“ If returning to the traditional values of generations prior is the permanent solution, why then did those generations give us these problems in the first place?”
That. Is the key problem. This is why I don’t wanted to live in the past. There are many good and beautiful things to appreciate and to restore, but there were also many weaknesses and confounding stupidity that shouldn’t be repeated.
I like to joke “Constitution so perfect it’s a mystery why there is corruption and decline.” Repeat with Christianity and other stuff. I wanted to get people to at least try to understand how and why things unfold as they did. But they’re strictly in for the talisman value.
So, let us build something better and a bit more wisdom.
The key issue for me is that christianity enshrines jewish mythology and history at the center of their culture. It's like the spinning top in inception, constantly reinforcing a message deep in the subconscious that keeps resurfacing. "The jews are the best, do what the jews want."
Some generations of christians ignore the message and behave in a sane manner, but ultimately it keeps coming through, and then philosemitism hands our nations over to the enemy.
Unless we completely divorce ourselves from those books they will end us.
If a real state ever came about in the 21st century or the future, it must be led by a man like Napoleon or Alexander, men who create a new way of life in themselves, whose personage becomes the source of a morality. A real leader to tell people what is right and what is wrong. A real state would be a state which posits some knowledge or ownership of the divine and eternal, and who express a will to something historical, to which the people will be subject to. Because we don’t have any true values, nothing we hold higher than life at this point, this is the only way it can come back. This is the insight of the Nietzsche, this is the transvaluation of values, on the level of a state or civilization.
In some sense Trump has approached this, many of his most cattle like followers seem to think everything he does is divine revelation, perfect and without flaw. Very interesting.
I believe Christ is God, but I cannot participate in the Christian life which my ancestors did, because it does not exist anymore. My faith doesn’t extend beyond me and my actions, I’m an island in this sense. I believe Christ because I think he is literally God and the truth. I can’t rely on an organization to deal this to me, they are all essentially dead and corrupted, like you say. The individual must lift himself to the truth and figure it out himself, this is the only way out of nihilism, besides the Caesar I described earlier of course.
So to trust or politics to these corpses of organized religion is not viable. The individual man can decide for himself, but as a matter in society, they are too weak and splintered. Thanks for this article, I enjoyed it. This was my rant…
im glad someone mentioned the weird arianist beliefs rampant with evangelicals, there is a shit ton of stuff you could find with how distorted their view of Christianity is but itd take up a book.
The whole article is excellent but the Arian connection was a profound observation. I’m a baptized traditional Lutheran but off and on through life I’ve often felt like a 4th century Arian heretic anyway, so this resonated.
I'm not christian, but I find myself agreeing strongly with many of the "heretics" the church censored. Pelagius in particular, and also the doctrine of reincarnation which was removed by Justinian.
“Was the Catholic Church not, for the last three centuries, the most eminent and powerful promoter of leftism on the planet, through its activism for progressive humanitarian ethics and laws?”
Strange amount of incredulity to what I thought was an assumed fact. Here is what I replied to someone else a few days ago:
"Yes this was left out of the article for the sake of space (you will see why here). [The point of this line is to show that Christian institutions do not equate to any specific type of politics. Aside from its use there, this line doesn't have any utility and isn't intended to be the focal point.]
There is plenty in the article still about the Church's influence over politics and more in the linked "Border Bishops" article, but I sense the idea that none of this was occurring until Vatican 2. Simply isn't true. Many assume the Church was this fundamentally conservative institution until it was suddenly swarmed over by progressivism, turned away from its true heart. The opposite is actually closer to the truth.
For essentially all of history since the aftermath of Waterloo, the Church has been to the left of the ordering powers of Europe. This is part of the deal it struck in the anti-clerical sentiments of the various republics, particularly France after the Boulangist coup. It's really a simple calculus: the upper classes of Europe hated the Church, but the lower classes loved them. Hence, "liberal Catholicism" is soon formed to ensure the Church retains some of its sway. More to the point of our appeal to secular rule, when and wherever a right-wing authority attempted to wrestle control over its domain(s), the Church was there to use this newfound sway to put up firm guardrails and attempt to prevent this from occurring. See the Kulturkampf alone for dozens of examples.
