Monday, March 29, 2021

The Modern Christian Dilemma

Apologies for not posting for a while but as I've mentioned in the comments section of a previous post, I'm currently down follow intellectual rabbit holes which came about from reading a biography of Charles De Gaulle and I'll hopefully be posting properly soon.

However commentator MK gave me a heads up with regards to an interview of Rod Dreher by Aaron Renn and wanted to know my thoughts about it. In my opinion the pivotal moment of the interview occurs when Renn quotes Dreher a passage of his own writing. From Retribalising America:

Eventually, the provocations of Social Justice Warriors, especially when they are race-based, is going to empower the militant whites, especially those drawn to pagan masculinity, and they are going to do what the rest of us would not do: Fight. This, because the best — that is, those who want peace, civility, and tolerance — lack all conviction to defend the conditions under which we can have those things against their enemies.
Renn then asks Dreher "Why cant we [Ed: Christians] fight?"

Dreher: "How can we do that? I'm not trying to be provocative, I'm really trying to figure this out."

Here is the YouTube link to the interview segment.

I don't think Dreher was trying to avoid the question here rather the Christianity that Dreher espouses inhibits any type of fighting back.  I don't think that it's an issue of "conviction" as much as it is a perversion of Christianity which sees any type of righteous assertion as immoral. The "suffering" Jesus is seen as a moral example, the Jesus who chased the money lenders from the temple is ignored.

I really want to go back to one of my favourite quotes from Chesterton's, Orthodoxy:
So it is also, of course, with the contradictory charges of the anti-Christians about submission and slaughter. It IS true that the Church told some men to fight [ED] and others not to fight; and it IS true that those who fought were like thunderbolts and those who did not fight were like statues. All this simply means that the Church preferred to use its Supermen and to use its Tolstoyans. There must be SOME good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers. There must be SOME good in the idea of non-resistance, for so many good men seem to enjoy being Quakers. All that the Church did (so far as that goes) was to prevent either of these good things from ousting the other. They existed side by side. The Tolstoyans, having all the scruples of monks, simply became monks. The Quakers became a club instead of becoming a sect. Monks said all that Tolstoy says; they poured out lucid lamentations about the cruelty of battles and the vanity of revenge. But the Tolstoyans are not quite right enough to run the whole world; and in the ages of faith they were not allowed to run it. The world did not lose the last charge of Sir James Douglas or the banner of Joan the Maid. And sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and justified their juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled, and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is--Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? THAT is the problem the Church attempted; THAT is the miracle she achieved.
Chesterton recognised that "sound" Christianity was able to incorporate the gentleness of the lamb with the fierceness of the lion. How it did so is for a later time. But was happened over the last century or so is that Christianity has deligitimised the lion's nature and told it to be more lamb like.  In fact, what Christianity has done, through a Kenotic interpretation of itself, is told the lion to treat the lamb as a type of Buddha and incorporate himself within it, resulting in both a destruction of it's identity and nature. Chesterton saw that the pacifistic trend in Christianity had strong tendencies with Buddhism.

We don't have a Church that "told some men to fight" as it did in the Ages of the Faith. This could either be as a result of a doctrinal development or as a result of heresy. But as the Master says: "you judge a tree by it's fruit" and contemporary Christianity, especially in the West has been bleeding. The empirical evidence leads points to the latter.

The thing about heresies is that none of the heretics think that they are wrong and it just might be that we're in another one of those ages, like during the Arian controversy, when the laity were right and the senior clergy wrong.  Note, this trend in Christianity--especially Catholic Christianity--has been gaining traction over the last century, so this isn't a post Vatican two effect.

As for "fighting" I think our primary purpose at the moment should be to drive out the kenotic heresy from our Churches.


14 comments:

  1. Hoyos9:32 am

    Good that you’re reading about de Gaulle, the more I learned about him, I’m kind of in awe of the man. I think he might have been the last great Western statesman.

    Still pondering on your article. And the earlier one you linked to.

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  2. I agree with you. But it's not only the doctrinal thing. The doctrine selects its kind of people.

    Your mileage may vary but in my two countries in Spain and Central America, people who go to Church are f*cking lazy and f*cking coward.

