Prophecies

I’ve listed below just a few prophetic words from people I hold in high esteem. Each of these brief comments seems, at least to me, applicable to our current situation. That situation is a movable feast of sorts, but an indigestible feast rushing quickly to something truly demonic. We will soon reach a point where human actions will be unable to save us from a worldly future driven by those captivated by evil. That’s when God will step in as he has again and again. What He will do, how He will rescue us…well, that’s likely to be quite a surprise. But like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, God calls on us to plead the case of the faithful ones [See Gn 18]. 

In the meantime, we must do our part and never fear speaking the truth, not only among family and friends, but also openly in the public square. But first we must come together prayerfully as the people of God filled with hope. And remember, hope isn’t just wishin’ and dreamin’ — not at all. Hope, as a theological virtue, is our firm confidence that God will answer our prayer and fulfill His promise to care for us and pour out His peace on us, all over us, and into our confused and troubled hearts. "Peace be with you" Jesus says to the confused and doubting.

Keep in mind that prophecy involves the proclamation of God’s Word and only occasionally addresses future events. Prophecy, then, is simply the revelation of God’s will for us. That said, read these comments and consider their truths:

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.” ~ St. Paul [2 Tim 4:3-4] 

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.” ~ Pope Benedict XVI, 2005

“The hero can never be a relativist.“~ Richard M. Weaver, 1948, Ideas Have Consequences

"I don't need a church to tell me I'm wrong where I already know I'm wrong; I need a Church to tell me I'm wrong where I think I'm right" ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

“For the first time in human history, most people are doing things that could never interest a child enough to want to tag along. That says less about the child than about us.” ~ Anthony Esolen

“Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.” ~ Russell Kirk, (1986). “The Assault on religion: commentaries on the decline of religious liberty”

“The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason.” ~ Richard M. Weaver

"We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us." ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

“When one remembers how the Catholic Church has been governed, and by whom, one realizes that it must have been divinely inspired to have survived at all.” ~ Hilaire Belloc

“It may be a movement towards becoming like little children to admit that we are generally nothing else.” ~ Charles Williams, Descent into Hell

“When the whole world is running headlong towards the precipice, one who walks in the opposite direction is looked at as being crazy.” ~ T. S. Eliot

“We’re surrounded by a lot of noise. The world tries to drown out God’s voice. How many never take the time to listen for God’s call, or even believe He’s calling them?” ~ Me (2022)

"Rather than shivering in the cold, modern man has preferred to set the house on fire, and dance for a moment in the final conflagration" ~ Roger Scruton

Progressive Education, a Prophecy

The other day, in a TV news discussion addressing the radicalization of so many students in our colleges and universities, a member of the US House complained that, over the past two or three decades, our nation’s educational system has been infiltrated and co-opted by the ideological left. At one level he is correct, but at another, he is historically ignorant. The left’s takeover of education, especially our public educational system, has been a long, intentional process that began well over 100 years ago. Let me introduce you to a prophet who addressed the specifics of this highly successful movement 70 years ago, certainly more than a “two or three decades.” 

The prophet, Richard M. Weaver, died far too early in 1963 at the age of 53. A professor of English at the University of Chicago, he was far better known as a political philosopher and historian of intellectual movements. Weaver ultimately became one of the pioneers of modern conservative thought. He left behind many writings, but he is best known for three remarkable books: 

Ideas Have Consequences (1948)

The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)

 

Visions of Order (1964)

If you hope to understand the ideas that have formed the basis of today’s conservative thought in America, these three brief books, along with Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, are a great starting point. 

Years ago, when I first read Weaver’s Visions of Order, I was captivated by his chapter on education, entitled, “Gnostics of Education.” He described how the process of educational radicalization really began in the nineteenth century when, in his words: 

“…there occurred a sinister change. This came about when state bureaucracies were created to set the terms and supervise the workings of the expanding public school system. State legislatures felt that they had to turn the actual administration of affairs over to a body of ‘experts’…these state departments of education became virtually autonomous in their power to define the goals, methods, and materials of public instruction. The final step came when they were able to require all prospective public school teachers through the high school level to take a set number of courses in a subject called ‘Education’…This is where the doctrinal revolution…really took place…The new education, for which the name ‘progressive’ has been pre-empted by its advocates, is in marked conflict with our basic traditions and culture.” [Visions of Order, p. 114-115]

Following this, Weaver lists “some of the chief assumptions and tenets of progressive education. The conflict between them and the principal teachings of the Judea-Christian classical heritage of the west will be immediately apparent.” 

