Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas to my long suffering readers.

Hopefully I'll be less slack and put up a few more posts next year.

Best wishes to all.

Modernity

One of the recurring tropes seen in conservative blogs is the opposition of modernity to religion. The implication of this line of thought is that somehow a return to pre-industrial society would shore up the decline of Christianity. I don't particularly subscribe to this point of view but I can understand how it came about.  That the the collapse of religion in the West is correlated with the industrialisation of Western society  is true but as all the good text books say, correlation is not causation and the relationship of modernity to religious decline is much more complicated.

But first we need to define terms.

Modernity as a concept has both temporal and qualitative aspects. Temporal, in that it acknowledges that that whatever modernity is, it marks a discontinuity with the past in time. Qualitatively, it acknowledges a civilisational change irrespective of time. I think that one of the reasons why modernity is so difficult to define is because its is one word linked to two different two concepts. 

The first thing to consider the is the temporal component of the concept which I think is its least important aspect. The Latin root of the term, modo, defines the present or contemporary. So the concept refers to the here and now. But the important point of the word modernity is that it is meant to distinguish a now that is different from the past, yet time itself is neutral with regard to modernity's qualitative aspect. The modern world is not modern because it is five hundred years away from the the 1500's, it's modern because there has been a qualitative change since then and its the change in things, not the passage of time that gives the term its major meaning. The reason why the 1500's are not modern is because the civilisation experience  of then is different to what it is today.

So what then are the major qualitative changes in modernity?  From the point of view of Western History, the two main factors would be the development of technology and the change in values, with technological aspect having greater value. Simply put, the modern world would be impossible without the technological innovations particularly of the last two hundred years. Technology has given Western modernity a large component of its qualatative aspect.

But technology does not apply itself and requires human agents for its implementation. Therefore the the expression of technology is conditional on the values used in its implementation. If a society decided, because of its values, to reject technology current technological modernity would be impossible. The point I'm trying to make here is that technology is "captive" to the values of society and these values modulate the expression of technology,  and hence modernity. The interesting thing about this line of thought is that modernity can have many forms and the modernity we currently have is not necessarily the only modernity that could have been.

However, qualative changes can also occur in a society in the absence of technology, and history is full of societies which were technologically backward but which culturally changed over time. Here it's the change of values and not the passage of time which is the marker of change. The late Roman Emprie was "modern" in that it differed from the founding values of the Republic.  Looking at the decadent values of the late empire and ours now, are we really that modern? Strip away the technology and we resemble a lot of "old" decadent societies.

Whats been interesting about the West is that it has undergone two transformations over the past few centuries. First, the material one, driven by technology, and secondly the cultural one, driven by other factors.

When religious conservatives talk about modernity they have to be quite specific. It needs to be understood is that incorporation of technology into our civilisation has bought, quite literally incalculable, benefits. The production of medicines, diagnostic equipment, food and safe transportation for instance, sits atop a vast mountain of technological capital. Turning the clock back would come at the price of an ocean of human misery. A more simpler existence, i.e. agrarianism, would be a more painful one as well. 

Of course, none of these religious conservatives would dream of getting of getting rid of the beneficial effects of technology what they want to do is simply change morality, but even here we have a problem.

Now, while I have separated technology and culture, treating them separately, the reality is there is an interplay between the two of them. Formally, technology shouldn't really impact upon our values system but materially it does, and the medium of the interaction, from a civilisational level, is the midwit. Culture isn't just a product of the guys at the top of the intellectual food chains, it is a product of all levels of society and I don't think what isn't recognised enough is just how powerful this midwit engagement with science and technology is in the shaping of culture.

"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to him" is a quote attributed to Pastuer but it captures the essence of things. Not thinking deeply about things is problematic but its how most of the human race lives and the midwit engagement and being satisfied with superficialities is a powerful solvent of traditional religious morality.  The experience of penicillin and fertiliser have probably been more effective de-Christianisers than nominalism.  For the day to day believer, penicillin cures, prayer doesn't. Fertiliser, rather than fasting, ensures the crops. God becomes increasingly irrelevant to our day to day lives.  Faith atrophies rather than is rejected and it is lived as if it is increasingly irrelevant. Only the troubled and the deep end up engaging religion.

The point here is that technology, in it's success, undercuts a powerful psychological mechanism which powers moral values, namely dependency, especially in the midwit class. As they say, "there are no atheists in foxholes" which simply is a recognition that in desperate times the midwit is prepared to give God some consideration: atheism and degeneracy being luxuries of comfort. 

Christian forensic philosophers have laboured to identify and combat the errors of modernist thought but the fact is that stupid ideas have been around since time immemorial. What distinguishes the  modern world from the past is the traction these stupid ideas have now, or appear to have now. The average man does not engage life like a Pascal, Nietzsche, Heidegger or Kant: in fact he's probably never even heard of them. The fault of Christian philosphers has been to map the thought of dissident philosophers on the brains of midwits, combating a process that isn't naturally occurring in their minds, wondering why their arguments don't work. The fault lays in the failure to recognise that  Homer Simpson doesn't do Heidegger and the widespread consumption of internet porn is not due the average man's acceptance of the arguments of Foucault.

Rather, how modernity attacks religion is "psychologically", through material comfort, security and abundance. The "argument" of modernity is not logical but existential. God is not needed, or sought, among people who are fat, happy and in-control enough.  Stupid ideas, which never would have been given the time of day in  a precarious world are suddenly given a hearing. Hubris, ingratitude and sloth act on a population-wide level consigning "hard" religion as an irrelevancy. The rejection of God is more pragmatic rather than philosophical. The relationship of Christianity to modernity is much bigger than just the world of ideas.

Pushing Ukraine West

Vladimir Solovyov is one of Putin's chief propagandists.

Back in 2008 he sang a different and more sensible tune.

 

As many Russian analysts have recognised,  the Ortho-con policies of Putin have pushed the Ukrainians away from the Russians.  Had Putin simply followed the the ideas expressed by Solovyov in 2008, he--and Russia--would he would be in a much stronger position than now.

It even gets weirder than this. Here's a link to Solovyov and Zelensky singing together on Russian TV in 2013.

Bonus: For Comrade Vatnik who likes to populate my comments thread with vulgarities. It appears that Solovyov is a bit of a fan of Mussolini.

Russia's war against Nazism in Ukraine is in safe hands!

You can't make this stuff up. This really is Clown World.

Ortho-connery.

The truth is this war has its roots much further back than Obama. If you want to point to an incident as a starting place, it would be American involvement in the Balkan war during the Clinton years. American support for Kosovo against Serbia was the start of a new conflict with Russia. At the time, it was viewed in Moscow as a deliberate offense to the Russians. In the years that followed, this affair has become a warning for the Russians about what Washington plans for them.

One of the things about being of the right it is the desire to calibrate one's beliefs to reality. So its with some surprise that I read the above over at Z Man's blog. Quite simply its a revision of history.

Unlike the current situation in Ukraine, when the war in Yugoslavia started the American's did all they could to stop the country from breaking apart, including placing an arms embargo on the Croats, Slovenes and even the Bosnians. The Americans was so concerned about the stability of the former Soviet Union that they did not want to set a precedent by recognising the breakaway republics. Even the Baltics had a hard time gaining recognition from the U.S. The fact of the matter is that the Bush administration of the early 90's did all it could to support the continuity of the the former Soviet Union and turned a blind eye to much of the slaughter in the former Yugoslavia. The Republicans, for all their mouthings of liberty, did bugger all.