Another example is the current Pope's namesake, Leo XIII, who was for all intents and purposes the poster child of modern liberal democracy. After 1800 years of monarchism he established the Church's commitment to democracy as the Christian ideal—so long as these democracies adhered to Leo's earlier demands that the lower working classes be elevated and empowered (see encyclicals Rerum novarum and Graves de communi re). We have essentially the same official teaching from the Church today, this is Leo's legacy. It's not difficult to find people in our circles preaching his work and values.
The article also covers immigration. Worth reviewing the history here and the Church's involvement in promoting immigration reform, then later carrying out the mass migration itself. But since we are still operating on the falsehood that "Vatican 2 did it", see how orgs like Catholic Charities were founded: The Saint Vincent de Paul Society in the 1850s-90s, Monsignor William J. Kerby and the National Council of Catholic Charities in 1910 pooling resources for Catholic immigrants in order to secure the "more efficient protection of common Catholic interests". Archbishop John Hughes calling for more immigration to NYC so that "the Catholic Church in America will be the refuge for our suffering people".
Vatican 2 obviously put all of this into overdrive, but it didn't come out of nowhere. The decision made at V2 was to transition Catholicism from a European religion into one of global democracy. But this could not have been conceivable without previous developments, previous attempts to assert itself over secular regimes through liberal Catholicism. Leo XIII above all others is responsible for it, and the current Pope intends to carry that torch."
That is the most absurdly mendacious description of Leo XIII I have ever seen. He was not “the poster child of liberal democracy” he criticized liberalism constantly and condemned socialism outright. The Catholic Social Teaching of Rerum Novarum and elsewhere was a response *to and against* the forces and ideas of (your, secular) liberal modernity in its socialist and capitalist forms. Leo’s vision of Christian government was that of historic Christianity based on natural law and the Thomistic philosophy of Aeterni Patris. “The church’s commitment to democracy as the Christian ideal” is simply false; Leo was not talking about political democracy in Graves:
“Moreover it would be a crime to distort this name of Christian Democracy to politics, for although democracy, both in its pliilological and philosophical significations, implies popular government, yet in its present application it is so to be employed that, removing from it all political significance, it is to mean nothing else than a benevolent and Christian movement in behalf of the people. For the laws of nature and of the Gospel, which by right are superior to all human contingencies, are necessarily independent of all modifications of civil government, while at the same time they are in concord with everything that is not repugnant to morality and justice. They are, therefore, and they must remain absolutely free from political parties, and have nothing to do with the various changes of administration which may occur in a nation ; so that Catholics may and ought to be citizens according to the constitution of any State, guided as they are by those laws which command them to love God above all things, and their neighbors as themselves. This has always been the discipline of the Church.”
Leo did not himself favor liberal or democratic political systems. Read Diuturnum and Immortale Dei, in which he condemns all consent-based theories of government, liberty of the press and other fundamental liberal doctrines.
Leo aside, the Catholic Church has been among the most historically consistent and ardent institutional foes of leftist revolutionaries for centuries, as well as always one of their main targets. It has doctrinally condemned socialism and communism explicitly since the 1860s in the strongest terms. The Jacobins, Maoists, Bolsheviks etc—all secularists—all correctly understood the Church to be a bastion of reaction and counter-revolution and persecuted it accordingly. To try to twist history around and say actually it was leftist all along is just ahistorical and obviously motivated reasoning.
I see the problem here, you think I am coming at this from this common argument that Rome promoted communism and such. Not what happened and not what I'm trying to claim here. This is the problem with attempting to attack one sentence designed for an entirely different purpose.
It is however incorrect to insinuate that Leo etc were attempting to conserve certain ideological leans in an otherwise liberal environment. Because of the way these “coalitions” were structured (again, particularly in the ralliement), the Church had to decide where it was going to maintain its political legitimacy. It couldn't do so through the various secularizing or antimontane states at the time, and so elected to take on an alliance with the then-mobilizing lower classes. When Leo refers to an indifference to specific forms of government so long as they adhere to “Catholic doctrine”, he means the wellbeing of the lower classes. This alliance did not help at all the various secular orders attempting to clamp down on their insurgence.
You can continue to quibble with all of this if you wish, but it's not at all the point of the article or the point of the line. The point isn't that Rome equates to a particular politics, the exact and precise opposite is the point.
"Was the Catholic Church not, for the last three centuries, the most eminent and powerful promoter of leftism on the planet, through its activism for progressive humanitarian ethics and laws?"
This is kind of a wild take. Can we get some citations for this between 1725 and 1925?