    Fighting? They are afraid of saying a negative word! When you show them the Pachamama coin issued by the Vatican, the strongest thing they are able to say is: "Wow! We should pray a lot about this"

    I have tried to create some kind of group to resist the innovations that are on the way. "We should pray about this". I have tried to give some presentations about political correctness so they can reply. "We should pray about this"

    They want to pray because they don't want to do anything else. Fighting? They are afraid of being called sexist, racist, homophobes, you name it.

    They live very happy with their prayers, their masses. Doing something else is too much work. Mamma boys and lazy.

    This is why we are more and more irrelevant. While our enemies have balls, we are a bunch of pussies.

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  3. I don't think that it's an issue of "conviction" as much as it is a perversion of Christianity which sees any type of righteous assertion as immoral. The "suffering" Jesus is seen as a moral example, the Jesus who chased the money lenders from the temple is ignored.

    Well said! You saw exactly what I saw: Dreher, a good man, has gone astray due to flawed culture and inproper doctrine the Church has pushed.

    Myself, I see no easy way out, even for men with balls (Dreher need not apply): we cannot fight without unity, and unity can come only through the hierarchy. It's going to have to get a lot worse, to actually threaten the bishops themselves (or at least their comfy lives) before the laity can do anything meaningful besides martyr ourselves without effect.

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  4. @Hoyos

    I've always thought of De Gaulle as one of the top leaders in the 20th Century but after reading up on him in more detail I'm convinced that he is probably the greatest. And I don't say that lightly. There's a pantheon of nobles he has to compete with: Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Churchill, Adenauer, Le Kwan Yew, etc. But the measure of the man is how he deals with the hand that he's dealt with. Churchill for instance, was lone voice against the Nazi menace but he inherited a functioning empire. Roosevelt took command of great empire and drove it to its potential. De Gaulle, on the other hand, had everything against him. Adenauer, handed a poisoned chalice, that could have gone horribly wrong, at least had the goodwill of the Americans and British to support him. De Gaulle had far less.

    He is a titan.

    @Chent

    The doctrine selects its kind of people.

    It does but it also creates a kind of people. I think the current kenotic push definitely emasculates. I think that this is an important point. The Church doesn't feminise as much as it emasculates (which is a different thing). I think that the current Church creates a environment of passive dependency on Christ which is congenial to a certain type of female.

    @MK

    Threatening Bishops is not the answer. I think we have to shore up Christianity without them. They will do will do what they can to scuttle the endeavor....in good faith, without troubling their consciences.

    In essence what I'm saying is that the motive force for the revival of Western Civilisation has to come primarily from religion. Seek ye first the Kingdom...is practical advice in this instance. The religion has to be "righted" before any restoration can occur.


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  5. Today's lambs are snarling like lions, engaged in endless purity spirals, while the lions are fighting one another over theology.

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  6. @Aurini

    Thanks for dropping by.

    ....while the lions are fighting one another over theology.

    In my own studies of why the Right failed, I've drawn the conclusion that is that because of subversion from within. Poor thinking within the Right has frequently provided loopholes which leftist ideology can exploit for the purposes of co-option.

    I do appreciate the utility of not being too picky about your allies, but you've got to make sure that pick your allies and your enemies carefully. The modern Right has done neither and hence its record of failure. Sometimes your friend is your enemy and your enemy your friend. This is why I bang on so much about what it means to be "Right", because it provides the conceptual framework which enables that distinction.

    Once again I'll leave the last word to Chesterton:

    "Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfillment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. ...if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. ... Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless."

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  7. Doc,

    The Church has been in sociopolitical freefall ever since the 17th century wars of religion, yet people still find their way to her and are saved.

    Too many people on the Right (Trads or otherwise) have an overly naturalistic view of Church affairs. They think "If only we can get white Catholics (are South Americans chopped liver?) to have ten kids per family, have two of the sons become priests and have the homely girls become nuns we can turn this ship around."

    Still others WANT to fight but are too daunted by the fact that their own clergy seem opposed to the mission of the Church, that is, to save souls and bring about the Social Reign of Christ. Faithful laity are flummoxed by the notion that their own bishops, even Popes, have accepted compromises with the world that seemingly gives the world what it wants while the Church gets nothing in return (or transformed to something more worldly).