The entry of the Clinton administration initially didn't really change much. But it was the nightly reports of slaughter and murder, perpetrated mainly by the Serbs that turned public opinion in the U.S. and Europe against Serbian/Russian interests.  By the time the issue of Kosovo had come around, the largely accurate public image of the Serbs had taken such a beating that Serbian claims to Kosovo fell on unsympathetic ears.  American policy in Kosovo was designed to save lives and if the Serbians hadn't a policy of extermination I doubt that there would have been any intervention at all.

This of course bothered the Russians and their apologists who somehow felt that their right to dictate what happened in that theatre of operations trumped the human rights of the inhabitants of that region. What's really weird about this is that it was supported by large sections of the American "right".

While the fine detail of U.S. foreign policy towards Russia is beyond this blog post the fact of the matter is that U.S. Russian relations were quite cordial, even to the extent that Russia was mooted as a potential NATO member until the Orange Revolution where the Russians were outmaneuvered by the Americans, failing to get their man installed. (Unlike in Belarus.)

It's clear now that the U.S. is hostile to the Kremlin but it wasn't always this way and while both sides are responsible for this deterioration in their relationship. The way the Kremlin and their apologists paint it, one would think that the Russians were victims of exploitation instead of contributory agents. Putin is a Russian Nationalist with an imperialistic vision and his desire to restore a modern version of the tsardom is what rubs many people the wrong way and in the playbook of Russian diplomacy, when Russia doesn't get what it wants it is a "victim." 

While it is true that Putin's nationalism is in someways more "wholesome" than Western Liberalism in some ways it's far more rotten. Putin's anti-sexual-deviancy needs to be balanced by his disregard for the loss of innocent life. His appeal to family values has to be balanced by his blind eye to civic vices. What surprises me is just how many of the right are blind to them, or even worse, how many of them see as justifiable. From my perspective Putin's "badness" is a different "badness" to the "badness" of the West: But it is still bad.

Just as Neoconservatism wants to build a conservatism without reference to Christ, Orthoconnery wants to build a conservatism subordinated to Russian/Orthodox Nationalistic interests*. In this schema, the Church blesses whatever the State wants and reinterprets facts to further that narrative. The truth be damned. The idea that NATO is a threat to Russia is laughable as is the idea that Ukraine is a fascist state and so on.  The fact that many on the Western Right buy into this is a measure of how pitiful their understanding of when membership of the right entails.  i.e. a commitment to the truth and justice.

*Note: I'm not criticising legitimate Orthodox patriotism but its a patriotism that must be grounded in the truth.

Service Announcement

Even though not much has been posted recently on the blog it's not dead yet. I won't be posting for the next two months due to personal reasons. I'll still be keeping my eye on things though.

Defending Christianianity?

I'm getting a bit of heat from the idiot Right in criticism of their view of Russia the new defender of Christianity. So I wonder how the guys will spin this.

This is the new "decoration" of the ISS courtesy of the Russians.

Russia is rehabilitating the Soviet Union and our idiot "Christian" Right are cheering them on. Let that sink in for the moment. The Christian "dissident" Right is supporting the party of Marx and the Gulag. Let's not forget which country spent millions of dollars trying to undermine the West. A lot of the Globohomo that we have now was a direct result of the subversion policy's of the USSR from a long time ago.

This is why the Right loses all the time: They're too stupid to see that they're supporting the forces that will ultimately undermine them.

Some More Military Religious Art

I got a fair amount of grief from the pro-Russian crowd in my last post about the Russian Military Cathedral which I felt tried to reconcile communism with orthodoxy.  Commo-Orthodoxy much like Judeo-Christianity is fundamentally incompatible due to their foundational premises.  As I tried to point out in my last post, patria and Christianity are compatible, Communism (and fascism for that matter) is not.

The allies destroyed of confiscated a lot Nazi art following the war, and I'm not sure how much of it had a religious element. But I managed to find an example of religious art produced in a time of totalitarianism that gets it right.

Oskar Martin Amorbach was a well renowned painter during the time of the Third Reich. He painted one of my favourite works from that time, The Sower. What I was not aware of is that he also painted a mural in the The Holy Trinity Chapel in Waldsassen. The mural was completed in 1940 while the Reich was on the rise. Titled, The Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, the mural of the German soldiers is seen as an allegory of the corporal acts of mercy. Of note, you have to look very carefully to see any Nazi imagery. The emphasis is clearly on German soldiers being good Christians.

They guys are clearly Wehrmacht but it's very difficult to see an Nazi symbolism at all.  In this image we see the German give a drink to French, Italian and Spanish prisoners of War, visiting the sick...

...and burying the dead. Note, the grave next to German grave is French. The imagery is clearly one of Christian morals, rather than a celebration an attempt to reconcile Nazism and Christianity.

Even this sort of thing from another Church and from the First World War, put in a Russian context would have been  more appropriate.

I'm not an artist, but it isn't too hard to see how faith and patria could be depicted in a way which acknowledged historicity while criticising totalitarianism.  Even some of the icons of Alexander Schmorell, a saint of the Russian Church, acknowledge his German military background in their depiction of him:

Note the German uniform under the white overshirt.

Now the guys who built the Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces weren't stupid, they could have chosen to depict the Russians who fought during the Soviet era in a way which emphasised the faith and downplayed the Soviet.

They didn't and that's the problem, they're trying to reconcile the two.

BTW, I have taken most of the images here from the site of a Russian Photographer, Vladimir Pomortzeff,  The Woe of the Vanquished. Great site, have a look.

The Cathedral of the Armed Forces in Russia

I meant to write about this last night but got stuck with other things.

Russia has built itself a new cathedral for its armed forces, and I've got to admit, on first impression, I really quite like it. It's a spectacular building of relatively traditional design which is very impressive.  I think the use of glass and color in the building is particularly imaginative and overall produces a grand ecclesiastical space with a sense of grandeur and sanctity that is completely lacking in most modern religious architecture. I've never really liked byzantine art but I've really warmed to this.

I'm not a big fan however, of how they have sited the building, placing a military "theme' park/museum next to it. I feel it detracts from the gravity of the space and it detracts from the sanctity and seriousness which the building itself so successfully evokes. The building has had it's critics, complaining about its color, which I like: it's glorification of the military, which I also think is appropriate in the right context, and some of the stylistic choices which I think are  petty.

In the previous post, Commetator Joseph A said:

I'd think the most controversial iconography in the military temple is the resurrection icon in the apse. I admit its rad coolness, but it strikes me as pretty innovative, as far as temple iconography goes. Not as wild as Jesus as Thor in D.C.'s National (R.C.) Basilica, but pretty wild for the Orthodox.

I personally think it is fantastic and great example of how a modern stylistic element can be incorporated into a traditional style in a way that adds to the intended effect. It's modern but  synches with the old. When I first saw it, I was gobsmacked.

Till I started noticing a few details.

Like the hammer and sickle on the ceiling, the abundance of unabashedly Soviet military officers and commemorations of the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring. Original proposals even included the image of Stalin, cast in a positive light. (Removed after protest from the Orthodox community.) Hmmm, I thought to myself, something's not right.

