Hope in the Wreckage of a Lost War

 

The Man in the High Castle TV show, based on the novel by Philip K Dick, shows a 1962 America in which the Japanese and Germans won the Second World War. The characters’ lives are all defined by the fact that “we lost the war.” Generally, the Americans live impoverished, second class lives while their German and Japanese overlords micromange them, abuse them, and warp their culture for political or indulgent ends. 

While we can avoid false equivalence with Hitler’s Germany and militarist Japan, over and over conservatives have, in Galadriel’s words, fought the long defeat. 

Starting in the 60s, a handful of cultural imperialists on the unelected Supreme Court banned prayer in public schools (even voluntary student led prayer), mandated the legalization of contraception and abortion in all 50 states, mandated the legalization of contraceptive distribution and ads to those under 16, and led most Americans into debt by eliminating interest rate limits on credit cards. The feds generally allowed a massive series of acquisitions in tech, pharma, retail, and many other industries to concentrate wealth and power in a handful of generally liberal hands, leading many small businesses to close and ordinary folk to lose control over their own livelihoods. Then came the more recent redefinitions of basic familial relationships and identity, amidst rising anxiety and suicides, especially among youth.

Nearly every aspect of modern life is dominated by secular liberals. Every major city is controlled by the democratic party. Most media outlets frequented by educated people are controlled by liberals. Most big tech companies and increasingly many wealth management companies are managed by liberals. Even my local library showcases books that are heavily tilted toward secular liberal views. 

Government has grown to an unending degree, under republicans as well as under the democrats. Over the last 10 years, conservative views are increasingly censored on major platforms and can get people fired from their jobs. 

So also goes the Catholic Church in America. Nearly every diocese has had to close a half to two thirds of its parishes, or soon will. Church after church, rectory after rectory, school after school closed. Mass attendance declined by two thirds, most priests over 65, hideous abuse scandals, school enrollment falling. Most of the time, traditional liturgy, catechesis, and orthodox theology have been banned, scorned, and annihilated by those in authority. 

We lost the war. 

But The Man in the High Castle characters find films showing a different outcome. They show the West wining the war, toppling Hitler, defeating the Imperial Japanese, knocking down statues, celebrating in the streets. 

The characters break down into perfectly believable tears at the very idea that the West could have won the war, that their culture could be not just allowed but celebrated and treasured. 

If the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs opinion is decided and released as advertised, it is a similar moment for conservatives. While overturning Roe and Casey is the beginning rather than the end, it’s a start. 

It’s an opportunity to watch a movie where we won the war. What if we lived in a society where prayer and Bible reading were allowed in public schools? Where we had the power to protect the unborn and the family? Where states, communities, and families could actually govern themselves and live by the guidance of tradition? Where traditional Catholic liturgy, catechesis, and family life were celebrated and supported?

We might never see that world. But Alito’s Dobbs opinion is a glimmer of hope, one that could show conservatives here and elsewhere that a better world is possible and worth fighting for. 

Cathedrae

 

“Some people think You just live in cathedrals made of stone, but I know You live inside my heart, I know that it’s Your home.” So goes a song on my kids’ car-trip-staple Christian radio station. While this is obviously offensive to Catholics, we can be charitable pointing out the error. 

Certainly God lives in the human heart in a sense. But when and how does He come there most intimately? The liturgy. Baptism. The Eucharist. Confession. Prayer, especially public prayer. And for most of Christian history, the Holy Spirit has lifted up cathedrals as the center of liturgical life. 

Once upon a time, cathedrals had whole chapters of priests dedicated to signing the psalm-based prayers of the Roman Office throughout every day. Dante narrated how “Terces and Nones” rang down from cathedrals in his day as a side comment. Augustine Thompson, OP’s, Cities of God relates how in Medieval Northern Italy, communal baptisms would take place at the cathedral font. The cathedrals often maintained the local calendar of saints, local missals (Gallican in France, Sarum in England, and so on). 

Cathedrals were the lifeblood of the faith, and a place where God uniquely spoke to the heart of man and infused him with sanctifying grace. 

