This is the Work to be Done
A unexpected guest column from our own radio-jockeyish yet thaumaturgical RJ Wizard. The words below are his. Perhaps we should heed them:
These comments follow a pattern. Mr. Wright posts the latest miscarriage of justice, and several commenters (not always the same ones) howl War! and suggest we lower ourselves to various, but not explicitly identified, forms of violence. I don’t think most people realize how far down the pike we are. That they so freely and without thought throw such words out there, out of all context and consideration.
I just read Walker Percy’s THE MOVIEGOER published in 1960 (that is 62 years ago, more than two generations have passed) and one of his characters laments the post-Christian world of lax sexual visions.
Post-Christian. Think about that. Walker Percy was no dummy (see LOVE in the RUINS). 1960. He was calling it, our world, his Southern, Bible-belt world, post-Christian before the onslaught of the sexual revolution made its first major assault (though the battle was well underway plenty before then) and the general downfall in public decorum, manners. Before the full on assault on education, morality and every single thing that Western Civilization stands for and rests upon was openly underway. Before openly and publicly spitting on Christ was openly and publicly applauded. Before Christian was a sneer word. Before Jesus was invited into the pot circle as an eastern guru in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
Now if it be true that it was already a post-Christian world by then, what is it now sixty-two years later?
I agree with his description even in 1960. Yes, all the decoration of the Christian world lived on for a time. But it was the mindset, the vision, that was gone from the minds of most people. More and more people, even Christians, were assimilated into the new, secular, worldview. Most people can only take their Christianity through a modernist glass, hence the huge popularity of the prosperity heresy of Osteen and his ilk.
The very last thing we want is war, the very last thing we want is violence. Not merely because it is generally good to avoid these things if possible. But because they would be exactly our destruction. It is not time for it. It may never be time for it (Rabble Rabble Rabble!! I can hear).
But let’s say there would be a time for it, let’s say we did it now by some means. Who is the man on your right? Who is the man on your left? Is he a Western Man? Is he a man of God? Will you (in some teenaged daydream vision) re-establish the United States of America as it was? How is that possible? Namely, how will you do such a thing through different causes? The men who forged this nation are not here, we are not those men – I do not mean those men specifically, I mean those men, those men of that character.
Is there, anywhere in the public sphere, a George Washington? No? Then pray violence does not fall until we can forge such a man. Until we do, we will fall if violence breaks out as some here fantasize.
And that is just one man, and one man did not make this nation. How about a Thomas Jefferson? We need lots and lots of these men, and we need a populace that can be persuaded to follow us. Can you even image standing next to such a man as George Washington? I’d feel as a floppy piece of warm rubber next to a newly forged Claymore. Neurotic and small, spineless. He’d forge ahead across the frozen Delaware, I fall apart if I don’t get my morning fix of coffee, so creamed and sweetened it is more a liquid dessert than coffee.
And think how close, and how many times, they were on the very brink of complete failure. How hard they had to fight for support. Patrick Henry would not have been the orator he was if he hadn’t had to fight against hearts so hardened. You wish the same outcome with what we have to work with now? With us as the men? It is to laugh if it wouldn’t be so garishly and hellishly gory.
We need education.
We need a metanoia. We need it in ourselves and we need it across a good portion of the populace. We will not get back what we had without Christ, without Christianity. It must be reestablished first. Most things that die do not come back. Mithras never came back. But we are of the resurrection. It comes back, has come back again and again – seems to be its favorite trick! Unlike any other religion, it can come back in any clothing it wishes. So don’t expect a nostalgic return to the 1950’s, aw shucks, golly Wally. It’s re-birth will remake the world again in a new way no one will anticipate. But some things you can bet on, return of men of character, valor and strength.
One of the reasons I think the Covid-Con was so easy to perpetrate on the public is our advanced De-Christianization. Most of us, when the knife comes to the throat, are utter atheists. The Covid scare was easy because we live under the terror of the materialist. This is it. There is nothing else. So, of course, we lick, tongue flattened out like a big pink spoon, the dictator’s boot.
I mention this because, while I do not possess a crystal ball, it may be that part of the metanoia, part of the education may be martyrdom. It may be jail time, it may be public harassment. Or that real terror, ridicule. I don’t count myself out of this, I could, not all the time but a lot, win Coward of the Moment award many a time.
There are many things we can do. One is to speak, don’t be silent, but be charitable and speak with love. No one, not even I, cares to hear someone who speaks from behind a raised pinky and pious contempt. Speaking the truth is not about making yourself feel good, it is about speaking truth. Another is to make Christ visible, make Christianity visible. I do this a lot because a lot of situations don’t allow or are not conducive to speaking. Like work situations or people who are too closed off (at least at the time you are in their company) or foreign to what you would say even if the context arose.
I notice even among my fellow parishioners at Mass, or even when I see them out and about, that I would not be able to identify them as Christian by sight. You should be identifiable easily by sight (exempting really cold weather I suppose) as Christian.
And if you are Catholic, as Catholic, put a body on that Cross. We don’t live under Nero, there is no reason we shouldn’t be, and want to be, identified on sight. Even if we come to live under a Nero, all the more reason to bring it to light.
I, after winning a few weeks of Coward of the Moment winnings earlier year I started to do this. I have a 3″ St. Benedict crucifix you cannot miss.
https://rjwizard.wordpress….
I am not bragging in an echo chamber – this is stuff we all should do. Make it visible! I reserve the right not to put bumper stickers on my car though, I despise bumper stickers.
Also a Marian pendant necklace. Also started to replace t-shirts with anything whatever on them with scripture quotes. I started to notice a few weeks after starting to wear my crucifix at work that a few others were coming out (not Catholics, I live in hillbilly heaven) with their crosses. Nothing as outlandish as mine, but as long as they are out there at all is a positive sign.
Also, pray and support your priest (or pastor if not Catholic) in anyway possible – especially if he is a good one. They are men with the same struggles and temptations as the rest of us and they are under enormous pressures. Offer to be of service to them in any way you can, and let them know they are in your prayers. Don’t just show up for your wafer and drop a buck in the basket and call it done. If you don’t belong to the Knights of Columbus, join. Or if you are able to join a third order, do so. Have a local pregnancy center? Help them out. This is the work to be done.
Yelling war on a forum is doing nothing.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