The purpose of any religious decoration is to convey the religious theology in some kind of visual form. So the presence and positive context of Soviet imagery in an Orthodox Church was either a mistake or some attempt to "synthesise" the two. Theologically, the synthesis is impossible since the ideals of Communism and the Ideals of mainstream Orthodox theology are oppositional. The only way such a synthesis can be achieved is by elevating the Russian commonality between the two extremes.  In such a schema the only way that  communism and Russian Orthodoxy can be reconciled is  because of their Russian-ness. God matters less than being Russian.

Stalin's image was removed after an outcry from members of the Orthodox Church.

Commentator Joseph A also said:

Many cathedrals and temples depict significant historical events. The National Cathedral in Washington D.C. (Anglican) has depictions of the War between the States among other important episodes in the life of the American nation. The Russian military sobor in this article does the same -- it is a temple for the armed forces, and there is an emphasis on WWII.

This is true but the issue is how to depict the art while being true to the religion. I fully understand that the "Great Patriotic War" was both an exercise in the expansion of Communism and a war of liberation against the Genocidal Germans, so Russia does have something legitimate--from a Christian perspective--to celebrate about it. How to depict it is the problem,  since what you don't want to do is elevated the anti-Christian in a such a depiction.  I don't think the art achieves this balance, neither do quite a few orthodox.

Lest anyone think that my comments are due to my inherent anti-Russianism, this interesting article by the Russian, Alexi Lidov, raises similar objections:

And from the perspective of social psychology it is interesting that many people are quite comfortable with this sort of understanding of Christianity, with the love of God soothingly transformed into the veneration of power.

It seems to me that the church we’re talking about aspires to become a monument of the era and a bright reflection of contemporary Russian religious consciousness[ED], as the most vivid manifestation of the deepest spiritual crisis but nowhere near a manifestation of triumph. And there is something paradoxical in this. I think this ambiguity and incongruity has been felt by many Orthodox people and this is precisely why the military church has evoked such an explosive reaction, and occasionally also deep antagonism, despite the unprecedented promotion of the project via state mass media. And it seems to me, too, that this will live on as a memorial of sorts to the era. But in my opinion, the proposed path is — undoubtedly — a ruinous dead end and should certainly not become an example for imitation.

Bonus: Lidov actually gives a very good talk here about the cathedral and various other Russian relgious topics. Worth a listen.

Fun fact that I didn't know: Stalin, after mercilessly persecuting religion in Russia only allowed it to practice again in order to get Lend Lease American military supplies. Apparently the Christians in Congress were refusing to the let the appropriate legislation pass because of Stalin's brutality towards religion. The only reason he opened the Churches in Russia was to win favour with the American Congress!

*Images are not mine and have been used under fair use provisions.

Religious Art du Jour

 Some interesting religious art from the newly consecrated Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces.

The one on the left is the original version, the one on the right is what is considered theologically acceptable. (Stalin's been rubbed out.)

The Church also commemorates the crushing of the Prague Spring and Hungarian Uprising.

Some interesting theology going on there.

Some more pictures. 

A Pseudo-Right Own Goal

The Pseudo Right support of Putin only results in the furthering of the causes of the Left.

The facts were quite clear. Among Putin's four military interventions in the former Soviet space, three targeted Christian and Orthodox countries. The direct aggression against Georgia was to the benefit of the Muslim Abkhazians. During the last conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the French far right and the Republicans (Les Républicains) called for Christian solidarity against the Turkish-Muslim threat. I had reminded them in an article (Le Monde, 18 November 2020) that the Russians were on Azerbaijan's side and not at all on the Armenians' side. They let the Azeris take over Karabakh and then pretended to intervene. In the wake of the war in Chechnya, Putin supported the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. The only place in geographical Europe where Sharia law is applied is in the Republic of Chechnya, in Russia. The attack on another Orthodox nation, Ukraine, will further accentuate the divisions in the Orthodox world but also in the Christian world in general (the Ukrainian Catholic Uniates are a bastion of Ukrainian patriotism). The only Ukrainian patriarch who still recognises the supremacy of Patriarch Cyril of Moscow, Onuphre, has just called on the faithful to defend the Ukrainian homeland. Putin has lost his claim to represent the Orthodox world.

Great essay by Oliver Roy. Note, in quoting Roy I don't agree with all that he says. I'm a big believer in the Clash of Civilisations theory. The problem isn't with the theory but in what is considered a civilisation. Samuel Huntington painted with too broad a brush, failing to appreciate that local factors--which cause the formation of identity--modify this theory quite a bit.

Some More Comments About Russia

Commentator Sean took offence to my comment about the eternal Russia and I felt trying to justify myself would really be counterproductive. 

So I thought I would bring a different perspective to the claim.

Marrti Kari is a former colonel in Finnish Intelligence. Apart from losing some territory to the Soviets in the Winter War, Finland was never occupied by the Russians, so was spared most of the cultural trauma that Central Europe went through.

He has two good talks on You Tube about the Russian mindset which I would urge my readers to look at. Since everyone is time poor, the fist four minutes of this video explains a lot about Russia.



The interesting stuff begins at 6:37.

He also gives another good talk, How Russians Think and Why They Do What They Do and a summary of this talk can be found here.

Precision Guided Morality

Sometimes even though world events are complicated and require nuance, the moral response to them is not hard. One of the most depressing things about the current war in Ukraine is watching some of the leaders of the the "dissident Right" cheer on the actions of Vladimir Putin. It's a gross moral failure.

Russian claims about being threatened by NATO are quite simply, rubbish.  Does Switzerland feel threatened, surrounded as it is by NATO. As you read this blog, there are probably three or four Russian nuclear armed submarines just off the U.S. coast, closer to the American shoreline than Kiev is to the Russian border.  Likewise, there are probably a similar number of U.S submarines off Russian waters. When it comes to nuclear war, the presence of nuclear weapons on the Ukrainian soil is largely an irrelevancy. It's the subs that are the scary weapons.

So why did the Russians decide to go to war?

The Kremlin's anti NATO and anti Ukrainian propaganda has a familiar tune to those who remember the events that led to War in Yugoslavia.  Because the Kremlin's arguments are exactly the same--except for the place names--as the one advocated by Serbian Nationalists in that war.  Russia sees Ukraine, just like Serbia saw Croatia, as its rightful clay. Even Kiev (with its historical role in the foundation of the Russian state) is analogous to the Serbian spiritual claim over Kosovo. And the reason why Russia did not want Ukraine in NATO is because it would have frustrated this ambition. The Russians don't want to fight a nuclear armed power.

The Poles understand this, as do the other former Warsaw Pact nations, the problem is that those in the West, particularly the Germans, don't. It also seems that many "conservatives" in the West fail to grasp this fact. Nationalistic Russia is a predatory power.

So while Putin's forces have violated a country borders whom they promised to respect, and are bombing civilian targets indiscriminately we have many "conservatives" cheering him on.  Mark Twain once said, history may not repeat but it sure does rhyme and there's a lot of the 1930's in the air at the moment.

