Further to the charge of treasonous activity at the highest levels of government, in the case of the Canadian government see https://twitter.com/ncio_canada/status/1478855651732463619. (This charge was made earlier on DBC, in "Segregation Sunday.")
Excellent analysis: the problem today is eschatology.
It is true that Thomas is weak on eschatology, as well as Saint Augustine and the same Ratzinger.
The pandemic has brought to the light the conflict of the last time between the Church and the Leviathan. This conflict is structural, not occasional. Martyrdom is the permanent condition of the Church, if the Church does not follow the world.
Here there is one point where I do not agree, when you speak of civil disobedience. With this word we enter into the political field and we abandon the eschatology. Engaging in politics is the game of the imperial church. Promoting a campaign of civil disobedience to the powers that are, is a bid to take their place.
Jesus Christ or the early Church never promoted a campaign of civil disobedience.
The real political act of the Church - as you yourself write - is not building a kingdom on this earth but proclaiming the royal priesthood of Christ in the liturgy. (Peterson has evidenced this point very well). Martyrs do not disobey but they are citizens of another motherland, they proclaim another king, they follow another law, they sing a different national hymn. The closing of the Churches has revealed the worldliness in all of us christians. For the Church to stop celebrating the victory of Christ is a form of suicide. Not civil disobedience but martyrdom.
For puzzled readers, the above remarks allude especially to Part II.
Augustine was quite strong on eschatology (and very adept in it) by the time he wrote The City of God. But to the point: no neat separation between the two cities is possible, apart from their entirely distinct ends: the highest good (summum bonum) or the greatest evil/calamity (summum malum). Their politics are inevitably intertwined, because they have many areas of common interest and hence of overlapping jurisdiction.
To keep the churches open, e.g., when the rulers of the earthly city order them closed, is already an act of civil disobedience. So is defying segregation laws, say, be they concerned with race or vaccination status; or refusing to teach children to defy natural or divine law. Such acts are not arbitrary, of course, nor are they merely prudential despite their prudential elements; they are choices to obey a higher authority.
Such acts are for the moment unlikely to lead directly to martyrdom, which is often reached in stages, though they may lead to poverty or imprisonment. But civil disobedience can have redemptive effects without inducing martyrdom and Christians ought to be interested in redemptive effects even as regards the affairs of this world.
Otherwise, they themselves would appear to be aligned with the gnostic tendency to disdain the world made by God, imagining that it is irredeemable and that there is some other world to be looked for.
Christian eschatology does look for new heavens and a new earth; but in just the same sense as it speaks of a new covenant in Christ: the new is the renewed, the transformed, not the altogether other. Therefore Christianity is always concerned with the redemptive, here and hereafter.
Thank you for your answer. Please allow me an explanation because I feel I did not explain what I mean.
Civil disobedience is too little and too much.
Too little because Christians have been taught to give to Cesar the things of God and if Christians do not rediscover the meaning and the desire for martyrdom, they will obey unjust and murderous laws which, as you wrote, are dragging us towards an ever-growing tyranny which classifies China, one of the most heinous regimes mankind has ever seen, as acting for the greater good.
Too much because it involves politics and Christ was not Gandhi nor MLK. (Gandhi managed to make stop the train driven by an Englishman in front of women lying on the tracks, but the Chinese driver would have puffed happily along). The poor will be always with you. The Church changes the world announcing the resurrection and witnessing it till the effusion of blood. The Christians change the world not using the sword but offering the throat to the sword. Every altar is built on the relics of martyrs. Christ rejected Herodians and zealots: no rebellion nor collaboration, not right nor left: My kingdom is not of this world. Give back to Cesar what belongs to Cesar, mammon and all that it signifies, and give back to God what carries the image of God, yourself. No parallelism, but conversion.
Separation from the world? Certainly not: the letter to Diognetus shows the Christians in the world but not of the world, following the laws of the city as long as they do not contrast with the law of God. The Church before Constantine always welcomed people with leprosy and plague and cured them even if they were not Christians (see Tertullian and Cyprian etc.); the emperors forbade the presence of sick people at the table of the eucharist. Saint Basil and others in the east ignored the imperial decision and continued to welcome and minister to sick people. Did Christians who met to celebrate the sacred mysteries disobeyed? Did Basil tendering the lepers disobeyed? Suprema lex salus animarum. Theirs was not disobedience to the state, but obedience to God to save souls.