I realize his list is neither brief nor couched in today’s politically-correct language, but believe it’s worth reading. As you read, keep in mind that, although the book was published in 1964, a year after Weaver’s death, most of it was written in the mid-1950s, almost 70 years ago. These eight assumptions could easily be the manifesto of one of today’s radicalized teachers' unions. I include them here just as they were published [See Visions of Order, p. 115-117].

1. There is no such thing as a body of knowledge which reflects the structure of reality and which everyone therefore needs to learn. Knowledge is viewed as an instrumentality which is true or false according to the way it is applied to concrete situations or the way it serves the needs of the individual. Since these educators have embraced the notion that the essence of the world is change, there is no final knowledge about anything. The truths of yesterday are the falsehoods of today and the truths of today will be the falsehoods of tomorrow.
2. This being so, the object of education is not to teach knowledge, but to “teach students.” As they translate this into practice, it means that everyone should be adapted to the child as child, to the youth as youth, and to the particular group according to its limitations. There are no ideals or standards of performance which these are bound to measure themselves by or to respect.
3. As a corollary of the above principal, the child should be encouraged to follow his own desires in deciding what he should study, and what aspects of what subjects, and at what times.
4. The teacher must not think of himself as being in authority, because authority is evil. The teacher is there as a “leader,” but the duty of the leader is only to synchronize and cooperate with the work of the group.
5. The student should never be made afraid of anything connected with the school. Marks and competitions are bad because they instill feelings of superiority and inferiority, which are undemocratic. 
6. The mind is not to be exalted over the senses: democracy requires that sensory and “activist” learning be valued on a par with intellectual learning. The mentally slow or retarded are not to be made to feel that they are lacking; it is better to impugn the whole tradition of intellectual education than to injure the feelings of the less bright and the lazy.
7. Consequently, there should be less education through symbols like language and figures and more through using the hands-on concrete objects. It is more important to make maps than to learn them, said John Dewey, the grand pundit of the revolutionary movement.
8. The general aim is to train the student so that he will adjust himself not simply to the existing society, as is sometimes inferred from their words, but to society conceived as social democracy.

Here’s an abbreviated view of Weaver’s conclusions regarding these aims of progressive education:

• Absolute truth does not exist. No knowledge is binding.
• The mind is a tyrant which denies the rights of the body and must be democratized, forced into equity.
• The student’s aim is not to save his soul, inherit past wisdom, or advance himself or human knowledge, but to become a member of a future, ill-defined utopia.

How sad that Weaver recognized, understood, and warned us about this back in the 1950s and yet as a nation we didn’t listen…a prophet in his own land. One can only hope that the American people will come to realize the importance of local elections, particularly school board elections.

Of course, this radicalization has affected more than just education, but every aspect of society. Can we overcome this societal radicalization? I'm not sure. Back in 1949 -- when I was just a little kid -- another modern prophet, T. S. Eliot, wrote:

"Our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago; and that the evidences of this decline are visible in every department of human activity" [Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, p. 17].

Language and Societal Decay

Perhaps a year ago, while reading a biography of John Milton, I came across an interesting comment Milton made in a letter to one Benedetto Bonomatthai. I found it so interesting, I made note of it. And then, just about a week ago, I once again encountered the same quote in a collection of Richard Weaver's essays and other short works. Weaver (1910-1963) is another of my heroes, one of those remarkably smart people who challenge my ill-formed opinions. This particular book -- In Defense of Tradition -- is certainly worth reading, as is everything else Weaver wrote.

Anyway, back to Milton. Here's the quote (an English translation from the original Latin) by the great English poet and written on September 10, 1638: 

"Nor do I think it a matter of little moment whether the language of a people be vitiated or refined, whether the popular idiom be erroneous or correct...It is the opinion of Plato, that changes in dress and habits of the citizens portend great changes and commotions in the state; and I am inclined to believe that when the language in common use becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin or their degradation. For what do terms used without skill or meaning, which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote but a people listless, supine, and ripe for servitude? On the contrary, we have never heard of any people or state which has not flourished in some degree of prosperity as long as their language has retained its elegance and purity."

This all came to mind because of the quality of the language used by some of today's inexplicably famous people, who seem to capture the interest of the media and those enslaved by the cult of celebrity worship. I refer particularly to the women on the US soccer team who, after beating the team from the Netherlands, celebrated by presenting us with a constant stream of foul language, obscene gestures, and other equally unpleasant demonstrations of the respect they have for the country they represent and its people. 

Behavior, too, is a form of language that communicates sometimes more clearly than words, and the team's display of unsportsmanlike behavior, especially during their 13-0 win over a hapless Thai team, was simply disgusting. The US team ran up the score, cheering madly with every senseless goal, while the Thai women left the field in tears. No humility, no reserve, no grace -- just an in-your-face, "we're something else, you're nothing" display of hubris. I suppose some folks thought this was just fine; but I, for one, was ashamed to be an American that day.