Back in the 1930's socialism was rapidly taking over the mindset of the elites in the West which challenged the pre-existing social order. Many of the traditional approaches at combating them were ineffective, and men like Mussolini and Hitler earned a lot of 'respect" from the "Right" for their apparently ability to curb the Left.  The problem, however,  was that the "Right" that these guys represented was superficial, and deep down it carried with it all of the metaphysical poisons of the Left. 

If you were a conservative in the 1930's there was a lot to like about Hitler and his mates. For instance, he was profoundly anti-degenerate, but then again that depends on how you define degeneracy. From a Christian perspective, it's no use being against the globohomo if you embrace murder of the innocents, deliberate lying and widespread theft. You might not go to Hell for buggery but you're still going to go to Hell.

Likewise it's also understandable to see why many conservatives would see something beneficial with Vladimir Putin. He is also against the globohomo, strongly nationalistic, "Christian" and is trying to restore "family" values in Russia. I strongly advise anyone who wishes to understand him to study the concept of Russkij Mir. The problem with the ideology behind this "Pax Russia" is that it is profoundly anti-Western, not in the sense of the Modern West, but also also in the sense of the the "Traditional West". Our idiot conservatives are cheering him on.

The image of modern Russia is in many ways akin to the Potemkin villages of the past. Superfically attractive but deep down rotten to the core. Russia has some serious cultural problems, and they're not simply the legacy of Communism but a problem with its history and relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church. Stephen Kotkin in an interview with the New Yorker, gives a great talk on this subject.  This is the Russia that Putin is championing, and this the Russia that the "useful conservative idiots" in the West are cheering on.

The Russia that these idiots are championing has the highest rates of abortion, homicide, divorce, suicidality and criminality in Europe. Google it up. Much like German--and European--society in the the 1930's, Russian society is profoundly morally sick. It is no moral exemplar. The fact that many "dissident" conservatives are cheering it on shows just how distorted their moral compass is.

And in criticising modern Russia I'm in no way vindicting the modern West, both societies are profoundly diseased. European civilisation is a profound moral crisis and the only way out of it, as I see it, is through a rejuvenated civic Christianity which can steer itself between the brothel that is the modern West and the spiritual wasteland of the East.

Some Thoughts on George Bailey and the Incarnation

Blogging has been scarce since I've been a bit burned out but I thought I should make an effort for Christmas.

Protestantism gets a bad rap among many on the right and I think some of the traditional criticisms of it are justified. However, as I've mentioned before most analysis of Protestantism lack quite a bit of nuance and I don't think that Protestantism is as much of a bogeyman as some traditionalists make out.  Many Catholic traditionalists tend to draw a straight line from Protestantism to liberalism and while this may be theoretically plausible real world observations are a bit more complicated.

Most of the readers of this blog know that I am a Catholic, so it may surprise many of you when I say that the main reason why the West is imploding in the moment is primarily due to the numerical collapse of "sound" Protestantism, Catholicism largely being irrelevant in the West's fate.  And the reason why I have come to this view is based up my reflections on modernity and how each religion handled it.

Executive Summary: Protestantism was able to tame modernity, Catholicism wasn't able to engage it at all. The "slouch to Gomorrah" happened when sound Protestantism collapsed.

Richard Weaver was famous for advocating that ideas have consequences but he neglected to mention that so do have material circumstances. The problem with most approaches to understanding modernity is in thinking that modernity is primarily an intellectual phenomenon. This ignores the "carnal" dimension of it. Modernity isn't simply the habit of thinking according to certain ideas, it's also the mode of existence that is generated when the practical application of technology transforms life from an agrarian mode of living to that of an industrial one. What destroyed the old world wasn't just "enlightenment ideas" but fertilizer, the electric motor, railways, radio waves, sewerage etc. Modernity is just as much about "things" and services as it is about ideas.

Modernity's ability to provide goods which satisfy human nature are what powers it.  Modernity's ability to deliver carnal goods such as better foods, pharmaceuticals, comfort and transport make pushing back against it a fools errand,  because in the end human nature wins. Even the Amish go to "modern" doctors. The Taliban use AK-47's and mobile/cell phones. No matter how "traditional" there's always the concession to modernity.

The human demand, and reward, for technological advancement which provides benefit to human nature  is limitless and given the more two centuries since the beginning of the industrial revolution an incredibly vast and complex logistical, economic, academic and legal infrastructure exists to provide the "fruits of modernity" All of this is staffed by  hundreds of millions of highly specialized individuals who need to be trained for their tasks. These people and the institutions they man are the infrastructure of modernity.

The key point here is that modernity can't happen without this infrastructure,  and who controls this infrastructure controls modernity.

When Max Weber wrote his, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism it was well recognised that Protestant led countries were richer and technologically more advanced than the Catholic ones, they were effectively more modern, they still are. Interesting too, was the fact that the flow of immigrants were from Catholic to Protestant lands and not in the other direction.

Weber felt that religious reasons were the main drivers of this divergence in economic performance and I agree. Weber dwelt a lot on the Protestant virtues, I want to dwell a bit on the Catholic vices.

Charles Peguy felt that one of the reasons that the Catholic Church had lost its grip on the modern world is because the clergy "had reversed the operation of the Incarnation". Whereas God wanted to bring himself into the world, the Clergy reversed this operation and was trying to keep God out of it. And I think the Peguy was right. The issue is how each church viewed holiness.

Holiness, particularly in the Catholic Church is strongly tinged with a sense of asceticism, clericalism and monasticism. As Catholics materially understand it, the practice of a deepening of the relationship with God involves a "renunciation" of this world: a turning away from it. More asceticism, more poverty, more prayers and the assumption of holy orders: monasticism and it quasi equivalents. There even a ranking system, with the saints and martyrs on top, clergy in the middle and laity-those involved in the day to day operations of the world--on the bottom.  The conception of holiness, as Peguy correctly sensed, was an operation away from the day to day affairs of the world.

Culturally, this produced a society which was strong in reasoned argument, great art, deep philosophy but with poor roads,  minimal industrial infrastructure, widespread grinding poverty and lessening real world influence.

Contrast this with the Protestant world,  which emphasised the role of the laity and holiness of a honest vocation, be that in plumbing or philosophy. Protestantism where it was honestly practiced, sought to bring a Christian spirit, be it to education, science, engineering or banking. Protestantism christianised the carnal world. It kept alive the operation of the Incarnation, the bringing of God's love into the material being of day to day life. The result was the world that Max Weber noted.

Protestantism ended up being the custodian of  modernity and subjugated it to it's version of Christianity, Catholicism was left in the lurch because its theology made it unable to do so.

Which brings me to the movie It's a Wonderful Life. I've always enjoyed the movie but only recently have seen some of its deeper theological significance. While Catholicism has been a factory of saints, Protestantism has been a factory of George Bailey's. (Casting Jimmy Stewart was perfect) It is true that he is fictional character, but he is also an archetype of the a type of man that we all know, and the type of high minded Protestant man who is slowly disappearing due to the cultural forces that have been unleashed since the sixties. Although the movie is fictional it, unnervingly, is beginning to resemble real life.  Bedford Falls may be a fictional town but I remember the world I grew up in strongly resembling it, the world I live in now is slowly turning to Pottersville. The genius of the movie is the depiction of what world would have looked like without Protestant George Bailey. The irony of it is that is was made by a Catholic.

