These days I fluctuate between revulsion at our fellowman
and a detachment from the world. Regarding both, it is fair to say that I
emulate the example of Dr. Tom More in The
Thanatos Syndrome.
Don’t get me wrong:
I have nothing against individuals. I know many individuals, some of
them dear to me, and have witnessed their capacity for good. Rather, it’s our
fellowman, the masses, people, society, in the year 2014 of what used to be
A.D.
My thoughts began to coalesce after listening to Elizabeth Cook
on satellite radio. A decent country singer and redneck, Cook complained that
there was something creepy going on in America. People are so “well adjusted” through access to drugs and therapy that nobody seems to question the
fact that more adult children are living under their parents’ roof. She yearned
for her younger days when the households in her neighborhood were typically
populated by a pissed-off father who served a tour in Nam and a mother angry
about who-knows-what. Back then kids couldn’t wait to escape.
Cook identified part of the problem, but there’s something
bigger going on. And it’s not limited to the millennial generation, though
their lack of grounding is a constant source of amazement. It affects both
young and old.
Our fellowman has been dumbed down and is getting dumber
with each passing year. Part of this condition is brought on by choice, of
course, but most of it is due to decades of conditioning, indoctrination, or
misguided education.
Take a walk in any major Northeastern or West Coast city in
the United States. What do you see? Men with bare feet in flip-flops dressed in
clothing designed to make them look like little boys; professional women
dressed like pornographic actresses; young men and women speaking in lilting
cadences punctuated by rising inflections; people crossing against traffic
signals as if they had some divine right of way; the dependency on personal
electronic devices.
[N.B: I have a
long-held sympathy for commercial airline flight attendants, who must do their
jobs in close quarters, at 35,000 feet, to all of this venality.]
These are symptoms of a society that has become lax in its
standards of conduct. The fact of the matter is that our fellowman is disturbed.
And he doesn’t realize it. No—worse still: he realizes it, but doesn’t give a
damn. I offer the following observations in support of a hypothesis:
- Acceptance by the heterosexual majority of the perversion of the natural definition of marriage championed by the homosexual minority
- The recent proliferation of effeminate young men
- An emerging primacy of women over men
- Deteriorating driving habits on the major metropolitan roadways
- Docile acceptance of expanded government regulations
- Vapid entertainment accentuated by banal news programs
- Societal infatuation with sex, celebrity and death
- The substitution of philosophers and theologians with pundits, minstrels, and bureaucratic scientists
- The rejection of high art
- The elevation of sophistry over wisdom
- An undermining of the categories of “win” or “lose,” so as to reinforce a feeling of exceptionalism for each and every person
- Idolization of animals (e.g. “multi-species households”) and the environment (e.g. “mother earth”)
- The treatment of classical ethics and natural law as categorically relative
We may be hurtling toward an evolutionary change whereby homo sapiens metamorphoses into homo sed: a pleasure-seeking creature with a brain capable of reasoning
that spends its waking hours seeking out and feeding on various types of external
stimulation, many contrary to its nature and damaging to its cerebral
functions.
Wait a moment! Take a deep breath. Better yet, take a drink.
A cold can of beer, preferably National Bohemian (Brewed in the Land of
Pleasant Living). Or bourbon in a glass piled high with ice.
Is it really that bad? Of course it is.
Walker Percy predicted our current condition. His advice for
Catholics set the stage for Joseph Ratzinger’s comments about a smaller, purer
church of the future: accept the fact that man is hurtling toward
self-destruction, and those that stay true to the Faith despite this will turn
out all right.
Easier said than done. Especially when the Church herself is
turning upside down, trending toward an agreeable acceptance of things that are
objectively immoral.
It begs a question: can orthodox Catholics expect the Church
to be healthy in the midst of a society in decay? I’m not sure we can. Think of
the Church as a golden chalice set upon a banquet table. Inasmuch as the chalice made of precious metal shines, it still reflects distorted images of
those seated at the table.
This leads me to my hypothesis: the “whirling adventure” of G.K. Chesterton—in which the
Church navigated a steady course between heretical theologies and extreme
ideas—has come to an end. The Church can no longer self-correct as she has in
the past. The origins of this problem can be found in the hijacking of ressourcement at the Second Vatican
Council, but Pope Francis has put the rocket into second-stage orbital
velocity.
The Church of the Middle Ages or Renaissance could survive a
Borgia or Medici or the other bad popes. However, I maintain that her ability to do so was in the context of the world as Christendom. Today the world has largely
rejected Christianity. That which was sacred or venerated has been cast aside in a great leveling. Now anything goes.
By all appearances, Pope Francis, his extracurial “Gang
of Eight,” and other like-minded clergymen in the Vatican are making an all-out
attempt to consolidate the work of bringing the Church into the world, thereby
consolidating much of the program set forth by Hans Kung and the Conciliam camp soon after V-2. In my
opinion, Francis and his allies will not be overt in their strategy, but
will stick closely to the pope's operating style: signals and signs. He’ll joke about the tenets of orthodoxy,
take private actions that are conspicuously leaked to the media, and, through
both, emphasize pastoral theology and what Michael Voris has called “the church
of nice.”
If he was still alive, Walker Percy might have taken
ironic pleasure watching it all from his perch in Covington, LA. For Francis
may well be known for a semiotic papacy.
Part II of this essay, wherein I make predictions, will be
posted soon.