The two cities was a spiritualization of the concept of Church after the birth of the imperial church and the difficulty to see witnesses of the victory over death because people “did not leave in the baptismal pool the old man“(Saint Jerome). The most consequential event in the history of the Church that threatened the announcement of the Gospel was the birth of the imperial church and we are still dealing with it. With the byzantine emperors the church identified with the roman empire and Eusebius greets Constantine as the new Moses who fulfills the eschatology in the pax Romana. In the IV century the imperial church was born, but also the monastic movement was born which kept alive the Church as a supernatural entity. The monks did not retreat from Christianity political defeat but from Christianity political triumph.
Disdain for the world? Our Lord loved the world so much to give his blood for it. Jesus called his disciples to continue his work: I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves. But the wolves will eat the sheep and the sacrifice of Christ will continue in the Christians to complete what is missing to his passion until He comes again.
Yes, Christianity is always concerned with the redemptive, here and hereafter, but the redemption – as you wrote- is redemption from sin and from the fear of death and to say otherwise is an heresy. Material endeavors like hospitals, schools, etc. are not “ends” but just means to transmit supernatural life and save souls. Many years ago, I interviewed Mother Teresa and I asked her why she took care of people dying in the street. She answered: I try to have them reconciled with God before they die.
Today’s greatest paradox is that conservative Christians and progressive Christians wants the same thing: not supernatural life but political power. The right wants to go back to Charlemagne and resurrect Christendom; the left wants to build a new marxistic world which is another form of Christendom; the undecided wants a “gentler Christendom”. Facing an eschatological threat, In front of the tyranny, should we promote a political action, or should we teach that there is a higher law surpassing all human law?
Once done these hurried notes, I thank you again for your analysis which is the best written so far and , for this reason, it begs for a higher ground.
As you will see from Part II, I find it difficult to answer that, apart from saying that (a) people should prepare themselves spiritually and (b) individual and collective disobedience to unjust laws and mandates has been necessary and will be necessary.
These two are connected. The former provides the virtue and the moral fibre, through a grasp of law and of human nature, requisite to the latter; it also provides access to divine graces.
How to organize the latter is another matter. As the truckers did? As the Dutch farmers are doing? As MLK Jr did? Every situation is different.
What is pretty clear to me is that the regime in power in Canada, and the international cabal to which it belongs, is playing for keeps. They treat us as seditious, but it is they who are seditious. A serious response to their sedition must be mounted.
What gnaws at me is the feeling that we are confronting an evil the likes of which has never been seen before on a worldwide scale.
The reason we know of an MLK or Gandhi is because they were confronting flawed but fundamentally decent societies. Had they been living in Stalin's USSR in the 30s, both men would have ended up as stains on the floor and walls of Lubjanka. Hatred, based on race and (incredibly) vaccination status, has been stoked to destroy any sense of unity among the victim class.
It has been extremely disheartening to watch the Catholic Church throw its support behind this globalist project. My local parish priest spent time at the end of Mass encouraging us to get "vaccinated" and even made it a point in the bulletins to call out those of us attending services unmasked as selfish.
Pray and prepare...that's all we can do. God help us all.
I have too many thoughts and questions to jot down here. But I would argue, from but a small snippet of this message, classical liberalism died well before Covid. I peg it at c. 1914.
Yes, I recently read an interesting thing about classical liberalism never really establishing itself. I believe it was in Cantor's 'The Civilization of the Middle Ages'.
I mean only that the covid and covid policy casualties are still outstripped by older atrocities. Of course it is too early to know what the full devastation will be.
The failure of the churches is one of the most striking features of the whole business. Without repentance and renewal in the churches I do not believe that victory can be won. That is not to say, however, that those outside the churches can do but little. There are heroes of the resistance to be found in all quarters. Yet even if Fr Delp is right (see Part II) that modern man has ceased to care about the church, that is modern man's mistake. The church remains the most important institution there is.
Further to the charge of treasonous activity at the highest levels of government, in the case of the Canadian government see https://twitter.com/ncio_canada/status/1478855651732463619. (This charge was made earlier on DBC, in "Segregation Sunday.")
I thank you for this essay and look forward to the 2nd part. This was a great summary.
I hadn't seen the coin set up until your post and am incredulous.
Excellent analysis: the problem today is eschatology.