Now I do have disagreements with Protestantism, but my intention here is to praise one of its strengths. And its strength was to produce thousands of George Bailey's, who in various fields and in their own small way were able to transform the world. Catholicism may have a great theology of the Incarnation but Protestantism, at its best, produced the goods, and bought Christianity to the day to day affairs of men.

Unfortunately, Protestantism, like Catholicism was gutted in the sixties and its drift toward radical liberalism is far more catastrophic since it controlled the infrastructure of modernity, the mantle of leadership has now been past to men who see George Bailey as a quaint anachronism, not someone to emulate. Catholicism is unable to fill the void.

That's why I think the only way out for the West is for Catholicism to protestantise in such a way to incorporate the legitimacy of the archetype of George Baily or for Protestantism to Catholicism i.e gain some central authority to stop its drift to the left and recapture control of modernity. But discussions about this are for another time.

But on this Christmas Eve, the night before the celebration of the Incarnation, I want to celebrate the George Bailey's of the world, who each in their small way transformed the world. They represent what I consider the best in Protestantism and I would like to wish them all, and all men of good will, a very Merry Christmas.

The Anti Buddhist

One of the unexpected consequences of revisiting the life of Charles de Gaulle was a deeper appreciation of man who I frequently ran into while delving into the history books but really didn't understand: Charles Peguy.  

De Gaulle had stated on several occasion that Peguy was--after his father--the greatest influence on his life and an author "who mattered to him immensely".  Which is interesting because most English biographies of de Gaulle scarcely mention him. Yet to know Peguy is understand a lot about de Gaulle and Gaullism. Julian Jackson, in his five best books on Charles de Gaulle states:

I think out of all the books I’ve chosen, Péguy is probably the least well known to an English audience. But the first reason I chose him was that on many occasions de Gaulle said it was the book that most influenced him as a young man and Charles Péguy the author that most influenced him.....

....De Gaulle has a phrase in his war memoirs on the first page where he talks about how for him “France is like a princess in a fairy story, Madonna in a fresco”. That could come straight out of Péguy. Péguy is offering this extraordinary, overarching synthesis of the unity of France, that French history is a continuum and a whole.

De Gaulle once remarked that "he thought and felt exactly as I did'. 

Which is odd because the circumstances of both were wildly different and on superficial appearances there was little to suggest a shared affinity. Contrary to De Gaulle's bourgeois upbringing,  Peguy grew up poor. His father died while Peguy was a child, from wounds sustained in the Franco-Prussian war. His mother, a chair-maker, worked long hours to support the poor family.  However Peguy was precocious, and his intellectual ability was recognised by the local schoolmaster, and the republican educational system, recognising his talents, propelled him from provincial Orleans to the to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.  Dropping his childhood Catholicism for Socialism, he became a student activist and soon became embroiled in the Dreyfus affair, literally fighting in the streets of Paris against those who were convinced Dreyfus was guilty. He never graduated from university, instead became an "essayist", earning a meager income from his journal Cahiers de la Quinzane. Rediscovering his Catholicism in the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair he railed against modernity and became "mystical", writing several poems which, while earning him acclaim, earned him little money. A reserve army officer, he was killed leading his troops on the eve of the Battle of the Marne.

So why is he important.

Well, apart from the political legacy he left through his influence of the politics of de Gaulle, he had an indirect influence on the trajectory of Catholicism in the 20th C. Peguy recognised that modernity was changing the world in a way that it had never experienced before and he also recognised that the Christian religion was in deep trouble. A founding, if not principle member, of the ressourcement movement--he coined the term--he excoriated the clergy whom he felt had corrupted the Christian religion and turned men away from God. A man of fierce integrity, his relationship was the Church was highly irregular as he was married to secular woman who refused to baptise their children (he would not so without her agreement) and was thus denied the sacraments.

Interestingly, the young assistant who worked with him in the store in which he published his journal was Jacques Maritain. Peguy set into motion a series of events which caused Maritain to return to the faith. Maritain, in turn, mentored many who become influential in the Nouvelle theology movement which reshaped Catholicism in the 20th C.

Peguy was a fulcrum upon which a lot moved.

Peguy approached religion as poet and not as a theologian, in that his faith was in his heart and not a product of his head. But it would be wrong to say that he "intuited" this rather he seemed to have "sensed"--I'm being specific about the terminology--it in a profound manner. And what he sensed was that the clerical led faith had become detached from the source of it, and he felt that this was the cause of Christianity's atrophy. But it wasn't just this disconnection between the source of the faith and the practice of religon, Peguy also felt that Christianity, particularly in its Jansenist and ascetic elements, had deformed Christianity. There has been perhaps no other Christian that so emphasised the goodness of the carnal world. His was not a Christian spirituality rather it was a word made flesh.  Peguy was big on the goodness of creation and the body.

So why isn't he well known?

As I see it, there were two major problems with Christianity at the dawn of the 20th C. Firstly, there was the source/theology detachment problem which was recognised by a few, but there was also the problem of the  "buddhisation" of Christianity which is hardly recognised even today. At the dawn of the Nouvelle Theology movement there could be said to be two branches, the "traditionalists" and "Peguy". And since Peguy was problematic and died early, the "traditionalist" i.e. Buddhist branch assumed dominance. Peguy's nouvelle theology was a road not traveled.

As said before, Peguy was a probelmatic Christian. For example,  he was fiercely nationalistic which he said was fueled by his Christian faith.  He loathed pacifism and preferred a just war to an unjust peace. He was not a militarist but saw in the profession of arms a shield against the wickedness of malign powers. For Peguy, Christian soldiers provided the space in which the faith could grow unmolested and there was a holy dimension to their profession provided they acted justly and honorably.

"Blessed are those who died for carnal earth

Provided it was in a just war.

Blessed are those who died for a plot of ground.

Blessed are those who died a solemn death."

He literally street-brawled for justice. He preferred to put the hurt on evil rather than suffer it.  His notion of carnality, meant that identity was not an idea but a something rooted in reality. For example, France was not an "idea" but it was carnal thing and to be French, as opposed to a French citizen, were two separate things. He thought that some of the poor, in their attitude to work had become too "bourgeois." He also felt that Jesus wasn't in competition with our identities. We did not all have to become "mini Jesuses" rather we should be the christian version of ourselves.

His was a loving assertive Christianity, there was no kumbayah in him. And his assertive Christianity put him against the "traditional" ascetic "Buddhist" Christianity which assumed prominence in both the traditional and liberal strains of Christianity. He was a Christian knight who did not find an audience among pacifist monks and therefore he is forgotten. When he is mentioned, he is remembered for his "acceptable" points; his piety, his concern for the poor, his religious poetry. They gloss over the disagreeable stuff.

But the question to ask here is who is the more orthodox Christian, the pacifist monk or Peguy? And here a thought experiment is in order: Joseph Ratzinger is probably the deepest, most orthodox of the Nouvelle Theologians. Now could you imagine, even in his young adulthood, the young Ratzinger making a whip out of cords and chasing the money lenders out of the temple, but anyone given a familiarity of Peguy's life could not only imagine it, but could also see Peguy giving a "few extra" for good measure.

Which one better imitates Christ?

Makes you think.

