucifer’s fall there have always been but two choices -
ReplyDelete1: I am God, captain of my ship, my life, my needs, my choice.
2: God is God, I am not God, I am a member of a Divine communion.
Another item that ties in with this topic of “whether Christians can save Western civilization” in this moment, I found in Q&A format in the latest Rorate article - Cardinal Ejik is interviewed about unity in the Catholic Church under Pope Leo XIV.
ReplyDeleteHe says that we are not “post-Christian”, rather “post-secular” … the world is exhausted by sin and the younger generation needs answers to the deep questions:
- quote -
“Q - A bishop from Scandinavia, Bp. Erik Varden, told this newspaper a few months ago that, in his opinion, it is wrong to speak of a post-Christian world. In fact, he observed, this is now a post-secular world. He said, "Secularization has run its course. It is exhausted, devoid of positive purpose." Do you agree with this view?
"A - It is a bit early to give a new label to the current era. In the West, secularization began because of booming prosperity in a short period of time. This increased prosperity gave people the opportunity to break away from the community, including the church community, to which they belonged. This allowed them to develop as individuals and to choose their own values and norms. In today's society, almost everything is for sale except the meaning and importance that goes beyond the limits of death. Only Christ can make this offer - free but not without obligation. I think more and more people are feeling discontent with the emptiness of the current secular world, but talking about a post-secular world already seems premature - especially when I look at the figures of secularization and the disproportionate emphasis still placed on materialistic values such as economic growth."
- end quote -
The fires of secular sin have burned the fields and we are ready for Christ … and we have a Pope (and a battle strengthened Layity) prepared to proclaim Him in unity once again (me thinks) .
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2025/06/cardinal-eijk-pope-leo-will-restore.html?m=1
No, the "Western civilization" cannot be saved, because that implies a transformation from a fundamentally bad culture into a good one. Even the good religion needs something in the way of native virtues that a people may have in order to work; if you try to multiply zero, you will get zero.
ReplyDeleteThe good religion of Christianity is fundamentally incompatible with the daevic Indo-European cultures that have fled from another good religion to Europe in the first place, that have worshipped Indra (Zeus, Jupiter, Thor) and Vayu (Odin, Angra Mainyu, Satan) for thousands of years. Christianity won't fix that kind of generational sin - the true legacy of most Western people is the return to the daevic religions of their ancestors, hence Protestantism, imperialism, slavery, Enlightenment, paganism, Hinduism, Marxism and Nazism. The horrors will never stop coming regardless if the West calls itself Christian or not because all people are ultimately hostages of their heritage.
An interesting comment, but I think Catholic history contradicts your position which seems pretty cynical to me. St. Patrick converted the pagans of Ireland. Despite the evil of them voting for abortion, many Irish are working for the restoration of their pro-life, pro-family culture. During the dispersion entire communities converted to Christianity through the preaching of the apostles and their disciples. Great missionaries like Francis Xavier, St. Boniface, St. Isaac Jogues and his companions all converted entire cultures or, like St. Dominic, reconverted people seduced by heresy.
DeleteAnd of course, the Blessed Mother was the great missionary to the Aztecs who converted millions after she appeared to Juan Diego in 1531. It may be true that the "horrors will never stop coming," but not because we are all "hostages [of our] heritage." It simply illustrates that man's capacity for evil is infinite unless he responds to God's grace. And we all have the ability to influence that by our prayers and sacrifices. Hope and grace can overcome evil any day!
Mary,
DeleteIt will not work in the long term, because, frankly, a thousand years of Christianity will not override more than 6 thousand years of worship of what is actually pure evil anytime soon. Why do you think the Irish returned to their ancestral viciousness so comparatively soon in their history? Why did they not hold out on Christianity at all, why it slid off their culture as if it were a mere garment to be discarded when entering a home? You speak of conversion... But did it truly happen? Or did the daevic barbarians merely change their image - that they begun to sing hymns to Jesus Christ on their lips, yet they have continued to behave as if Satan still had a hold on their hearts and minds?
History, unfortunately, supports my statement. If true conversion had happened, the aforementioned horrors would've NEVER spawned at all from those cultures. It is my belief that people cannot be counted to oppose that which is wrong if they do not know right from wrong - and most modern cultures and governments are not interested in teaching people right from wrong. Relying on hope and grace is not enough; the teaching has to be systemic on a national level. The good religion of Christianity has to take primacy in society and every other competing ideology and religion has to be removed from the people and society - Christianity must not to be a merely private thing (this is a Western heresy that every actual benevolent ruler in history would've opposed), but a societal educational institution that underpins whole nations. The American Founding Fathers understood this, even if they were wrong in granting freedom to heresies. This is because religion has an undisputable primacy over all other forms of knowledge - because it and it alone teaches what to do with the talents or knowledge one may possess. Modern "freedom of religion" has to be opposed for the horrific lie it is - a bad religion is not equal to a good one and the good religion, if widespread, does infinitely more for the good of all people than government policies, law enforcement and so forth.
Well, we'll have to disagree on much of this. I do agree that "freedom of religion has to be opposed for the horrific lie it is." The undermining of Catholic countries in the name of ecumenism has been a disaster. I'm betting many Christians today think the only thing that matters is being "a good person" not recognizing the necessity to embrace the fullness of the truth in the Catholic Church. Assisi and Abu Dhabi have magnified the problem.
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