It is true that Thomas is weak on eschatology, as well as Saint Augustine and the same Ratzinger.
The pandemic has brought to the light the conflict of the last time between the Church and the Leviathan. This conflict is structural, not occasional. Martyrdom is the permanent condition of the Church, if the Church does not follow the world.
Here there is one point where I do not agree, when you speak of civil disobedience. With this word we enter into the political field and we abandon the eschatology. Engaging in politics is the game of the imperial church. Promoting a campaign of civil disobedience to the powers that are, is a bid to take their place.
Jesus Christ or the early Church never promoted a campaign of civil disobedience.
The real political act of the Church - as you yourself write - is not building a kingdom on this earth but proclaiming the royal priesthood of Christ in the liturgy. (Peterson has evidenced this point very well). Martyrs do not disobey but they are citizens of another motherland, they proclaim another king, they follow another law, they sing a different national hymn. The closing of the Churches has revealed the worldliness in all of us christians. For the Church to stop celebrating the victory of Christ is a form of suicide. Not civil disobedience but martyrdom.
For puzzled readers, the above remarks allude especially to Part II.
Augustine was quite strong on eschatology (and very adept in it) by the time he wrote The City of God. But to the point: no neat separation between the two cities is possible, apart from their entirely distinct ends: the highest good (summum bonum) or the greatest evil/calamity (summum malum). Their politics are inevitably intertwined, because they have many areas of common interest and hence of overlapping jurisdiction.
To keep the churches open, e.g., when the rulers of the earthly city order them closed, is already an act of civil disobedience. So is defying segregation laws, say, be they concerned with race or vaccination status; or refusing to teach children to defy natural or divine law. Such acts are not arbitrary, of course, nor are they merely prudential despite their prudential elements; they are choices to obey a higher authority.
Such acts are for the moment unlikely to lead directly to martyrdom, which is often reached in stages, though they may lead to poverty or imprisonment. But civil disobedience can have redemptive effects without inducing martyrdom and Christians ought to be interested in redemptive effects even as regards the affairs of this world.
Otherwise, they themselves would appear to be aligned with the gnostic tendency to disdain the world made by God, imagining that it is irredeemable and that there is some other world to be looked for.
Christian eschatology does look for new heavens and a new earth; but in just the same sense as it speaks of a new covenant in Christ: the new is the renewed, the transformed, not the altogether other. Therefore Christianity is always concerned with the redemptive, here and hereafter.
Thank you for your answer. Please allow me an explanation because I feel I did not explain what I mean.
Civil disobedience is too little and too much.
Too little because Christians have been taught to give to Cesar the things of God and if Christians do not rediscover the meaning and the desire for martyrdom, they will obey unjust and murderous laws which, as you wrote, are dragging us towards an ever-growing tyranny which classifies China, one of the most heinous regimes mankind has ever seen, as acting for the greater good.
Too much because it involves politics and Christ was not Gandhi nor MLK. (Gandhi managed to make stop the train driven by an Englishman in front of women lying on the tracks, but the Chinese driver would have puffed happily along). The poor will be always with you. The Church changes the world announcing the resurrection and witnessing it till the effusion of blood. The Christians change the world not using the sword but offering the throat to the sword. Every altar is built on the relics of martyrs. Christ rejected Herodians and zealots: no rebellion nor collaboration, not right nor left: My kingdom is not of this world. Give back to Cesar what belongs to Cesar, mammon and all that it signifies, and give back to God what carries the image of God, yourself. No parallelism, but conversion.
Separation from the world? Certainly not: the letter to Diognetus shows the Christians in the world but not of the world, following the laws of the city as long as they do not contrast with the law of God. The Church before Constantine always welcomed people with leprosy and plague and cured them even if they were not Christians (see Tertullian and Cyprian etc.); the emperors forbade the presence of sick people at the table of the eucharist. Saint Basil and others in the east ignored the imperial decision and continued to welcome and minister to sick people. Did Christians who met to celebrate the sacred mysteries disobeyed? Did Basil tendering the lepers disobeyed? Suprema lex salus animarum. Theirs was not disobedience to the state, but obedience to God to save souls.