Ah very good. Yes interesting discussion - I certainly agree with you that things just didn’t all of a sudden switch with V2, but don’t think your characterization is correct. The Church resisting the anti Catholic KultureKampf of a Nationalistic Protestant Germany isn’t being leftist. Nor are SVDP societies caring for the poor. Nor are Catholic bishops caring for immigrant communities.
Unless your position is just that any care for the poor, or support of immigrants, or human rights/humanitarianism is leftist. Which I and most would contest. And even then it’s still pretty common knowledge that the Church in the 19th century was on the whole on the “right” not the left. So if you’re attempting to refute common knowledge you’d have to attempt to do so rather than have a throwaway line that presents an unconventional view as common knowledge
Since when has that been some kind of bingo-card item anywhere outside of turkey?
> Christianity exclusively targeted check
He's talking about the political revival of the Europeans. Why would he criticise buddhism, or shinto? Neither of those religions have ever been common among Europeans. Christianity has been by far and beyond the dominant religion during our period of decline. It's role in that decline must be answered for.
Lucky for you, in my native language when we say hello, we don’t damn the opposite person by conjuring the word “hell”… we say “pleasant sun” Barev (bari arev).
This is simply the procession of the Zodiac ages from that of Pisces/Virgo axis to that of Aquarius/Leo axis. Christianity is from the previous age and therefore feels stale and old.
“ If returning to the traditional values of generations prior is the permanent solution, why then did those generations give us these problems in the first place?”
That. Is the key problem. This is why I don’t wanted to live in the past. There are many good and beautiful things to appreciate and to restore, but there were also many weaknesses and confounding stupidity that shouldn’t be repeated.
I like to joke “Constitution so perfect it’s a mystery why there is corruption and decline.” Repeat with Christianity and other stuff. I wanted to get people to at least try to understand how and why things unfold as they did. But they’re strictly in for the talisman value.
So, let us build something better and a bit more wisdom.
Christianity isn't simply a set of doctrines like the Constitution. It's also claiming to be a vision of reality itself.
A Cosmos. The Constitution is a dead document.
But Christianity claims a God who is alive today. And still active in the world in the hearts of his people through the Holy Spirit.
Of course to anyone else it's simply a set of ideas. But it has demonstrated life before despite challenges:
https://www.worldinvisible.com/library/chesterton/everlasting/part2c6.htm
I used to be a missionary in Manhattan.
The key issue for me is that christianity enshrines jewish mythology and history at the center of their culture. It's like the spinning top in inception, constantly reinforcing a message deep in the subconscious that keeps resurfacing. "The jews are the best, do what the jews want."
Some generations of christians ignore the message and behave in a sane manner, but ultimately it keeps coming through, and then philosemitism hands our nations over to the enemy.
Unless we completely divorce ourselves from those books they will end us.
If a real state ever came about in the 21st century or the future, it must be led by a man like Napoleon or Alexander, men who create a new way of life in themselves, whose personage becomes the source of a morality. A real leader to tell people what is right and what is wrong. A real state would be a state which posits some knowledge or ownership of the divine and eternal, and who express a will to something historical, to which the people will be subject to. Because we don’t have any true values, nothing we hold higher than life at this point, this is the only way it can come back. This is the insight of the Nietzsche, this is the transvaluation of values, on the level of a state or civilization.
In some sense Trump has approached this, many of his most cattle like followers seem to think everything he does is divine revelation, perfect and without flaw. Very interesting.
I believe Christ is God, but I cannot participate in the Christian life which my ancestors did, because it does not exist anymore. My faith doesn’t extend beyond me and my actions, I’m an island in this sense. I believe Christ because I think he is literally God and the truth. I can’t rely on an organization to deal this to me, they are all essentially dead and corrupted, like you say. The individual must lift himself to the truth and figure it out himself, this is the only way out of nihilism, besides the Caesar I described earlier of course.
So to trust or politics to these corpses of organized religion is not viable. The individual man can decide for himself, but as a matter in society, they are too weak and splintered. Thanks for this article, I enjoyed it. This was my rant…
Kino
im glad someone mentioned the weird arianist beliefs rampant with evangelicals, there is a shit ton of stuff you could find with how distorted their view of Christianity is but itd take up a book.
The whole article is excellent but the Arian connection was a profound observation. I’m a baptized traditional Lutheran but off and on through life I’ve often felt like a 4th century Arian heretic anyway, so this resonated.