Is your cathedral thriving? Is it beautiful? Is it well maintained? Does it have a good schedule of liturgy, is it well attended, does it have faithful priests, is it in a safe neighborhood? Too often, the answer to most or all of these questions is no. 

For most of my life, I ignored my diocese’s cathedral. In college, I was blessed to live a block and a half from a thriving cathedral and attend inspiring Triduum liturgies there. In Arlington, the cathedral’s eyesore wallpaper was mercifully ejected during a renovation a few years back. In my current diocese, the cathedral is beautiful with wonderful priests but in a questionable neighborhood and, I suspect largely for that reason, poorly attended. Last year’s Easter Vigil could not have had more than 40 attendees, and most of those were families from the local Latin Mass (not held at the cathedral) attending because one of the family’s newborns was being baptized at Vigil. 

Our pastor is also the rector of the cathedral and lives in the cathedral rectory. Somewhat high on his enormous to do list is restoring the cathedral rectory, which was damaged by a roof flood years ago, after which nothing was repaired except the roof. 

While unlikely, I cannot help but pray that the Bishop moves our diocese toward a hub model, and makes the cathedral the center. Word on the street is that the diocese, like most, needs to close 50% of parishes given fallen attendance, financing, and vocations. And that was before covid. 

Why not move several priests into a restored cathedral rectory, having them travel to their former resident parishes on Sundays if those churches make the cut to stay open? The priests could pray at least one hour of the Office in public in the cathedral each day. With 4-5 priests during the week, the cathedral could also offer a genuinely pastoral schedule of liturgy: Mass before working hours, Mass during lunch hour, and Mass after working hours, with confession preceding each Mass. Throw in adoration and benediction before the after work Mass, and perhaps Compline and/or a rosary afterward. Open the rectory and have catechesis and adult formation during the week. 

During the recent synod on synodality, the downtown parishes were hapless as to how to form adults in the faith and keep them at Mass and participating in parish life. So many of us just want a place to go to find healthy community and engagement. 

Making the local cathedral a destination with events around the clock and throughout the week, and making space in the rectory for come and go chats, events, community, food, and social life wouldn’t be the worst idea. 

I am convinced that the Pittsburgh Oratory’s almost shocking success with vocations (from 2007 to 2021 at least five ordinations within the community, plus at least four others who became diocesan priests), was due to causes beyond reverent liturgy and perpetual adoration. The Oratory is a lived in space. Students eat there, do homework there, play video games and foosball there, fall asleep in an armchair there. Running into (cassocked) priests for casual conversation is a normal part of daily life.

While a longshot, there’s at least a chance at catching some of that lightning in a bottle in a diocesan setting if we try. Who knows, maybe we’ll one day dust ourselves off from the last few decades of crisis and have strong cathedrals leading the way to the Divine once more. 

Dies Matris

 

For my dance with my mother at my wedding reception, I chose the song Everything I Am by Celine Dion, even though I dislike most of Celine Dion’s music. I chose it because I meant it. My mother was was everything to me growing up, even through years of single motherhood, the loss of her mother, a wayward brother, unstable friends, a prickly sister, and the relocation of her father across the country. For me, it goes well beyond the “I owe it all to Mom” cliche that can be said by just about everyone. 

But there is always a dark side to this picture in my mind. A dark side which my mother more recently takes multiple opportunities to remind me of, albeit indirectly. 

Perversely, this Mother’s Day comes amidst heavy headlines about abortion. Ever since I was a child, my mother has made her unwavering support for abortion rights and like minded politicians clear. 

Every time this happens, I hear one thing, and it took listening to an episode of New Polity to crystallize it. I hear: I could’ve killed you. 

My mother’s stance has always been “I personally am opposed, but I can’t tell other people what choice to make.” The translation for me is “I personally didn’t choose to kill you. But I could have. And if I had, it would’ve been ok. And it’s ok for everyone else to do the same.”