Of course, we encounter similar behavior and hear the same foul language from our politicians, including U.S. Senators and Represenatatoves. Even our president occasionally utters the mild expletive, especially during his roadshow rallies, but he's truly mild when compared with AOC and her staff. These folks spit out f-bombs like pieces of chewed up gum, as does another lovely New Yorker, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. And in California, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris refused to be out-profaned by her Empire State colleagues. She, too, demonstrating the class with which she graces the upper chamber, let loose with a steady stream of obscenities while discussing, of all things, healthcare. 

A person's language and its associated behavior usually provide a fairly clear picture of the state of his or her mind. These folks, apparently unable to develop and articulate their arguments, resort to meaningless obscenities designed to do nothing but shock their listeners. Their "words" certainly don't offer convincing evidence that their beliefs are worthy of acceptance. 

The degradation of language and its effect on a people intrigue me, so maybe I'll continue the discussion in a future post.

Of course, if Milton was correct, and there's certainly much evidence to support his hypothesis, we might well be doomed as a nation.

We sure do live in interesting times, don't we?

A Few Modern Prophecies

Here are just a few prophetic comments I've come across in my reading recently...

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) on 13 November 1926

"All centralized systems mean the rule of the few; and industrial machinery is the most centralized of all systems. If the modern American really wants to know what his fathers meant by democracy, he will never learn it from a Ford car. He must make the supreme and awful sacrifice. He must get out and walk."

Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) in 1933:

"The family is steadily losing its form and its social significance, and the state absorbs more and more of the life of its members. The home is no longer a centre of social activity; it has become merely a sleeping place for a number of independent wage-earners.

"If we accept the principles of the new morality this last safeguard [marriage's social prestige] will be destroyed and the forces of dissolution will be allowed to operate unchecked.

"Marriage will lose all attractions for the young and the pleasure-loving and the poor and the ambitious. The energy of youth will be devoted to contraceptive love and only when men and women have become prosperous and middle-aged will they think seriously of settling down to rear a strictly limited family."

And another by Christopher Dawson, also in 1933 from Enquiries into Religion and Culture):

"The central conviction which has dominated my mind ever since I began to write is the conviction that the society or culture which has lost its spiritual roots is a dying culture, however prosperous it may appear externally. Consequently the problem of social survival is not only a political or economic one; it is above all things religious, since it is in religion that the ultimate spiritual roots both of society and the individual are to be found.”

Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) in 1954 from her Introductory Papers on Dante:

"That the Inferno is a picture of human society in a state of sin and corruption, everybody will readily agree. And since we are today fairly well convinced that society is in a bad way and not necessarily evolving in the direction of perfectibility, we find it easy enough to recognize the various stages by which the deep of corruption is reached. Futility; lack of living faith; the drift into loose morality, greedy consumption, financial irresponsibility, and uncontrolled bad temper; a self-opinionated and obstinate individualism; violence, sterility, and lack of reverence for life and property including one's own; the exploitation of sex, the debasing of language by advertisement and propaganda, the commercializing of religion, the pandering to superstition and the conditioning of people's minds by mass-hysteria and "spell-binding" of all kinds, venality and string-pulling in public affairs, hypocrisy, dishonesty in material things, intellectual dishonesty, the fomenting of discord (class against class, nation against nation) for what one can get out of it, the falsification and destruction of all the means of communication; the exploitation of the lowest and stupidest mass emotions; treachery even to the fundamentals of kinship, country, the chosen friend, and the sworn allegiance: these are the all-too-recognizable stages that lead to the cold death of society and the extinguishing of all civilized relations."

 Richard Weaver (1910-1963) in 1948 from Ideas Have Consequences:

"It may be that we are awaiting a great change, that the sins of the fathers are going to be visited upon the generations until the reality of evil is again brought home and there comes some passionate reaction, like that which flowered in the chivalry and spirituality of the Middle Ages. If such is the most we can hope for, something toward that revival may be prepared by acts of thought and volition in this waning day of the West."

More on Europe...

Last week was particularly busy, leaving me little time for the blog or any of the other activities I actually enjoy. Interesting how one's expectations for retirement differ so greatly from the reality. But I suppose this is true of most human endeavors. Yesterday evening, for example, I opened Pope Benedict's book, Europe Today and Tomorrow, (written in 2004) and came across this prescient comment: "For politicians of all parties the obvious thing to do today is to promise changes -- of course, changes for the better."