Friedrich Nietzche: A European Buddhism

“I could be the Buddha of Europe: though admittedly an antipode to the Indian Buddha”

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

I've got to admit that I've never read much of Nietzsche simply because he hasn't really interested me that much.  But perhaps I've been wrong. While rummaging through some journal articles I became aware of the fact that he had a reasonably solid understanding of Buddhism and apparently even spent two years learning Sanskrit. Interestingly, a lot of the "Will to power" and "Ubermesch" stuff was a consequence of his understanding of Buddhism and its application to European culture.

What I also found astounding is that there is a fair amount of literature out there looking at the relationship between Nietzsche's thought and Buddhism, the executive summary being that they are more alike than different. What I find interesting is how he also recognised that the decline of European culture will come with it becoming more Buddhist, particularly Christianity, something this blog has mentioned before.

This is form an excellent journal article which summaries his thoughts on the subject which I would highly recommend:

Nietzsche opened his Genealogy of Morals with a revaluation of Schopenhauer, considered as a cultural event in the history of Europe. Thus, at the moment when Schopenhauer's philosophy was a cause celebre, creating spectacular enthusiasm among intellectual and artistic circles, Nietzsche felt compelled to abandon his most influential mentor in order to dramatize the danger that he believed Schopenhauer's Weltanschauung represented when conceived as a European destiny.

It was precisely here that I saw the great danger to mankind, its sublimest enticement and seduction—but to what? to nothingness?—it was precisely here that I saw the beginning of the end ... the will turning against life . . . I understood the ever spreading morality of pity . . . as the most sinister symptom of a European culture that had become sinister, perhaps as its by-pass to a new Buddhism? to a Buddhism for Europeans? to Nihilism?

In this manner, Nietzsche raised the specter of European culture passing into a nihilistic phase, one characterized by a will to nothingness—a will to the absolute relativity of all values and, hence, to the frank realization that life was without any given meaning or goal. Such a cultural destiny, Nietzsche called a new or "European" Buddhism. We should note immediately that Nietzsche took special care to emphasize that a Buddhistic phase in the cultural life of Europe would constitute a new form of Buddhism and, thus, would exhibit qualities both consistent with and profoundly different from classical Buddhism. Some of those differences we have already encountered in Nietzsche's judgment that classical Buddhism arose out of the death throes of an exhausted civilization and marked, therefore, a final cultural form of excessively spiritual men[ED].

Nietzsche saw that the loss of the transcendental values which came about with encroaching atheism would  produce a state of affairs which was similar to what went on in Asia before. Neitzsche's critique of Schopenhauer was about how he approached the "death of God". Nietzsche may have ranted about his pity but what really irked him was his passive acceptance of the fact which he saw as a type of Nihlism.   But its also important to note that excessive spirituality paved the way for the transformation of Christianity.

The Christian era is succeeded by its opposite, a new Buddhism. Such a movement occurs within Christianity as a result of its revaluation of itself. Nietzsche postulated that the "will to truth" was the agency by which Christianity overcomes itself and necessarily eventuates in an honest atheism and a radical cultural nihilism. After almost two thousand years of training in the "will to truth," which eventually got sublimated into cleanliness of intellectual conscience (science), European man is finally ripe for the truth of a new Buddhism and the total revaluation of his most precious venerations. The new Buddhism, therefore, will be the terminal phase of the Christian era.

But how could Christianity give birth to a European form of Buddhism? In Nietzsche's judgment, European Christianity's moral world-view and its in-junctions produced a man already trained in the ways of practical nihilism. In fact, Christians have always been practicing nihilists, and it was this hidden scandal that Nietzsche believed he had uncovered about Christianity. Such a practical nihilism was rooted in the Christian's disposition to invest all of the significance of life in a kingdom beyond this world—indeed, to devalue the earth—including human reason, instincts, and passions. Such a tendency brought about a radical depreciation of the richness of earthly life and the concomitant investment of nothing, and the beyond, with ultimate meaning. By these means, Christianity educated European man toward a yearning for nothingness and created a Buddhistic tendency in man. Viewed in this manner, European Buddhism, whatever specific form it might finally take, would have to be seen as the culmination of a moralistic development within Christian culture itself. Its appearance would symbolize the final collapse of the Christian movement and the onset of a post-Christian era.

There are several really important points here. That excessive spirituality conditions men to a Buddhist worldview. Secondly a detachment from "the world" negates the importance of worldly affairs. Thirdly, an excessively keanotic interpretation of Christianity produces an atmosphere akin to nihlism. What Nietzsche is saying is that traditional asceticism and modern theological developments i.e. Kumbayah Kenotic Christianity will transform Christianity into a Buddhist version of itself.

Strangely, Nietzsche greeted the prospect of a Western form of Buddhism with considerable ambivalence. In Beyond Good and Evil, he spoke of Europe being threatened by a new Buddhism, while in an unpublished note, he characterized the possibility as a "nihilistic catastrophe." Yet in another unpublished note, Nietzsche welcomed a European form of Buddhism as both "the most extreme form of nihilism" and "the most scientific of all possible hypotheses." Such an ambivalence on Nietzsche's part reflected his genuine uncertainty regarding what kind of pessimism (or nihilism) would eventually come to dominate European culture. Nietzsche never doubted that Europe had already entered a nihilistic phase of cultural existence. What he did have serious misgivings about was the specific interpretation that Western man would give to his emerging awareness of a culture-wide crisis of meaning—that the old values which had supported and shaped his life had collapsed and, therefore, could no longer insure a future for him. In other words, how European man would appropriate the new conditions of his life mattered greatly! The issue turned, for Nietzsche, on whether Europe would succumb to a pessimism of weakness, symbolized by Schopenhauer's metaphysics and an opiate Christianity, or whether it would will the courage of a "pessimism of strength" symbolized by Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the Dionysian man. Only under the latter banner would it be possible to create a future beyond the desert of nihilism. Moreover, it was in the latter sense alone that Christianity could become the proper basis for a new European civilization. Should this occur, then the emergence of a European Buddhism could be viewed as the signal for the beginning of a more spiritual age.

If found this last bit quite interesting as Nietszche still saw some possible hope for Christianity, but it had to reverse some of its tendencies. You've got to take Nietzsche with a grain of salt but what I find interesting is his notion that Christianity could successfully tackle society if it could "deascetisise" to a degree and recognise the legitimacy of the the created world, not just in theory but in practice.

*Bonus: Another good blog post on the subject.

Taliban 1: Woke Empire 0

As the debacle of Afghanistan flashes across our TV screens it's important to reflect why a bunch of goat herders were able to successfully defeat the most technologically advanced and copiously equipped military on earth. This all segues well with my current posts on de Gaulle so it's worth a few comments.

If victory is defined as the ability to impose your will on the battlefield, then the fall of Afghanistan--and its rapidity--is a catastrophic defeat for the U.S.  Sure, the US is still capable of affecting much destruction but a desert is not a client state and what's been fascinating to see is that when faced with a choice of a U.S. style democracy and medieval sharia state the local people chose a sharia state. It's not like the U.S. didn't try. Under effective U.S. rule the GDP of Afghanistan grew 500%, women's rights were improved and vast amount of infrastructure was built. America was putting down the infrastructure to integrate Afghanistan into the globohomo system.

And remember, the U.S. has been in Afghanistan for 20 years.

The speed and rapidity of the Taliban advance--most of the time with hardly any fighting at all--showed that American values had completely failed to "take" in Afghan society. The modern American way of life was an unwanted product. As it was in Vietnam.