This is a mortifying truth to live under, but this is the sickness of the world we live in. My mother has made fun of my dad for suggesting that babies “count” when in they’re in the womb, in reference to baby’s first Christmas or referencing a baby as having traveled to a state, when they did so in the womb prior to birth. She made clear to me when I attended my first pro life rally in high school that my grandmother (strangely enough, a state paternity lawyer) would roll over in her grave. She has told me that she has stopped attending a church whose pastor used strong language against abortion. She has dutifully taught my sister to hold the same views, and my sister made sure to text me asking about the recent leak surrounding the Supreme Court this week. 

I had the right to kill you. 

I have changed opinions on many political matters in the course of my life. This is not one of them. I have watched my siblings and my own children on an ultrasound. I have been acutely aware of my own status of having begun life as an unwanted pregnancy of a single teen mother in the United States after 1973. For me, the issue is not an academic one of political theory. It is a direct attack on my existence. Mine, and my Godson’s, who was born at 24 weeks gestation and required over three months in the NICU. And on those like Melissa Ohden who were wounded in attempted abortions. 

Whatever dodging, extreme scenarios, rhetoric, gaslighting, and all the rest are employed, that’s what it comes down to. My mother, looking me straight in the eye, and heavily suggesting: “I could’ve killed you.” 

With Jack Nicholson, I must say I am pro life because I have no right to any other opinion. And if I don’t, then neither does anyone else. 

I cannot say I have ever had any successful conversations about this topic. Largely, this is because the need to be moderate, not offend, and above all not push my faith has been beaten into my brain from an early age. 

Yet I wonder if it is time to rip off the bandaid. 

Felix dies matris, vere. 

Retirement ‘Disputatio’

It seems that one should save funds for a financially independent retirement to the fullest extent possible.

Obj 1: All are responsible for providing for themselves if they are able to do so. There comes a time when one is too old to provide for oneself by one’s own labor and must retire. This retirement is likely to come when one’s children are themselves providing for their own children. 

It would be unjust to presume support from one’s children or to fall back onto support from the state during retirement, as this would demand resources to fulfill a need that one should have provided for oneself through savings during one’s years of labor. Therefore one must save for a financially independent retirement.

Obj 2: Modern work is often degrading, producing profits for remote, wealthy shareholders, focused on tasks that are boring and unedifying, and sedentary to an unhealthy degree. It is virtuous to remove oneself from such work as early as possible, therefore one should save as much for retirement as possible.

Obj 3: The tax code allows for retirement savings in a way that decreases and defers money paid in taxes. The government tends to spend money in an immoral and wasteful manner. Therefore one should take advantage of the opportunity to place as many funds in accounts outside of the government’s reach, and these accounts are often retirement accounts.

Sed contra: Christ says: “Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow.” (MT 6:34)

Respondeo: In saving for retirement, it is necessary that one act virtuously (not merely without sin) in three aspects: firstly the mode of retirement, secondly the amount saved for retirement, and thirdly the manner in which funds are saved for retirement. The specific way in which these conditions are met must be at the discretion of one’s family after good faith discernment, cannot be dictated by a detailed set of rules, and should not be judged by others. 

The mode of retirement: Many retire from all work when they remain capable of working in some capacity. However, Scripture says that our first parents were commanded by God to work prior to the fall. Therefore to work is a healthy aspect of human nature, and an open ended period of no work is against human nature and divine law. That this is true is seen in the heartbreaking physical, mental, social, and spiritual decline of many wealthy retirees.

The amount: Many save for retirement out of all proportion to real need. Doing so first harms one’s own soul, in that one becomes self centered and has a reduced capacity for charity. Doing so also harms the poor, who need real assistance here and now. 

The manner of saving: One must save and invest one’s money in an intentional fashion in morally strong organizations who do not act contrary to the Gospel. 

Rep Obj 1: The need to provide for oneself does not negate the mutual dependence of a healthy family and community. For many, there comes a time when they are no longer able to physically care for themselves. At that time, financial independence becomes an illusion that hides one’s dependence on paid strangers. 

A healthy family that can care for an aging parent (or other relation) and in which the aging parent can help with children and certain household tasks can reduce the burden of daily life and cost of living on all parties while providing an opportunity for mutual self sacrifice and charity. 

As to the state, most wealthy American retirees do not have a reduced dependence on the state, as they typically still rely on social security and Medicare. Strong family support is more effective at reducing state dependence than nominal individual financial independence.