And yet how often do those promised changes actually lead to the betterment of human life? We, the people, because we've bought into all the promises and the expectations, convince ourselves that we're unhappy with the status quo and embrace change. But, of course, every change carries with it unexpected consequences that more often than not degrade our condition. This is one reason why I'm fairly conservative: I know I'm not smart enough -- and I really don't believe anyone else is either -- to manage forced societal change and all its consequences effectively. Socialists have tried it. Communists have tried it. Fascists have tried it. And they've all failed.

Since the end of World War I, Europe, both East and West, has been the proving ground for these failed experiments in change. In truth, I suppose it all really began with the French Revolution with its cry for "Liberté, égalité, fraternité." Talk about unmet expectations! Yes, the French people certainly had liberty, equality and fraternity. Operated by a perverse form of fraternal love, the guillotine, that equal opportunity killer, liberated large numbers of citizens from their earthly lives. Another reason I'm thankful I was born here and not in France. (In a wonderful book, Ideas Have Consequences, 1948, Richard Weaver traces it all back even further, to the nominalism of the 13th-century English Franciscan, William of Ockham.)

Back to WWI...That devastating and so unnecessary war dimmed the enthusiasm spawned by the Enlightenment, an enthusiasm for rational man as the measure of all things, an enthusiasm that dismissed the divine and transcendent as meaningless when it came to human affairs. Faced by the devastation of that war, confidence in man's ability to solve all the world's problems ebbed. Rational man suddenly seemed little better than primitive man. It's no accident that the war's resulting crisis in faith and reason led to the totalitarianism that brought us an even more devastating war. It also brought an open and undisguised rejection of God. Religion was (and still is) seen as nothing less than a form of slavery, as the greatest obstacle to true human freedom. The folks who believe this are the same people who run the show at the European Union, the same folks who wrote the EU Constitution that, when addressing the roots of European democracy and law, dismissed the influence of 1,500 years of Christianity without a single word. -- a remarkable sin of omission. (If you want to understand better Christianity's forming influence on Europe, I can recommend no better book than Christopher Dawson's The Making of Europe, first published in 1932 but still relevant.)

Most Europeans have happily gone along with the politics of change. They accepted the idea of cradle to grave governmental control of their lives, demanding more and more "benefits" while disregarding the costs. As costs skyrocket, and productivity nosedives, and the tax base disappears, and the people demand more, and the politicians finally must face reality....we find ourselves in modern-day Greece, probably the prototype of the rest of Europe and perhaps the USA.

And so we're left today with a strange Europe, one seemingly afflicted by several maladies. It suffers from a form of historical amnesia in which it represses any memory of the creative force that actually formed Europe: Christianity, and in particular, the Catholic Church. Equally damaging, Europe seems to be committing demographic suicide. Birthrates in most European nations have fallen well below the population replacement rates. The people have apparently fully embraced the contraceptive mentality, one that views pregnancy as a disease and children as obstacles to the good life. And as its population dwindles, Europe will only experience an ever growing need for immigrant workers, one that the Islamic world is only too happy to satisfy. And as you might guess, the birthrates among Muslim immigrants is very high.

How are the Europeans handling this crisis? Simply by ignoring it. The average European pays obeisance to a new dictatorship, what Pope Benedict calls the "dictatorship of relativism." In his words, "We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires." Compared to the European totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, it's a far more subtle form of dictatorship. It's a dictatorship the people, driven by a combination of selfishness and laziness, willingly encourage and accept. They have turned away from their faith, turned away from the truth. But like all dictatorships it won't last long. Demographics will soon transform it into something else. Our grandchildren may actually live to see a Europe ruled by Sharia law. What Suleiman the Magnificent failed to accomplish at Lepanto with his huge fleet and tens of thousands of Muslim warriors, immigrant workers may well accomplish simply by knocking at the door.

This is why the New Evangalization, championed by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, is so important today. As Christians we must evangelize our own. We must bring Christ to those among us who have rejected the faith of their fathers, to those who have lost their way amidst the confusions of our modern world, to those who struggle to see through the darkness that has settled all around them. The fathers of the Second Vatican Council, in their "Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity" (Apostolicam Actuasitatem), wrote:

"They [the laity] exercise the apostolate in fact by their activity directed to the evangelization and sanctification of men and to the penetrating and perfecting of the temporal order through the spirit of the Gospel. In this way, their temporal activity openly bears witness to Christ and promotes the salvation of men. Since the laity, in accordance with their state of life, live in the midst of the world and its concerns, they are called by God to exercise their apostolate in the world like leaven, with the ardor of the spirit of Christ." [Apostolicam Actuositatem, 2]

The politicians won't save Europe from itself since they're a major part of the problem. If Europe is to be saved, it will be saved by the same force that created it, the Church -- and that's all of us.