    There are some odd ones out there like Brother Alexis Bugnolo who is trying to create a Catholic Military Order to protect persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

    We have to accept that while the Church is no longer the mighty institution it was in the High Middle Ages or the Baroque era, she is still the Bride of Christ and Christ will come at the consummation of the age to save His faithful.

    Consider that Our Lord told us two things: first, that narrow is the road and few are those who come to heaven. And second, that the final days will be like the days of Noah. Noah spent 100 years building the ark and the earth was full of wicked people. The scriptures do not give us too many details about how bad things were in the antediluvian era, but I could imagine that these people, wicked as they are, did their best to spite Noah in his work whilst righteous Noah tried to convince the wicked people about the disaster to come. In the end, only eight people survived.

    I consider the work of Catholics in this age much the same as that of Noah. Do your necessary labor, endure and survive. And to respond to Chent--why not both? Why not do the necessary work AND pray? If an ass can rebuke Balaam, so can a layman rebuke wicked clergy.

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  8. @Chent

    "They want to pray because they don't want to do anything else. Fighting? They are afraid of being called sexist, racist, homophobes, you name it."

    At least in the realm of crime and the state. The ones to wield a sword to be a terror to the wicked as God's Angel of Vengeance are those tasked with acting on God's behalf while the persecuted civilian is obligated to pray and seek Justice from said Civil Authority.


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  9. @Ingmar
    "There are some odd ones out there like Brother Alexis Bugnolo who is trying to create a Catholic Military Order to protect persecuted Christians in the Middle East."

    Kaleb of Axum of the Kingdom of Ethiopia avenged the Christians who were being slaughtered in Yemen. And disestablished the local King who was seeking to kill every single Christian he can find:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye1HFp7cOW8

    4:39-5:50

    Text form:
    https://www.persee.fr/doc/ethio_0066-2127_1972_num_9_1_896

    If the Khmer Rogue and the Rwandan slaughter is any guide. Only decisive Military defeat can stop Christians from being wholly wiped out if the Ruler decides on such an atrocity:
    https://infogalactic.com/info/Rwandan_Genocide#Rwandan_Patriotic_Front_military_campaign_and_victory

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  10. Likewise the Khmer Rogue stopped its slaughter when Vietnam invaded and overthrew the Government:
    https://infogalactic.com/info/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_War

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  11. @John

    George Orwell said something in a very similar vein when he mentioned that pacifistic approach used by Ghandi would of only worked against the British and not against the Russians or the Nazi's.

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  12. @The Social Pathologist

    Agreed. And in regards to persecution it is by God's Grace that in the Roman Empire the persecutions weren't just exterminatory. Christianity for example in China was potentially hindered by Men like Huang Chao:


    "The Chinese rebels led by Huang Chao slaughtered Jews, Muslim Arabs, Muslim Persians, Zoroastrians (a.k.a. Parsees or Mazdaists) and Christians when they seized and conquered, according to Arab writer Abu Zayd Hasan As-Sirafi.

    Huang Chao's army was in Guangzhou during 878–879. Mulberry groves were also ruined by Huang's army.Only the Arabic source of Abu Zaid mentions the massacre; Chinese sources of the Tang dynasty history say nothing of the massacre and only mention Huang Chao occupying Guangzhou and retreating after disease struck his army.

    Most of the victims were foreign and wealthy.

    The death toll could have ranged from 120,000 to 200,000 foreigners.

    Foreigners have at different periods settled in China; but after remaining for a time, they have been massacred. For instance, Mohammedans and others settled at Canton in the ninth century; and in 889, it is said that 120,000 foreign settlers were massacred.

    — the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, "The Baptist missionary magazine" (1869)

    https://infogalactic.com/info/Guangzhou_massacre



    Although the Church of the East may have been Nestorian and heretics. But I digress.


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  13. Anonymous11:30 am

    Paul Gottfried has claimed on his podcast that TAC gets a lot of funding from left-wing donors. Its very possible that Dreher's entire schtick is just a gaslighting operation by lefties.

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