Rep Obj 2: In many cases it is virtuous to retire from typical corporate work before the usual retirement age. However, retiring from such degrading work in favor of healthier work does not require investment-driven financial independence. In many jobs, one can reduce the required time commitment by working part time or as an independent consultant. 

Such a move becomes easier if one avoids heavy but typical middle class expenses (multiple cars, private school, living in a high tax area, larger house, home remodels) and does not assume the need for an income-producing retirement investment before leaving an unhealthy, higher income job. 

Rep Obj 3: Tax deferred investment accounts often invest in companies whose spending and activities are as wasteful and immoral as the government one seeks to avoid supporting. Examples include those with unethical business practices and oligopolies (Amazon, Alphabet), those who directly unborn harm human life (Johnson and Johnson), those damaging the natural environment (Exxon Mobil, BP), those promoting censorship and social engineering (Pfizer, Alphabet), and those whose business models are heavily based on usury (Visa). 

Further, such investment accounts often direct money to the bond market, which enables government borrowing, overspending, and thereby overregulation. 

Native Sympathies

 

            Nora Thompson Dean, one of the last traditionalists of the Native American Lenape people

As I listened to the latest Hardcore History episode on the Transatlantic slave trade (an article for another day), I decided to learn more about the natives who once lived in my area of the east coast of the US. 

My reading quickly took me to Nora Thompson Dean, a woman who spent her life trying to keep the traditions of her people alive for the next generation after they had been nearly annihilated. 

That sounds awfully familiar. 

Contra modern trigger-happy folk, comparison is not equivalence. I can say that I have a very dim understanding and shared experience with the Native Americans without suggesting that the experience of my people is at all equivalent to theirs in terms of human suffering and cultural destruction. 

As a traditional Roman Catholic of English descent, my culture and, to an extent, my people, have been eviscerated. I looked up how many pre-Henry VIII churches in England are Catholic today. The answer is two. Two! That’s all we have left of all of the churches of England prior to 1534. 

Our sacred language of Latin is, of course, almost eliminated and ridiculed whenever it shows its face. This is even more the case with our sacred music of Gregorian chant. Incense and the Roman Canon aren’t faring much better. All of this is to say nothing of the richness of ancient liturgy beyond the rubrics as they were in 1955: public Divine Office, the processions, the salvation history plays, the architecture, the public feast days. Many traditional Catholic ways of life on every topic from fasting to fertility to lending without usury are almost gone. There are no truly Catholic countries left, and those who have tried to restore them (such as the Cristeros) have been quickly suppressed. And we haven’t even gotten to the fact that the churches are empty, most dioceses will have to close half their parishes if they have not already, modern styles are horrendous. The European motherland was subjected to successive rounds of destruction in the Protestant Revolt, Thirty Years War, French Revolution, then came back for more in the World Wars, before capping it off with the sexual revolution and turn to socialism. 

It is just a handful of enclaves, who barely have the right to exist, who are struggling to preserve and hand on Catholic tradition to the fullest possible extent. Catholics are barely even allowed to live out the faith in a traditional manner in the modern world, even in historically Catholic countries with nominal freedom of religion. 

Modern people have this hangup that the Catholic faith is all about rules. That is not true, it’s just that the few remaining rules are seemingly all that’s left. 

And I feel justified in claiming some kinship with the Native Americans because it was often the same people who were responsible for both suppressions. 

That the Protestant Revolt, with its accompanying iconoclasm and suppression of the monasteries, happened in the same century of the conquistadors in the Americas and the dawn of the transatlantic slave trade should tell you something. That England took over the majority of the transatlantic slave trade immediately after the “Glorious Revolution” chucked their last Catholic king doesn’t seem so coincidental. That the Catholic monarchs of Europe who built a dreadful slave empire in sugar plantations were the same ones who were bullying the pope and naming corrupt bishops left and right should come as no surprise. 