I'm not christian, but I find myself agreeing strongly with many of the "heretics" the church censored. Pelagius in particular, and also the doctrine of reincarnation which was removed by Justinian.
I didn’t know about that one! Thank you
Gildhelm's got a motherlode of themes cognate with my own obsessions, just subscribed.
Canadian “rightwingers” are just liberals/conservatives who’ve finally discovered they're screwed and become increasingly unstable and extreme
very good
Great article
“Was the Catholic Church not, for the last three centuries, the most eminent and powerful promoter of leftism on the planet, through its activism for progressive humanitarian ethics and laws?”
What utter nonsense
Strange amount of incredulity to what I thought was an assumed fact. Here is what I replied to someone else a few days ago:
"Yes this was left out of the article for the sake of space (you will see why here). [The point of this line is to show that Christian institutions do not equate to any specific type of politics. Aside from its use there, this line doesn't have any utility and isn't intended to be the focal point.]
There is plenty in the article still about the Church's influence over politics and more in the linked "Border Bishops" article, but I sense the idea that none of this was occurring until Vatican 2. Simply isn't true. Many assume the Church was this fundamentally conservative institution until it was suddenly swarmed over by progressivism, turned away from its true heart. The opposite is actually closer to the truth.
For essentially all of history since the aftermath of Waterloo, the Church has been to the left of the ordering powers of Europe. This is part of the deal it struck in the anti-clerical sentiments of the various republics, particularly France after the Boulangist coup. It's really a simple calculus: the upper classes of Europe hated the Church, but the lower classes loved them. Hence, "liberal Catholicism" is soon formed to ensure the Church retains some of its sway. More to the point of our appeal to secular rule, when and wherever a right-wing authority attempted to wrestle control over its domain(s), the Church was there to use this newfound sway to put up firm guardrails and attempt to prevent this from occurring. See the Kulturkampf alone for dozens of examples.
Another example is the current Pope's namesake, Leo XIII, who was for all intents and purposes the poster child of modern liberal democracy. After 1800 years of monarchism he established the Church's commitment to democracy as the Christian ideal—so long as these democracies adhered to Leo's earlier demands that the lower working classes be elevated and empowered (see encyclicals Rerum novarum and Graves de communi re). We have essentially the same official teaching from the Church today, this is Leo's legacy. It's not difficult to find people in our circles preaching his work and values.
The article also covers immigration. Worth reviewing the history here and the Church's involvement in promoting immigration reform, then later carrying out the mass migration itself. But since we are still operating on the falsehood that "Vatican 2 did it", see how orgs like Catholic Charities were founded: The Saint Vincent de Paul Society in the 1850s-90s, Monsignor William J. Kerby and the National Council of Catholic Charities in 1910 pooling resources for Catholic immigrants in order to secure the "more efficient protection of common Catholic interests". Archbishop John Hughes calling for more immigration to NYC so that "the Catholic Church in America will be the refuge for our suffering people".
Vatican 2 obviously put all of this into overdrive, but it didn't come out of nowhere. The decision made at V2 was to transition Catholicism from a European religion into one of global democracy. But this could not have been conceivable without previous developments, previous attempts to assert itself over secular regimes through liberal Catholicism. Leo XIII above all others is responsible for it, and the current Pope intends to carry that torch."
That is the most absurdly mendacious description of Leo XIII I have ever seen. He was not “the poster child of liberal democracy” he criticized liberalism constantly and condemned socialism outright. The Catholic Social Teaching of Rerum Novarum and elsewhere was a response *to and against* the forces and ideas of (your, secular) liberal modernity in its socialist and capitalist forms. Leo’s vision of Christian government was that of historic Christianity based on natural law and the Thomistic philosophy of Aeterni Patris. “The church’s commitment to democracy as the Christian ideal” is simply false; Leo was not talking about political democracy in Graves:
“Moreover it would be a crime to distort this name of Christian Democracy to politics, for although democracy, both in its pliilological and philosophical significations, implies popular government, yet in its present application it is so to be employed that, removing from it all political significance, it is to mean nothing else than a benevolent and Christian movement in behalf of the people. For the laws of nature and of the Gospel, which by right are superior to all human contingencies, are necessarily independent of all modifications of civil government, while at the same time they are in concord with everything that is not repugnant to morality and justice. They are, therefore, and they must remain absolutely free from political parties, and have nothing to do with the various changes of administration which may occur in a nation ; so that Catholics may and ought to be citizens according to the constitution of any State, guided as they are by those laws which command them to love God above all things, and their neighbors as themselves. This has always been the discipline of the Church.”