No while I reckon he's still a bit of a Buddhist Christian, Rod Dreher appears to be getting red pilled quite rapidly and his post on the subject was quite insightful.  As he points out, America's political a military eggheads discounted the role of religion:

This is on the elites. This is on elites like Carter Malkasian, senior adviser to the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2015-2019. In this piece from last month in Politico, he admits that it never really occurred to these American geniuses that the Taliban were really motivated by their religion. Excerpt:

The Taliban had an advantage in inspiring Afghans to fight. Their call to fight foreign occupiers, steeped in references to Islamic teachings, resonated with Afghan identity. For Afghans, jihad — more accurately understood as “resistance” or “struggle” than the caricatured meaning it has acquired in the United States — has historically been a means of defense against oppression by outsiders, part of their endurance against invader after invader. Even though Islam preaches unity, justice and peace, the Taliban were able to tie themselves to religion and to Afghan identity in a way that a government allied with non-Muslim foreign occupiers could not match.

The very presence of Americans in Afghanistan trod on a sense of Afghan identity that incorporated national pride, a long history of fighting outsiders and a religious commitment to defend the homeland. It prodded men and women to defend their honor, their religion and their home. It dared young men to fight. It sapped the will of Afghan soldiers and police. The Taliban’s ability to link their cause to the very meaning of being Afghan was a crucial factor in America’s defeat.

This explanation has been underappreciated by American leaders and experts, myself included. We believed things were possible in Afghanistan — defeat of the Taliban or enabling the Afghan government to stand on its own — that probably were not.

Gosh, you think? What the hell did these eggheads think that the Taliban were?! It’s like a senior American expert in 1945 writing that it was surprising to discover that the Nazis really cared a lot about race. This is what happens when you have an elite that is wholly secular, and incapable of thinking outside that narrow box. Why did they tap Ghani as president? Because he was the most secularized, technocratic Afghan politician — somebody American experts could understand, but also someone incapable of inspiring loyalty among Afghanis.

The bottom line is that institutional America, homo secularis, was taking on the Taliban, homo religiosus and the Taliban won. The point here is that most men are motivated by more than dollars and cents and that sometimes the intangibles are far more important. But what's also important to note here is that Islam reinforced identity.  America was caught in a a rather interesting bind. To be tolerant, it had to allow Islam to flourish but Islam was opposed to America.  There was a fundamental incompatibility that doomed the US project from the outset.

Christianity, once, also reinforced identity. De Gaulle's opposition to the U.S. and E.U. hedgemony was rooted in his Christian sense of the identity of France. It wasn't xenophobia as much as his Christianity that pushed him hard in rejecting anything the compromised his sense of French identity. De Gaulle and the Taliban may come from different religious faiths, but both understand the teaching, "what does it profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul?

The secular man has no such understanding.

*The mosque in the background of the image is a nice touch.

The Strange Case of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

One of the things that struck me in reading about de Gaulle's life is how Catholic support for the Free French could be predicted by theological position, with "traditionalists" supporting the Vichy regime.

The common perception people have of the Vichy regime is that it was a puppet regime imposed by the Nazis. The thing is that this is not exactly true. It would be more correct to say that it was regime enabled by the French defeat and though it shared a disadvantageous position with respect to Germany, there was much synchronicity between the ideals of it and Nazi Germany. People forget just how respectable Fascism was prior to the Second World. Contemporary history tends to paint the French as "victims" of Nazi conquest yet the reality was that there were many Frenchmen who were supportive of the German conquest of Europe.

People forget that prior to the Second World War, France was deeply divided society, much like the modern U.S., with both Left and Right factions who saw no agreement virtually on anything.  The biggest movement on the Right  was the Action Francaise movement, which advocated a return to French Monarchy, a repudiation of the French revolution, a restoration of the preeminent position of the Catholic Church in French society and a return to "traditional values".  It was anti-Semitic, anti-Protestant, Xenophobic  and collaborated, in some instances, quite enthusiastically with some of the more odious Nazi policies.

What was strange about the movement is that it was led by an avowed atheist who was contemptuous of religion, Charles Maurras. He supported the Catholic Faith because it formed part of the "identity" of France but as said before, he thought the faith a bunch of tosh. He did, however, like Vichy.

Now men of quite of quite rudimentary and simple faith would probably feel that there is something intuitively wrong with a position which supports a religion while at the same time regarding it with contempt.  But I suppose this incompatibility can be overcome with a rigorous philosophical training and deep spirituality. Enter  Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. (RGL)

RGL, who is currently being rehabilitated by certain trad sections in the U.S., was not your ordinary member of clergy.  A brilliant Dominican theologian, author of many theological books, who held high ecclesiastical office, ghost writer--and "influencer"-- of several papal documents, he was doctrinal supervisor to John Paul II. As said, he was an exceptional guy, but in many ways he encapsulates the problem of Right Catholicism in the 20th Century. As Etienne Gilson explains:

Posterity will have more leisure than we have, and the future will see things from a distance that is lacking to us. Those who are curious about doctrinal teratology will enjoy unraveling the intricacies of such an alliance. On the political level no explanation is needed. The French people are born fanatics; rightists or leftists, they are always willing to persecute one another in the name of some sacred principle. ....The really interesting question was to know why a Master in Theology belonging to the Order of Saint Dominic, as well as a highly qualified interpreter of Thomism who enjoyed in the Church an unchallenged doctrinal authority, should then have felt duty bound to teach that Charles Maurras and Saint Thomas Aquinas agreed on the notion of "the best political regime."

It is enough to open the Summa Theologiae at the right place to know that this is not true. Yet this theologian was very far from being alone in his error. Laymen of great intelligence and talent did not hesitate to side quite openly with the "party of order". The heart of the problem would be to know how, by what secret channels, Thomism could seem to them to offer a theological justification of the political theory of Charles Maurras. What the royalists hoped to gain from such an alliance is obvious. Saint Thomas is the Common Doctor of the Church. To establish that his political doctrine was the same as that of Charles Maurras amounted to proving that the Political doctrine of Charles Maurras was that of the Church. With this proved, all French Catholics without exception would have been held in conscience to accept the monarchist politics of the Action Francaise. What a haul! Let us resist the temptation to as what peculiar brand of "Thomism" this must have been to feel akin to the positivism of Maurras which, like that of Comte, was deeply interested in Rome but not in Jerusalem.

The Philosopher and Theology

Now RGL wasn't just a supporter of Vichy, he was an enthusiastic one. He was so enthusiastic that he used his doctrinal authority to assert that anyone who supported the Free French was committing a mortal sin. And there is credible evidence that he saw no problem with Vichy's anti-Semitic policies. Now it's one thing when the local village priest comes to a conclusion which is stupid, but when your "best and brightest" is out cheer-leading for an evil government you've got a serious problem.  What's even worse is that RGL enjoyed considerable support and esteem in the Vatican well after the evils of the Nazis' and their collaborators were born to light. Remember this is all before Vatican II and its "corruption" by "liberalism".

Apologists for RGL have stated that his religion clouded his theology.

I doubt that.