The slave trade and the destruction of the American natives were not signs of the faith’s stranglehold on power but marks of its shocking decline through the preceding Renaissance period. It is not an accident that slavery rebounded in the 1400s as Europe’s best and brightest were abandoning the study of Catholic theology for pagan sages whose societies were propped up by slaves. Or that a society that perpetrated these atrocities with an eye toward riches was one that had abandoned medieval skepticism on money and commerce. 

Obviously one must also be mature enough to confront the reality that a time and culture in which the faith was much stronger still failed to prevent the mass brutality experienced in Africa and the Americas by Catholics for several centuries. Still, a clear eye will see that matters were substantially worse from a moral point of view in 1550 than in 1200. And an open hear would hear that the popes, while doing nowhere near enough, were early voices trying to strangle these monsters in their cradle in writings like Creator Ominum, Sicut Dudum, and Sublimis Dei. The perpetrators, Catholic and otherwise, come off much like the Venetian marauders who sacked Constantinople in 1204, the (largely Lutheran) mobs who sacked Rome in 1527, and any number of other infernal groups. “They come with fire, they come with axes, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning.” 

Why even mention this? As a reminder of what can happen when a society loses its faith, a recognition of just how far we’ve fallen, and how we have more in common with seemingly foreign groups than we think. As someone who hopes to see Hagia Sophia and Canterbury Cathedral restored to bishops in full Communion with the Apostolic See and a liturgy that would make a Renaissance pope jealous, I do wonder: can we realistically hope for a restoration of our own property and culture without respecting the rights of others to similar restoration? 

The Trouble with Russia

There’s been a surge in sympathy for Russia among some American conservatives in recent years. There are a few clear reasons for this. But there are more compelling reasons why this is misguided and misunderstands the reality of modern Russia.

Reasons for conservative russophilia

The number one topic that comes up is Russia’s law banning “homosexual propaganda.” To conservatives in the West who face required legal acceptance and reeducation on the topic at work, public schools, and in media, Russia seems like an oasis. Putin seems like a strong leader willing to push back against progressive moral rot. Any talk critical of Russia is chalked up as a liberal temper tantrum at a major power not giving into their cultural imperialism.

I’d say the second is the perception that Russia has triumphed over communism. After 70 years of communist rule, with groups like the League of Militant Atheists running state-supported propaganda, Russia is no longer a Communist nation. Over 70% of Russians identify as orthodox christian, up from 31% in 1991. The number of churches in the country has gone from ~2,000 in 1991 to over 20,000. 

To those in the West seeing a constant collapse in religious affiliation and practice since the 60s, Russia’s “conversion” seems like a miracle. Jordan Peterson’s publicizing of works by Russian anticommunist Alexander Solzhenitsyn also contributes to widespread admiration for Russians’ struggle and eventual triumph over communism. Catholic figures from Bishop Barron to Pope Benedict have spoken of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Fulton Sheen spoke of Dostoevsky’s warnings about communism. 

Third is probably the perception of personal friendliness between Trump and Putin among Trump supporters. Though this was overblown given the real actions taken by Trump and Congressional Republicans during his administration. 

A distant fourth may be the reality that Russia has been the main power taking action to protect Christians in the Middle East. 

Why this is a bad idea

Look past the cosmetics and you’ll see that Russia is by no means a nation dedicated to rebuilding Christian society. 

First, only six percent of Russians attend Divine Liturgy regularly, which is worse than Mass attendance in most western nations. It’s tough to make a case that Russia has converted and that their society has a Christian foundation when the “I’m Christian, but” attitude is worse there than anywhere else. And remember, even practicing orthodox christians fully accept divorce and many accept contraception. 

Second, abortion rates in Russia are significantly worse than in many western countries, including the US. It is tough to stomach people going on and on about Russia’s supposed moral superiority to the west given that abortion was and remains more prevalent there than elsewhere. 

Third, the communists are still around and retain much cultural influence. The Communist Party in Russia remains the second largest political party in the nation, with membership far outstripping the membership of the Communist Party of the US despite Russia’s much smaller population. Thousands have petitioned the Russian government to change the name of the city of Volgograd back to Stalingrad. Russian churches are being built with murals of Stalin and Russian Orthodox prelates are kissing the feet of Stalin statues. 