Leo did not himself favor liberal or democratic political systems. Read Diuturnum and Immortale Dei, in which he condemns all consent-based theories of government, liberty of the press and other fundamental liberal doctrines.
Leo aside, the Catholic Church has been among the most historically consistent and ardent institutional foes of leftist revolutionaries for centuries, as well as always one of their main targets. It has doctrinally condemned socialism and communism explicitly since the 1860s in the strongest terms. The Jacobins, Maoists, Bolsheviks etc—all secularists—all correctly understood the Church to be a bastion of reaction and counter-revolution and persecuted it accordingly. To try to twist history around and say actually it was leftist all along is just ahistorical and obviously motivated reasoning.
I see the problem here, you think I am coming at this from this common argument that Rome promoted communism and such. Not what happened and not what I'm trying to claim here. This is the problem with attempting to attack one sentence designed for an entirely different purpose.
It is however incorrect to insinuate that Leo etc were attempting to conserve certain ideological leans in an otherwise liberal environment. Because of the way these “coalitions” were structured (again, particularly in the ralliement), the Church had to decide where it was going to maintain its political legitimacy. It couldn't do so through the various secularizing or antimontane states at the time, and so elected to take on an alliance with the then-mobilizing lower classes. When Leo refers to an indifference to specific forms of government so long as they adhere to “Catholic doctrine”, he means the wellbeing of the lower classes. This alliance did not help at all the various secular orders attempting to clamp down on their insurgence.
You can continue to quibble with all of this if you wish, but it's not at all the point of the article or the point of the line. The point isn't that Rome equates to a particular politics, the exact and precise opposite is the point.
Enjoy the rest of the article.
It was tho.
Christianity will always revive and never die. But modernity as it stands is a necessary crucible.
"Was the Catholic Church not, for the last three centuries, the most eminent and powerful promoter of leftism on the planet, through its activism for progressive humanitarian ethics and laws?"
This is kind of a wild take. Can we get some citations for this between 1725 and 1925?
I explain what I mean specifically in an above comment chain with Brother Lunk. Two centuries would be more accurate in hindsight of the article
Ah very good. Yes interesting discussion - I certainly agree with you that things just didn’t all of a sudden switch with V2, but don’t think your characterization is correct. The Church resisting the anti Catholic KultureKampf of a Nationalistic Protestant Germany isn’t being leftist. Nor are SVDP societies caring for the poor. Nor are Catholic bishops caring for immigrant communities.
Unless your position is just that any care for the poor, or support of immigrants, or human rights/humanitarianism is leftist. Which I and most would contest. And even then it’s still pretty common knowledge that the Church in the 19th century was on the whole on the “right” not the left. So if you’re attempting to refute common knowledge you’d have to attempt to do so rather than have a throwaway line that presents an unconventional view as common knowledge
Are you Protestant, Catholic, or neither?
Ataturk quoted check
Nietzsche quoted check
Christianity exclusively targeted check
……… I thought “intellectual” “INtEllENgEntsIAa” hipster coffee sipping takes were a thing of the 2010s.
Let me guess, your chest tattoo has faded and you are groggy.
The hipsters were right libtard
Imagine reading what I said and coming to the conclusion that I’m a libtard. Typical pagan who take it where the sun doesn’t shine…
Clearly not a disciple of SolBrah, it shines there all the time brother
Not an argument.
> Ataturk quoted check
Since when has that been some kind of bingo-card item anywhere outside of turkey?
> Christianity exclusively targeted check
He's talking about the political revival of the Europeans. Why would he criticise buddhism, or shinto? Neither of those religions have ever been common among Europeans. Christianity has been by far and beyond the dominant religion during our period of decline. It's role in that decline must be answered for.
Lucky for you, in my native language when we say hello, we don’t damn the opposite person by conjuring the word “hell”… we say “pleasant sun” Barev (bari arev).
This is simply the procession of the Zodiac ages from that of Pisces/Virgo axis to that of Aquarius/Leo axis. Christianity is from the previous age and therefore feels stale and old.
https://davidkunt.substack.com/p/life-huh