RGL primarily saw himself as a religious man and his "faith" was sincere. There is no chance in hell that he didn't measure his political actions by the yardstick of his faith. And this is where the problem really lays: How is it that a man, who is gifted in intelligence, a profound ascetic, devoted to religion and who's had the best education that  Western Civilisation could have thrown at him come to the conclusion that there was no moral problem with his faith and the persecution of an innocent people and the support of a morally vile regime.

After the war, de Gaulle "leaned on" the Vatican and a quarter of the French clerical hierarchy were forced to retire. RGL kept his position.

There is something profoundly wrong here, and I think it is here where we must look to understand one of the reasons why religion collapsed in the 20th C. 

Charles De Gaulle and Catholicism

“As the French and as Christians we oppose Hitler and fight the fight”

Andre Malraux, de Gaulle's polymath Minister of Cultural affairs once said of him. "He talks a lot about France, very little about God" and it is in this vein that many of his biographers have approached his life. De Gaulle is primarily thought of as a political person, yet that is to misunderstand the man for de Gaulle was profoundly religious. Catholicism is often thought of a showy, flashy religion yet that was not the case of the de Gaulle who was quite reserved about it, keeping it a very private affair.  The other reason why this dimension of is neglected is because the type of faith he had was out of sync with contemporary notions of religion.

When we think of a religious lay man, we tend to think of someone like Robert Schuman: aescetic, in prayer, "churchy", gentle and seeking "peace". De Gaulle, on the other hand, was combative, rude and fiercely nationalist. Someone we wouldn't necessarily associate with being serious about his faith. A yet this would be to misunderstand the man because he was sincerely religious but  he wasn't a church groupie. And here I think we touch the crux of the matter. Our conceptions of religiousness have been so conditioned by the "monkish aesthetic" that we fail to recognise his religious dimension. Yet perhaps this failure in recognising the "holiness" of De Gaulle, seeing him mainly as a political person, lays more in our mistaken conceptions of holiness rather than the actions of de Gaulle.

Samuel Gregg has written an excellent article on his faith which I would urge you to read. Sam writes:

Until recently, de Gaulle’s Catholicism was an understudied topic. In his influential three–volume biography of de Gaulle published in the 1980s, Jean Lacouture portrayed it as something to which de Gaulle held primarily as a matter of French identity rather than deep faith.

Over the past thirty years, that interpretation has collapsed. Books including Gérard Bardy’s Charles le Catholique: De Gaulle et l’Église (2011), Laurent de Gaulle’s Une Vie Sous le Regard de Dieu: La Foi du Général de Gaulle (2015), and the conference proceedings collected in Charles de Gaulle, chrétien, homme d’État (2011) have illustrated that de Gaulle was a believing Catholic who accepted the Church’s teachings without much fuss. The real question is how this commitment shaped de Gaulle’s thought and action.......

The answer: quite a lot. De Gaulle was a deeply sincere Catholic, but why this is so difficult to recognise is that his Catholicism was peculiar and once you begin to realise the peculiarity of it, a lot of de Gaulle's political actions become quite easy to understand. Roosevelt once mocked de Gaulle saying "he thinks he's Joan of Arc" but here Roosevelt was on the money. Because de Gaulle's Catholicism was of the same nature as that of St Joan, it was, in a sense, medieval and not modern.  His efforts to liberate France need to be understood as personal crusade, with all the medieval religious elements that it entertains.

Lacouture, a biographer,  held that de Gaulle was Catholic because he was French, but that's not how de Gaulle would have seen it. His Catholicism is what amplified his Frenchness and not the other way around. Unlike modern Catholicism which demphasises identity, de Gaulle's emphasised it. His version of Catholicism was pushing against the stream of contemporary christian culture. His Christianity was nationalistic, identitarian and militant.

De Gaulle's peculiar version of  Catholicism meant that his relationship with French Catholicism was sometimes quite difficult.  With the Fall of France, many of the Catholic senior clergy enthusiastically accepted the new Vichy regime and were quite accommodating to their Nazi overlords.

When Pétain restored what Baudrillart would have regarded as the natural order, with Church and state wedded together, he welcomed the Marshall’s rule and offered open support, even though he lived in the occupied zone. In 1941, he went a step further. He publicly supported the French volunteers who joined the Wehrmacht and SS in the campaign against the Soviet Union. In the first two years of the war, the Cardinal could even write that there was no contradiction between Nazism and Christianity.

What I also hadn't appreciated till now was that support for de Gaulle in religious circles could be broadly predicted by theological position. The Nouvelle Theologians lined up behind de Gaulle and the Resistance, the traditionalists behind Vichy. Let me be quite clear about this: Traditionalist Catholicism in France lined up behind the Nazi's.

Yet some in France were resisting the new order from the outset. In the vanguard of the Resistance stood the Jesuits, often in close collaboration with Protestant pastors. These men were theologically far removed from their fellow clergy in Paris, or, indeed, in much of France. As liberals, their thinking was to influence the outcome of the Second Vatican Council profoundly, particularly in the new attitude towards the Jews and their rejection of the close association between Church and state. It was exactly this line of thinking that proved abhorrent to Archbishop Lefebvre* and caused the schism with the SSPX some decades later.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that there is something seriously wrong with a Catholicism that sees itself as compatible with German National Socialism.  Traditional Catholicism in France, as in the rest of Europe, was seriously diseased.

And remember, this was before Vatican Two.

De Gaulle had a healthy contempt of some of the senior French Catholic hierarchy and with the victory of the Allies, made sure some of the worst offending clergy were removed. But in being opposed to the traditionalists it did not mean that de Gaulle was some kind of kumbayah liberal. He realised, like most other sensible people at the time,  that the Church needed to change in order to deal with modernity. During the war, despite all the other issues that beset him, he cultivated religious intellectuals such as Maritain and Bernanos. He followed Church events closely and was influential in some of the French appointments to Vatican II. He hoped for positive changes since he understood that the identity of Europe and Christianity were intertwined, and the decline of religion was sapping Europe's vitality. Yet, as a social conservative,  he deplored many of the changes that resulted from Vatican Two.

De Gaulle, it seems, had a unique take on Catholicism that doesn't fit neatly within the liberal/conservative schema. But it wasn't an idiosyncratic expression of Catholicism rather one which had its roots in a dissident strain of Catholicism that seems to have been pushed aside in battle between the "modernisers" and traditionalists.  Perhaps the greatest exponent of this strain of Catholicism was Charles Peguy, and the more I read about de Gaulle, the more I see the influence of Peguy on him.

And this is where I find de Gaulle really interesting. De Gaulle's political actions with respect to France have as their basis a specifically Christian vision of the nation, people and state. De Gaulle's strident French nationalism, for instance, was based on a Christian nationalism, something that is foreign to modern Christianity. His Christian realism led him to reject pacifism something modern Christianity has nearly completely succumbed to. De Gaulle's battles with the British, Americans and EU take on a different dimension when one starts thinking of him as a Christian/Catholic statesman instead of being simply a good french politician.

What I haven't really appreciated until now is that a political approach to de Gaulle is the wrong one, and one has to really look at him as a Christian engaging modernity in the field of politics. The reason why we don't take this approach I imagine is because our contemporary notions of Christianity are so foreign to what de Gaulle stood for, is that we are blind to the Christianity in de Gaulle's action.

And perhaps de Gaulle's Christianity was the right one and ours is wrong.

*Bonus:Lefebvre thought de Gaulle "a snake".