Fourth, many of the practicing Russian Christians are anticatholic. While we may appreciate Patriach Hilarion Afeyev’s denunciation of Western immorality, we must oppose his wish to suppress Eastern churches that wish to enter into full communion with Rome. It is not exactly difficult to guess what might happen to Ukrainian Catholic churches if Russian soldiers gain control over them. And members of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia (ROCOR) do seem to have an anticatholic streak. 

Fifth, the Russians have staked their foreign policy on an alliance with Communist China, which may be the biggest political threat to the faith. Certainly they are a direct threat to any catholic and orthodox christians within their borders, just ask Cardinal Zen in Hong Kong. 

Sixth, the Russians have also made common cause with increasingly militant islamic Turkey. Russia didn’t exactly speak up when Turkey reconverted the mother church of Eastern Christianity, Hagia Sophia, back into a mosque. 

—

Russia is not a genuinely Christian nation in any real sense. At best it is mission territory whose few practicing christians are mostly in fervent schism and dissent from critical moral laws. It is a nation dominated by a cult of personality around its current opportunistic leader, allies with nearby antichristian states when convenient, and has scenes of idolization of dead communist leaders dotting the landscape. 

Publicly endorsing Russia as some sort of Christian ideal or healthy counterweight to the secular west is shallow thinking that makes one look foolish. Yes, it is a miracle that Russia has emerged from decades of communism with the faith that many of its people genuinely possess. But don’t lose the forest for the trees. 

And remember that the Leonine prayers following traditional Low Mass are still for the conversion of Russia. Pope Pius XI issued that intention after the resolution of the Roman Question, and that intention has never been changed. 

Historical Conflation

 

There is a lively trend of historical conflation these days. It goes like this:

—-

Coworker: I recently read this book called Braiding the Sweetgrass. 

Me: Ok, sounds interesting. 

Coworker: It’s about how the judeo-christian tradition encourages this mentality that’s harmful to the earth and how we can find a healthier view in indigenous cultures. 

—-

Were I not so slow-witted, I would’ve said that blaming the judeo-christians for modern environmental degradation makes about as much sense as blaming FDR for deregulation. 

It was not the theologically orthodox Christians and Jews who strip mined the earth and created modern suburbia but their enemies, the classical liberals, who acted the part of the materialist while sometimes masquerading as mainline protestants (oh hey, Rockefeller). 

This is a larger trend of assuming that if something bad happened in recent history, it must have been even worse before, or it must have been caused by a specific group of people who had long since lost their influence. The problem most often shows up in the context of blaming christianity for just about everything that went wrong in the late 19th/early 20th century. 

Christians were warmongers, despite the fact that wars were indisputably worse before and after Christendom (bookended as it was by the ghastly Roman civil wars and the Thirty Years War). Christians were indifferent to the poor, nevermind that the real dreadful rabbit holes of poverty came about during the Renaissance and after, when Europe was abandoning its Christian roots. Christians were racist, despite the fact that modern racism was an invention to justify race-based slavery, which itself was condemned by the Church as soon as it started and numerous times over the next 400 years. Christians were intolerant, despite the fact that modern progressives want to censor everyone from Dave Chapelle to JK Rowling while Christians like Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s wrote dialogs incorporating work from Muslims like Averroes, Jews like Maimonides, and pagans like Aristotle. Christians were no fun, despite the fact that pre-Reformation England (of all places) played host to churches erupting in riots of color, raucous plays and festivals for major feasts, and good beer. Christians were absolutist, despite the fact that Christendom seems like a positive anarchy compared to modern day governments. 

Most damaging, I think, is the blame placed on Christians for the world wars. It should be obvious that Popes Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII all but threw their bodies in front of the warring armies to bring about peace, besides running missing person bureaus, critical relief programs, backchannel diplomacy, and even a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler whilst hiding thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. 

Our modern society aims its post traumatic stress at Christianity for the ghoulish episodes of the transatlantic slave trade, European absolutism, the dehumanizing industrial revolution, and the world wars. It should re-aim at the proper targets: blind faith in the state and government centralization, unregulated technology, corporate monopolies, the greed of the secular rich, and nationalism.