The two cities was a spiritualization of the concept of Church after the birth of the imperial church and the difficulty to see witnesses of the victory over death because people “did not leave in the baptismal pool the old man“(Saint Jerome). The most consequential event in the history of the Church that threatened the announcement of the Gospel was the birth of the imperial church and we are still dealing with it. With the byzantine emperors the church identified with the roman empire and Eusebius greets Constantine as the new Moses who fulfills the eschatology in the pax Romana. In the IV century the imperial church was born, but also the monastic movement was born which kept alive the Church as a supernatural entity. The monks did not retreat from Christianity political defeat but from Christianity political triumph.
Disdain for the world? Our Lord loved the world so much to give his blood for it. Jesus called his disciples to continue his work: I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves. But the wolves will eat the sheep and the sacrifice of Christ will continue in the Christians to complete what is missing to his passion until He comes again.
Yes, Christianity is always concerned with the redemptive, here and hereafter, but the redemption – as you wrote- is redemption from sin and from the fear of death and to say otherwise is an heresy. Material endeavors like hospitals, schools, etc. are not “ends” but just means to transmit supernatural life and save souls. Many years ago, I interviewed Mother Teresa and I asked her why she took care of people dying in the street. She answered: I try to have them reconciled with God before they die.
Today’s greatest paradox is that conservative Christians and progressive Christians wants the same thing: not supernatural life but political power. The right wants to go back to Charlemagne and resurrect Christendom; the left wants to build a new marxistic world which is another form of Christendom; the undecided wants a “gentler Christendom”. Facing an eschatological threat, In front of the tyranny, should we promote a political action, or should we teach that there is a higher law surpassing all human law?
Once done these hurried notes, I thank you again for your analysis which is the best written so far and , for this reason, it begs for a higher ground.
Outstanding analysis of our situation. What practical measures would you suggest to resist this?
As you will see from Part II, I find it difficult to answer that, apart from saying that (a) people should prepare themselves spiritually and (b) individual and collective disobedience to unjust laws and mandates has been necessary and will be necessary.
These two are connected. The former provides the virtue and the moral fibre, through a grasp of law and of human nature, requisite to the latter; it also provides access to divine graces.
How to organize the latter is another matter. As the truckers did? As the Dutch farmers are doing? As MLK Jr did? Every situation is different.
What is pretty clear to me is that the regime in power in Canada, and the international cabal to which it belongs, is playing for keeps. They treat us as seditious, but it is they who are seditious. A serious response to their sedition must be mounted.
What gnaws at me is the feeling that we are confronting an evil the likes of which has never been seen before on a worldwide scale.
The reason we know of an MLK or Gandhi is because they were confronting flawed but fundamentally decent societies. Had they been living in Stalin's USSR in the 30s, both men would have ended up as stains on the floor and walls of Lubjanka. Hatred, based on race and (incredibly) vaccination status, has been stoked to destroy any sense of unity among the victim class.
It has been extremely disheartening to watch the Catholic Church throw its support behind this globalist project. My local parish priest spent time at the end of Mass encouraging us to get "vaccinated" and even made it a point in the bulletins to call out those of us attending services unmasked as selfish.
Pray and prepare...that's all we can do. God help us all.
I have too many thoughts and questions to jot down here. But I would argue, from but a small snippet of this message, classical liberalism died well before Covid. I peg it at c. 1914.
My own view is that it was never properly founded, but certainly it did not survive the wars it was supposed to prevent.
Yes, I recently read an interesting thing about classical liberalism never really establishing itself. I believe it was in Cantor's 'The Civilization of the Middle Ages'.
“This killing is not, or not yet, on the scale of German or Soviet or Chinese crimes against humanity over the past century.”
This is not clearly or obviously true.
I mean only that the covid and covid policy casualties are still outstripped by older atrocities. Of course it is too early to know what the full devastation will be.
Excellent essay, especially part II. Not to many Catholics telling the whole truth. I think it will turn out to be the greatest crime against humanity in all of human history, and we are now only at the first stage. https://thaddeuskozinski.substack.com/p/antichrist-rising-the-plandemic-and?r=jl12o&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=direct
Thank you, Dr. Farrow, for this excellent analysis.
Bergoglio hits a new low….
The failure of the churches is one of the most striking features of the whole business. Without repentance and renewal in the churches I do not believe that victory can be won. That is not to say, however, that those outside the churches can do but little. There are heroes of the resistance to be found in all quarters. Yet even if Fr Delp is right (see Part II) that modern man has ceased to care about the church, that is modern man's mistake. The church remains the most important institution there is.